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Russia considers legalizing piracy of software from sanction countries
- joyamaral 5y ago
- mmastrac 5y agoGoogle translate picked out a key paragraph here: However, according to Moscow Digital School teacher Oleg Blinov, piracy resolution is not a very effective step: “Today, most of the useful software is made in the form of subscriptions to a cloud product, this allows developers to secure the code that remains on their servers. Without subscriptions and access to a regular service, many tools will stop working.”
- empressplay 5y agoMost software packages have an offline product. All you have to do is check out torrents to see that.
- capableweb 5y agoMost software packages do indeed often have offline-installers and runtimes, but the quote seems to be about SaaS which almost never has offline/self hosted options. It's part of the value of building SaaS in the first place, if source doesn't get leaked, it most likely will never end up on TPB et al.
- antifa 5y agoMost probably have an open source alternative, which could benefit everyone in the world with an army of Russian devs polishing/maintaining. What would be sad is if instead Russia just made Russian SaaSs.
- gattilorenz 5y agoPlus, you risk angering the cloud companies that can decide to terminate all cloud services in Russia. Imagine if tomorrow Azure disappears...
- jurschreuder 5y agoIf you would disable microsoft products you would only help them
- MattGaiser 5y agoWas it meaningfully illegal in Russia anyway?
- zelon88 5y agoMy understanding is the only cyber crime that gets prosecuted in Russia is Russian on Russian. As evidenced by the fact that Russian droppers are often written to avoid deployment on machines in Russian timezones or with Russian keyboards.
- Mo3 5y agoCan confirm, ransomware devs excluding Russian machines to not get in trouble
- eurasiantiger 5y agoLifehack: install Russian keyboard layout on all devices to avoid malware attacks.
- chayleaf 5y agoyeah, for businesses piracy is prosecuted if caught
- paxys 5y agoSo business as usual then
- aaron695 5y agoThis was talked about, and passed by the WTO in the Caribbean after the USA blocked their gambling sites - https://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2013/01/29/pirates-of-the-caribbean-antigua-and-barbuda-turn-from-internet-gambling-to-legalized-piracy/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2013/01/29/pirates-of... What would the world do? Block all Russian sites? Russia could do some damage. Their crippled software devs turn to piracy as a profession? Along with ransomeware it could be a strong source of income in IT. It's an interesting idea. Not sure it'd work. People would fight it more than blown up buildings of foreigners. It's still hard to pay for it. And they'd have to compete with piracy as well.
- Mikeb85 5y agoI mean, there's enough open-source software out there you don't ever 'need' proprietary software. But I know middle income countries always have some weird stigma about open source and would rather pirate shitty commercial software. Based on how well their military operates they probably won't figure it out...
- Fice 5y agoSoftware vendors can deliberately leak "pirated" copies of their programs to Russian torrent sites with backdoors and other malicious code added. That could be an effective countermeasure.
- croes 5y agoHow do you prevent that they don't spread to other non russian torrents?
- Fice 5y agoYou don't. That's a way to punish all users of pirated software.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoThats still a crime. You can't rob someones house even if they they are a burgler.
- Fice 5y agoCan a vendor be held responsible for anything an unauthorized pirated copy of their software does?
- eurasiantiger 5y agoCan a car manufacturer be held responsible for built-in features designed to maim or kill unauthorised users?
- croes 5y agoIf he put the malware in, yes.
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoAre you aware that torret tracker sites are heavily invested in uploader reputation? It doesn't matter if you create a new user to upload a torrent with a backdoor. Nobody is going to download it because it's coming from an untrusted uploader.
- zozbot234 5y agoThis is a predictable feel-good move but of course it doesn't come anywhere close to fully offsetting the sanctions' impact, or they would have done it before!
- Witeshadow 5y agoThis will keep all non-subscription software from being sold there for a long time.
- joyamaral 5y ago