Wednesday, January 18, 2012

A hypothetical abuse of PIPA/SOPA


Ponder this scenario if you will. Let's say you are an amateur musician and a bit internet savvy. Instead of trying to get a record label deal, you decide to build your own site, and market your music yourself. You register your domain, find a hosting service, design your site, begin posting songs for sale on your site for some pocket change amount. Your collecting money from advertisers, and sales of your music through various credit card services like Visa, Mastercard, Discover etc.

Suddenly you get a notice stating that your site has been taken offline. Suddenly you find:
  • A record label claims they own the copyright on a single song on your site
  • Your advertising has been yanked
  •  Visa/Mastercard/Etc froze your accounts
  •  Anyone who types in your url in their browser is denied visiting your site 
  • All search engines have removed your site from their search results  
  • Your domain name has been taken away from you by the US government


To defend yourself, you have to prove that you own the rights to the music you created. In the meantime, your livelihood is offline and unavailable. Even though you can prove you own all the music on your site, you have a major financial loss; all without going to court.
So maybe you financially survived after proving you own the music. After an extended amount of time, you finally get your site back up, and recover. Suddenly it happens again. Not only has your site been taken down, The same label is now suing you for not only copyright infringement on a new song you posted, but is also suing you because they believe you are not working hard enough to curb piracy on your site
 
Though this is an abuse of IP law, they may get a small fine. You on the other hand are financially devastated even though you won in court. This is just a possible scenario but rooted in reality. It will be a fact of life if PIPA and SOPA are passed.

Take this news article for example.

When the DCMA was passed it had the potential for abuse. Since it has been passed, it has been abused countless times.  The most recent example of abuse of the DMCA is UMG’s take down of a Tech News Daily episode from YouTube. They claimed copyright infringement and had the video taken down for 10 days. They did this knowing full well they had no copyright claim to the news show.   


The PIPA/SOPA bills that are being pushed by our government give unprecedented power to the MPAA, RIAA, major content producers and anyone else who has a copyright.  This is above and beyond what the DMCA gave copyright owners. The bills give them this kind of power in good faith that it will not be abused. Unfortunately, just as the DMCA was, these will be too with far reaching consequences.

Piracy is a complex problem that needs to be resolved, and these vague bills set forth by our government is not the answer. They are too over reaching, too broad, and too damaging.
If somehow you don’t believe the DMCA has been abused and that we are over reacting over the PIPA/SOPA bills. Here are some real life examples for you.







Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Sony Admits epic fail for PSN/Qriocity user account security…and its serious!

Today Sony gave an explanation behind the “external intrusion” that forced the company to take down the Playstation Network service. This intrusion is a worst case scenario for both Sony and it’s customers who own the Playstation 3 or use the Qriocity music service.

The information stolen includes your name, password, date of birth and address. All of which could be used to steal your identity. The worst of course is the likely possibility of your credit card information.
For more information about this breaking news, please visit the following sites.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/04/26/update-on-playstation-network-and-qriocity/
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/04/sony-admits-utter-psn-failure-your-personal-data-has-been-stolen.ars

To my friends who own a Playstation 3 or use the Qriocity music service, I implore you to take actions to protect yourself! 


Please take the following actions
Change your passwords for all of your user accounts. These include

  • Facebook
  • Email
  • MySpace
  • Online financial and banking accounts. 
  • Any account that holds personal or important information that you do not want others to access. 
Update: It is also highly recommended to change your PSN password as soon as possible once the Playstation Network service is back online.

Update 2: It is being reported on some gamer sites, such as GiantBomb, that Sony has confirmed that there is no way to determine a user's PSN password. Even though your password was encrypted in Sony's system. I still advise you to consider your password compromised! If you use the same password for other sites around the web, I recommend changing them all. If your not sure, change them all anyway.  

If you have used a credit card for services on your Playstation 3 or use the Qriocity service. Please cancel your cards immediately and contact the following credit agencies to put a credit fraud alert on your accounts.
Experian: 888-397-3742; www.experian.com; P.O. Box 9532, Allen, TX 75013
Equifax: 800-525-6285; www.equifax.com; P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
TransUnion: 800-680-7289; www.transunion.com; Fraud Victim Assistance Division, P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790

Sony has also provided a wealth of sources for data and protection against identity theft.
You may wish to visit the web site of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission at www.consumer.gov/idtheft or reach the FTC at 1-877-382-4357 or 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580 for further information about how to protect yourself from identity theft. Your state Attorney General may also have advice on preventing identity theft, and you should report instances of known or suspected identity theft to law enforcement, your State Attorney General, and the FTC. For North Carolina residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; telephone (877) 566-7226; or www.ncdoj.gov. For Maryland residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 200 St. Paul Place, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202; telephone: (888) 743-0023; or www.oag.state.md.us.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Cryptic Shits on it's Champions Online Community Yet Again!

