Sony pirated ebooks on hacking

[MrHarley]

Oftentimes the one making the most noise about something they despise is the one most likely to be doing that exact same thing.

From the Supreme Court case Smeltit v. Dealtit

[SheiffFatman]

@songkran

Sony as a corporation is against piracy because it’s their duty to maximize profits.

It’s their duty to maximise their own profits. Not O’Reilly’s, screw those guys.

[teapot]

So you’re angry at this because you’ve got skin in the game. Why didn’t you say so at the start? Perhaps your friend should be angry at Sony’s horrendous security team instead?

I think the question of whether these were pirated is a valid one to which I’ve yet to see anything conclusive, but storing them on a widely-accessible (and poorly secured) server is almost certainly not allowed under the ebook TOS.

Edit: I think these are originally legitimate copies of the book, but it would be VERY herd to tell whether it was a pirate version since the ‘legit’ copies are the ones the eventually get pirated. Every pirate copy starts somewhere as a legit copy.

This is from Acrobat Pro for the Wikipedia-hosted Sony copy:

And this is from a sample pdf of the same book from O’reilly:

Notice that both files were created using the same software tools, and the “Created Date” for both files is exactly the same date and time. This suggests that the Sony-hosted file was, at least originally, a legit copy.

The only part that would suggest it might be pirated is that the Sony version doesn’t have the “xmpMM” parameters in the advanced metadata. This might have just been a change of procedures at O’Reilly or it might be someone stripping it purposefully, which is often done on pirate files.

[zathras]

@songkran

A far great irony, I’d argue, is railing against the NSA’s overreach and invasion of personal privacy, then conveniently turning a blind eye to the fact that you’re traipsing through the private emails of private citizens obtained through exploits that are just as illegal and just as invasive as any NSA action.

That contradiction (as a non-native speaker of English, I am afraid to use the word “irony” in English…) is a matter of definitions:

• “private” emails: “work emails”. My private emails are in a separate account.
• “private citizens”: If you’re talking about Sony employees, see above. If you’re talking about Sony itself, then just no.
• “just as illegal”: No. The NSA commits acts of tyranny against US citizens, and hostile acts against the rest of the world. And sometimes acts of tyranny against citizens of other countries in collusion with their own government’s secret services. I couldn’t care less about whether this is legal according to US law, my reaction would be exactly the same.

It probably comes down to our view of large corporate entities such as Sony; this is purely ideological question.

---

I propose a “scale of trust”:

1. Private citizens. I trust them about as far as I can throw them, which is pretty far given a proper catapult. In my experience, most of them are nice people. I think they deserve their privacy to be protected, and they should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. They have human rights, because they are human.

2. Governments. I trust them about as far as I can throw them, which is out of office at the next election (but only if others agree with me, and only if it’s my own government). Governments need the scrutiny of their people, but some things also need to be kept secret.
   A private citizen acting on behalf of the government only gets the privacy that the government gets.

3. Private companies. I trust them about as far as I can throw them. For any company with more than a few employees, this means, “not at all”. The only reason why companies should have any right to privacy at all is that they need to compete against other companies.

So when someone breaks the law and this gives us the chance to better watch over powerful entities that I don’t trust at all, I can’t get very upset about it. But your set of priorities might be different, so it’s OK to come to different conclusions.

[songkran]

@teapot

So you’re angry at this because you’ve got skin in the game. Why didn’t you say so at the start?

I guess because I assumed that most normal people should be upset about private emails being hacked by allegedly foreign agents for blackmail purposes and then hosted on wikileaks as if they’re newsworthy whether or not you know someone personally affected and whether or not you agree with all the business decisions a corporation makes. I think most commenters here are taking Cory’s cue on how to unpack this, however, and are just using it as confirmation bias fodder.

[teapot]

Well that’s a foolish assumption then. The hack, yes, was not cool which is why we have laws against that, but what many people (including you) clearly don’t understand about the internet is that once the cat is out of the bag there’s no cramming it back in, whether by moral or any other means.

“Bad guys” will always have access to that data because the 26gb of it is still well seeded and has been downloaded thousands of times. Pretending it doesn’t exist does nothing to get it out of the hands of the people who will use it for evil ends and pretending it’s not out there means everyday people, like your friend, have no way to know the true extent of the damage and to know what data the bad guys might have.

The fact that you’re unaware how much interesting and relevant news has come out of this leak is testimony to why you don’t understand the value of a searchable database of it.