All this talk of Vista, followed by me installing Steam on my new PC, 
got me wondering if the Steam activation had ever been cracked (since 
Vista activation is cracked via backdoors MS intentionally left in which 
aren't really needed for Steam to work well). So I google around, just 
out of curiousity, and come across
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5rIw1HUfrU

Now, how lame is this? Three minutes of video, with music, to convey six 
sentences of text?  Damn, guys, get a geocities web site or something.
-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> All this talk of Vista, followed by me installing Steam on my new PC, 
> got me wondering if the Steam activation had ever been cracked (since 
> Vista activation is cracked via backdoors MS intentionally left in which 
> aren't really needed for Steam to work well). So I google around, just 
> out of curiousity, and come across
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5rIw1HUfrU
> 
> Now, how lame is this? Three minutes of video, with music, to convey six 
> sentences of text?  Damn, guys, get a geocities web site or something.

i wonder how long it took them to upload their video

Post a reply to this message

Tom Austin <taustin> wrote:
> i wonder how long it took them to upload their video

  Writing those sentences on a web page would have probably taken like
one minute. Creating that video probably took at least a half hour or
more. What's the point?

  The comments really show the state of morality of people: Wow! This is
absolutely great! I can play all these games without having to pay money!

  The attitude seems that having to actually pay for games is just an
obstacle those stupid big bad companies have put to annoy us, and if you
can overcome this obstacle without actually paying any money, you have
beaten the system.

  The attitude is like softare is a natural resource which pours freely
from a fountain, and these big bad companies have tapped into this fountain
and unfairly demanding people to pay for its contents, denying free access
to it. Any means to circumvent these demands and get the natural resource
for free is not only completely acceptable, but in fact a cool thing to do,
as it hits back at those big bad companies trying to steal us from what's
rightfully ours.

  Of course these people know the reality: They are getting the software
not at the expense of the company, but at the expense of other honest,
paying customers, those which keep the company running with their money.
In other words, they are using the products created with the money other
people have spent, without spending anything themselves. However, even
though they know this, they couldn't care less. Those who keep the company
alive by paying them money are fools and stupid, haha! They deserve to lose
their money for being so foolish.

  Software pirate mentality is one of the worst things that really grinds
my gears. People who pirate software and have this kind of attitude are
the worst moral scum on earth.

-- 
                                                          - Warp



-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   Software pirate mentality is one of the worst things that really grinds
> my gears. People who pirate software and have this kind of attitude are
> the worst moral scum on earth.

I don't pirate music for a similar reason... (Being a person who also 
creates the stuff.)

OTOH, DRM *also* annoys the hell out of me! >_<

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Tom Austin <taustin> wrote:
>> i wonder how long it took them to upload their video
> 
>   Writing those sentences on a web page would have probably taken like
> one minute. Creating that video probably took at least a half hour or
> more. What's the point?
> 


a joke based off Andrew's YouTube experience

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I don't pirate music for a similar reason... (Being a person who also 
> creates the stuff.)

  I don't even feel the need to pirate music because listening to music
is not my hobby. I basically never listen to music.

> OTOH, DRM *also* annoys the hell out of me! >_<

  The reason why DRM is so annoying is that it doesn't affect the people
who it should, ie. the pirates, but it *does* affect and hinder the honest
people who buy honestly and pay what they are asked for the product.

  Soon we will live in a world where pirated music and movies are the
*only* way to get them to work properly without having to spend enormous
amounts of money on expensive hardware which might still not guarantee
that you can get them to work properly.

  The naive theoretical idea behind DRM is that if you are a honest paying
customer, you don't even notice it's there. Only if you try to copy it
illegally you will stumble accross its obstacles. In practice it's often
almost the opposite.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

The phrase "YouTube lameness" is very near being a redundancy.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> I don't pirate music for a similar reason... (Being a person who also 
>> creates the stuff.)
> 
>   I don't even feel the need to pirate music because listening to music
> is not my hobby. I basically never listen to music.

I feel sad for you.  Unless you're deaf, in which case there's no way 
around it...

Post a reply to this message

"nemesis" <nam### [at] nospamgmailcom> wrote in message 
news:491cea4d$1@news.povray.org...
> Warp wrote:
>> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> I don't pirate music for a similar reason... (Being a person who also 
>>> creates the stuff.)
>>
>>   I don't even feel the need to pirate music because listening to music
>> is not my hobby. I basically never listen to music.
>
> I feel sad for you.  Unless you're deaf, in which case there's no way 
> around it...

