• CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    The comments (and maybe the article too, I didn’t read to the bottom) are misinformation. This guy isn’t enabling Russian hacker groups. What happened is he ripped the BluRay and posted it online. Since it got a lot of hype Russian hackers decided to use that opportunity and ship a similar file ending in .exe instead of the usual Matroska format (.mkv) you see usually with ripped BluRays. If you were around torrent communities back then you know this to be false. These are your tax dollars at work, potentially jailing someone up to 15 years for ripping a BluRay.

    • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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      1 day ago

      They are actually working as intended ie proetcting property rights of the parasite class.

      Once this little nugget clicks, american regime makes a lot more sense.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    stole “numerous ‘pre-release’ DVDs and Blu-rays” between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly “ripped” the movies, "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying

    How? Especially pre-release bluray?

      • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        No, i mean, bluray DRM is partly bound to keys and the player. Even blurays from 2020 often fail with libbluray and a newish player. I see no way to rip a pre-release bluray.

        DVD is a bit more tame with only CSS and no BD+ VM on the drive.

        For Details, look here.

        • CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          I’ve never ripped BluRays but from what I’ve been told by someone who is apart of a P2P release group the jist is there’s an exploit in Intel SGX that made BluRay protection obsolete and the tools to crack BRs are practically publicly available if you search around for a bit. The funny thing is newer CPUs/mobos don’t support Intel SGX, which is one way to stop it.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            4 hours ago

            With libredrive flashed on your player. Let the player decrypt for you, and then copy the decrypted stream, no need to break any encryption…

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      One is running some nobodies over, the other making a rich person some pennies less rich.

      Must set a precedent, y’know?

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        4 hours ago

        on paper

        It’s making them less rich only if you assume pirated copies would’ve been sales. That’s generally not the case, and piracy can often increase sales by pirates recommending things to people who will actually buy.

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Just goes to show how horrendous this sort of crime is. I hear dvd pirates are on the same cell blocks as pedophiles in prison.

    • Broken@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      Goes to show, he should have made a run for it and hit a bunch of people with his car. Then he’d get a reduced sentence.

    • booly@sh.itjust.works
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      People generally aren’t sentenced to the maximum penalty for a crime, so it’s not very useful to compare the maximum potential sentence for a charged crime versus the actual sentence received after conviction on another crime. The Indianapolis hit and run carried potential penalties of more than 15 years. This DVD guy will probably get less than 5.

  • d00ery@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Soon it became dangerous to download the movie, though, as popular demand for the movie quickly put a target on downloaders’ backs and scammers soon planted malware in Spider-Man movie torrents that ReasonLabs reported used the movie to “lure in as many victims as possible.”

    ReasonLabs said that the malware was “likely from a Russian torrenting site.” It took over the would-be Spider-Man movie watchers’ computers without setting off Windows Defender and with the goal of cryptomining in the background for the bad actors’ benefit.

    How does a video file contain malware. Or are people running exe files to watch a video?

  • Singletona082@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Yes let’s not go after the south African literally fomenting the rise of a fashist takovet. Let’s go after the guy selling bootleg DVDs.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      2 days ago

      Just started to say I’m glad they’re focusing on the important things. 🙄🤮

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      He didn’t get arrested for theft. He got arrested for being part of a distribution network that empowered Russian hackers.

      To be clear. Copying or downloading media is not illegal. Distribution is.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        4 hours ago

        Downloading is absolutely illegal, it’s just not really enforced because you need to prove criminal intent. You’re still accessing copyrighted material without a license, which is a copyright violation.

        Distribution has much higher penalties and is more likely to push people to buying (harder to find copies = potentially more legal sales), so that’s where enforcement is focused.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          This isn’t a “piracy is bad” comment, this guy in particular was feeding media specifically to a group that repackaged malware into it.

          • WR5@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Do you have a source for that? This article does not say that at all. It simply says that the person in question ripped Spider-Man Far From Home, that movie specifically was available from a lot of different users and locations, also had some cases where it had dangerous malware packaged, and that could have come from a Russian torrenting site. Nothing links this person directly to that malware or Russians at all.

            • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              The article says

              Soon it became dangerous to download the movie, though, as popular demand for the movie quickly put a target on downloaders’ backs and scammers soon planted malware in Spider-Man movie torrents that ReasonLabs reported used the movie to “lure in as many victims as possible.”

              ReasonLabs said that the malware was “likely from a Russian torrenting site.” It took over the would-be Spider-Man movie watchers’ computers without setting off Windows Defender and with the goal of cryptomining in the background for the bad actors’ benefit.

              It could be that the article is misquoting people and displaying a Bias, but I wouldn’t know.

              • WR5@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                Right, but that specifically is not linking Steven Hale. So your original assertion that he is selling/supporting Russian malware is not substantiated by this article.

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                  4 hours ago

                  Exactly. That will have to be proved in court, and just making something available for anyone to use as they please is not “working with Russian hackers.” They would need to prove actual collusion to make the malware-ridden version more accessible.

      • Billegh@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        But I collect russian malware. I was expecting that release. Where else can I find that? It’s gone now, and the collector’s value has skyrocketed.