Piracy Paranoia
Grok Headline matches for Piracy Paranoia
Paranoia
Paranoia
01/16/2004 01:02 PMPeter Wayner writes: "The novel Paranoia begins with one of the most
tantalizing premises I've read in some time. Young Adam Cassidy was
just sliding by as a ...
More Paranoia
More Paranoia
05/21/2004 06:57 PMApple's just released a Security Update that resolves the security
vulnerability with Help Viewer. Unfortunately, that's all it resolves.
The...
Protection -- or paranoia?
Protection -- or paranoia?
08/06/2004 07:55 AMWhy is the Secret Service treating harmless professors and pacifist
homeless advocates like they're members of al-Qaida?
Of penises and paranoia...
Of penises and paranoia...
02/13/2004 10:38 AMIt can only be Letters
Pregnancy paranoia
Pregnancy paranoia
06/05/2004 06:23 PMBusiness Times Singapore (subscription),Singapore-3 hours ago ...
said. And there's quite a bit of doubt out there. Google the
phrase 'pregnant women should avoid' and 6,970 entries appear.
On Urbanbaby ...
Paranoia Goes Better With Coke
Paranoia Goes Better With Coke
07/03/2004 05:40 AMA promotional campaign that features special Coke cans containing cell
phones and GPS chips has the military obsessing over possible security
leaks. Coca-Cola shrugs it off, but the generals aren't kidding,
apparently.
Wi-Fi Paranoia Too High?
Wi-Fi Paranoia Too High?
05/20/2004 01:08 AMDavid Pogue wonders if the concern about Wi-Fi security is at too high
a pitch for home users: Pogue's email column, archived online, this
week questions whether there's too much focus on security. Now, I'm
the first to agree with him that people with home wireless networks
that aren't near neighbors have nothing to fear. Even if you have near
neighbors, enabling WEP or WPA, as Pogue recommends, lowers your risk
from low to nil. (WEP's key weakness that enables a cracker to break a
key and access a network could require weeks of network monitoring to
extract enough data to carry that out. It's only a quick crack on
high-usage business Wi-Fi networks.) But Pogue doesn't separate out
different risk scenarios. My colleague and co-author on The Wireless
Networking Starter Kit, Adam Engst, wrote an excellent essay on how to
decide the level of exposure you have and how to mitigate it which
parallels Pogue on the home networking side, but is more granular on
risks outside the home network. Pogue opens his piece talking about
public Wi-Fi: "It's just so glorious to be standing in an airport,
hotel lobby or city street, open your laptop, and discover that you
can go online at cable-modem speeds without hooking up a single
cable." But the rest of his column focuses on home networking risks
where I generally agree with his take and his recommendations. Out in
the wild, the risks are quite high that someone could be monitoring an
open free or fee-based Wi-Fi hotspot network -- it's probably 1,000 to
10,000 times more likely that someone is using software to monitor a
hotspot than a home network. I have a piece of software that I can run
that automatically captures all passwords passing over any network
connection, Wi-Fi or otherwise, that requires me to press a single
keystroke to activate. You should never conduct unsecured transactions
over public hotspots using FTP, email, or the Web for this reason: it
requires no effort to capture those passwords, and people may capture
them idly. At the very least, your email password should be secured
via APOP (authenticated POP), which creates a one-time use token for
access. Your email would still pass in the clear, but your password
would be protected. Better, try to use SSL for email (POP and SMTP),
or read your email with a Web browser using an SSL...
I am Paranoid of Paranoia
I am Paranoid of Paranoia
03/27/2005 09:01 PMPeople are way too paranoid these days. Especially mac users. They're
going completely insane lately. You've got Symantec claiming that...
Public paranoia
Public paranoia
02/19/2004 12:53 PM The people re-creating the cultish game Paranoia (about which I know
nothing) have a blog where they're talking about the process and the
business....
Paranoia XP goes gold
Paranoia XP goes gold
08/06/2004 11:39 AM
Attention Alpha Complex
troubleshooters of
blue clearance or
higher, good news!