What was a pretty good game late in beta and pre-release, quickly turned to shit on launch day. Champion's Online was poised to greatness before they pulled the rug out from under it's community with a sweeping patch. This release day patch essentially brought turned every "super hero" into a chump. It was a huge blow to a community that was behind that was cheering the songs of greatness to Cryptic. You would think that after that whole debacle, they would have learned their lesson right? Right!? Sure they did...

On Tuesday, Cryptic dropped a bomb on their game, and it wasn't the kind of bomb with cheers of joy, streamers and champagne. This bomb stunk like a fresh pile laid upon the earth by your next door neighbor's French poodle on a hot summer day. This massive patch, dubbed "The Kitchen Sink" is a laundry list of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and changes. Unfortunately, when Cryptic released the patch, they decided to not just drop a patch that wasn't ready, but decided to smack their community in the face with a kitchen sink.

Lemuria (Lagmuria) was to get a zone wide fix for it's poor performance and lag. The fix was included in the patch and it actually made matters worse. Players are reporting to be stuck in the zone with no way to log into their characters. Not only that, but game wide lag has become prevalent through out the game. Even the fixes to the crafting system was an epic fail as now players are reporting losing not only the items they are crafting but the material used to make the item.

Something else baffling with the patch, is their insistence of changing powers that require a free retcon. Only to give the players with those power sets the free retcon in an "upcoming" patch.

Lastly, and what I call "Lets take a shit on our community" announcement by Daeke that their upcoming filler content patch is a going to be a paid for expansion! First the game hasn't been out a year, and their already going to charge for an expansion? The real kick in the teeth is the fact that they are just adding more content to the level 37 to 40. Most, if not all Champions Online players will agree that content was already extremely lacking that level, forcing people to either roll up a new character, or force them to do repeatable quests to hit the end game. No matter how you slice it, this is a smack in the face to players, who should have that content already in the game, for free anyway.

It's clear Cryptic in no way, shape or form has learned anything from it's launch day debacle, and continues to keep me away from a game I wanted to love playing. With the upcoming Star Trek Online, I can't help but avoid that game, as Cryptic continues to show it's lack of thought and care for it's own community.

-Draok out

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Website Update

Tonight Nykk and myself got a lot accomplished on the new website. Nykk installed our new forums, and while I worked on the main site. The main site is now up and available though we don't have much content yet. Images have placeholders and definitely nothing to read. Just take in the nice visuals thus far. We'll keep you posted on the changes when they happen. 


-- Draok/Grexis out

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Black Gives Way To Blue, I'll Remember You.

Its funny how music can affect a person. Today I was on my way back to the office, listening to the new Alice in Chains cd. The song Black Gives Way to Blue came on. Great song I've heard it at least a dozen times since buying the cd. For some reason it got me thinking about my best friend when I was a teenager.

With the exception of his family members and a few close friends I don't think anyone else really remembers him. Tony Owens died a short while after I graduated high school.

When I was around thirteen, I met Tony. He's was a different kind of kid than the most of the jerks I went to school with. He was over at my neighbors house playing basketball in the back yard with a few kids around the neighborhood. He was a pretty easy going laid back kind of kid. Though when you put a basketball in his had, he'd school you. We hit it off, and became good friends quickly.

That summer we played basketball and video games every chance we got. When we wasn't doing that, we were off somewhere with our girlfriends. I remember every morning, he'd be sitting on my front porch, waiting for me to wake up so we could play ball at the park. If my girlfriend and I wasn't doing anything we'd run up to up to the park. We we're usually the first ones there and always the last to leave. It was nothing for us to spend 19 hours on the courts playing anyone that would show up. He's was a great ball player too. Me, I was mediocre at best at the time but I admired him. Nothing seemed to bother him. He's was a great guy on and off the court. He challenged me to be the best I could be on and off the court and I have never forgotten that.

As we got older, we never stopped playing. We were inseparable and after a long night of playing ball or video games, we talked. We listened to each other about what was bothering us or what we wanted to do with our future.

