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South Korea Passes Bill to Directly Punish Hack Makers
- gruez 10y agoHow is this law going to help when the hack developers can simply operate in another country to evade the law?
- godmodus 10y agoIt might actually rejuvenate the underground community as it triages the new limitations.
- sschueller 10y agoSo any violation of the ToS is now illegal? Has anyone read Apple's or Google's ToS lately?
- saycheese 10y agoYes, a violation of the terms of service (TOS) is a crime now in South Korea, but it's worse, if a right is not provided in writing that it's explicitly reserved; meaning if you do anything that's not forbidden, but also not explicitly approved, you are a criminal.
- nkrisc 10y agoIs that what the law says, any violation of TOS? I can't read Korean so I couldn't read the linked amendment and the article didn't go into much detail.
- saycheese 10y ago>> "Based on this law, manufacturing and distributing programs that are not allowed by the game company and its Terms of Service is now directly illegal." Very possible that's not what the law says, but it is what's stated in the linked news article.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mtgx 10y agoSo basically corporations are directly making laws in South Korea now, which really seems to be the final goal of a process that's already happening in other countries, including the US. Perhaps we're really going to get those "corporate governments" we see in some dystopian sci-fi books and shows/movies.
- saycheese 10y agoMaybe, though it's also more commonly lazy governance mixed with inactive citizens in a democracy; South Korea is a democracy.
- wangchow 10y agoWell there's massive protests going on to oust their president. http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/massive-protests-against-south-koreas-pr?articleId=USRTSU04U http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/massive-protests-against...
- saycheese 10y agoProtesting is a lazy expression of self interest, done in massive, etc. Taking the time to independently form and express a legally enforceable position takes substantial and ongoing effort. Generally speaking if you were to take a group of protesters and separate them and have them express the their concerns, related reasoning, their desired change, and expected outcomes... you would get non-sense.
- wangchow 10y agoYou would not get nonsense, you would get emotional charge. Emotions can easily overpower thought-process. Because of this, emotional charge is the de facto force of social change.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
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- eriknstr 10y agoThen it is time for the people of south korea to throw away proprietary software and use only open source software licensed under ISC and the likes. >Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies. > >THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
- saycheese 10y ago"All rights reserved" by default laws are toxic and the ultimate form of bureaucracy.
- GordonS 10y agoA bit off topic, but the phrase "Hack Makers" - is that a thing?
- saycheese 10y agoMakers of a hack, that is "hack makers" - is grammatically okay. The title is in title case, so the capitalization of the text is meaningless.
- tremon 10y agoBut hacks are not made -- they are performed. It may be grammatically okay, but not semantically.
- saycheese 10y agoYes, hacks are original performed, but some cases, especially those referenced in this context, the hacks are made to be used by 3rd parties, most who likely would be unable to preform the hack from scratch, much less discover it.
- ultim8k 10y agoKim press the button.
- sctb 10y agoPlease comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- vojant 10y agoThat also means a lot of good stuff might not be legal as well. Like unofficial servers (even for games that are not longer officially supported), or mods? I hope other countries won't follow this regulations.
- a_c 10y agoDoes it have effect on non-korean citizens?
- lithos 10y agoLays the foundation for other countries.
- dimva 10y agoIt means you don't have to worry about any competition from South Korean companies in the field of cybersecurity.
- lithos 10y agoI like this statement.
- kybernetyk 10y agoYou also probably don't need to worry about competition from SK programmers. (My WoW account got banned back in the day because I had an instance of the Visual Studio Debugger running while playing WoW. No, I wasn't debugging WoW ...)
- except1 10y agoThe way I understand it, your citizenship is irrelevant here. If you happen to visit South Korea, they can usually prosecute you for a crime you allegedly committed on the internet while abroad. Seeing as you'd be charged with creating or distributing a ToS-infringing program, it's likely sufficient that at least one person located in South Korea received (or could have received) a copy of that program for the crime to fall under South Korean jurisdiction. Extradition is more complicated; depending on your country of origin, the crime you are charged with must also be illegal under local laws in most cases.
- malka 10y agobasically: dont go to south korea.
- scotty79 10y agoI'm really opposed to making writing something a crime.
