Re: [dvd-discuss] DoS Dirty Tricks (was Movie Downloads, automaticallyillegal?)

[Tim Neu <tim(at)tneu.visi.com>]

On Mon, 5 Aug 2002, Michael A Rolenz wrote:

> I like that one...given Pat Schroeder's comments about how libraries are
> the single biggest threat to the publishing industry, they are likely to
> be DoSing libraries as well.
>
> Or the ISPs begin blocking the RIAA, MPAA, DoS packets because it's net
> junk that is degrading their system performance.

My guess is that they would not be dumb enough to run the attacks from
their normal internet connection.   They would probably use something
harder to trace.   Even though they would have immunity, they would still
want to minimize exposure if they can.

> Or the script kiddies decide to band together and do DDoS attacks against
> the RIAA, MPAA

The script kiddies will hopefully be too smart for that.  Why break the
law yourself if you can trick the MPAA & RIAA into doing it?  I'm sure the
content mafia will _try_ to make sure the addresses they attack are
individual accounts, rather than corporate websites, however, if they have
a person review every IP in a P2P network their enforcement will not
scale, and if they do not, they risk overattacking.  Given the lessons
learned in internet filters, they will err on the side of the latter.

The global nature of the internet might also present some interesting
options.  In theory, movie execs could be jailed in other countries for
the illegal actions of their technical staff.  Immunity in the US does not
mean squat globally.

If they are smart they will try their best to limit attacks to US-based
hosts, but I think it would be pretty hard to distingish an ISP account
being dialed-into from outside the country, not to mention sattilite
internet access.

The other side of this is that the content folks have enough lawyers that
they _should_ be aware of some of these risks.   I would imagine, though,
it would be pretty easy to set up a decoy by just using CDDB filenames and
running from a server in the US.

> Or imagine this...some quick thinking Movie Cop sets up a honeypot and
> another Movie Cop gets caught and they DoS each other

Now that would be neat.  I would also venture to suggest that it will be
possible and that someone will figure out a way to do it, if this law
passes.

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