Dataset piracy
12 messages in this thread
Unreal. I hope ViewPoint fries the people who posted that.
Unreal? If they've cracked this scheme, and can regularly generate this
month's universal key to unlock all those models, they could simply post the
new key on a regular basis to the net, in public, as "revenge." Sounds like a
pirate's mentality to me.
For that matter, some Eastern European customers of Syndesis have told me that
one-off CD-R CDROM copies of any CD you want are available for about $10 more
than the cost of the CD-R blank, or about $30 total… The Syndesis 3D-ROMs
included.
Yup…Unreal. I can't believe someone was stupid enough to post
something like that to the Internet, and think they could get away with
it. I hope Viewpoint finds these guys.
Well,
Don't think I condone their stuff in any way at all, but I wondered what
EXACTLY viewpoint can get them for? Is it illegal to tell someone a
number? Is it relevant that that number happens to be a key to unlock
software on a CD which was obtained legally? I think the theft occurs at
the moment a user accesses an object she hasn't paid for, or maybe when
she renders it. The people selling the keys may not be doing anything
illegal. Or they may be in a conspiracy to defraud… If I set a
program to crack the viewpoint object locks by brute force, would my
success be illegal? They give away the CD-ROM free, does it have some
sort of use agreement on the envelope?
I submit that at our current "Electronic Frontier" state of ill-fitting
laws, undereducated Lawyers and Judges, one may as well flip a coin.
Or have I missed something 8-o
Not that I'm overly familiar with ViewPoint's CD :-), but here's how I
look at it: ViewPoint is selling keys to the CD for individual objects.
They alone have that right. Anyone who buys that key is also knowingly
breaking the law.
How's this for opening a bag of worms: It's kinda like cable TV piracy.
Are the people selling decryption devices breaking the law, or are the
people who buy the devices to view cable "for free" breaking the law?
I say both.
I completely agree about your comment about our current laws too.
Did you read the wired piece about the satellite pirates??
There were some interesting issues. The law seems self contradictory, and
the satellite broadcasters violate their agreements with their content
suppliers, by beaming the movie to other countries when they only have
rights for the US. And the makers of descramblers let the hacks out the
back doors so they sell to all rural americans, rather than just their
cable head-ends. And some drooling farm-boy who makes 25k/yr selling
these things does time.
Back to Viewpoint: We're saying the pirates are guilty of selling stolen
property, and their customers are wittingly receiving stolen goods…
sounds good, except that the property wasn't quite stolen in the material
sense… I'm still not sure info will be treated like material property
consstently in court.
As in most legal situations, whether you're guilty and punished depends
more on how much $$ you have for Lawyers than ANYTHING else. (cynics
anonymous help me!!)
I'm curious about what do you mean by "in the material sense". Do you
mean, stolen like a bike, or car? The way I view it, it's being stolen in
exactly the same way as software is pirated.
I view it more along the lines of theft of services, since it is a
duplicate, and the theft hasn't (directly) robbed the rightful owners of
their ability to use the product.
New proposals for software distribution aim at alleviating this rather
poor fitting of old laws to new concepts.If everything were networked and
compatible (HA), then software could be given away, and bill users each
time it is used. This is a way of giving people incentive to create
reusable software objects, as well as protecting consumers, who must (in
theory) buy software untested and based on the seller's claims, which are
all completely DISclaimed on the SW agreement. I think most (much)
software still claims to be 'as is', not guaranteed to be useful for any
specific purpose. I know many states would not uphold this waiving of
rights.
Arnie,
This is an area of the law which is in some state of flux. I suspect that
viewpoint could claim the key numbers as trade secrets, which in most
jurisdictions is defined as information which has economic value by virtue of
not being generally known or readily ascertainable through proper means. If
the key numbers were obtained improperly, I think viewpoint would have a strong
case.
Things get a little more complicated if the key numbers were derived through
brute force. The recent Microsoft/Stack litigation has some application here.
Microsoft prevailed on its trade secret counter- claims by arguing that it had
prohibited disassembly or decompiling of its code in the license agreement
pursuant to which Stack had obtained its copies of MS-DOS with the preloading
feature claimed to be a trade secret. The restriction in the license agreement
apparently was found to be a sufficient basis to hold reverse engineering of
the preload feature to be a misappropriation of Microsoft's "trade secret." If
viewpoint has similar restrictions in its license agreement that can be
enforced, it might be able to pursue a trade secret claim against even people
who derived the key numbers through brute force calculation and not direct
theft.
Darron
… In which case the crime would be obtaing the numbers through inside
info, or brute force. Subsequent redistribution by others wouldn't then
be illegal…
Its stuff like this that mekae me want to be a lawyer!
NOT ;-}
Arnie,
Did I write what you quoted? If so, my fingers slipped on the keyboard. If
the information is obtained through improper means, such as theft, bribery of
an employee, etc., subsequent redistribution _is_ illegal.
Darron
Oh, I dunno, I seen stupider things on the Internet. It's amazing what you
find on there.
Nick