Likewise, without music I'd simply be a lost soul.

I listen to music pretty much the entire time I'm awake, but then again, I 
listen to music when I go to sleep so thats not real accurate :)

IOW, I love music, music *moves* you!  Imagine the feeling you'd get if you 
created a piece of music to have someone come up to you and say something 
like "whenever I hear your song x, all the hairs stand on my neck stand on 
end" for example, imho thats the biggest cudos someone could ever give...

Music has the ability to make my body move without my brain telling it to! 
*Nothing* in this world can do the same.

Cheers Dre

Post a reply to this message

>  Soon we will live in a world where pirated music and movies are the
> *only* way to get them to work properly without having to spend enormous
> amounts of money on expensive hardware which might still not guarantee
> that you can get them to work properly.

Exactly, I don't understand why the producing companies do not realise that 
if they completely scrapped DRM at least the same people would still buy 
their products (maybe even a few more who refused to buy before because of 
DRM) and their products will still appear on bitTorrent.  The only 
difference will be they don't have to spend millions on DRM and their 
customers don't have to get annoyed with it.

I can understand in the past when there was no internet and people passed 
around videos to copy at home, and some mild DRM would stop most people 
being able to copy the tape.  But today there are *always* huge numbers of 
very skilled people willing to put in the time and effort to crack any new 
DRM system and share their findings online.  Once one person has done that 
everyone else can get the copy with almost no hassle.

eg They must have spent a huge amount of time and effort coming up with the 
really complicated DRM system that is used on BluRay discs.  Yet, almost 2 
weeks before the official launch of Wall-E on BluRay (in the UK at least), 
you can download the 1920x800 DRM-free AVI for free, and I'm sure all other 
releases are equally available.  I think that counts as a failure in 
anyone's books.

Post a reply to this message

> The phrase "YouTube lameness" is very near being a redundancy.

That's like saying "Internet lameness" is near being a redundancy.

There is plenty of good content on there, you just need to filter out the 
bad stuff.

Quite often with new software I YouTube for "<software> tutorial", or for 
some specific feature I can't work out how to use, or some critical moment 
of a sporting event that I would like to watch again, etc. I find it quite 
useful.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   I don't even feel the need to pirate music because listening to music
> is not my hobby. I basically never listen to music.

Given the current state of the Chart Top 40, I can't say I blame you...

...oh, wait. You're from the country that gave us Lordi? That 
*definitely* explains it! o_O

>> OTOH, DRM *also* annoys the hell out of me! >_<
> 
>   The reason why DRM is so annoying is that it doesn't affect the people
> who it should, ie. the pirates, but it *does* affect and hinder the honest
> people who buy honestly and pay what they are asked for the product.

As somebody once said, "trying to make data not copiably is like trying 
to make water not wet".

Even on paper the concept is impossible.

The *only* way to prevent digital copying is to make all devices use a 
single common DRM system, and to outlaw (and efficiently confiscate!) 
all devices which can circumvent this DRM.

Even assuming you somehow manage to do this (how long have guns been 
illegal in my country?), this does nothing to prevent copying of 
analogue signals. And basically all of this stuff must eventually be 
rendered in an analogue form in order to *use* it for its intended purpose.

The only way to totally prevent analogue copying is to prevent any 
device that can copy analogue signals. So no recording devices, basically.

In fact, forget DRM. If you just outlaw any device capable of copying 
audio/video signals, the audio/video DRM problem goes away. As does 
YouTube. Because nobody will be able to make anything to put on it.

So getting rid of all recording devices is infiesible. The only other 
approach is watermarking and requiring all devices to respect it. 
Unfortunately, nobody has yet designed a watermark that can survive 
extreme treatment. And it's probably impossible even in theory.

I find the whole idea pretty absurd.

Post a reply to this message

Dre <and### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > I feel sad for you.  Unless you're deaf, in which case there's no way 
> > around it...

> Likewise, without music I'd simply be a lost soul.

  The *most* I can bear to listen to is one CD of music. Well before the end
I will be rather tired of it. Often I can't bear it to the end and I will
just stop it early, for the sweet silence. Thus I basically never listen to
music for more than a few minutes.

