Hollywood Hiring Cyber Hitmen To Combat Piracy

[theshonen8899]

That thumbnail is misleading. This is more accurate:

http/www.barelyhangingon.com/wp-content/uploads/thumb-fat_guy_in_girl_underwear5.jpg

 

[eddieroolz]

You know, I thought DoS attacks were illegal. And here they are, Hollywood hires people to do this to others.

If we don't keep Hollywood's power and wealth in check, they may begin acting on their own accord - ignoring all national and international laws.

 

[Guest]

Piracy really shouldn't be the focus of those who want to stop it.
Piracy is a symptom of trying to force a business model designed for rival goods upon a nonrival good. It costs nothing to reproduce a movie or software program once it has been created, so they should follow the same model as companies that produce similar "goods", such as the knowledge produced by scientific research.
Governmental funding for software/movies would be tricky because of the many countries involved and because you need a way to reward those who do it well rather than just pay everyone evenly, but it is the only sound way to handle a product that costs nothing to reproduce. Movies in particular would still get plenty of revenue from theater tickets, and games would still get a small bit of revenue from those who like having a hard copy, but those are "luxuries" that people may splurge for, not how the majority of the product is consumed. Most people haven't bought every one of their games at launch or seen every movie in a theater, they instead buy used or once price goes down and rent most of the movies they watch, and only pay full price for things they are especially interested in.
As a whole, the industry needs to realize selling something that costs nothing to produce isn't a sound business practice. Attempting to artificially restrict digital goods is like trying to prevent everyone from learning their native language if they don't pay a fee, or researchers funding their research by selling it after it is finished. It isn't practical, and just does not apply to the product at hand.
/end rant

 

[thegreathuntingdolphin]

None of this is surprising. I have been anticipating this for a long time now.

I guess they are trying to fight fire with fire. It sounds like a moderately effective strategy against the unprepared. Also, there are ways of defending against this, but the point to get the large weak ones. And it sounds like they are doing more than DDoS attacks; it sounds like they are also hacking other servers and deleting or disrupting.

I think they will get away with it too. There are a lot of laws about recovering stolen property that might partially legally justify this. Also, who is going to sue them? The torrents? Do you any of you think any of them want to publicize themselves and spend the money suing Hollywood? And if you think governments are going to do anything you are naive...after all they do not do much about pirating so why are they going to care about those attacking pirates?

I would like to point out that not many of the torrent users or distributors are great hackers. A lot think they are and a lot of those are arrested every year in FBI sweeps. A lot of services thought they were invincible and wound up sued out of existence.

 

[antilycus]

I find a large amount of humor in all of this, because just like O/S's, the most copied movies are also the largest selling. They correspond w/ eachother. If people are going to go through the work to steal it, they aren't going to stop so they can give someone 20 bucks for a mediocre movie (and 35 for a blu-ray disc).

Stop making $5 movies and you'll cut down on piracy

 

[antilycus]

write you config file to prevent DDOS, problem solved.

 

[thegreathuntingdolphin]

AMildlyConcernedConsumer,

Wow. OK first...it does cost millions to reproduce and advertise these things. Just because it doesn't cost much or anything after it is made does not mean it doesn't cost anything. It's like medicine. In reality many are very very cheap to make. But millions to billions go into making the product; that money is made up in subsequent sales.

Also, you do know that scientific research isn't just given away, right? It is sold. Even universities sell it. There isn't much universal government research that is freely distributed (at least any that is used to make something). And this is nothing like scientific research which is meant to further mankind's progress. This stuff is MADE FOR PROFIT. It is the sole reason for its existence. You have no right to it at all.

Um...what the hell are you talking about "as a whole, the industry needs to realize selling something that costs nothing to produce isn't a sound business practice"? That is the business model for all movies, music, games, software, etc etc etc. That is the hole digital distribution model. Do you not want any of those things?

Seriously how can you compare movie/game digital distribution to government funded scientific research? One is paid by tax dollars to further knowledge; the other is funded privately to entertain and make a profit.

 

[Minus_i7]

Pirates, copyright holders, I'm not for or against either in this case.

As long as they don't sneak malware onto my and everyone else's PCs to help them carry out any DDoS attacks, that is. Because I'm pretty sure they're not above trying to.

 

[MasterM40]

This just in! Hollywood plans on hiring hitmen to murder all the bootleggers on the streets! pandemonium! lol

 

[tinnerdxp]

Perhaps the first of that "hitman" should be putting a process in place where all Hollywood directors pass their films through it in order to filter out:
1. idiotic scenes involving animations of actors punching the keys in order to hack "the internet" or at least get rid of apple products (or at least) logos from all the films... I doubt Apple pays them to do it - so why Dell or other brands are not there?

 

[rajeshsundaram]

Aiplex sounds like BlueFrog who tried the re-spamming technique against email spammers. Later all spammers joined hands and collapsed Blueforg's email servers with millions of emails and Bluefrog went out of business. One day this Aiplex too will go out of business.

No one can stop piracy. It appears because watching a movie in theatre or owning it on DVD/BD costs a great deal. Hollywood mud-heads should think about commodotizing the movies. Make them appear on cables and DTH the same day it is released. It will generate millions of dollars revenue!

 

[aznplayer213]

Ceo:"Gentlemen we have launched a Dos attack to stop them from ddling our great movies."
Board member: "But sir, its illegal to do so."
Ceo: "So, they will never find out it was us."
Board member: "Well sir, there is an article about it."
Ceo: "What?"
Board member: "Yes sir, there is an article that plainly states we were interested in using these type of services."
Ceo: "So legally we are screwed if they ever found out."
Board member: "Yes sir."
Ceo: "Lets hope these pirates never read this story. One thing I know is that they dont get internetz at sea."
Board member: "Not those kind of pirates sir."
Ceo: "Oh..."

 

[back_by_demand]

OK, for a start the movies and the company are all in India, if they want to mess with each other then let them, they have their own laws.
However
As soon as 20th Century Fox employs them to hit someone in the US then it gets less complicated.

 

[Cogwulf]

What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?

 

[Guest]

"nobody is ABOVE the law"
You may stop one site but thousands will pop up overnight.
This is the most ridiculous, desperate, and pathetic move since the invention of the internet.

 

[tommysch]

Lets all react in a civilized fashion, DDoS every e-retail outlet there is!

Its time to strike back at the empire.

 

[Camikazi]

[citation][nom]deecrutch[/nom]My mom always told me that two wrongs don't make a right....[/citation]
But 4 rights make a square!

 

[Guest]

@dolphin

I'm not trying to say it costs nothing to create movies, music, and software products. I'm saying that once one has been created, it costs nothing (ok, maybe a comparatively small amount of the user's bandwidth, but thats negligible) to distribute it to anyone who wants it.

The products (movies, software, music, etc) need to (or will be, needs to is probably too strong) be developed, and someone has to pay for this, we can accept that as a given. The issue is how that is going to ever work when distributing the finished product to everyone on the planet with an internet connection costs nothing (or nearly nothing, again, internet connections aren't free, not yet anyway). Thus the problem I was getting at, digital goods are nonrival, giving them to one person doesn't keep them from anyone else, so trying to artificially restrict their distribution doesn't really make sense.

Movies in theaters, DVD's, and hard copies of anything that can be digitized are real products that have a significantly higher cost than zero to reproduce, that is why they are and will always be a seperate product from their digital forms.

I was comparing research to the digital goods industry because the products have very similar traits. They both cost little to nothing to reproduce, but a lot to develop. People don't generally "pirate" knowledge, because we don't generally try to artificially restrict it. (Medicines don't quite fit this, because they do cost a lot to produce in complex machinery and chemicals even though the knowledge isn't hard to find. People can't, or generally realize it is a bad idea to, create their medicine at home by looking up how to make it.)

My point, in short, is that the digital distribution method is inherently flawed. We need to be somehow paying collectively for the creation of anything that can be distributed at zero cost, rather than trying to pay for the distribution itself.

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]hollycrap[/nom]"nobody is ABOVE the law"You may stop one site but thousands will pop up overnight.This is the most ridiculous, desperate, and pathetic move since the invention of the internet.[/citation]
From the looks of things, you skimmed over the replies, failing to properly read what is written.

To add to that, I doubt you even know much about what UseNET is or even anything about the background of UseNET.

NNTP servers are not websites and they have nothing to do with torrents or P2P networks either.

UseNET has been around for a long time. So long that it would be next to impossible to get rid of. It is comprised of NNTP servers ALL across the world in every country that has any existing network infrastructure. So you're talking hundreds of thousands of systems if not more.

So of course, if someone were to try to take UseNET down, you can darn well bet that thousands more would pop up to replace the servers that were taken down.

Why do you think that no one has ever bothered to try and take UseNET down before?

For years, the authorities have wanted to do just this, but they have been unable to touch it for this very reason.

It would be like trying to take the internet itself down and you do realize what would happen if anyone ever tried to do that, do you?

 

[jgiron]

defiantly illegal.
These 'hitmen' are part of the new Hollywood cyber mafia.