Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

joshcsimmons.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 464 posts

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#411

Post by rtldg »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #61

Once, out of the kindness of my foolish heart, I ran a server with a lot of great sound effects for all and sundry to download. Eventually the bandwidth was getting hammered by a huge number of leechers seemingly from some apps that had simply hard-linked to the resources. After replacing said resources [0] they soon ceased but not without a slew of abusive and entitled emails demanding I restore the SFX. Oh fun time…

I was browsing the source of Cookie Clicker and noticed that it blocks sounds from soundjay.com (which third-party mods used) for similar reasons.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#412

Post by maccard »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #410

Just to play devil's advocate here: * The people you're hurting with the goatse image are mostly not the people wrapping your game in an iframe, but rather the people playing games on the game aggregator sites. Probably includes many teenagers and children. * The game aggregator sites are bringing your game to a wider audience. For gamers who don't know the name of a specific game they want to play, it's nice to be a…

> The game aggregator sites are bringing your game to a wider audience.

This is the equivalent of getting paid in exposure.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#413

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

maccard wrote: post #412
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #410

Just to play devil's advocate here: * The people you're hurting with the goatse image are mostly not the people wrapping your game in an iframe, but rather the people playing games on the game aggregator sites. Probably includes many teenagers and children. * The game aggregator sites are bringing your game to a wider audience. For gamers who don't know the name of a specific game they want to play, it's nice to be a…

> The game aggregator sites are bringing your game to a wider audience. This is the equivalent of getting paid in exposure.

The OP seemed to be motivated by bringing joy to people who play his game. I'm saying the aggregator site can help him do that.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#414

Post by rovr138 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #388
jeroenhd wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm sure the British courts will rule in the author's favour when the lawsuit is filed, but that doesn't make flashing other users legal. Then again, I doubt someone is going to file a police report, especially when the URL of the page would bring the reports to an entirely different web page in the first place.

Why would the US extradite

The point of extradition is surrendering a person to another jurisdiction to face criminal charges. Why?, because that's what a treaty is.

Ultimately it depends on what he's charged with and if it's found they can be extradited for it...

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#415

Post by rovr138 »

balls187 wrote: post #347
jsf01 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only this, but I imagine some of the less tech savvy end users (kids, grandparents) would be the ones who found the game from one of these parasitic sites inundated with ads. The goatse image doesn’t help those users. They probably won’t realize what that’s about and then just stop playing altogether.

If an iframe displays that content, could the creators webhost be contacted and would they cancel his account?

Possibly, yes.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#416

Post by stubish »

jeroenhd wrote: post #374
TeMPOraL wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's advocate: OPs approach is a form of inoculation against the ad-powered Internet. The experience may not be pleasant, but drives the right message and quite memorably so.

I don't have a problem with OP's approach and I think he should be free to put whatever he wants on the content-stealing sites, but he didn't have to make it sexual. A very annoying, loud, visually busy animation would've sufficed. Baby shark at maximum volume, or a continuous fart sound, or maybe just a high pitched beep would also sufficiently scare away people. By showing porn in a place that he knows minors and o…

Who is showing porn here? OP or the company they would probably quite like to get shut down due to local censorship laws?

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#417

Post by akoboldfrying »

jonahx wrote: post #313
TeMPOraL wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's advocate: OPs approach is a form of inoculation against the ad-powered Internet. The experience may not be pleasant, but drives the right message and quite memorably so.

100%, and not just as devil's advocate. Let the punishment fit the crime. My sympathies are entirely on the side of the game's author. It's just an obscene image -- the "collateral damage" in this case is perfectly acceptable and imo fair because it damages the brands of the illegal hosters.

I'm a little sympathetic to the author because I don't consider viewing the image all that damaging, but I'm not a fan of the general principle of hurting innocent bystanders in order to cause second-order pain to a third party.

I think you'd probably agree that, say, overwriting every file on the end user's computer with a text file complaining about how the iframe-wielding website steals content would be an unacceptable thing for the author to do. But the only difference would be the degree of suffering inflicted on the innocent bystander.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#418

Post by akoboldfrying »

s3p wrote: post #292
gregsadetsky wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agreed - it for sure would have been easier/cleaner/safer to just show a message that said "please play the official game on whatever.com"

It is not this developer's job to parent someone's kids. It is a parent's responsibility to make sure their child only gets access to the appropriate websites when they are young.

So before clicking on a word game in their browser, all parents should know about the business relationship, or lack thereof, between the underlying content provider and the website running in the top-level browser frame?

I want to emphasise, again, that we're talking about clicking on a word game here.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#419

Post by jonahx »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #417
jonahx wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%, and not just as devil's advocate. Let the punishment fit the crime. My sympathies are entirely on the side of the game's author. It's just an obscene image -- the "collateral damage" in this case is perfectly acceptable and imo fair because it damages the brands of the illegal hosters.

I'm a little sympathetic to the author because I don't consider viewing the image all that damaging, but I'm not a fan of the general principle of hurting innocent bystanders in order to cause second-order pain to a third party. I think you'd probably agree that, say, overwriting every file on the end user's computer with a text file complaining about how the iframe-wielding website steals content would be an unaccep…

The difference is that I rate the amount of "hurt" to the viewers as essentially zero in this case, and I think the concern is misplaced pearl-clutching.

Re: Using Goatse to Stop App Theft

#420

Post by duxup »

swores wrote: post #337
duxup wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the days of P2P file sharing I used to share files with file names and metadata indicating they were rare Metallica live recordings of Metallica songs and other metal band's songs.... but instead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwK_WOXjfc0 So many downloads.

Hopefully you've since grown up a bit and discovered some hobbies that don't involve being a dick to annoy strangers?

If you’re pirating music I would hope you could enjoy a good joke…
Post reply on HN