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Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

orca.security

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Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#41

Post by wolco2 »

kmeisthax wrote: post #33
logicalmonster wrote: post #20

A review seems like a textbook case of fair use to me. Not sure where there’s a justification for removing a review in this situation.

Because of a legal precedent and a general fact about contract law: 1. Installation and/or execution of software constitutes copying (the "RAM Copy Doctrine") which is only lawful if the person currently using the software has been licensed or sold the software 2. Licensing restrictions can restrict license holders from exercising rights they otherwise would have as a matter of law There is nothing prohibiting you fr…

Doesn't a brief window exists where at 11:59pm you can run Oracle but after midnight when lic expires and the results are back you could report on those numbers.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#42

Post by ecliptik »

paultopia wrote: post #27

Palo Alto networks also makes bossware so intrusive that it's basically malware. Their VPN software on MacOS, for example, collects tons of system data and starts itself persistently on reboot + cannot be quit unless the user happens to have much-more-technical-than-most-users levels of knowledge about things like sudo and the various plist files work. My own experience, in a couple Twitter threads: https://mobile.tw…

It also uses High-Performance graphics for whatever reason when connected and can completely drain a full MacBook Pro battery in under an hour. Disconnecting does not free the GPU.

On a positive note, I now have a reason to use to MacBook touchbar. Setup an Automator action to kill the PIDs to release the GPU when I no longer need to use VPN.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#43

Post by neilv »

Trustworthiness seems to be one of the most important properties of a firewall company.

But this news of a reviewer getting cease&desist nastygram from PANW erodes some of the trust that PANW started with by default in my mind.

They're not the only company to try to prevent independent benchmarking and reviews, but I've never liked that from any company.

Perhaps this could be a learning moment for PANW, and they decide to change some policies?

(I actually have one of those big old Palo Alto Networks blue rackmount firewalls right here, purchased with the intention of playing with it, either for ideas for OpenWrt features, or to decide whether to buy a new little one for interim use until I have more time for open source. I'm not getting much warm-fuzzies from the big blue metal box at the moment, but maybe that will improve.)

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#44

Post by BrandoElFollito »

I am grateful to Palo Alto for the C&D. I had them on my radar screen for possible consideration next year on a large project.

Now I don't anymore. That's a bunch of money that will go to someone else.

This is the price when you have to defend the technical aspects of your solution with lawyers.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#45

Post by justinclift »

ecliptik wrote: post #42
paultopia wrote: post #27

Palo Alto networks also makes bossware so intrusive that it's basically malware. Their VPN software on MacOS, for example, collects tons of system data and starts itself persistently on reboot + cannot be quit unless the user happens to have much-more-technical-than-most-users levels of knowledge about things like sudo and the various plist files work. My own experience, in a couple Twitter threads: https://mobile.tw…

It also uses High-Performance graphics for whatever reason when connected and can completely drain a full MacBook Pro battery in under an hour. Disconnecting does not free the GPU. On a positive note, I now have a reason to use to MacBook touchbar. Setup an Automator action to kill the PIDs to release the GPU when I no longer need to use VPN.

Maybe their developers don't yet know that's fixable with a plist entry? eg:

https://github.com/sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser/commit/72a452...

You can manually add that to applications that don't have it, to see if it works. :)

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#46

Post by 3np »

hirundo wrote: post #31

Dear Palo Alto Networks: There is no way I would have watched that video if you hadn't demanded it be taken down. Now having watched it I can see why you want to hide it.

We were just in the process of surveying firewalls. PANW was high on the list, given the user experience. They are no longer on it since today.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#47

Post by Spivak »

paultopia wrote: post #27

Palo Alto networks also makes bossware so intrusive that it's basically malware. Their VPN software on MacOS, for example, collects tons of system data and starts itself persistently on reboot + cannot be quit unless the user happens to have much-more-technical-than-most-users levels of knowledge about things like sudo and the various plist files work. My own experience, in a couple Twitter threads: https://mobile.tw…

As much as I despise this kind of software as an end-user the data collection can be for above-board purposes and is required in certain regulatory domains. Zero excuse for being a shitty application though.

In our case we were required to verify that any machine that connected to our VPN was sufficiently updated, had a backup taken, was running AV and was recently scanned for malware, and had disk encryption enabled with our recovery key.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#48

Post by RKearney »

canarypilot wrote: post #13
RKearney wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Cisco firewalls. Cisco is the worst by far, the Fortinet are not fun to use but have an incredible $/performance ratio, and the Palo Alto ones are by far the most expensive but also the most enjoyable to use. They're certainly not without their faults, and we've had issues with them that took time to remedy, but I wouldn't trade them for anything else I've seen so far from competito…

Did you just publish the result of a benchmark or performance comparison test you ran to establish the difference in $/performance ratio between competitors? If so, I have bad news for your license compliance...

Nope, I read the manufacturers published specifications for their equipment and looked up the pricing on publicly accessible websites.

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/products/product-selection

https://www.fortinet.com/products/product-compare?cat=ngfw

And you can get pricing from any VARs website such as CDW.com

Good try though.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#49

Post by ghastmaster »

> Palo Alto Networks appears oblivious to the fact that the New York Attorney General’s office sued and won an injunction against McAfee from enforcing its contractual restrictions against publishing reviews or comparisons of its products without its consent more than 17 years ago. In enacting the Consumer Review Fairness Act, Congress has also prohibited businesses from including contract terms that prohibit consumers from reviewing products or services they purchase.

New York only matters if either party has standing in that jurisdiction. Palo Alto Networks(California) and Orca Security(Israel) would not, however there could be made a case that the video in question resides on servers(youtube) in New York.

The argument for the application of 15 U.S. Code § 45b appears to only apply to "form contracts".

> means a contract with standardized terms— (i) used by a person in the course of selling or leasing the person’s goods or services; and (ii) imposed on an individual without a meaningful opportunity for such individual to negotiate the standardized terms.

It appears as though the EULA is a form contract and Orca indeed falls under the protections of the Consumer Reviews Fairness Act.

EULA: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/content/dam/pan/en_US/asset...

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