  And this is only if I'm not concentrating on anything. If I'm concentrating
on something (eg. work or reading), the music is immensely distracting. It
makes it very hard to concentrate. I need silence, please.

> IOW, I love music, music *moves* you!

  It may move me, but after it has played for an hour it starts becoming
really tiresome, if not even irritating.

  I don't hate music. I like music. There's no musical genre which I would
detest. I just can't listen to it for long periods of time.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> I can understand in the past when there was no internet and people passed 
> around videos to copy at home, and some mild DRM would stop most people 
> being able to copy the tape.  But today there are *always* huge numbers of 
> very skilled people willing to put in the time and effort to crack any new 
> DRM system and share their findings online.  Once one person has done that 
> everyone else can get the copy with almost no hassle.

  That's where internet censorship steps into play.

  (Internet censorship is starting to slowly get widespread. It starts
"innocently" by banning child porn and perhaps racism. But you'll see that
soon it will be used to try to stop music piracy as well.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   And this is only if I'm not concentrating on anything. If I'm concentrating
> on something (eg. work or reading), the music is immensely distracting. It
> makes it very hard to concentrate. I need silence, please.

I *like* music and even I agree with this...

Post a reply to this message

>> I can understand in the past when there was no internet and people passed
>> around videos to copy at home, and some mild DRM would stop most people
>> being able to copy the tape.  But today there are *always* huge numbers 
>> of
>> very skilled people willing to put in the time and effort to crack any 
>> new
>> DRM system and share their findings online.  Once one person has done 
>> that
>> everyone else can get the copy with almost no hassle.
>
>  That's where internet censorship steps into play.
>
>  (Internet censorship is starting to slowly get widespread. It starts
> "innocently" by banning child porn and perhaps racism. But you'll see that
> soon it will be used to try to stop music piracy as well.)

Well given that piracy is illegal, it seems a legitimate target for the 
censors, but as with all these sort of schemes there will always be a way 
around them and new ways of pirating software will pop up.  Just look what 
happened with Napster when it was shut down, up popped bitTorrent.  If 
suddenly they start censoring all sites that link to torrents, then I'm 100% 
sure some new method will be invented that makes it impossible to censor 
using the existing scheme.  By the time a new scheme is dreamt up to fight 
the pirates, another system will be in place, it's endless.

Post a reply to this message

scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> Well given that piracy is illegal, it seems a legitimate target for the 
> censors, but as with all these sort of schemes there will always be a way 
> around them and new ways of pirating software will pop up.  Just look what 
> happened with Napster when it was shut down, up popped bitTorrent.  If 
> suddenly they start censoring all sites that link to torrents, then I'm 100% 
> sure some new method will be invented that makes it impossible to censor 
> using the existing scheme.  By the time a new scheme is dreamt up to fight 
> the pirates, another system will be in place, it's endless.

  And western countries will become no better than China in their
totalitarian censorship policies...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> ...
>
>   Software pirate mentality is one of the worst things that really grinds
> my gears. People who pirate software and have this kind of attitude are
> the worst moral scum on earth.
>
> --
>                                                           - Warp
>
Prior to this bit of hyperbole, you made a number of good points that I
generally agree with, but "the worst moral scum on earth"? Really? Good golly
gee willikers, man! (Sorry for the strong language, but my gears get a tad
asynchronous at times as well.) Do you realize that there are villains out
there doing things like breeding chihuahuas? …ON PURPOSE?

But seriously… I do refrain from swiping software and join you earnestly in
urging others do the same.  I do, however, have a point of view that differs
rather radically from the perspective that sees “Good” software vendors in a
battle against “Evil” software pirates.  In my mind, stealing software from the
great majority of vendors would bring me down to their moral level, which is
more than sufficient impetus to prevent me from doing so. (Some indie folks and
the like are notable exceptions.) A large company that starts with an actual
product in order to initiate commercial intercourse (pun intended) and then
adds on every sort of deception, misdirection, hidden restriction and
misleading condition that they can possibly imagine to get as deeply into the
customers’ pockets as possible is a fancier bunch of thieves than plain ol’
software pirates, but they are no less thieves in the moral sense.

