Rethink Your Business Models if Piracy is a Concern

Certain products and items are easily copied in this day and age. Instead of whining about how so and so stole my intellectual property, let's look at the list of the serially offended to see where the problem really lies.

 Movies
Television
Music

 All of the above are parts of a studio system where a few major production companies, through copyright abuse and various other IP laws, exist solely because they are protected by law. Is it really sensible that someone ought to be paid, perpetually or almost perpetually, for something that requires a team of lawyers to ensure their income stream? They should absolutely be paid for their investment in the artist, i.e. marketing and studio time, but can't they do that by just taking a percentage of the artist's earnings instead?

 I apologize to the actor or artist that they may actually have to do some work post-writing through acting or performing live. I know this screws up the dynamic of being able to write a good song or create a good show, and then watch as the replays earn you money. For 99.9% of the other industries out there, we don't get paid for the work we already did. If I built a car today, I have to build another one tomorrow in order to get paid. I don't have to pay Honda every time I use their car. Nor does Honda get any revenue from when I sell my car or give other people a ride in it. Jay-Z, though, wants a cut every time I play "Big Pimpin'".

The right way to do this is for the musician to show up to a venue and charge money to hear them live. Do not expect someone to pay you for something I can copy with two mouse-clicks. In the real world, I have to actually piece together a house. If I want another house, I have to piece that one together too. There was a considerable amount of real work done to recreate that house. For a house blueprint, on a computer, I simply Ctrl+C then Ctrl+V to make a copy. See how labor went into one effort, but not the other.

 What would a system without any type of piracy laws look like. For starters, large studio systems would not exist. Musicians would have to actually do concerts and sell merchandise to generate serious money. I believe several friends of mine who perform professionally would acknowledge that the bulk of their revenue comes from merchandise and live performances. Software companies already go to great lengths to protect their products. There are several licensing companies who exist solely to prevent unauthorized (unpaid) use. This system prevents 99% of the market from pirating their copies.

 I apologize if this means that we as individuals are going to have to be more market savvy on what people are willing to pay versus taking the easy road of DMCA take-downs and other threats. However, if you are always producing something tangible, a live concert experience, new features, etc. you will always have buyers if the price is right. Don't get swept up in Intellectual Property protectionism. It is very easy to lay back and let the lawyers do the work. Do you really want to your income dependent on subpoenas? A system reliant upon laws to support their business activities is a business which should never have existed.

Old Immunity Debugger Class

Here is a deck I made years back for a quick class on debugging with Immunity.

Building a FreeBSD ARM Env for Shellcoding

In keeping with my fine tradition of having a ton of crap to do pre-SAHA!, I had to dust off an old presentation. There were a few decent notes here on configuring an ARM FreeBSD environment. Some of this is OBE since when I did this, there was no ARM FreeBSD port and thus no way to generate shellcode for it. The rough python code for shellack (a shell coding engine) is available at the end github link.

KENS5 Interview

From late last year, here I am talking Anonymous and ISIS.

Linkedin Revival (Hypocrisy Reloaded)

Yes, even after my diatribe about LinkedIn being pointless, I have accepted a new position where it is not pointless. As a developer I only really needed IRC and Twitter to keep up with everything, but my move to more of a business development role necessitated a new account. To close, yes it is me on there, and no my account was not hijacked.

-vesh

First Drafts in Money Laundering

In this post I would like to step away from all things computer. Here are a couple of what I think were excerpts from the first draft of a story about a wayward money-laundering task force brought to you by the great state of Florida, aka the land of 911 calls over chicken McNuggets. To summarize, the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriffs Office were involved in a task force to cut-off funding lines to various cartels, complete with cover bank accounts and loads of untraceable cash. This all went very predictably wrong when the police realized they had badges and started to spend money like Saudi Arabian Sheikhs, becoming ACTUAL money launderers in the process. Don't worry, once the Department of Justice realized they were getting screwed on their cut, the whole operation was shut down.






Above, we have poor Pat Franklin's original wording just before lawyers from the Department of Justice lodged a complaint that the comparison to the Mafia was inappropriate since caporegime refers to an underboss when clearly they are the Capo di tutt'i capi (boss of all bosses).

This is from the next installment where the cops were trying to decide on how they could use the potential drug money to finance their own departments. Surprise, surprise the Feds had a program designed JUST for the occasion.

My thoughts on the preceding blurb are that the two LEOs didn't know what the program was originally called, so they were a bit more descriptive in what they wanted until they found the actual name.

Of course, the above is all satire, but I would like everyone to take a second and ponder how the hell a program like "Equitable Sharing" exists or that ANY organization is allowed to feed a budget off the proceeds of a crime.





Thank you to the Miami Herald for posting this series of stories; if you would like to read more go to: http://pubsys.miamiherald.com/static/media/projects/2015/license-to-launder/index.html

Scrubbing your Creds

Here is my presentation about keeping your ident closes on the web if you want to purchase particular items and services. Enjoy.



Transcript of Cleaning your Creds Cleaning your Creds scrub them idents Get a number from pinger (need an existing mobile, or DO you?) What's your digits? Using your favorite livecd, hop on TOR and start using the tubes Hop on TOR Grab an Email address from mail.ru https://e.mail.ru/signup?from=main_noc The Russian Connection Use your mail.ru account to create a FB page, then allow pinger to use that for verfication Facebook fail to the rescue What are we doing? We want to be able to purchase services using an entirely unattributable network, from the comfort of our couch Click here and use a disposable email for verification Security in Layers Use your new phone number, FB profile, and email to start stacking layers (hushmail would be good cuz privacy) How to get moniez Really the only part requiring a physical presence somewhere MoneyPak from WallyWorld of Walgreens (pay cash dumbass) Find a MoneyPak to BTC service (they exist) Things to buy Private VPN using BTC (ipvanish) Maybe a ice VPS (bithost.io) Anonymize Further Use a mixer/tumbler to make your BTC more anonymous You can use this multiple times once you establish the unattrib chain