321 Studios remotely disables software without a trial

[mrbass]

http://www.dvdcreation.com/2004/02_feb/news/321studios025.htm

"321 first heard of this Illinois man's alleged activities in court papers related to Paramount Pictures Corporation and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation v. 321 Studios, a lawsuit filed in the Southern District Court of New York on November 14, 2003. The company took action the same day by remotely de-activating the man's copy of DVDXCOPY XPRESS."

Nice ...your guilty until proven innocent...that's 321 Studios being the judge and the jury. I'll be sure to look for your lovely products at my local fry's.

[Doobie]

I wonder if a firewall would prevent remote deactivation (i.e. the software doesn't need to reach home to work). I wonder why anyone is using 3-2-1 Studio's software in the first place considering how crippled it is (I don't want to sit through 8-second warnings on my own video backups) when free stuff isn't crippled.

[mudda_t]

I wonder if a firewall would prevent remote deactivation
Xcopy must have a call home function, if you have ZoneAlarm, etc, then you could easily prevent this "remote deactivation"
I wonder why anyone is using 3-2-1 Studio's software in the first place considering how crippled it is...
Because some people are to damn lazy!!! Instead of clicking 5 times or 6 times, they only want to click once.
.
"you mean I have to use 3 programs, that's too much, that's too hard, don't forget I'm a lazy idiot and want my xcopy!"

[Doom9]

Yet another very strong argument why you should never go online without an active firewall..

[creative_cracker]

So we all use GKnot or DVDShrink and that solves the problem.

[brynolf]

Perhaps an open source code program is the best way to prevent this kind of madness. ReJig anyone?

[Sirber]

DVDShrink is great, never used GKnot

[thop]

How can you remotely disable software? That just doesn't work. Or does DVDXCOPY ask permission from the 321 server every time you start the damn thing? Welcome TCPA, today.

[sys49152]

After reading about this post on doom9, I've installed an active firewall on my home machine, but I've still got one concern:

Even if I disable an application like dvdXcopy (strictly an example -- I use the tools described in the doom9 guides for my backups) from establishing a direct connection outside, could these types of applications use an enabled application to send information out anyways?

For example, if an application wants to communicate out, but can't do it directly, it could use an open browser session to post information to an external website, which would by-passing any restrictions on the application itself. I'm not even sure if this is possible, but if it is, then disabling the application from going out directly is a moot point.

Scary stuff. I'm just not sure if there really is any sure way of blocking this type of notification.

sys49152

[MikeMacMan]

I have used DVDShrink to copy over 100 DVDs. Its an awesome program. I have a copy of DVDXCopy (which I obtained legally....yes) but I would still rather use DVDShrink. Why waste your money on a shitty program when there are much better free alternatives?

[Blkbird]

@sys49152:

Your concern is justified. However, there aren't so many common "enabled programs" to be used by phone-home applicaions. Realistically there is only one: Internet Explorer (plus Windows Explorer, Windows Media Player etc., which incorperates the same libraries as Internet Explorer). So if you completely dump IE and deactivate it in your personal firewall (or set it to "ask me everyt time" or so), you're pretty much on the safe side.

[viol]

Norton Firewall allows you some pretty good customization.

You can tell it not to allow an application to use the Internet by using another application. So, suppose you have set up the firewall to not allow application A to use the Internet. And then application A tries to use application B to access the Internet, application B can be Internet Explorer or any other hidden app. Norton firewall will detect it and ask you if you want app A to use app B to access the Internet and then you can say NO. And that's independent of the fact that you may have already set up app B to be able to access the Internet (when not being used by another app).

Also, suppose app A has the bad habit of trying to connect to some Internet address X to validate your app (and, in validating, your app would be cancelled). But suppose also that you need app A to access Internet address Y, that's not related to validation but to a feature of app A. In Norton, you can set up app A to not be able to access the Internet but you can establish a rule telling the firewall that if A wants to connect to Y, it should be allowed.

It's a very good way of controlling which application in your computer accesses which Internet address outside your computer.

[Gaia]

Originally posted by viol
Norton Firewall allows you some pretty good customization.

You can tell it not to allow an application to use the Internet by using another application. So, suppose you have set up the firewall to not allow application A to use the Internet. And then application A tries to use application B to access the Internet, application B can be Internet Explorer or any other hidden app. Norton firewall will detect it and ask you if you want app A to use app B to access the Internet and then you can say NO. And that's independent of the fact that you may have already set up app B to be able to access the Internet (when not being used by another app).

Also, suppose app A has the bad habit of trying to connect to some Internet address X to validate your app (and, in validating, your app would be cancelled). But suppose also that you need app A to access Internet address Y, that's not related to validation but to a feature of app A. In Norton, you can set up app A to not be able to access the Internet but you can establish a rule telling the firewall that if A wants to connect to Y, it should be allowed.

It's a very good way of controlling which application in your computer accesses which Internet address outside your computer.

You can do same with ZoneAlarm Pro and i bet there are others too...

[viol]

So if you completely dump IE and deactivate it in your personal firewall (or set it to "ask me everyt time" or so), you're pretty much on the safe side.

What I meant was to show that you don't have to completely dump IE to be in the safe side. Firewalls can deal well with an app that tries to use IE to use the Internet.

Although I'm mentioning IE, my opinion is that it's not a good browser because it controls you, you don't control it, but in rare cases it's still the best one. I personally use Firebird (now Firefox).