I never have and, most likely, never will buy into the notion that having enough
wealth and power to renders one’s means of separating honest folks from their
money “technically legal” buy purchasing legislation in bulk renders one
morally upright.  Agreed, stealing software pretty much makes one scum… but
just one more little patch of scum in the great scum ocean we call “information
technology”, the major currents of which flow from the moral effluent issued
forth by its corporate giants.

Hey, this hyperbole thing can get addictive, can’t it?  ;-)

Best Regards,
Mike C.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> As somebody once said, "trying to make data not copiably is like trying 
> to make water not wet".

No, it's like making money that's impossible to counterfeit.

Yes, it's really trivial to do that. What's hard is making money that 
only one organization (i.e., the central bank) can counterfeit.

Making data that you can't decrypt is easy these days. Making data that 
you can only decrypt in certain ways for certain purposes is hard.

Of course, it's still copyable. But the point of DRM is to make copying 
useless, not impossible.

> Even assuming you somehow manage to do this (how long have guns been 
> illegal in my country?)

Guns are easy to make. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> Quite often with new software I YouTube for "<software> tutorial",

You Suck At Photoshop.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> You Suck At Photoshop.

I know that. What's your point?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> 
>> You Suck At Photoshop.
> 
> I know that. What's your point?

   <eyeroll>

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   And this is only if I'm not concentrating on anything. If I'm
>   concentrating
> on something (eg. work or reading), the music is immensely distracting. It
> makes it very hard to concentrate. I need silence, please.

Since I *can't* get silence in my house, I prefer to add music on top.

If my mom is in the house, the radio is on; always. The washing machine is
also close enough to be super-annoying.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> 
>>   And this is only if I'm not concentrating on anything. If I'm 
>> concentrating
>> on something (eg. work or reading), the music is immensely 
>> distracting. It
>> makes it very hard to concentrate. I need silence, please.
> 
> I *like* music and even I agree with this...

I like to program with Bach on the background. In fact, music can also 
be a wonderful firewall to noisy environments.  :)

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> If my mom is in the house, the radio is on; always.

  I think I would go crazy if I had to live in a place where there's a
constant racket of music.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   I think I would go crazy if I had to live in a place where there's a
> constant racket of music.

That's the thing, the radio station she listens to is not music, mostly
news.

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   I think I would go crazy if I had to live in a place where there's a
> > constant racket of music.

> That's the thing, the radio station she listens to is not music, mostly
> news.

  Not a lot better...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>>   I think I would go crazy if I had to live in a place where there's a
>>> constant racket of music.
> 
>> That's the thing, the radio station she listens to is not music, mostly
>> news.
> 
>   Not a lot better...

Worse, for me. I can ignore music. It's very hard for me to ignore talking.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>> >   I think I would go crazy if I had to live in a place where there's a
>> > constant racket of music.
> 
>> That's the thing, the radio station she listens to is not music, mostly
>> news.
> 
>   Not a lot better...

Not at all.

Post a reply to this message

Tom Austin wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> All this talk of Vista, followed by me installing Steam on my new PC, 
>> got me wondering if the Steam activation had ever been cracked (since 
>> Vista activation is cracked via backdoors MS intentionally left in 
>> which aren't really needed for Steam to work well). So I google 
>> around, just out of curiousity, and come across
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5rIw1HUfrU
>>
>> Now, how lame is this? Three minutes of video, with music, to convey 
>> six sentences of text?  Damn, guys, get a geocities web site or 
>> something.
> 
> i wonder how long it took them to upload their video
> 

I wonder how many valid accounts they phished with their video.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> All this talk of Vista, followed by me installing Steam on my new PC, 
> got me wondering if the Steam activation had ever been cracked (since 
> Vista activation is cracked via backdoors MS intentionally left in which 
> aren't really needed for Steam to work well). So I google around, just 
> out of curiousity, and come across
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5rIw1HUfrU
> 
> Now, how lame is this? Three minutes of video, with music, to convey six 
> sentences of text?  Damn, guys, get a geocities web site or something.

I'm stunned.

I keep hoping that the kids trying to pirate games would know their 
technology. Fact is, they possess no more clue then anyone falling for 419s.

I really needed a good laugh, thanks Darren.

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian <"ykgp at vtSPAM.edu"> wrote:
> I wonder how many valid accounts they phished with their video.

  Reminds me a bit of this:

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Go-Phish.aspx

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> I wonder how many valid accounts they phished with their video.

