Live data from Hacker News

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

boingboing.net

171–180 of 269 posts

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

#171
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we'll just have to use a VM then. They can "root" that all they want.

Of course, the blob would detect a virtual machine and refuse access to the content.

Actually, some games do that, as they interpret the existence of a VM or developer tools installed as an attempt to decrypt/reverse engineer the game's DRM. Which would be funny if it weren't so sad.

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

#173

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…

> 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.

A reasonable point, but I think their argument about "we won't allow seeing GoT without a cable subscription" still is incredibly short sighted.

It lets them make money in a way they understand now. I would very happily pay them money straight up, but since I'm not in the US, it's not really about wanting access to free stuff - it's about access to stuff in the first place. They would lose money on setting up such a system in the short term, sure, but they are only delaying the inevitable - that such a system is what is required if they want to compete with bittorrent in the long term.

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

#174
post #43
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then the entertainment industry has enemies actively trying to destroy their systems. so to be fair this is actually where we are today, if you remember the efforts of anonymous and sony, etc...

To be fair: 1) Anonymous/Lulzsec aren't necessarily a best-of-the-best of the 'hacker world.' Do they want to raise the ire of even more skilled people? 2) Anonymous/Lulzsec are/were in it mostly for the publicity, and 'cheap thrills.' I'm sure that they could have done a lot more damage had they been focused on being as malicious as possible.

Number 1 is a very good point and something those companies should keep in mind. Anonymous/Lulzsec are basically like children in terms of what they could do. Very skilled people could do substantially more disruption and damage.

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

#175
Sound like the entertainment industry is suffering from a severe case of walter mitty syndrome cased by to much watching of 24 they will be asking for their investigators for the right to use enhanced interrogation techniques ala Jack Bauer.

They will be dressing up in multicam and running round the woods pretending to be devguru operators with paint guns next.

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

#176
post #69

The copyright cartel these days is indistinguishable from the pirates they lobby against. In fact, I think I trust the pirates more lately.

I do trust pirates more. I get the media I want in whatever format that I want it. I get it on time, several minutes after it airs. There is no DRM on it so I can use it with my home theater setup without any complications even when my internet goes offline. All I want is a site that lets me pay a reasonable amount of money for a television show or movie and download it in whatever format I want with no DRM. I want to give the creators and the actors money, but I refuse to do it in a way that harms me, or my access to the material I bought for doing so. That is not going to happen anytime soon, so for now I continue to trust the pirates more.

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, let's not forget that every piece of code they write and every root-kit they successfully deploy will soon be taken advantage of by black-hats, quite probably in ways that will cause damage to systems completely unrelated to media playback of any sort. It will be stupidly easy to execute; if the malware shuts down computer when it detects illegal download, the only thing an attacker needs to do is to trick…

4chan yes, but remember most black hats are operating for profit. They don't want to shut down your computer. They want to root it so they can use it in their botnet, or maybe log your passwords and credit cards.

You're right, though there is some profit in shutting down computers. Even right now there's a proliferation of ransomware[0] [1] that locks out machines. I've removed several of those from computers in last two years and even once been paid to do this.

Moreover, if computer-locking DRM malware becomes commonplace, a market for cheaper-than-police unlocking will emerge, with incentives favouring hacking the DRM to then earn money on fixing it.

[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware_(malware)

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_security_software

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

#178
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm really hesitant about the Internet of Things. Can you imagine if some hacker got ahold of my toaster? He could burn my toast!

Or burn down your house for an immature laugh while ruining your life.

Ehhh, it would be ok as long as I still got my toast and coffee. I'm really grumpy in the morning without toast and coffee.

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

#179
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I purposely expanded 'for the lulz' into something a bit more succinct.

You actually expanded it into something that by definition is less succinct.

Lulz may be brief, but it is hardly clear.

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

#180
post #173

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…

> 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. A reasonable point, but I think their argument about "we won't allow seeing GoT without a cable subscription" still is incredibly short sighted. It lets them make money in a way they understand now . I would very happily pay them money straight up, but since I'm…

The problem is, it's the short-term that matters on quaterly reports and that moves you up the corporate label. Long-term changes take too long to benefit those who introduced them.
Post reply on HN