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US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits

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Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits

#201

Post by amorphid »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #17

This is not going to go where they think it will go. Right now their enemies are just pirates wanting to watch Game Of Thrones for free. A business threat, certainly, but one they're generally handling well. But start infecting people's computers, and a portion of them are going to fight back. Then the entertainment industry has enemies actively trying to destroy their systems. A whole different level of conflict, an…

I want to watch Game of Thrones and pay for it. I also want it available within a day of it's original airing and without having to buy cable or a TV. Charge me for HBO. Just don't make me wait a year before I can buy the video. You can even make me buy the HD version when I only want to pay for standard definition.

Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits

#202

Post by namdnay »

Swizec wrote: post #194
rednukleus wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You left out one important point: 6. Convenience. I believe that the content industry is relying on a sufficient number of people still finding it easier to buy a DVD/Bluray rather than pirate. For technical people, pirating is already sometimes more convenient for reasons that you stated. There is also a 7. Ethics Some people do not find pirating ethical under any circumstances, and will inconvenience themselves to…

Some people also think using animal products isn't ethical and inconvenience themselves to avoid it. But you probably don't want to build a mass market business on that. For the record, I don't pirate music anymore. Spotify has made pirating too inconvenient.

I'm not sure the comparison is just. Using animal products isn't illegal.

Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits

#203

Post by vidarh »

regularfry wrote: post #154
vidarh wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck for them breaking out of the VM their software would end up getting run in.

This is not as unlikely as you may think. All it takes is the right bug in a virtio driver, and they can go from vm-root to host-user, and assuming some level of competence they can go from host-user to host-root. Of course, you're welcome not to use any virtio devices, and you're welcome not to use hardware virtualisation support, but the performance of your guest will not be much to write home about.

Of course it is possible that they find holes, but I consider the odds that they will find holes like that early enough that countermeasures won't already be deployed in a situation where people have come to expect destructive actions from their software on a regular basis to be quite unlikely.

Also OS level virtualization is not the only protection worth using in a scenario like this. Sandboxing at the syscall level (restricting allowed syscalls and arguments substantially) is also highly useful, and if we start seeing a threat from apps that people are expected to intentionally install knowing that they pose a risk, we will see a lot more aggressive security work.

Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits

#204

Post by vidarh »

lightknight wrote: post #122
vidarh wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I ever find a rootkit on my system stemming from a company that thinks they can do stuff like this, and it is legal, it is to a demonstration that the law is not worthy of any respect any more, and that it is time for war. And given the resource discrepancy, the only way of fighting back against companies like this would be to cause vastly disproportionate amounts of damage. I'm sure getting rootkits into their ne…

If I ever find a rootkit on my system, that OS gets binned permanently, no questions asked. I have a zero tolerance policy for who's system my computer is: it's mine. Not the US's, not Law Enforcement's, not the MPAA's, not MS's. If it achieves sentience, fine, it can be it's own; until then, any OS which fails to understand this arrangement (that a secure OS means that only I and system services (Windows Update, var…

It's not down to the OS or OS vendor. Most rootkits are exploiting bugs, not intentional backdoors, and many of them are exploiting bugs that are not in the OS but in third party applications.

E.g. a common approach is to look for common third party applications that require admin/root privileges for some part of their functionality, and look for ways of tricking them into executing your code (via e.g. buffer overflows, or by finding ways of modifying the configuration with lower privileges).

So unless you never install third party software, you are potentially vulnerable even if the OS is flawless (and it isn't - no matter which OS you pick).

Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits

#206

Post by bobsoap »

wereHamster wrote: post #14

From the report: > there are increasing calls for [...] that allows companies [...] actively retrieving stolen information They are still living in the last century, and think that if somebody steals something from them they can take it back. They have yet to grasp what this 'digital media' is.

They grasp it alright, but they haven't figured out how to monetize it properly yet, especially compared to their established physical business model, which already has all the infrastructure in place, and they are trying to exploit to the very end.

Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits

#207

Post by scotty79 »

namdnay wrote: post #202
Swizec wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people also think using animal products isn't ethical and inconvenience themselves to avoid it. But you probably don't want to build a mass market business on that. For the record, I don't pirate music anymore. Spotify has made pirating too inconvenient.

I'm not sure the comparison is just. Using animal products isn't illegal.

I don't think ethics overlaps much with law.

Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits

#208

Post by wnight »

ericcumbee wrote: post #2

Because every country strives to be more like Syria. "MPAA told Congress that they wanted SOPA and knew it would work because it was the same tactic used by governments in "China, Iran, the UAE, Armenia, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Burma, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam."

Let's let this proceed, then take anyone who supported it or voted for it and send them to the listed countries.

When do we treat this sort of nonsense as a threat, ala the Boston rapper. If I announced a business model of selling something for $0.99, but claiming its real value was $150K and then using the millions of dollars of "damages" to justify rooting through your computer, I'd have the police called on me. So why doesn't this extend to the real criminals in our society?

I doubt they'll get this, but they need to be kicked for even asking.

That's actually the fundamental problem in democracy - the assumption that everything is up for grabs if you win some popularity contest, and that there are no limits on how often you can ask. If I asked if I could do something horrible to you, you'd say no and move on. If I ask your government I just keep doing it until fatigue or human error on your part lets me win.

Lobbyists are a rootkit against democracy.

Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits

#209

Post by [deleted] »

beloch wrote: post #99

What qualities do people look for when buying movies and music? 1. The content they want. 2. Quality (i.e. resolution, bitrate, etc.) 3. Reliability (it actually plays) 4. Low annoyance (no ads, warnings, etc.) 5. Safety (guaranteed freedom from malware, etc.) The movie and music industries haven't done a perfect job of delivering #1-4. Region coding means the content users want is frequently only available through p…

[deleted]

Re: US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits

#210

Post by namdnay »

scotty79 wrote: post #207
namdnay wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure the comparison is just. Using animal products isn't illegal.

I don't think ethics overlaps much with law.

Seriously? Theft, Assault, Civil Liability etc.. I think there's a significant overlap between Ethics and Law. Our systems of laws are based on the work of philosophers studying ethics, of course there's a huge overlap
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