You know, I never noticed that. (Of course, I had no intention of 
following the instructions so...)

I *did* kind of wonder at the "you can only get five games per one you 
own."  I thought it was kind of dumb for Valve to have left open to 
public email the game authorization mechanism.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:19:54 -0500, Warp wrote:

>   Software pirate mentality is one of the worst things that really
>   grinds
> my gears. People who pirate software and have this kind of attitude are
> the worst moral scum on earth.

Uh, no, I think you'll find that people who think it's appropriate to 
bomb innocent civilians are the worst moral scum on earth.

Let's have some perspective, please.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:35:22 -0500, Warp wrote:

>   Soon we will live in a world where pirated music and movies are the
> *only* way to get them to work properly without having to spend enormous
> amounts of money on expensive hardware which might still not guarantee
> that you can get them to work properly.
> 
>   The naive theoretical idea behind DRM is that if you are a honest
>   paying
> customer, you don't even notice it's there. Only if you try to copy it
> illegally you will stumble accross its obstacles. In practice it's often
> almost the opposite.

Yep, agreed there.  We just picked up a copy of "The Mummy Returns" from 
our local secondhand DVD store.  It comes with a digital copy on disc 2, 
which must be activated by June 8, 2009.

You have to be running Windows XP or Windows Vista in order to actually 
view it.  Requires WMP10 in order to watch it, and is DRM-encumbered.

Nice idea, but of course using Linux, totally useless to me.  
Fortunately, I can use k9copy to rip a copy of the video on disc 1, don't 
have to deal with DRM issues or platform lock-in, and I can move the file 
to my laptop if I'm taking a trip or view it on my desktop if I like, 
rather than being tied to the "only usable on 1 PC" built into the DRM 
software.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:54:33 +0100, scott wrote:

> Just look what
> happened with Napster when it was shut down, up popped bitTorrent.

IKWYM, but LimeWire popped up; BitTorrent is a transfer protocol, bit 
different than Napster or Limewire....

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:07:47 -0500, Warp wrote:

> scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
>> Well given that piracy is illegal, it seems a legitimate target for the
>> censors, but as with all these sort of schemes there will always be a
>> way around them and new ways of pirating software will pop up.  Just
>> look what happened with Napster when it was shut down, up popped
>> bitTorrent.  If suddenly they start censoring all sites that link to
>> torrents, then I'm 100% sure some new method will be invented that
>> makes it impossible to censor using the existing scheme.  By the time a
>> new scheme is dreamt up to fight the pirates, another system will be in
>> place, it's endless.
> 
>   And western countries will become no better than China in their
> totalitarian censorship policies...

Oh, come on - I think there's a bit of a difference between "you can't 
post material you don't have the rights to" and "you can't speak out 
against your government without risking your life".  Again, let's get 
some perspective, please.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> IKWYM, but LimeWire popped up; BitTorrent is a transfer protocol, bit
> different than Napster or Limewire....

Blocking BitTorrent is really stupid. If someone sets a FTP server with lots
of pirated material, they'll block FTP? It's a damned PROTOCOL. It can't be
illegal on its own. It's how you use it.

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:07:20 -0200, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> IKWYM, but LimeWire popped up; BitTorrent is a transfer protocol, bit
>> different than Napster or Limewire....
> 
> Blocking BitTorrent is really stupid. If someone sets a FTP server with
> lots of pirated material, they'll block FTP? It's a damned PROTOCOL. It
> can't be illegal on its own. It's how you use it.

Yep, agreed.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> Oh, come on - I think there's a bit of a difference between "you can't 
> post material you don't have the rights to" and "you can't speak out 
> against your government without risking your life".  Again, let's get 
> some perspective, please.

  Soon we will be in a situation where you really can't speak against
your government (about certain issues) without being fined or jailed,
which in many cases is effectively almost as bad as risking your life.

  You know, there are certain issues which are becoming more and more
a taboo, and which are overriding freedom of speech. Not too unlike what
has happened in China where, for example, speaking about the Tiananmen
Square events is taboo and will get you fined or jailed.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

>  Soon we will be in a situation where you really can't speak against
> your government (about certain issues) without being fined or jailed,

Happens in a lot of countries already regarding certain events during the 
war - doesn't seem to affect anyone apart from the people wanting to cause 
trouble for the sake of it.  Is that a problem for you?

