I’m hooked on IM again. I haven’t used it this much since high school. I’d say it’s ridiculous, but I’m enjoying the ability to connect with people. As friends move away and get married it’s getting harder to stay in touch even by phone, so I’m filling some of the void with digital communications. Plus, it’s helping me keep in touch with some people who do live in my area and coordinate real life meetings.

It’s not the first time I’ve ever used IM in such a manner, but it’s strange getting back to it. When I think back, I’ve actually developed a few good friendships with people primarily through the usage of IM. A few guys I met on IRC and then started IMing instead back when I watched anime nonstop. I keep in touch with a few of ‘em on IM and Facebook now even though I initially met them seven years ago. A good friend of mine from Colorado I originally met when he lived in Germany, I was at Nebraska, and we were both in the same warez channel on IRC. I’ve given up those ways (pirates are *evil*) a long time ago, but I forged a great friendship out of a completely random encounter.

Categories: Life
Tags: instant messaging, IRC, pirates

The Pirate Bay (one of the internet’s largest torrent indexers for movies, music, TV, etc.) is suing a number of large media companies including Fox, Universal, Paramount, and more. Why? “The charges are infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, all of these on a commercial level.” More details at TPB blog.

How’d all of this come about? A company named MediaDefender (if you check Wikipedia, hope you’re getting it on a day that the company isn’t trying to sanitize its profile). The scandal seems to have started a few months ago, but more details are continuing to be revealed as 700MB of the company’s email was recently acquired, bundled up and offered for download from a torrent site. Essentially, it has come to light via these emails that MediaDefender has been working with a large number of the media companies to hack users of peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing services and attack various websites such as TPB.

One large aspect of MediaDefender’s work is digging up information about P2P users. They set up a video sharing website (Miivi.com — not there anymore) in order to gather personal information about users who posted video content.

The most frightening aspect of all of this is the methods the company is using. The attacks on P2P sites, the fake video-sharing site, etc. And it’s not only the big media companies who use their services. A recorded phone call has surfaced containing a conference call between MediaDefender and members of the New York Attorney Generals Office. The NY AG office appears to have partnered with MediaDefender to track down info about child-porn sharers. Now, shutting down child-porn sharers is 100% an excellent goal, but I’m not much thrilled when any government agency is buddying up with a company who itself circumvents legal methods of action and resorts to phishing, hacking, DOSing, spamming, and sabotage.

In a fantastic twist of irony, hackers everywhere now seem to be using MediaDefender for target practice. The leaked emails were culled from one of their employee’s private Gmail accounts. I don’t know exactly how the phone call was captured, but the NY AG’s office was using a VOIP (voice-over-IP) connection and this could have been hacked/recorded somehow. Now that P2P users are aware of the threat from this company, they’re able to use information about the company in order to circumvent MediaDefenders ability to track them using applications such as PeerGuardian (site | wiki).

The outcome of the MediaDefender scandal will be interesting to watch. The company has certainly had their reputation trashed, at least among the IT crowd (no, not that The IT Crowd). The lawsuit will be watched closely as it could signal the tides of change in the ongoing privacy vs piracy war in Sweden and in general.

Note: I’m not defending intellectual property pirates. I just don’t want to relive 1984 or any other sort of dystopian nightmare.

Sources:
- The Pirate Bay Files Suit Against Big Media
- Leaked Media Defender e-mails reveal secret government project
- Peer-to-peer poisoners: A tour of MediaDefender
- MediaDefender Phonecall
- MediaDefender Emails
- Hackers Smack Anti-Piracy Firm Again and Again
- Media Defender emails

Categories: News, Tech
Tags: MediaDefender, pirates, torrents, Wikipedia

According to NBC: “In the absence of movie piracy, video retailers would sell and rent more titles. Movie theaters would sell more tickets and popcorn. Corn growers would earn greater profits and buy more farm equipment.”

No explanation needed, but if you want the context…

Categories: News
Tags: NBC, pirates

I realized at some point tonight while driving home that my hand kept flipping a switch to activate my windshield wipers. At this point, I noticed it was raining. I’ve become so used to rain it doesn’t register as a significant event to me.

Training officially ends tomorrow. I’m not frightened anymore — I’m starting to get into the routine. I’ve got most of the basics down at this point and it’s only the more complicated situations I’m still unprepared for.

The largest aspect of this job I still need to learn is understanding people. I don’t mean understand what they say or questions they ask; I want to understand how people think and exactly how they’re trying to manipulate me.

For instance, I spoke to a woman today in a difficult situation. I empathized and sympathized and did all I could to correct her problem. Out of pity (and partially just so she’d stop being angry), I gave her some money back. Then I realized she’d already done the same thing before. And she still wasn’t happy.

I let her ramble about her cat for five minutes until she felt a bit better. Then I told her she couldn’t have something she wanted, and she proceeded to tell me about the horrible medical conditions she and her entire family face and why she shouldn’t have to pay so much money when she has all these problems.

Needless to say, no easy resolution. After an hour and fifteen minutes the call ended with her being slightly more pleased and I needed to breathe a few moments before addressing the all-important and undeniably crucial needs of the next customer.

Some days all I want to do is become a pirate.

Okay, maybe a more fearsome pirate.

Categories: Life
Tags: pirates, rain