Defeat SOPA

[xjwmx]

If it weren't for burglars, there would be no need to lock your doors. If it weren't for file sharing thieves there would be no need to limit freedom on the internet. But it's necessary to do both, because of the thieves. You are the reason. That's problem I have.

 

[xjwmx]

Gary, was I right? No, but I made restitution.

 

[Detale]

If it weren't for burglars, there would be no need to lock your doors. If it weren't for file sharing thieves there would be no need to limit freedom on the internet. But it's necessary to do both, because of the thieves. You are the reason. That's problem I have.

What "restitution" did you make? I'm sure it wouldn't acceptable by the standards of the media outlets. They got some woman a while back for 6 songs and sued her for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Did you pay that amount?

Burglars, sure I'll give but limiting freedom, now you're talking crazy. For that matter I'll presume and say we can agree child porn is worse than piracy so by your rationale they should have limited the internet ages ago and basically cut off any media hosting site "they" see fit. Megaupload for one is currently under attack. Next it would be graphic violence and so on. Limiting the internet is, for ANY reason a not a good idea. It would be limiting information soon enough. It would be a modern day book burning. Truth be told just like everything else no matter what they do the pirates will find ways around it soon enough.

The Megaupload thing is atrocious! Without arguing if they broke the law or not the government basically shut them down and seized their property illegally without a trial or even giving him the chance to address or fix the concerns. They stormed the site owners house during his birthday party for Christs sake. I'd say his freedoms were at very least imposed on no? Hell I'd go so far as to say he's being treated like shit and not given a fair and legal shake at all. Why isn't youtube being attacked for that matter? There's plenty of protected content uploaded there daily. Obviously they are making an example of MU for sure, but I digress.

Look man, I respect your point of view but we should hold on tightly to any and all freedoms that haven't yet been taken away. Our country is based on freedoms and we have given some up already but anytime a freedom is to be taken away it should not be taken lightly.

 

[xjwmx]

I paid lots of restitution, some debatable, and some less so.

Also you have to see those days in the context of those days. We would copy entire small books, or entire chapters and entire magazine articles on a Xerox in the library. We thought nothing of making copies of cassette music tapes. At first we saw making a copy of a program on a floppy the same way. Everybody in the world with two computers was using a bootleg copy of DOS on one of them, if not both.

At the University of Ky there was a PC-based card catalog before there were any student PCs. I would go in there late at night and reboot it using a pirated floppy of DOS formatted with /s and use my bootleg copy of Microsoft C on it. That was technically against the rules too, but it took a few weeks for the library to catch on. Next I would sneak into the medical school, and do the same with their card catalog. It wasn't long before there was a school computer lab, luckily for me!

That's why I did not want to sue anybody and everybody. Some of those people are doing something necessary.

 

[Pawl]

I think there is a strange balance there between producers and pirates. Producers will generate a lot of crappy music / movies / software which will be glossed up to look like something you GOTTA to have, see or listen too. Once you shell out your hard earned bucks for said media only to discover it was shiite . . . . what do you do!! . . . nothin' ya suck it up. am I right so far? If not, what steps are the "industries" doing to compensate you? . . . . Dick! I know I have a lot of lyrics from shitty songs from the 70's up to the 90's they pump at us on the radio stuck in my head . . . .and I want 'em out!! . . .(Boy George, Lionel Ritchie . . . . ). I think the music industry owes everybody for that. I now have my entire 1,000+ CD collection ripped to my hard drives and listen to the radio as little as possible. I rarely pirate any music, but if I do, and I like it. . . I will buy the CD, and never pay to download it, why pay for full quality audio (45 megs per song) and get something that is highly compressed low fidelity (3 megs per song). Is that not just as evil as "stealing" that shitty reproduction? . . .so I say Fuck-em! till they smarten up and fire the "marketing gurus" That's my condensed rant . .. Remember the Betamax / VHS battle it was won by marketing not quality.

 

[Detale]

Look Paul, you can talk shit about my country, my wife and even my kids, but don't you dare ever ever utter another bad word about Lionel Ritchie or it's on man!

 

[1974jh5]

Pawl's right, the music industry OWES me BIG TIME for all the hours I have been stuck with a damn crappy ear worm.

 

[littlebill31]

Say you, say me. Say it forever, that's the way it should be.

 

[Pawl]

. . . . I'm starting to think this site aint' . . what I thought it might be??? . . .

. . . a couple of you "might" be big fans of this putrid product of which (currently) cannot be unheard, from the early 90's. . . I think Anyone Pro SOPA should be forced to listen to this bile repeatidly, (I remember when this piece of lung butter came out, you could not escape it) and an oceanful more that exists, until they come around.

 

[Detale]

Thanks paul, thanks. I'll be singing that song in my head for 3 days now. A pox upon you!!!

 

[Poverty]

But then I thought of a straight up diabolical way to make money off of that very piracy. What you need to do is serialize each copy of the program and record that serial number with the purchaser. Then have it "phone home" and leave that number and an ip address the first time it starts up. Then, since you know who purchased the copy with a certain serial number, you can also know who's running illegal copies that have that serial number.

It takes no time @ all to remove the call home . movies ,and music watermarks Sppff.. there are countless progs to re-record them every type of security out can be bypassed with a bit of time and effort if you can write it someone can rewrite ..

most people pirate something in there time surfing a keyboard thats a given .. but what pisses me off with the Megaupload thing is the amount of legitament stuff posted there that is now inaccessible, links all across the interwebs are dead .. I searched for days for a homebrew I desperately needed and could not get it due to mega being down .. which is bullshit IMHO finally after a few days I found someone had posted the script for it ...

I understand why the site was pulled .. I dont agree with it .. Im a pirate .. but I honestly believe they should have went about it differently .. alot of legitament people ,programers , business lost out because of it

and thats where the attention really needs to be focused not with the big biz cry babys (cause we all know one ferrari just isn't enough)

 

[xjwmx]

Poverty, you're right, but also wrong.

I had a project manager who was a hardware guy. He would joke that with software you could do anything, when someone asked if something was possible. "It's software - we can do anything."

But the reason you are wrong also is this - the copy that is out there pirated is the first copy that was ever sold (Ironically it was sold to someone in Brooklyn according to the Paypal records). What he did was simply zip it up with its password and include a text file saying "hacked by..." whatever notorious sounding name.

I'll guarantee you there was little checking to see if it did anything secret. Much less to see if it did it only on the 100th start up. The strategy for what I described would include making it so easy to "hack" that no hacking is necessary; to both insure it got pirated and to insure it wasn't carefully examined, and would include making the purpose and strategy obscure.

 

[Poverty]

lMAO.. the fake h4x0r .. I love the ones who "hack" shit that they own

but yeah I get your point.. I actually have a program that runs in the background specifically for call homes or in this case the '100TH start call home" and all it does it wait, ask if it has permission .. then blocks upon denial .. but if a professional "hacker" had attacked your prog with a hex editor .. I bet there would be nothing left of the call home or any other security Even M$, and Apple cant stop them, hell the dell im on know was bios locked and it took about 10 mins to get it open.. its a viscous circle the best one can do is stand in the middle and hope to not get a knock at the door


if you dont mind .. what prog did you write? Im completely interested

 

[1974jh5]

. . . . I'm starting to think this site aint' . . what I thought it might be??? . . .

. . . a couple of you "might" be big fans of this putrid product of which (currently) cannot be unheard, from the early 90's. . . I think Anyone Pro SOPA should be forced to listen to this bile repeatidly, (I remember when this piece of lung butter came out, you could not escape it) and an oceanful more that exists, until they come around.