Anti-piracy company pirates a million copies of Deus Ex

 Internet News, Law, Marketing  305 Responses »
Oct 122011
 

 

 

When illegal downloaders illegally downloaded an illegal copy of the illegal Deus Ex: Human Revolution beta, they illegally enjoyed themselves for the first few illegal levels before the game was all like, “lol j/k” and kicked them out to a Web-based form that started asking them all kinds of probing questions about their illegal activities, courtesy of a startup anti-piracy firm called Anti-Piracy Strategies.

The strangest part, though, was that 90% of the victims actually went and filled out the questionnaire rather than ripping their ethernet cords out of the wall, encasing their hard drives in blocks of concrete, and dumping them into the nearest major body of water like I would have done.

via Anti-piracy company pirates a million copies of Deus Ex | DVICE.

How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

 Internet News, Law  35 Responses »
Oct 112011
 

Aaron Barr believed he had penetrated Anonymous. The loose hacker collective had been responsible for everything from anti-Scientology protests to pro-Wikileaks attacks on MasterCard and Visa, and the FBI was now after them. But matching their online identities to real-world names and locations proved daunting. Barr found a way to crack the code.

In a private e-mail to a colleague at his security firm HBGary Federal, which sells digital tools to the US government, the CEO bragged about his research project.

“They think I have nothing but a heirarchy based on IRC [Internet Relay Chat] aliases!” he wrote. “As 1337 as these guys are suppsed to be they don’t get it. I have pwned them! :)”

But had he?

via How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price.

A game we all win: Dumping DRM can increase sales while reducing piracy

 Internet News, Law, Marketing  451 Responses »
Oct 112011
 

The standard line that Digital Rights Management (DRM) functions as a bulwark against online music piracy is being challenged by a trio of economists from Rice and Duke Universities. Their game theory research sides with a growing sentiment that DRM technologies which restrict music file copying and moving sometimes encourage illegal file sharing instead.

“In many cases, DRM restrictions prevent legal users from doing something as normal as making backup copies of their music,” contends one of the researchers, Dinahy Vernik, assistant professor of marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. “Because of these inconveniences, some consumers choose to pirate.”

The paper in question is titled “Music Downloads and the Flip Side of Digital Rights Management Protection.”

Under certain conditions, “we find that eliminating DRM restrictions can lead to an increase in sales of legal downloads, a decrease in sales of traditional CDs, and a decrease in piracy,” conclude marketing scholars Vernik and Devavrat Purohit and Preyas Desai of Duke. “This is in stark contrast to the view that removing DRM will unconditionally increase the level of piracy.”

via A game we all win: Dumping DRM can increase sales while reducing piracy.

Righthaven copyright suits tossed in Colorado, too

 Law  446 Responses »
Sep 282011
 

In the last year, newspaper copyright troll Righthaven has brought its dubious lawsuits in two states: Nevada and Colorado. (Update: a lawyer in South Carolina says Righthaven filed a single case there as well.) With a new ruling today from a Colorado federal judge overseeing all of Righthaven’s cases there, courts in both states have now told Righthaven to take a hike—and to pay court costs before it goes.

Righthaven’s business model has been based largely on suing small-time bloggers and forum posters who have copied articles or photos from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post. When threatened with a federal lawsuit for copyright infringement, many of these users decided to settle for a few thousand dollars instead. It turns out they needn’t have done so, however; Righthaven never had the right to sue them in the first place.

via Righthaven copyright suits tossed in Colorado, too.

Man who ‘trolled’ dead girl’s remembrance pages gets jail time

 Internet News, Law  495 Responses »
Sep 142011
 

 

 

Rarely do people get jail time for posting remarks on the Internet. It’s the Internet — it’s only virtual, right? Not for Sean Duffy, who after “trolling” the remembrance pages of several dead teenagers has been in jail for 18 months and is banned from using social networks for five years.

via Man who ‘trolled’ dead girl’s remembrance pages gets jail time | DVICE.

Hackers Issue Rogue SSL Certificates for CIA, MI6, and Mossad; Apple Stands Pat

 Internet News, Law  431 Responses »
Sep 062011
 

A well known security firm warns that the number of compromised digital security certificates from DigiNotar, a Dutch certificate authority outfit owned by VASCO Data Security International, has doubled in size over the past week from 250 false SSL certificates to 531. False certificates have now been issued for Facebook, Google, Tor, Skype, Mossad, CIA, MI6, Twitter, and several other high profile sites.

“This is really bad news. As DigiNotar is a ‘root’ certificate, they can assign authority to intermediaries to sign and validate certificates on their behalf,” security firm Sophos explains. “It appears the attackers signed 186 certificates that could have been intermediate certificates. These certificates masqueraded as well-known certificate authorities like Thawte, Verisign, Comodo, and Equifax.”

According to Sophos, computers users of IE and Safari on Windows 7/Vista/2008/2008R2 and/or Chrome and Firefox on all platforms are immune from exploitation, so long as you’re rocking a fully patched browser and OS. Things aren’t as peachy for Apple users.

via Maximum PC | Hackers Issue Rogue SSL Certificates for CIA, MI6, and Mossad; Apple Stands Pat.

Dude Downloads $5 Million of Stolen Software to 1TB Hard Drive for Art Exhibit

 Design, Law  315 Responses »
Aug 242011
 

 

 

Art is about freedom of expression, and it sometimes results in controversial pieces that challenge the social norms or intentionally push the boundaries of decency for one reason or another. But does there ever come a point when artwork crosses the line? A 1TB external hard drive sitting on a white pedestal at the Art 404 gallery begs that very question, the one you have to ask when someone crams $5 million worth of illegally downloaded software into a storage device and calls it art.

via Maximum PC | Dude Downloads $5 Million of Stolen Software to 1TB Hard Drive for Art Exhibit.

How “What What (In the Butt)” unintentionally bolstered “fair use”

 Internet News, Law  379 Responses »
Aug 222011
 

 

 

It didn’t escape their notice that South Park aired on Comedy Central, which was owned by Viacom, the massive media conglomerate which was suing YouTube for $1 billion dollars over… displaying Viacom content without payment. “It is unreasonable for those same corporations to treat the Internet as a bottomless well from which it [sic] can endlessly draw content without permission, payment, or even acknowledgment of the original artists,” said Brownmark in a press release (PDF) announcing the litigation. “Brownmark Films is taking a stand against these corporations’ continued reliance on double-standards, a decision made all the more difficult by Brownmark Films’ respect for South Park and its brand of humor.”

South Park had licensed the music and lyrics, but had paid nothing to the guys who created the video, even though that video was clearly the basis for the one in the episode. Was this copyright infringement? Brownmark said yes; South Park claimed that it was a fair use parody of the whole viral video phenomenon.

via How “What What (In the Butt)” unintentionally bolstered “fair use”.

 

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