Hey, you can even cause massive disruption by protesting against your 
government, yet they do nothing, no fine, no arrests, no attempt to even 
stop the disruption.  *That's* ludicrous IMO.

Post a reply to this message

>> IKWYM, but LimeWire popped up; BitTorrent is a transfer protocol, bit
>> different than Napster or Limewire....

What I meant was BitTorrent suddenly became hugely popular for sharing 
pirated files, since people were unable to use Napster to share pirated 
files.

> It's a damned PROTOCOL. It can't be
> illegal on its own. It's how you use it.

Hehe you could say the same with guns.  Actually no, a much higher 
proportion of people use guns for legal activity :-)

Post a reply to this message

>>   Software pirate mentality is one of the worst things that really
>>   grinds
>> my gears. People who pirate software and have this kind of attitude are
>> the worst moral scum on earth.
>
> Uh, no, I think you'll find that people who think it's appropriate to
> bomb innocent civilians are the worst moral scum on earth.
>
> Let's have some perspective, please.

Exactly.  The worst consequences of pirating are companies going bankrupt, 
there are many many crimes with far worse consequences.  Even driving at 
50mph in a 30mph limit past a school is worse IMO.  Would you rather you 
lost your job or your child?

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Blocking BitTorrent is really stupid. If someone sets a FTP server with lots
> of pirated material, they'll block FTP? It's a damned PROTOCOL. It can't be
> illegal on its own. It's how you use it.

I would hazard a guess that blocking BitTorrent is *infeasible* too. 
It's not like it runs on a Well Known Port. It will run on any damned 
port you like!

Personally, I use BitTorrent all the time - and AFAIK I've never used it 
for anything illegal...

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scott wrote:
>> It's a damned PROTOCOL. It can't be
>> illegal on its own. It's how you use it.
> 
> Hehe you could say the same with guns.  Actually no, a much higher
> proportion of people use guns for legal activity :-)

Hmm not really... Guns were *made for* killing.

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Invisible wrote:
> I would hazard a guess that blocking BitTorrent is *infeasible* too.
> It's not like it runs on a Well Known Port. It will run on any damned
> port you like!

Some ISPs started blocking it or throttling speed by detecting the protocol.

So now many clients support encryption. Run it through port 443 and they
can't tell it apart from online banking :)

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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> >  Soon we will be in a situation where you really can't speak against
> > your government (about certain issues) without being fined or jailed,

> Happens in a lot of countries already regarding certain events during the 
> war - doesn't seem to affect anyone apart from the people wanting to cause 
> trouble for the sake of it.  Is that a problem for you?

  You demonstrate perfectly the kind of mentality. Limiting freedom of
speech is completely "acceptable" when the subject in question is taboo
enough.

  People are already being fined in many western countries for expressing
their opinion *without* causing any trouble. It's getting worse by the day.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> I would hazard a guess that blocking BitTorrent is *infeasible* too.
>> It's not like it runs on a Well Known Port. It will run on any damned
>> port you like!
> 
> Some ISPs started blocking it or throttling speed by detecting the protocol.

Now, see, if I paid money to access the Internet, and then my ISP tried 
to prevent me accessing the Internet, I'd be... quite upset.

> So now many clients support encryption. Run it through port 443 and they
> can't tell it apart from online banking :)

...except for the massive quantity of data. :-P

Traffic analysis, anyone?

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Invisible wrote:

>> So now many clients support encryption. Run it through port 443 and they
>> can't tell it apart from online banking :)
> 
> ...except for the massive quantity of data. :-P
> 
> Traffic analysis, anyone?

Hmm, massive amounts of data encrypted and obscured are bound to raise a 
few eyebrows.

-- 
~Mike

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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
> 
>>> So now many clients support encryption. Run it through port 443 and they
>>> can't tell it apart from online banking :)
>>
>> ...except for the massive quantity of data. :-P
>>
>> Traffic analysis, anyone?
> 
> Hmm, massive amounts of data encrypted and obscured are bound to raise a 
> few eyebrows.

Indeed. A typical HTTPS session transaction is, what, 200 KB? 
Transferring multiple GB of data in both directions might look 
*slightly* suspicious...

Thinking about it, all an ISP *really* needs to do is block any network 
transaction involving "large" amounts of data. That'll block any 
concievably file-sharing technology, not just BitTorrent.

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