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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

#71

Post by shuaavi »

fefe23 wrote: post #58

The title is deceptive. OP is not some independent site doing a neutral review. This is a competitor pretending to be neutral (and doing a laughably bad job at it; the "referee" is their evangelist). So they basically make a untrustworthy video that (surprise, surprise) comes to the conclusion that their product is better, provoke Palo Alto into a hamfisted knee-jerk response, and now try to drum up cheap publicity b…

Fefe, We never said we're objective. Marketing is almost never objective. We tried to make it objective, but naturally - we're biased. But should the larger player be allowed to stop the smaller one from publishing his materials?

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

#72

Post by snuxoll »

apostacy wrote: post #66
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…

That's really gross. But it is sadly not at all unusual. In fact, Google's obscurely named "Keystone Agent" isn't much better. Apple should expose services in Control Center instead of making you use the terminal.

> Apple should expose services in Control Center instead of making you use the terminal.

Especially given how obtuse launchctl is to work with compared to it’s Windows and Linux counterparts.

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

#73

Post by jabroni_salad »

unethical_ban wrote: post #54
3np wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll say this again, I said it elsewhere. And to clarify, I own no stock in PANW, I don't work for them, though I have years of experience managing PAN firewalls in a large deployment (and some experience with their competitors). My coworkers don't know my HN name so I'm saying this from the heart, not for kudos from meatspace. As part of a team choosing a new technology for something, you really need to take a lot o…

I must agree, and I have been a PAN evangelist for a couple years. That said, my only other NGFW experience is with Firepower and I always feel gross after working with those. The only good thing I can say about Firepower is that my billable time gets padded to the stratosphere due to how long it takes to do anything in there.

If I burned a vendor every time they sent someone a mean letter, I would probably have nobody left to do business with.

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

#74

Post by tinus_hn »

warhorse10_9 wrote: post #59
Jonnax wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but it has no business doing this crap on university student's machines. It's straight up malware that modifies things that can break your computer. And it's not like they're going to offer support for fixing it.

All of these things are actually configured by your university. They are configuration options for the firewall that enforces the portal. Blame your university IT, not Palo Alto.

The software enables these excessive policies. Blame Palo Alto.

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

#75

Post by cddotdotslash »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #35

Thats a silly lawyer move, but I also kind of understand where PA is coming from - the FW space is a crowded, reputation driven world and a lot of classic late 00s companies are struggling to adapt to a less hardware centric space. That said, build better products, don't take down crappy reviews. I've had terrific experiences with my PA FW's and Panorama isn't too shabby as far as centralized mgmt solutions go - I'd…

This entire saga literally has nothing to do with firewalls.

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

#76

Post by warhorse10_9 »

tinus_hn wrote: post #74
warhorse10_9 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these things are actually configured by your university. They are configuration options for the firewall that enforces the portal. Blame your university IT, not Palo Alto.

The software enables these excessive policies. Blame Palo Alto.

The policies are really not excessive, Palo Alto is designing for enterprises which would want many of these restrictions on their assets. It just so happens the software is flexible enough to be used in BYOD settings. The IT professionals in those settings need to do their due diligence and apply appropriate policies. This is a PICNIC/PEBKAC.

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

#77

Post by cddotdotslash »

Bear with me here, but what if this entire thing was engineered from the beginning to be a marketing technique? The videos themselves? Marketing. The "we got a cease and desist from a big company" blog? Marketing. The follow-up letter about transparency? Marketing. And it all falls right into the David vs. Goliath story that the tech community loves.

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

#78

Post by curryst »

shuaavi wrote: post #36
kmeisthax wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just google 'yelp law'. It isn't legal these days.

I would be extremely surprised if the CRFA applied to competitors (or generally to corporations). The first word is "consumer", and competitors are generally not consumers of each other's products.

If you are correct though, doesn't that make Oracle et al's "no benchmarks" stipulation non-enforceable as well? That would be kind of nice.

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

#79

Post by drakenot »

cddotdotslash wrote: post #77

Bear with me here, but what if this entire thing was engineered from the beginning to be a marketing technique? The videos themselves? Marketing. The "we got a cease and desist from a big company" blog? Marketing. The follow-up letter about transparency? Marketing. And it all falls right into the David vs. Goliath story that the tech community loves.

Are you saying the cease and desist is potentially fabricated?

That seems unlikely given if that were true, we would expect a public response from Palo Alto to that effect?

That isn’t a ploy that would work very long and the backlash and damaged reputation would be significant if that occurred.

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