- Sir_Substance 10y agoBRB, making a games company in South Korea that prohibits Korean localized software in it's TOS unless unless our company gets a 5% cut of profits.
- godmodus 10y agoLol this planet is going to hell in a handbasket. I want to laugh, cry, care and not care at the same time. Can anyone tell me what sort of feeling this is?
- saycheese 10y agoSounds like Mania: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mania https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mania
- godmodus 10y ago"a “mirror image” to depression, the heightened mood can be either euphoric or irritable;" rubs chin seems to be a xor, though what I felt was simultaneous - maybe shock. rubs chin after some digging around it seems to be this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance My brain experienced a slight shock and went a bit joker on the emotions.
- saycheese 10y agoGenerally speaking, self evaluation takes considerable knowledge, skill, experience and time. To me, the update you provided didn't add clarity, but an additional degree of understanding what you're attempting to express. Someone experiencing pure cognitive dissonance would not act manic, they just realize that there was a paradox in their reasoning that needed to be resolved. Literally wanting to laugh and cry in series is an emotional response and to me, sounds manic. Emotional responses are a better predictor of understanding someone than reasoned expressions.
- godmodus 10y agoWell I literally DIDN'T laugh and cry. Felt a deep sense of Sadness/panic at the stupidity of this move. And just felt that sort of giving up,realising I can't do shit about a country half a,world away that wouldnt heed my advice even if it did reach it. Must admit, it caught me by surprise that my own "are you fucking dense?!" reaction was so strong. That all said and do done my friend, such a public exchange should have remained a more light hearted one - and not a me possibly suffering from a chronic psychiatric condition. On that note, I think I'll end this,and go light a candle to lament our collective intellectual regression, and pray that cthulhu be a merciful God when he eventually rises.
- except1 10y agoAllegedly this was the incident that prompted the creation of the amendment: https://www.akshonesports.com/2016/12/south-korean-police-bust-350000-scripting-operation https://www.akshonesports.com/2016/12/south-korean-police-bu...
- antihero 10y agoGovernments are such a blunt instrument.
- venomsnake 10y agoJust to make clear - are we sure we are talking about South and not North Korea?
- stuaxo 10y ago"The punishment? A maximum of 5 years jail time or $43,000 in fines (50 million KRW). " ... "it's good to know that they will have the weapons they need to fight back with the backing of the Korean government. " Is it only me that thinks this law takes things way too far ?
- problems 10y agoNot only that, but this goes directly against cheat developers. Cheat development is pretty interesting stuff from a reverse engineering perspective. Cheat developers also have in the past caught anti-cheat companies doing some very invasive shit, like taking screenshots of your desktop or sending your process list to their servers. And depending on how exactly they legislate that, it may also impact other reverse engineering projects like private servers, malware, security research, etc. I definitely don't think a blanket ban like this is at all appropriate.
- Benjamin_Dobell 10y ago> Is it only me that thinks this law takes things way too far ? No, this law is bat-shit insane. You don't go to jail for modifying your car, computer or mobile phone so the reach of this law is insanely over the top. You are however breaking the law for making illegal/unsafe modifications to your car, mobile phone; probably not your computer though. I think it's fair to make it illegal to utilise modifications during competitive play that involves making money - it's basically a form of fraud to cheat in those circumstances. However, if you want to mod/hack a game for your own personal enjoyment then that absolutely seems reasonable.
- zzbzq 10y agoSome people on the thread (most of whom did not read the article) are reacting like people's rights are being violated here. It's the other way around. There's been a lot of commotion lately about how online games are being ruined by cheats and aimbots. It's impossible for game makers to keep up. It should be illegal to make or distribute cheats for online games for the same reason it should be illegal to shit in a water fountain: you're not just modifying your stuff, you're ruining it for everybody else.
- ptaffs 10y agoIt should be illegal to pollute a water supply, but really, we can find another water fountain which isn't soiled. A law seems heavy handed, as it does here to protect the narrow interest of online gamers.
- a_plastic_bag 10y agoThe way I see it, this looks more like an attempt by the video game industry to pass the cost of preventing cheating to the taxpayers.
- wav-part 10y agoWow this will give even non-libertarians a pause.
- SixSigma 10y agoThis law makes it illegal to create arseholes that can shit in water fountains. Not shitting in water fountains.