The open source version of Paranoia has
gone gold.
Just in time for
GenCon.
The happiness control officer will be around soon, to check on your
compliance.
Have a nice day!
No More Paranoia, Awww Yeah
No More Paranoia, Awww Yeah
06/07/2004 06:51 PMWhelp, it looks like Apple conveniently has decided to schedule the
release of their fix for this fun security exploit...
Do We Suffer From Wi-Fi Security
Paranoia?
Do We Suffer From Wi-Fi Security
Paranoia?
05/21/2004 08:18 AMThe Age Old Entrepreneur-VC Paranoia
Question
The Age Old Entrepreneur-VC Paranoia
Question
03/14/2005 05:27 PMMore evidence that startups are back in fashion: we're seeing a repeat
of articles about the startup process that were published during the
bubble years. It seems that every new generation of entrepreneurs has
to find out how things work yet again -- so the old stories are
resuscitated with new actors filling all the usual roles. The Boston
Globe is running the ever-popular
"how secretive should
you be with your business plan in pitching VCs?" story. This
article was probably written and published twenty or so times in the
mid-to-late nineties. While this one includes the story of how
Sidestep pitched some VCs who later went on to found competitor Kayak,
the example case five years ago was
UrbanFe
tch being created after an investor heard Kozmo's pitch and
figured he could do a better job. Of course, VCs who actually do take
someone else's idea are being pretty stupid -- because word gets
around (such as in articles like this one, where VC firm General
Catalyst is accused of poaching Sidestep's ideas) and it makes it more
difficult for them to get the good deals in the future. Venture
capital is a reputation business -- and jeopardizing the reputation
over a single investment is a bad bet. However, in the long run, this
issue is a silly one. If you have a good idea, keeping it secret is
never going to be the answer. It may make sense initially, as you
sort out some of the details, but if it's a good idea there's always
going to be competition -- and the real trick is how well you can
compete in the market, not in how well you hide your business plan.
Paranoia RPG Returns in New Edition
Paranoia RPG Returns in New Edition
02/19/2004 03:34 PMFarenheit 451 + 1984 = Paranoia
Farenheit 451 + 1984 = Paranoia
01/10/2004 09:06 PMTechfocus Jan 10 2004 6:44PM ET
Cyber Blog War , Paranoia or PR
Opportunism?
Cyber Blog War , Paranoia or PR
Opportunism?
10/29/2003 12:12 AM According to an article by Lou Dolinar in Newsday, Al Qaeda may have
initiated a denial of service attack aimed at Internet Haganah, a site
that tries to get Web hosts to boot sites it believes belong to
terrorists. Internet Haganah thinks that a recent DoS attack was
directed at it by "hackers associated with Yussuf al-Ayyeri," an Osama
crony. Although there was a DoS attack last week that shut down a
bunch of blogs, the article gives no evidence to support the claim
that it was directed at Internet Haganah or that it was instigated by
any particular...
Google's Quiet-Period Paranoia
Google's Quiet-Period Paranoia
08/09/2004 05:39 AMForbes.com - Mon Aug 9, 10:01 am GMT
Click Fraud: Problem and Paranoia
Click Fraud: Problem and Paranoia
03/14/2005 06:29 PM"turns his professional paranoia to the
Papal election"
"turns his professional paranoia to the
Papal election"
04/14/2005 08:34 PMMuslim paranoia: Enemies made us
impotent!
Muslim paranoia: Enemies made us
impotent!
09/25/2004 07:14 PMMark Steyn: Muslim paranoia: Enemies made us impotent! .. Zionist
sorcery is making their penises disappear .. Chicago Sun Times ..
irreverent
suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn26.html
track this
site | 4 links
Paranoia game redesigned using
open-source methodology
Paranoia game redesigned using
open-source methodology
08/06/2004 07:52 AMParanoia, the classic role-playing game in which players battle a mad,
totalitarian computer for their freedom ("a light-hearted game of
terror, death, bureaucracy, mad scientists, mutants, dangerous
weapons, insane robots, and technological satire that encourages
players to lie, cheat, and backstab each other at every turn") has
just re-launched with a new version that was collaboratively developed
with players via a Wiki, borrowing "the tools and methods of
open-source software development for a paper game."