Day in and day out tony was over at my house waiting for me to get home from school, or work ready to play basketball. By the time I was 15, I got good because of him. He taught me and trained me how to move with the ball, fake out the opponent, and take the strong arm for the layup. My sister at the time had a crush on him though she refused to admit it at the time. Like me he made an everlasting impression on her. It was no bed of roses in our house either growing up and they talked to each other about their problems. It was a great thing for my sister to vent to him because he was such a good listener.

Tony had it rough at home sometimes. A couple times one of his brothers would beat the snot out of him. My dad came into my room a few times to tell me tony was sitting on our front porch. I'm not sure if my dad ever really liked him so it was kind of his signal to have me send Tony home. Which I never did, I would just sit out there and listen to him. His bloody nose or bruised what ever. It drove me nuts that I could never invite him into the house. Even though he had some rough times growing up. One night I was over at his house, one of his brothers had a fit over a power adapter we was using on his Nintendo. His brother took it away, and smacked Tony on the top of his head with it. Put a knot on Tony's head the size of a golf ball.His brother was much older and bigger than him and in the military. If I wasn't so intimidated by him due to my young of age, I would have kicked his ass right then and there. Regardless, Tony would always seem to regain his composure and took it in stride. I looked up to him for that.

Soon after my 16th birthday I started noticing a change in Tony. We played basketball less and less. I would wake up and expect to see tony out side my house with his Jordan basketball ready to play. Only there was no Tony. It seemed more and more like Tony just wanted to sleep. I started skipping school in order to hang out with him. It worried me that what I found was a tired Tony. He would sleep throughout the night, through the morning and through the afternoon. It wasn't like him. I would press him to try to find out what was wrong and he'd just tell me he was tired.

Around the time I turned 18, Tony ended up moving in with a mutual friend and baller of ours. Jeff talked his dad into letting him move in and instantly took to Tony as if he was his son. Of course Tony by that time was like a brother to Jeff as well. Jeff's dad had a fatherly love for Tony, and did anything he could to help him out. By this time Tony and I had drifted apart. Though I still cared a great deal about him. My schedule just couldn't mesh. He was working evenings at Papa Johns, I was off spending time with my girlfriend or other guys that were interested in partying as much as I did.

After I graduated I moved away. I was pursuing my dream of being a comic book artist. We ended up losing touch. One day I was in town cruising the square in my new car, I ran into Tony. He hopped in the car with me and Tony seemed his old self. He was happy, and joking in that dry wit of his. He could sometimes be morbidly humorous and when he told me he had cancer, I genuinely thought he was joking. I didn't take it seriously. I didn't know anyone my age with cancer and it always seemed like it was something older people got. He told me he was drawing, his favorite was spiderman. He told me I was his inspiration to pick up a pencil and draw. We talked again for hours that night. Just sitting in my car in the Coonies parking lot, watching other kids cruise around.

For me that was the last time I ever got to talk to him. It angers and saddens me sometimes that I didn't take him seriously when I thought he was joking. I never had a picture of him. I wish I could have spent more time with him and said goodbye.

Regardless, to those that knew him, those friends with whom he touched with his smile and take on life. I believe he lives on through us in some way. We will never forget you, I will always remember you.

- Draok out

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Windows 7 God Mode

Windows 7 has been out for a while now, and it's a pretty impressive operating system. Probably my favorite flavor of all the operating systems I've ever used. So any way, recently I have been bombarded with questions from friends and family regarding a Windows godmode feature in the new OS. Though this kind of feature really isn't new to Windows, it is however a bit more robust and organized that the previous Windows Control Panel of old. It will allow you access to damn near any configurable section of windows in a nice clean organized list. Create new partitions, configure Bitlocker, it's all here. You can even search the folder if you can't find what your looking for at a glance.

To create the godmode folder, go to the location you want to create it. right click anywhere in the location, and select "New" > "Folder". Finally give the folder the following name and press enter.

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

The folder icon, and name should change to that of the Win 7 control panel Icon, and now say "Godmode". Double click on the icon and configure and customize windows till your hearts content.

Enjoy

- Draok out

Monday, January 11, 2010

The Sunrise

Everything seemed to run in reverse, and as I tried to walk forward, my legs felt like a they were stiff and weighed down to the ground. Not an uncommon thing to see, but the weird thing is I was starting out the day without a past, and while everything was in reverse, I only wanted to look forward. From behind a voice, it wasn't one I recognized or could understand. It sounded so sweet, and inviting. I would have turned to look, but it was a beautiful sunrise before me. If I could have kept it for myself, maybe fingers wouldn't have been bleeding. Yeah, it's like that.