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I'd be willing to go out on a limb and estimate that maybe some private interests in Hollywood, with certain four letter acronyms, despise open source media pla
by negativity 13y ago
I'd be willing to go out on a limb and estimate that maybe some private interests in Hollywood, with certain four letter acronyms, despise open source media player projects like VLC, since they might represent a channel that can potentially enable bypasses that can circumvent precious, precious DRM.
The perception being: if you can see the source of a media player program, the encryption might be implicitly compromised. This is a silly idea though, because it neglects certain realities about the very nature of electronic encryption, and media consumption. Maybe having source code lowers the bar in some respects, but the reality is that determined people will simply bootleg media anyway, by other means.
Not an accusation though, just that my tinfoil hat is tingling. Who else might be so motivated to attack an awesome software project like VLC?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- omni 13y agoCool / "good" projects get attacked all the time. I suspect this is because the attacker is guaranteed an audience on HN to marvel in the results of their work. I think this is probably simpler and more likely than the tinfoil hat theory.
- pavel_lishin 13y ago> Who else might be so motivated to attack an awesome software project like VLC? Anyone who wants to show off a proof-of-concept attack to potential customers, without stepping on any huge toes. (e.g., it's relatively safe to DDoS VLC, not so much a U.S. government agency or a huge multi-national company.)
- AUmrysh 13y agoI could see it being some sort of message as CISPA was stalled in the Senate yesterday. More likely, however, is that we'll never know why.
- GigabyteCoin 13y agoI would suspect DDoS attacks to be akin to terrorist attacks in that somebody typically claims responsibility for them.
- snowwrestler 13y agoDDOS attacks are way more common than terrorist attacks, and there's a rarely a clue why they happen.
- Tobu 13y agoAnother option is some shady people bundling VLC with spyware, some of which have been successfully clamped down: http://blog.l0cal.com/2011/07/07/these-companies-that-mislead-our-users/ http://blog.l0cal.com/2011/07/07/these-companies-that-mislea... Or, less likely but more timely, the GPL→LGPL relicensing to get an AppStore port, or the consultation to get the French DRM police to play its role in enforcing a conflicting law about interoperability.
- snowwrestler 13y agoWhy DDOS Reddit? Why DDOS Wikipedia? Why DDOS the New York Public Library website?? Within the last year or two I've given up trying to find reasons for DDOS attacks. I think of them now like Internet traffic weather. They just happen at random times and you better be prepared.