Sounds about right. Oftentimes the one making the most noise about something they despise is the one most likely to be doing that exact same thing. This rule applies to politicians, companies and the righteously religious.
The link in the tweet â directly to the copy of the pirated book â seems like double irony. Or maybe triple.
âŚ+1 for âit was a Sony inside jobâ conspiracy theoryâŚ
Sorry, but I think this is a bullshit âgotchaâ. Sony as a corporation is against piracy because itâs their duty to maximize profits. We all know it wasnât corporate policy to pirate these ebooks. Do you think the CEO or executives canât afford or would even care to read an ebook on cyber warfare? It was most likely an IT employee deep in the basement who had them buried in his files. Since thereâs one theory the Sony hack was partially an inside job by a disgruntled IT person because of the exploitâs in depth knowledge of the Sony file structure, they could even be from the perpetrator.
A far great irony, Iâd argue, is railing against the NSAâs overreach and invasion of personal privacy, then conveniently turning a blind eye to the fact that youâre traipsing through the private emails of private citizens obtained through exploits that are just as illegal and just as invasive as any NSA action.
Perhaps the point is intended to be âSony is more interested in policing the rest of us than in policing themselves.â
Iâm confident Sony execs werenât aware of this material on their servers, but if they want the rest of us to submit to intrusive surveillance and security that they claim wonât inconvenience legit users, wouldnât it make sense to start with their own operations?
You canât admit that Sony execs were most likely unaware of this AND pretend that a possibly lone, rebellious IT employee represents Sonyâs corporate policy towards digital rights. Thatâs intellectually dishonest for the sake of scoring gotcha points, and I think you know thatâs true. âIntrusive surveillanceâ is arguably breathless pearl clutching too. Incredibly clumsy attempts at digital rights management in an age where weâre struggling to find the line between protecting content and serving legitimate customers? Sure. I say again: if youâre going to rail against intrusive surveillance, maybe start with standing against the publishing of private correspondence gleaned illegally. Are we for that now? Iâm baffled that BoingBoing users are going along with Coryâs misdirect on this, but whatever. I guess itâs easier to think of Sony as a faceless corporation rather than consider that a lot of regular employees got caught up in this and had their private correspondence, as well as emails, addresses, and social security numbers, exposed to the world.
Who is traipsing? Me? I assure you I never traipsed. Are you asserting that whoever clicks the link to Wikileaks has no right to have an opinion about privacy? Are you asserting that everybody who opposes the wholesale violation of the Fourth Amendment has read Sonyâs emails?
If not, just what are you saying?
So Iâm wondering how they know these were pirated PDF copies. Iâve got several legitimate Safari-Online/OâReilly books as PDFâs. It seems to me that mere presence of a PDF on a server is not enough to indicate that they were pirated, it might have just been remote storage for a single user.
Did you actually read PhasmaFelisâ reply? Try it again:
Itâs not that a Sony employee pirated the books, itâs that Sony doesnât police themselves so as to catch internal law-breakers as much as they want to police the rest of us; a fault distressingly common to self-appointed police.
It sounds so erotic when you put it like that. Pull my hair, too!
He didnât âpretend that a possibly lone, rebellious IT employee represents Sonyâs corporate policyâ, he clearly stated that he objects to Sonyâs willingness to hold others to a higher standard than they can possibly maintain themselves. Neither Sony, nor the myriad small ISPs and websites they push around, are able to keep their files 100% clean, because they cannot reasonably schedule the manpower needed to do so.
Your âlone, rebellious IT employeeâ is at present a completely unsubstantiated cartoon being, not an identified perpetrator of⌠anything. Given what we know of human nature, and the spectrum of people employed at Sony, these pirated ebooks was more likely buried in the subdirectories of someone on the âcreativeâ side of the business.
One of their 47,000 employees pirated a book and they didnât catch them. Yes, this is the smoking gun for which youâre looking. And âself-appointed policeâ? Come on, youâre being melodramatic and silly. A directed effort allegedly by foreign agents to infiltrate and exploit a private companyâs servers in order to blackmail them into not releasing a movie, and your takeaway is âA dude at a company pirated a book so therefore their corporate policy on DRM is invalidâ?
A corporate policy of pushing DRM is invalid even without this.
I donât know quite what your point is. Iâm sure it wasnât corporate policy to pirate that book. Iâm sure if it was hosted publicly and theyâd received a DMCA takedown they wouldâve willingly complied, as well as discipling or possibly firing the employee. Iâm not sure how that invalidates their corporate stance on DRM, especially since none of us can actually speak to what specific policies and efforts were in place corporately to police this kind of stuff amongst their 47,000 employees. I know thereâs an internet circlejerk about Sony and DRM ever since the rootkit debacle, but this seems reactionary and not at all reasonable.
I do personally know people who work at Sony (SPE specifically). Iâm curious why you say âgiven what we know of human nature, and the spectrum of people employed Sonyâ the pirated ebooks were from creative types? Whatâs your reasoning behind this? All the creative types I know (Iâm including the Jimmy Stewart building as creative types too) donât care at all about this kind of stuff. All they care about are scripts, press releases, or deadline.com.
Invalid? Nah.
My friend had her private information exposed in this hack. Sheâs had to contend with spam, identity theft, and threats. But, hey, at least you got your lulz.
I donât recall lulzingâŚ
Actually, thatâs what I brought into it, but the other way around. Sony has a history, as does DRM; as you yourself pointed out in another reply, the corporate entity Sony hacked millions of peopleâs computers illegally with their rootkit, laying them open to attacks by many, less-hugely financed miscreants. DRM is a legally and morally bankrupt idea, propagated by those who think they can pretend that they are a separate population from the rest of us, when in fact they are as careless, corrupt and downright stupid as any average human group. The people you know at Sony are doubtless shining beacons of morality and good sense individually, but the corporation of which they are a part is⌠less so.
As K says in MiB, âA person is smart, people are dumb.â
With ants it goes the other way. An ant is dumb. Ants are smart.
Why such difference?