- smrtinsert 10y agoSo long as it doesn't violate a games tos, its not illegal. What's the problem here? Seems like its targeting hack developers only.
- pooper 10y ago> So long as it doesn't violate a games tos, its not illegal. What's the problem here? Seems like its targeting hack developers only. I'm sorry but tos is NOT the law. We get all riled up against CFAA in the US (I know I do) but we turn around and see this stuff go on in other countries and say "well, they have good intentions". Well there is a saying that the road to the other place is paved with good intentions. Remember when Goldman Sachs effectively ordered FBI to handle a case as if FBI was some department within GS? I don't think jail time is warranted unless people are dying as a result of these hacks. If we are targeting commercial unauthorized usage of network resources, slap a big fine. There is no need to add jail time here.
- smrtinsert 10y agoWell to draw a parallel, in the US if there a doctor enabling an athlete (or group of them) with performance enhancing drugs, wouldn't he face jail time for providing that? esports are huge in south korea.
- Karunamon 10y agoNo. It's not illegal for a doctor to prescribe medication. It's on the user of that medication if they break their game's rules with them.
- kybernetyk 10y ago>While the bans have stopped some players from playing, it's good to know that they will have the weapons they need to fight back with the backing of the Korean government. In what world is getting a 5 year prison sentence for aimbotting a "good" thing?
- itake 10y agoThis law's goal is to go after the people creating these tools, not the ones using them.
- kybernetyk 10y agoOk. I'll rephrase: In what world is getting a 5 year prison sentence for writing an aimbot a "good" thing?
- PietdeVries 10y agoIn a world where a lot of money is made in the gaming industry?
- ethbro 10y agoHow is this different than making security research or even third party mods illegal? Rather than adding legal penalties that can be wielded at will by companies for less-than-moral purposes (protecting customer-negative revenue streams), they can spend more improving their netcode. Catapults and outlaws, etc. From the article (I can't read Korean): > Based on this law, manufacturing and distributing programs that are not allowed by the game company and its Terms of Service is now directly illegal. That would include [...] or anything not allowed by the ToS.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- FrancoDiaz 10y agoIn no world, except in HN bizzaro world where apologists justify anything a state does by saying..."in the US blaahbalah can already blahaha"
- seishun 10y agoIt seems it's going to be just another one of those laws that technically exist but never enforced. Unless, of course, the government doesn't like you for some reason.
- halomru 10y agoUnless terms of service start getting a lot more specific, this sounds harmful even to the gaming industry. The status quo is that the TOS of most online games just have a blanket ban on anything that modifies the game experience, but in practice enforce this very selectively. Basically the players develop software and then the game publisher decides whether the software is acceptable. An aimbot probably isn't, something that logs the ingame chat probably is, in between there is a huge gray area to explore. But if the worst punishment for a misstep isn't an account ban but five years in jail, people might think twice about developing anything for that games community. On that front, everybody loses.
- etatoby 10y agoThis is a good thing. The less programmers work for free on proprietary game systems, the more they can work on open source games, where they don't face criminal charges and where their work enriches everybody, instead of a specific corporation.
- noobermin 10y agoBe honest brother, hardly anyone plays open source games and they aren't up to par with proprietary games. Proprietary games have had similar issues (although without a jail sentence) forever and the 20 quake-likes out there have existed forever but the communities that play them are still a niche.
- Karunamon 10y agoExcept the programmers working in this case work directly against the interests of the creators, and players, of those games. So the hackers are driven away from working on Counterstrike so they can ruin my Sauerbraten game instead? Fantastic! /s
- niij 10y agoSo coercive legal action against modders is a good thing because... Open Source?
- fengwick3 10y agoA lot of people here seem to misunderstand the nature of the hacks that these laws are targetting. The intention here is to punish those who abuse these hacks to gain a competitive edge when playing against others, which can be extremely sizable especially for FPSes. Professional teams also rely on the in game competitive rankings to scout for new talent, so this abuse can have further ramifications apart from brusing egos.
- kaishiro 10y agoIsn't the intention of these laws to punish those who make the tools for those who abuse these hacks, and not the actors themselves?
