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South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

tomshardware.com

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Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth noting the SK has some pretty terrible laws around the internet in general. Distribution of porn is illegal there and they do their best to block it from outside. They are pretty big on cyber defamation and will go after people who make fun of government officials[0]. They have a comparatively low internet freedom score because they do things like fine middle schoolers for having anti-government websi…

I wouldn't comment over other statements, but... > Distribution of porn is illegal there and they do their best to block it from outside. Incorrect, it's yet another incorrect meme. Legal pornography is always possible in South Korea, and while the actual threshold varied over time (because you know, there is no objective metric for them anyway so it has to be a function of the approximate social consensus), legal po…

Thank you for taking time to write this explanation, but otoh it's a lot of words to say that it's "kinda illegal"

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#112
> The judiciary actually ruled in favor of KT. It said that Webhard didn’t pay KT network usage fees for its peer-to-peer system and didn’t explain to its users how the Grid Service works in detail

Huh? The users are paying for their network, so they should be free to do with it as they wish. How is Webhard involved in this discussion? This is something the ISP may wish to discuss with its users, if the ISP feels the users are consuming more than they paid for.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#113
post #107
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea at least used to have blazingly fast internet infrastructure . Of course that didn't make up for shitty banking websites that you could only use by running Internet Explorer and allowing it to install "security plugins" that hook into Windows kernel, but at least the internet was fast, and it did give Korea an edge for its IT industry. That was, I think, about twenty years ago. I've been living in the US…

I think this is sort of how Japan is often thought of as "land of the future" because where was a brief period around the 2000s where new tech adoption sort of got a little ahead of the US, but what people really missed was that they weren't ahead so much as just...kind of different? And the reality today is that it'll seem practically backwards to a Westerner - i.e. tons of paper forms and bureaucracy for things lik…

I was in Japan in 2008 and the cellphones there were from the future! I remember being awed seeing people watching TV on the subway on their phones..

There was a bunch of infrastructure and services provided by the actual phone company NTT DoCoMo (as opposed to generally over the Internet) that let people watch shows, play games, shop, etc.. all on their mobile devices. Stuff that we do now every day, but this was almost 20 years ago.

They also had phones built for this purpose, like ones that had rotating screens that went into landscape mode (imagine holding a "T"-shaped device) for watching TV..

So it certainly felt like they were ahead, but you're right, it was a very different approach with everything coming from the phone company itself, and one that wasn't set up to stay competitive or stay ahead..

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will China allow NK to fall apart?

Would it be worth it for China to prop them up? I get that they're communism buddies or whatever, but what does China get out of it? What does China really need from North Korea?

China can has influence over North Korea rather than it will be US (don't forget that there are two Koreas because USA and USSR both wanted to rule Korea but couldn't win against each other).

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#115
post #85
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are pretty big on cyber defamation and will go after people who make fun of government officials Because cyber defamation would go rampant otherwise and people would end up killing themselves on lost reputation and cyber bullying. You have to understand Korean culture, where reputation and how you're viewed in society is extremely important.

You mean the Korean netizen culture where celebrities routinely kill themselves? Where people not only still bully, but rapists can sue their victims for defamation and win?

I mean this. It's in Japan but Korea is no different. No one deserves this.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/24/hana-kimura-gr...

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#116
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't comment over other statements, but... > Distribution of porn is illegal there and they do their best to block it from outside. Incorrect, it's yet another incorrect meme. Legal pornography is always possible in South Korea, and while the actual threshold varied over time (because you know, there is no objective metric for them anyway so it has to be a function of the approximate social consensus), legal po…

Thank you for taking time to write this explanation, but otoh it's a lot of words to say that it's "kinda illegal"

"Kinda" may mean so many things that "kinda illegal" is as useful as no information, hence all these elaborations. They also matter for the eventual resolution.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#117
post #113
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is sort of how Japan is often thought of as "land of the future" because where was a brief period around the 2000s where new tech adoption sort of got a little ahead of the US, but what people really missed was that they weren't ahead so much as just...kind of different? And the reality today is that it'll seem practically backwards to a Westerner - i.e. tons of paper forms and bureaucracy for things lik…

I was in Japan in 2008 and the cellphones there were from the future! I remember being awed seeing people watching TV on the subway on their phones.. There was a bunch of infrastructure and services provided by the actual phone company NTT DoCoMo (as opposed to generally over the Internet) that let people watch shows, play games, shop, etc.. all on their mobile devices. Stuff that we do now every day, but this was al…

Other examples of this are the Satellaview for the SNES and the 64DD for the Nintendo 64, both of which were only launched in Japan. The Satellaview let you download games and the 64DD let you browse the internet. Apparently they'd also planned to have multiplayer online gaming for the 64DD, but that was never released.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#118
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for taking time to write this explanation, but otoh it's a lot of words to say that it's "kinda illegal"

"Kinda" may mean so many things that "kinda illegal" is as useful as no information, hence all these elaborations. They also matter for the eventual resolution.

I beg to differ. Using "Incorrect" to counter the statement that distribution is illegal implies it's largely untrue. While a distinction between "illegal" and "de facto illegal" exists, your own explanation doesn't support such a strong rebuttal.

You acknowledge that legal pornography, while technically possible, faces significant hurdles due to rampant piracy and legal loopholes. This creates a situation where accessing legal pornography is difficult and impractical for most, making the initial statement, that distribution is effectively illegal, more accurate than your initial "Incorrect" suggests.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#120
As a former resident of Russia, I'm not the least bit surprised. The practice of implementing parasitic scripts there began in 2014, and to date has been continued at the level of the largest provider as well as the monopoly owner of international channels (Rostelecom).

Good luck to the believers that someone there will be punished for this. For everyone else, switch to encrypted protocols.

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