Movie Makers Use 'Fake' Piracy Numbers To Score Distribution Deal

from the well,-good-for-them? dept

The NY Times recently had a blog post noting that the makers of an $850,000 romantic comedy called X's and O's were thrilled that their movie was widely shared on file sharing networks, because the attention it got helped land them a big DVD distribution deal, and potentially a television deal, helped along by the attention received from that file sharing. Of course, there's just one little problem. The FreakBits guys noticed that the number of downloads the movies' creators are citing are almost certainly false. Apparently some sites post fake download numbers as a part of their advertising, and the movie makers used those fake numbers. But... it seemed to get them attention to get more deals, so more power to them. No matter what, it suggests that (once again) obscurity is a much bigger problem than piracy.

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Cheap Trick: More Afraid Of Being Ignored Than Ripped Off

from the indeed dept

Last week on the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert did a gag about the new Cheap Trick album coming out on 8-track. I assumed it was just a joke, but apparently it's real. The band, as a little marketing gimmick is actually releasing the album as an 8-track (for you kids out there, the 8-track was a briefly popular form of cassette music, though it lived on at radio stations for years after it disappeared from public use). But, much more interesting is a quote at the end of the article about plans to offer the digital tracks at a steep discount from the typical iTunes price:

"We're kind of more worried about being ignored than being ripped off."

Indeed. This is just another way of saying that "obscurity is a bigger fear than piracy." And while such things are usually applied to new, up-and-coming artists, it's nice to see that more well known artists recognize the same formula applies to them, as well.

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How The Lock Industry Put Its Head In The Sand, Rather Than Deal With Vulnerabilities To Locks

from the bump,-bump-away dept

We've discussed in the past how locksmiths are apparently upset that geeks online have revealed that lockpicking is really easy, but it's not just the locksmiths. It's the lock makers themselves. Wired has a fascinating article about one of the world's most well known lock picker, who makes it a practice to publicly expose how vulnerable certain locks are. Not so long ago, he and a colleague figured out how to quickly open Medeco locks, which many had considered to be the most secure locks of all -- and are used all over the world in gov't high security buildings. So how has Medeco responded? Basically by trying to ignore the guy... then to insult him and then to discount what he clearly has done. It's just like software companies who try to deny software vulnerabilities, except that it's much easier to patch some software that to patch a vulnerable lock. While many in the lock world are apparently pissed off at this guy, Marc Weber Tobias, they should be happy that he's making sure the locks are really secure. Because, you can pretty much be assured that he's not the only one doing all of this -- but the others who are figuring it out aren't talking about it, but are using the knowledge to their own advantage.

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MBTA Will Work With MIT Students, Rather Than Suing Them, To Improve Security

from the a-good-move,-a-little-late dept

You may recall, back in August, that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority convinced a judge to ban the Defcon presentation by three MIT students, showing how weak the security was on the Boston transit system, and how easy it was to get past it. Of course, in trying to ban the talk, the MBTA only succeeded in getting a lot more attention for its own security vulnerabilities -- and, in the end, the judge lifted the gag order anyway, allowing the students to present their research.

The good news is that the MBTA has now dropped the lawsuit and done what it should have done in the first place: agreed to work with the students to come up with ways to improve security. It's good that they eventually came to this conclusion -- though still mind-boggling that they went down the legal route first.

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Boston Subway System Stops Defcon Talk; But Paints Security Target On Its Back

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

You would think after years and years of it backfiring every time some scared organization tries to shut down a talk concerning their security vulnerabilities, that people wouldn't even bother any more. But never underestimate the short-sightedness of some execs. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority uses a magnetic strip card system to access the subway system in Boston. That system is not particularly secure, and some enterprising MIT students planned to demonstrate just how weak the security was on the system this weekend at the Defcon conference... until the MBTA convinced a judge to ban the presentation and demand that all copies of the presentation not be released -- which is problematic since all attendees at the conference already obtained CDs with a copy of the presentation. Also, somewhat ironically, a copy of the presentation was entered in as evidence in the case, and that copy is now publicly available as part of the court records system. Oops.

Of course, even if the court had actually been able to stop the distribution of the presentation, it's silly to think that this would have stopped the dissemination of the methods for hacking the system. The truth is that the MBTA's system uses woefully weak security, and rather than doing anything to strengthen it, it has to threaten some bright MIT students and get a court order to pretend the such security vulnerabilities don't exist. And, of course, in doing this, all the MBTA has really done is painted a huge target on its back. Perhaps it should have just focused on making its system a bit more secure instead.

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Dutch Court Allows Research On Smart Card Vulnerabilities To Be Published

from the good-job dept

We recently wrote about how NXP Semiconductor (formerly Philips Semiconductor) was suing to try to stop the publication of some research that showed some vulnerabilities in its chips used in smart cards around the world. The vulnerability itself was already widely known (though NXP denied it for a while). The good news is that a judge has denied the request, and the research will be published as originally planned. The bad news is that NXP wasted quite a lot of time denying there was a problem instead of fixing the problem -- and with this latest misguided legal stunt, made sure a lot more people knew about it.

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