To a large degree, the game was developed online, in public. Fans of
the game contributed enthusiastically via blog, wiki, and online
forum. They wrote text, debated rules, proofread, ran statistical
analyses, and even wrote a computer simulator to test the game's
paper-and-pencil rules.
"Online collaboration made this edition of Paranoia the best yet,"
said Allen Varney (www.allenvarney.com), the game's designer. "We
borrowed the tools and methods of open-source software development for
a paper game, and it worked brilliantly. I plan to create future games
the same way, and other designers should consider it too."
LinkActual piracy on rise, response
orthagonal to RIAA's response to
"piracy"`
Actual piracy on rise, response
orthagonal to RIAA's response to
"piracy"`
01/27/2004 07:32 PMActual piracy is on the rise. That is to say, more people are boarding
more ships with more guns and shooting more people and taking more
cargo, all the while uttering more horrible cries of "ARRRRR."
Strangely, the shipping industry's response isn't to keelhaul
passengers who don't tip well on ocean cruises, or to hull random
pleasure boats, or to demand special bow-mounted lasers that vaporize
any ship that gets within a hundred miles.
Around the world, more than 20 sailors are known to have been murdered
by pirates last year.
Seventy are missing, presumed dead.
Other trends are also emerging: ships are now less likely to be
hijacked for their cargo; attackers, possibly from militant groups,
are seizing ships and ransoming their crew.
Link<
/a>
Orkut members launch Orkut Paranoia
community about Orkut TOS on Orkut
Orkut members launch Orkut Paranoia
community about Orkut TOS on Orkut
02/10/2004 10:42 PMGeez. My head is spinning. Anyway, BoingBoing reader Adam fields
points us to a new "Orkut community" (one of many online affinity
groups within the social networking service), called "
Orkut
Paranoia" (link requires free membership). Adam says, "This
formed out of some interesting discussion we've had about what's going
on... summarized in this blog post:"
1) Orkut claims irrevocable unlimited license rights to everything you
post. Most people don't understand what that means. One example of
this is that many of my friends have posted pictures that I've taken.
This is probably not a problem, generally, but they've granted Orkut a
license to use them without consulting me, and created a legal tangle
should I have a problem with that, forcing me to have to perform a
legal struggle with Orkut, because of their unwitting actions. I think
this is rude behavior on the part of Orkut, but their prerogative to
demand.
2) Orkut may share personal information with Google in an unrestricted
way. Google is unwilling (so far) to discuss what use they may make of
that information.
3) Google's privacy policy possibly has some holes in it with regards
to data collected by way of means other than use of the google.com
website.
I suspect that Orkut is a way for Google to gather personal
information about their clientele for marketing purposes, and to try
to form a more solid relationship beyond "I just use Google for search
because it's convenient". This is not terribly nefarious, but the kind
of data that could be collected to do so has wide potential for abuse,
and people should be aware that that's what's going on. Some may not
care, but many people I know are signing up without reading or
understanding the implications of the above three points.
Link
piracy
piracy
06/25/2004 05:12 PMMcKinsey Quarterly Jun 25 2004 7:13PM GMT
On Piracy
On Piracy
01/02/2004 01:09 PMMany people who use pirated products justify it by claiming they're
only stealing from rich mega-corporations that screw their customers,
but this conveniently overlooks the fact that the people who are hurt
the most by piracy are people like me.
Shareware developers are losing enormous amounts of money to
piracy, and we're mostly helpless to do anything about it. We can't
afford to sue everyone who steals from us, let alone track down people
in countries such as Russia who host web sites offering pirated
versions of our work. If you visit a few public "warez" sites, you're
unlikely to find software from companies such as Microsoft who can
afford to prosecute pirates - instead you'll find hundreds of
shareware products written by people like me.