[telva]

Frankly 321 Studios should be subject to prosecution under anti-hacking laws. I'm sure they could drag SoftKey in for aiding and abetting too.

This is exactly the sort of malicious behaviour that we can expect to escalate.

[easybeat]

Why stop there, might as well take him up to room 101 as well!

What next? pc supermarket come around and confiscate your computer? national electric pull the plug? i think "knee jerk" reaction is the phrase that applies here.

[Louse76]

I think its closer to the supermarket coming to your house, breaking in, and taking items back, or the electric company coming in and 'disabling' your refridgerator or your whole circuit breaker.

[DickSpeed]

Originally posted by telva
Frankly 321 Studios should be subject to prosecution under anti-hacking laws. I'm sure they could drag SoftKey in for aiding and abetting too...

What anti-hacking laws would those be? Did 321 enter a secure area of someone's domain and steal information or otherwise compromise someone's systems?

According to the DMCA, I should be able to leave the front door of my house unlocked, and just put up a sign saying keep out, because if someone goes in, I can prosecute them for bypassing my 'security measures' under the DMCA (the sign being a weak, software security measure, since it instructs a person not to enter). If I gather seashells to sell, then put up a sign on the beach claiming all the seashells are mine and I just haven't picked them up yet, can I have the children who take them arrested? Can the fishing companies claim ownership of fish they haven't caught, and prosecute those who fish from shore, or those who host private fishing excursions? Or, more relevantly, the makers of unauthorized fishing equipment? What would Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson think about this?

My point is, claiming ownership of something you don't have actual control over is like saying you own Jupiter's moons. When the American colonies were first established, they tried to claim that they spanned from the east coast to the west, even though no one even knew how far the coast was. PA, Virginia, Georgia, etc. were mapped to include all land within their latitudes from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But without actual control over the land, this philosophy was dismissed, and now we have far more than the original 13 states. But the DMCA legally supports weak security, and by extension, the same type of inane claim. So if we stick to this standard, but the world moves on to REAL security, where will we be left? Holding a shiny bead we can pretend is valuable, I guess. You'd think we'd have learned by now.

Legislation is not an answer. Government is supposed to be a framework for prevention and resolution of disputes, defense of its citizens, and to fulfill other such purposes that serve the general population. A system that serves the people, not just a person, or a group, or a corporation, but all the people. Patents require a working model, or at least they used to. You can't patent an idea, but I guess you can copyright it.

But if a company can't actively protect it's own assets, why should the government? Sure, I'm happy to have a reasonable police presence to deter theft, but only a fool would rely on this to actually prevent crime. Keep relying on weak security, and you raise your dependence on police presence to the point where we will live in a police state. Is intellectual property worth that? This means that taxpayers will be responsible for paying for the security and collection of fines and fees for the owners of intellectual property - in effect, we will be taxed to pay for entertainment - even if it's entertainment we don't consume. Not much different than being forced to pay for movies you don't see, right? In this way, Hollywood is making us pay for their (in)security through the DMCA. And if we have a constant police presence to monitor intellectual property, then how far away are the 'thought police'?

So telva, please expound on your statement about 321 Studios needing to be prosecuted more harshly. Personally, I think the movie studios need to take some of their earnings and use them to modernize their industry to fit the market they want to sell to, instead of trying to make the government shape their market to fit their old, decaying business model. The rest of us have had to adapt to the changes technology has brought. Why should they, or the music industry for that matter, be allowed to continue the old way, just because they can afford to lobby congress to defend their old ways? It is a different world than it was when they got rich, and it's partly because of them - so why didn't they see it coming?

The DMCA and other such trends are weakening us compared to Asia. We were stronger than China in the 1900's, despite having only a quarter of their population, because of our freedoms. If you don't want to learn Chinese, you might want to consider your freedoms, and the future. Otherwise, there are over 1 billion people in their market ready to do their own thing, and I don't think they have a massive movie industry lobbying their government for control of it's citizens. They are choosing open-source over proprietary software. Will they honor *OUR* DMCA? Isn't it time we remembered *why* we're a world leader, instead of using our position as one to try to dictate 'why'?

Of the people, by the people, for the people. Has YOUR elected official upheld YOUR standards? What are you going to do about it?

[DK64_MASTER]

Will DVD Fab be affected by this? Wasn't it almost like DVDXCOPY??

[int 21h]

Originally posted by DickSpeed
...
The DMCA and other such trends are weakening us compared to Asia. We were stronger than China in the 1900's, despite having only a quarter of their population, because of our freedoms. If you don't want to learn Chinese, you might want to consider your freedoms, and the future. Otherwise, there are over 1 billion people in their market ready to do their own thing, and I don't think they have a massive movie industry lobbying their government for control of it's citizens. They are choosing open-source over proprietary software. Will they honor *OUR* DMCA? Isn't it time we remembered *why* we're a world leader, instead of using our position as one to try to dictate 'why'?...

The people in China aren't choosing anything, anymore than the people in North Korea or Cuba are choosing anything.

In fact, the choice of open source software comes down to more suspicion of the West than anything.

Further, the MPAA lobbies asian governments just as hard, if not harder than our own (i.e. http://www.mpaa.org/jack/99/99_4_30.htm) because of the percieved 'lost income' to piracy in those regions.

In any event, this discussion is quickly becoming very political... :angry: