US Entertainment Industry To Congress: Make It Legal For Us To Deploy Rootkits 443
An anonymous reader writes "The hilariously named 'Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property' has finally released its report, an 84-page tome that's pretty bonkers. But there's a bit that stands out as particularly crazy: a proposal to legalize the use of malware in order to punish people believed to be copying illegally. The report proposes that software would be loaded on computers that would somehow figure out if you were a pirate, and if you were, it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime. This is the mechanism that crooks use when they deploy ransomware."
Orphan or Dame? (Score:5, Funny)
With the dreadful formulaic schlock that Hollywood puts out, it's fair to say that they've already incorporated an anti-theft device, called "bad writing".
Re:Time to start thinking (Score:5, Funny)
Just to make sure it's not plagiarized ofcourse... because that's piracy too...
Re:They also want to allow private cyberwar... (Score:5, Funny)
"Foreign cyber spies" sounds like a phrase my grandfather who knows nothing about computers would use.
Re:They also want to allow private cyberwar... (Score:5, Funny)
The hilariously named 'Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property' ...
...Presumably hilarious by way of the inclusion of the words "American" and "Intellectual" consecutively.
Sigh...
Go ahead, make my day (Score:5, Funny)
Please. Go ahead. Get Congress to authorize you to deploy rootkits. While you're at it, better make sure Congress also holds you immune from any damages done to the user's computer by either you or a third party who exploits your rootkit on the user's machine. I really want you to do this. I really sincerely hope this legislation goes through.
Because that will be the end of you. That will bring to an end the era of Big Entertainment .as people take special pains and use soon-to-be-written FOSS software to ensure that no part, fragment, snippet or bit ...nothing, NO-THING of what you produce ever has any contact whatsoever with any machine they own.
One way to kill your enemy is to give them everything they want. This works especially well when the enemy is the coke snorting sociopathic lawyers and executives in an industry who would corrupt every last vestige of civil society and even democracy and free speech itself in order that they can go on making money in just the way they've set themselves up to make money.
So please, go ahead .. make my day. (footnote 1)
Footnote 1-t
The phrase "Make my day" is copyrighted by Warners Brothers and is used here without permission despite the fact that Woofy Goofy was fully cognizant of the copyright and also the need to seek legal permission before using the phrase "Make my day" and further, it was Woofy Goofy 's intent to, with malice of forethought , defraud and and deprive Warners Brothers of its legal right to compensation for the usage of its copyrighted material and this defrauding was not intended by WoofyGoofy as a political act or protest but rather and only to secure financial gain for WoofyGoofy, regardless of the amount of such gain or whether such gain could reasonably be inferred to have materialized through any means, and for no other reason whatsoever.
Re:Greyzone (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Surprise is that this doesn't happen already (Score:5, Funny)
What's really surprising is that torrents aren't infected up the wazoo with malware anyway.
Why would they? Pirates are far more worried about reputation and repeat customers than the RIAA appear to be.
Re:Surprise is that this doesn't happen already (Score:5, Funny)
Starting with the Java installer for Windows being bundled with Ask Toolbar...
I was shocked when I first saw this as well... and here I thought Oracle was an enterprise level corporation?!
They are, but revenue is revenue. Larry Ellison would monetize his bowel movements if he thought it profitable - accessible only with a Service Contract, of course...