Some would argue that we should just accept piracy as part of the
job, but chances are the people who say this aren't aware of how
widespread piracy really is. A quick look at my web server logs would
be enough to startle most people, since the top referrers are
invariably warez sites that link to my site (yes, not only do they
steal my software, but they also suck my bandwidth).
A couple of years ago I wanted to get an idea of how many people
were using pirated versions of TopStyle, so I signed up for an
anonymous email account (using a "kewl" nickname, of course) and
started hanging out in cracker forums. After proving my cracker
creds, I created a supposedly cracked version of TopStyle and arranged
to have it listed on a popular warez site.
This cracked version pinged home the first time it was run,
providing a way for me to find out how many people were using it. To
my dismay, in just a few weeks more people had used this cracked
version than had ever purchased it. I knew piracy was rampant, but I
didn't realize how widespread it was until this test.
(As an aside, the only thing that prevented me from having this
fake cracked version erase the user's hard drive was a sense of ethics
- the same thing that's apparently missing from those who steal my
software. This does illustrate, though, that you never know what
you're getting when you download warez. Folks, if you're downloading
pirated software, you're trusting EXEs hosted by people who brag about
being criminals!)
Software crackers should be listed alongside spammers, virus
writers and script kiddies as scourges of the Internet, because they
make software more expensive and more invasive. Trust me: shareware
developers such as myself really don't want to resort to things like
software activation since it adds to our already oversized workload,
but when we see thousands of people stealing from us, we're willing to
do pretty much anything (wouldn't you?).
Software piracy on the up
Software piracy on the up
07/12/2004 10:48 PMSunday Times South Africa Jul 13 2004 3:09AM GMT
The Piracy Pyramid
The Piracy Pyramid
01/03/2005 02:39 PM
Anathema, darknets, master rippers, and currys:
The
Shadow Internet.
[via Volokh] The Economics of Piracy
The Economics of Piracy
01/05/2004 11:35 PMOn Piracy, or, Nick Bradbury is
an Amazing Idiot: This was written in response to Nick Bradbury's
bit about piracy from yesterday.
...most people who pirate his software probably would
never use it anyway, so they aren't costing him any money and they're
providing him with free advertising.
This is a good point. I'm not defending piracy, but piracy costs a
company money in only one instance: when a person who has the means
and inclination to buy the software pirates it instead. I can get
a pirated copy of Oracle, but that doesn't mean I've cost that company
money, because if I couldn't pirate it, I wouldn't buy it — I'd
use something cheaper or free.
Now, there are holes in this theory, of course, because if true, it
essentially means that poor people can pirate anything they want
because they couldn't or wouldn't buy it otherwise. But I get annoyed
when Microsoft claims that piracy costs it untold billions of dollars
a year. This is a little arrogant. Microsoft is basically saying that
every single person who pirated their software would have paid
full price for it if piracy wasn't an option.
This is patently ridiculous and Microsoft knows it, but big numbers
make big headlines. If Office was suddenly un-piratable, would
Microsoft reap a billion-dollar windfall from would-be thieves? Nope
— Open Office would
just saturate the market in a big hurry. When the only options are
paying for it or finding a much cheaper alternative, 99% of pirates
will choose the latter.
Click here to comment on this entry
Kids on Piracy
Kids on Piracy
01/07/2004 04:35 PM
In response to Nick
Bradbury's post on piracy, Aaron
Swartz writes:
Nick has no innate right to have people pay for his software, just
as I have no right
to ask people to pay for use of my name.
Even if he did, most people who pirate his software probably would
never use it anyway,
so they aren't costing him any money and they're providing him with
free advertising.
And of course it makes sense that lots of people who see some
interesting new program
available for free from a site they're already at will download it
and try it out
once, just as more people will read an article I wrote in the New
York Times than
on my weblog.
