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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

#41

Post by eru »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #35
maeon3 wrote: post #10

Would it also then become illegal to program software that would defend against such software rooting your machine and erasing things that goes against its views of fairness? I'd like see them try to root my Gentoo box.

Just about every Linux kernel version has had some root privilege escalation bug. So long as they can get some executable software on your system (perhaps not easy!) it's reasonable any such bug could be exploited, and voila, they can install a rootkit!

But they don't have all the same bug.

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

#42

Post by beedogs »

kunai wrote: post #11

I'm sick and tired of being in such a lazy-ass, apathetic society that possesses zero regard to freedom. Stallman may be a nut, but when you think long and hard about what he says, and think about SOPA, PIPA, and this lobby, in horror, your face twists in fear and you watch, helplessly, as your fellow citizens bend over backwards and let the government have their way. I don't even know what to do anymore. Nobody will…

I lobby against Hollywood by refusing to give them a thin dime of my money.

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

#43

Post by pyre »

munin wrote: post #24
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…

> 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.

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

#44

Post by seandhi »

This has little to do with the entertainment industry. This is dealing with intellectual property such as research and development.

They are trying to protect U.S. companies from having their R&D stolen and used by foreign companies, calling for sanctions via the FTC and by amending the espionage act to go after those who steal trade secrets, for example. The whole paper is on protecting the innovations developed in this country from being copied by foreign entities without repercussions, and when viewed in this light, the proposals are not that crazy.

I recommend reading the paper directly, as the BoingBoing link completely misrepresents it.

http://ipcommission.org/report/IP_Commission_Report_052213.p...

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

#45

Post by beedogs »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #35
maeon3 wrote: post #10

Would it also then become illegal to program software that would defend against such software rooting your machine and erasing things that goes against its views of fairness? I'd like see them try to root my Gentoo box.

Just about every Linux kernel version has had some root privilege escalation bug. So long as they can get some executable software on your system (perhaps not easy!) it's reasonable any such bug could be exploited, and voila, they can install a rootkit!

For an industry as fucking inept as the MPAA and the rest of the copyright cartel, I'd be absolutely floored if they managed to break into a Linux machine.

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

#46

Post by tantalor »

munin wrote: post #24
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…

> 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...

Being actively targeted would certainly encourage membership.

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

#47

Post by krichman »

markdown wrote: post #36
obviouslygreen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your answer is Stallman ? Yes, he is a nut. In the sense of "no one will ever take him seriously, especially anyone involved in mainstream decision-making, who has ever read anything he has written," which is in this case the most relevant metric. Stallman is never going to be any help here, nor is anyone like him, because any "normal" person -- that is, one that other people won't ignore out of hand -- will igno…

Stallman isn't an activist for the end user, he's an activist for the activists. > Yes, he is a nut. Eccentric is what he is. Must be fun living in a black and white world.

Yes, it's not reasonable to call him crazy since many things he's been predicting have come true. He's eccentric.

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

#48

Post by tnuc »

It is perfectly legal for the entertainment industry to deploy rootkits.

What you decide to put on your computer is up to you. If someone wants to put something in the software, the agreement is between you and them. So long as they disclose what they are doing, it's not like anyone reads the those agreement contracts on the internet.

A company that deploys rootkits, then survives class actions and angry consumers? Not likely.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] »

kunai wrote: post #11

I'm sick and tired of being in such a lazy-ass, apathetic society that possesses zero regard to freedom. Stallman may be a nut, but when you think long and hard about what he says, and think about SOPA, PIPA, and this lobby, in horror, your face twists in fear and you watch, helplessly, as your fellow citizens bend over backwards and let the government have their way. I don't even know what to do anymore. Nobody will…

[deleted]

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

#50

Post by ancarda »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #33
obviouslygreen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your answer is Stallman ? Yes, he is a nut. In the sense of "no one will ever take him seriously, especially anyone involved in mainstream decision-making, who has ever read anything he has written," which is in this case the most relevant metric. Stallman is never going to be any help here, nor is anyone like him, because any "normal" person -- that is, one that other people won't ignore out of hand -- will igno…

The best thing Stallman could do is improve his outward image from hippy to something less ... hippy. Appearances matter and his, together with what he says makes him, and therefore his message, unpalatable and unrelatable to most people. We live in a shallow society and the best thing the pro-privacy movement can have are moderately attractive, presentable, glib spokespeople.

I don't see why Stallman doesn't wear something a bit more presentable, like a suit and tie and shave his beard. It looks a little repulsive to be honest.
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