- gcb0 10y agothis raise the question of how much you want to give in order to play. i myself am fine encountering the occasional cheater. it sucks but it's only a game. and to be honest, sometimes its lots of fun when all honest players gang up on the cheater on AoE2 :) now, i won't put up with a closed code having to run as root. i gave up online gaming because of steam, which i consider a rootkit. and the scary thing is that I'm so in the minority that university of California now does not even give you the option for paper tests in some classes. you have to install a rootkit that turns your webcam on and report back a list of all open and installed applications to their servers, while you take a online test. and of course, no Linux support and it tries (badly, thankfully) to not run inside a vm. as a security expert i can run it in a vm with a fake webcam feed just fine. but everyone else will have to be subjected to this if they want a diploma subsidised by tax dollars. would you put up with it? the alternative is to book time on the few computers in the lab they allow this thing to be installed (remember, it denies vms, which is what the lab admins use to have always clean systems). oh, and everyone cheats by leaving open books behind the monitor. this whole thing only serves the software vendor. just like the Korean cheating will only serve who actually uses cheats for monetary gain. as i doubt it wasn't criminal before if money was involved.
- chei0iaV 10y ago> now, i won't put up with a closed code having to run as root. i gave up online gaming because of steam, which i consider a rootkit. Since when does Steam need to run as root? In a bit paranoid so I run Stream as a separate minimally-privileged user out of its own home directory, but "rootkit"? Come on...
- gcb0 10y agoon windows it runs as admin. never used on linux, but i wouldnt be surprised that your low user would be denied to play counter strike online
- chei0iaV 10y agoI would. I'm sure I'd there was a game that required root privileges on Linux, I would have heard of it. Doubly so considering it apparently works well on wine. I don't have CS and don't have any interest in buying it, but I'd welcome being proven wrong. (I would be more apt to consider telemetry-era Windows a rootkit, personally :)
- kbwt 10y ago@mods: how did the thread just plunge from #1 to #12?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- MrZongle2 10y agoFTA: "Based on this law, manufacturing and distributing programs that are not allowed by the game company and its Terms of Service is now directly illegal. That would include aimbotters, hacking programs, scripters, or anything not allowed by the ToS. The punishment? A maximum of 5 years jail time or $43,000 in fines (50 million KRW)." Five years in prison for an aimbot? This is South Korea we're talking about?
- Nadya 10y agoE-sports is basically the national sport of South Korea. They take the E-sports scene very seriously and this would be akin to doping in a competitive sport which caries up to 5 years jail time and fines of up to $250,000 in the U.S at least. So really it's just bringing E-sports up-to-par with sports...which is already how they treat it.
- EdHominem 10y agoFor writing the aimbot, not for using it. I'm fine with you being charged if you contract to not do something (steroids, for instance) for a voluntary event, but did so without intending to uphold your promise. That's fraud. But me, for ripping apart some game and tying into the internals? I should be charged because you could do something bad with it? That's just nonsense. And what counts as a cheat? In an old game I used to tape a crosshair to the screen because it didn't have one. What if we create an aimbot from vacuum tubes and light-sensors? Stupid politicians, sticking their noses into things they don't understand. The laws were already adequate to charge any actual cheater.
- Nadya 10y ago>For writing the aimbot, not for using it. So equate it to production and distribution of illicit material? Cultivating food isn't illegal in many areas. Cultivating magic mushrooms is another issue altogether. Chemistry isn't illegal but manufacturing MDMA is. Programming isn't illegal - but coding a program for a game that directly goes against the Terms of Service of a company is. Can you provide me an example of aimbotting in a multiplayer game that isn't "bad"? What else could you possibly be doing with it?
- hatsunearu 10y agoTranslation of https://imgur.com/a/jzQQm https://imgur.com/a/jzQQm Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this may be an inaccurate translation for legal purposes. Talk to a lawyer. Left panel: 9. The act of creating, distributing, offering or brokering game material [sic; note that it doesn't say software] 10. The act of creating or distributing computer programs or instruments for the purpose of illegal activities outlined in Article 9 Right panel: Article 44: Punishment Any person who meet the criteria below will be punished with prison not exceeding 5 years or a fine not exceeding 50 million won.
- minhoryang 10y agoextremely worrying that now they have the good reasons for getting my all .exe files :(