And what's this nonsense about warez sites only having shareware
stuff and not stuff
from Microsoft. In my experience with the biggest, easiest-to-use
things, the opposite
is true (tons of BigCo software, very little shareware).
And while it's true that EXEs can often do anything (because modern
OSes don't have
basic security protections like chroot, which has been
in UNIX for decades),
this is true of all software not just warez.
Yes, piracy probably does take some sales away from Nick, but I
doubt it's very many.
If Nick wants to sell more software, maybe he should start by not
screaming at his
potential customers. What's next? Yelling at people who use his
software on friends
computers? Or at the library?
Aaron then wrote these series of comments in response to Schoolblo
g's
post that agrees with Nick's view:
Chris is arguing what’s known as the sweat-of-the-brow theory
of intellectual
monopolies: someone who puts work into something deserves to
control how it is used.
Taken to its extreme, this probably results in things you disagree
with. (Michael
Jackson has put a lot of money and work into his face. Can he
charge people who distribute
pictures of it? A newspaper reporter puts a lot of work into
discovering a story.
Can he charge people who repeat it.) And certainly, in the specific
case of copyright,
if Chris’s world was in place we’d have no libraries or
video stores,
and all the books at bookstores would be shrink-wrapped or behind
glass.
By Nick’s reasoning, everyone who rents a movie from a video
store or takes
a book out of the library is a pirate, because they cost the author
one potential
sale (in the US, authors don’t get paid anything for library
or video store
rentals).
Chris, do you feel authors have a right to keep their book out of
libraries? They
worked hard on their book, shouldn’t they get to make the
terms of use? If you
don’t, how do you distinguish libraries from downloads?
(It’s true that
libraries don’t usually involve copies, but this is a
practical distinction
— quibbles like that don’t see like they’d
interfere with a strong
right.)
I spend months researching an important story. Finally, after great
lengths, I confirm
that Nixon’s team funded Watergate break-in, and I provide a
chain of evidence
to prove it. You run a rival newspaper and you verify all the
evidence with your own
eyes. Can you publish the story as well? I put a lot of work into
that story, I don’t
want you to copy it, even if you give me credit.
The fact that video rental stores are legal while peer-to-peer
systems aren’t
is an accident of law and technology. The law regulated copying
while the computer
systems required copies to do everything. If we had built our
networks with superfast
pnuematic tubes instead of wires, we could whisk CDs across them to
share with others
without violating the law at all. It’s hard to believe one
system could be moral
and the other not, simply because of this technological accident.
The fact is that there is no such morality behind copyright.
Copyright is a recent
invention, which originally only touched commercial publishers (of
which there aren’t
very many). This idea of their being some moral reason for it is
even more recent.
You won’t find it in any religion, or any old culture.
It’s a silly idea,
and it goes against our nature to share and build upon each
other’s work.
What’s the moral problem with me downloading Nick’s
software when there
was no chance of me buying it? I get the software, Nick
doesn’t lose any money
and possibly gets some free advertising. It seems everyone is
better off; how could
this be immoral?
Yup. That's how smart kids of 21st century thinks. What
a shame.
Aside from the lost profit and firmness of the moral ground piracy
stands on, piracy
undermines the soul of our young. When you do something
others consider bad,
you start a ball of self-justification rolling so you can sleep at
night. So
what if I burnt a house down? No one got hurt!
Let this bullshit go on and, before you know it, the only
acceptable answer to “Why
can't I drive your car when you are not using it?“ will be an
Uzi.
On Piracy, Part II
On Piracy, Part II
01/05/2004 03:01 PMLooks like my rant about
software piracy has generated some thoughtful feedback, some of
which is listed in the post's t
rackbacks. My apologies for not enabling comments for these
posts, but unfortunately a recent flood of comment spam has made
comments impossible for me to manage.
One thing mentioned in several responses is that people who steal
my software wouldn't necessarily have bought it in the first place.
This seems such an obvious statement that I didn't bother mentioning
it, but perhaps I should have. So, for the record, I'm certain that
the majority of people who use pirated versions of TopStyle would
never have purchased it. Almost anything that costs money will be
used by more people if they can get it for free.
But even so, this still costs me. My support newsgroups contain
countless messages from people who have been asking me questions for
years, yet have never purchased a copy. Given that the
TopStyle trial version expires after 20 uses, you have think
something's fishy there. And you'd be amazed by the number of support
emails I get from people who admit that they're using a
stolen copy, but still expect me to offer them support.
Perhaps more importantly, you need to consider how these pirated
copies are obtained in the first place. While some pirated copies are
cracks of the trial version, in other cases people use a stolen credit
card number to purchase a copy of TopStyle, then once they download
the registered version they post it on some warez site. This results
in a chargeback fee from the credit card company - which comes out of
my pocket.
Another common argument is that software isn't a physical product,
so it has no real value and therefore nothing is lost when someone
uses a stolen copy. Uhmmm...look, anyone who is tied to physical
objects as the only things with monetary value is flat-out unprepared
for the Internet and should stay offline.
Okay, that's enough ranting for now. My purpose with these posts
is not to browbeat anyone, but instead to offer an inside view of what
piracy really is. All too often the only people commenting on piracy
are the pirates themselves or the lawyers protecting large
corporations, so I thought I'd share how piracy affects someone like
me. Despite my sour attitude regarding piracy and the lack of ethics
among those who use warez, I'm still heartened that there are enough
honest people to enable small developers to earn a nice living. I
love what I do, and if you're among those who has purchased my
software and enabled me to keep creating it, then I owe you a great
deal of thanks.
Piracy Protection?!
Piracy Protection?!
09/07/2004 03:36 AMMany of us, including me, are the software developers. Many call
ourselves 'indieware' developers. We develop software, formerly known
as 'shareware', that allows people to download it, try it for some
period of time (or with some features disabled), and, if the software
looks and feels good, purchase it. After ...
Privacy vs. Piracy?
Privacy vs. Piracy?
03/14/2005 05:27 PMThe entertainment industry certainly loves to raid ISPs these days.
Perhaps it's payback for all those recent court rulings saying that
ISPs shouldn't just roll over and hand out private data every time the
entertainment industry suspects wrongdoing. Last week, they raided an
Austra
lian ISP and a Swedish one. The Swedish one was with the help of
authorities (the Australian one wasn't), but it was still organized by
the entertainment industry. However, in raiding the ISP and carting
away lots of info, some are wondering if the raid
violated
strict data privacy laws in that country. It certainly raises
some interesting questions in the light of all of the many, many data
leaks over the past couple of weeks. If your data happens to be
stored on the same server as someone who is breaking the law, does
that mean your data is open to review from private sources?
Pre-empting piracy
Pre-empting piracy
06/12/2004 12:00 AMUSA Today Jun 12 2004 3:06AM GMT
FCC Cracks Down On TV Piracy
FCC Cracks Down On TV Piracy
11/05/2003 05:18 AMCBS News Nov 5 2003 4:28AM ET
piracy messages
piracy messages
06/05/2004 04:32 AMa picture of the piracy-warning before the movie starts .. Gallery of
movie copyright warnings .. Anti-copyright warnings in
films
monochrom.at/piracy
track this
site | 5 links
The end of DIRECTV piracy?
The end of DIRECTV piracy?
04/15/2004 09:03 AM
The sky is
falling! [some links require reg] The years of hacking DIRECTV's signal and pirating its program offerings seem to be coming
to
an end.
Piracy Works
Piracy Works
06/22/2005 02:20 AMDepressing piracy statistic
Depressing piracy statistic
12/31/2004 02:59 PMThis week, 90% of the attempts to activate FeedDemon have been with
cracked serial numbers.
John Locke on Piracy?
John Locke on Piracy?
01/07/2004 04:30 PMAdam Gessaman channels John
Locke in t
his well-reasoned argument against piracy.
Grok Description matches for Piracy Paranoia
GrokA matches for Piracy Paranoia
Piracy Paranoia
