Internet. Somebody may not know that.....

Internet has recently lost most of its freedom. It has become a place for too serious business, for tricky people, for wasting money and time in privacy and copyrights.

Internet was initially created as a way to share data.
It was clear for everybody that anything they posted in the net was free; that anybody could download and use it as they liked.
It was also clear that, if they wanted to keep something private and to avoid that other people copy or use it, they had not to post it in the net.

Smart people would understand it.
But silly people don't.
And, sadly, many of the people who have power don't also have a good brain, they simply use their power to be right.

Time passed.
Companies like Microsoft and Apple became bigger and bigger.
They started to use internet as their own business place, ruining the proposals and the original ideas of internet itself.

Other troubles came with pages as Facebook, where a group of male students initially created a "social network" to keep contact with their favorite girls ( and maybe to bring them in bed ).
Nothing to say about that.
The troubles came after, when they got more followers, they grew up their stupid pride, and they filled the net with useless rules about privacy.
On the surface they said that they wanted to protect the rights and the privacy of the people joining their networks. The reality was another. "Privacy" was just an excuse to ask for your cell phone number, address, etc. and reselling it to advertising companies to make more money.

They enforced their rules and expanded their power in the net accusing the small internet "piracy", to spread viruses.
It was clearly a nonsense and a lie.
Why a hacker should put a virus in his own website? It is the website where he posts his own hacked programs. He wouldn't put any danger there. It is also of no danger for any company business, because who downloads hacked programs has clearly no money and no intention to buy the original software.
At the contrary, the sites at risk are government sites, or big companies sites ( like Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. ), where international hackers...
( often paid by anti-virus companies that want to sell their products, or paid by some governments to spy and give troubles to their adversaries )
....put their viruses.
It is clear. If, for example, a Chinese or an American hacker, supported by his own government, wants to post a virus to get secret information or to hit a lot of people, where would he post his virus? In a small hacking site or in the site of another country government? Just guess.

The result is this :
- A government hacker can destroy your computer with a single click, because nothing is going to stop him.
- A big company will restrict you to download a single picture from the the net, even if your purpose is simply to keep it in your hard disc. Just to overprotect every single thing it owns.
- A common hacker, having in his hands enough knowledge, will clearly not be scared by Norton or Kaspersky firewalls, protected pages or similar things. He will take and download anything he needs.

The only person who got damaged by the internet "witch hunt" and stupid moralism is you, common user.
...........Good result.

Do you know who really sent those emails?
That would be something interesting to know.
Without new and new viruses, the anti-virus software companies would have no job to do. Can we be sure that they don't produce the viruses by themselves? ( Surely not all, but at least some. )

Yes, I agree that there are countries doing nothing to stop viruses.
They even use viruses and hackers for their own business, as I said in my previous message.
And they aren't limited to Russia, China or Nigeria, no matter if on surface they do nice public talks, they use FBI or they catch some "small fish".

I agree also that there is a percentage of people who tries to steal money ( or just having stupid fun ) sending an email with a link containing a virus.
But the large virus attacks are not created by these simple systems, otherwise it would be rather easy to avoid them simply not opening links in unknown messages.
Don't you think the same?

Spam is not a virus and it is not connected with hackers, so it needs a separate talk.
Any company can be considered a spammer too when it sends a lot of advertising messages.
You can check it by yourself. Let companies as Yahoo ( this is only an example. There are many others ) get your mail address, and then have a look at how many unrequested messages you get from them. But no government would close Yahoo for this, right?
( It is funny that, if you open a Yahoo mail box and you send something like 50 messages in the same day, your account will be blocked for spamming )

"The internet was originally created for universities and the military to share data." : that wasn't internet. Those were simply small networks among military structures or inside universities.
What we commonly call internet was born between 1970 and 1980, much later, and without limitations or restrictions to small networks.

No. I don't defend the actions of the small hackers or of the piracy.
The theme of my post was another.
I wanted to say how many privacy rules, how many restrictions, how many pretended copyrights, etc. etc. are ruining the freedom of internet.
The part about small hackers was only to say how these are used as an excuse to add more restrictions and how their impact on the software sales ( except for the anti-virus software ) is very small.

Then..
Should we arrest hackers who spread viruses? Yes we should.
But, the same way, companies as Norton had to be closed when the sold their clients data to advertising companies without any permission.
Many large companies should be obliged to stop sending unsolicited messages, their spywares in their sites should be deleted, etc. etc.
Unfortunately size does matter, as we know.
If you kill one person, it is a crime and you are arrested.
If your country kills thousands, they call it "war" and they say they have the right to do it.

No I don't know who they are. I occasionally will do an IP check which I understand does not necessarily mean that the server being used belongs to the true sender. But I'm just a business and social user of the internet lacking in know-how and technical tools to reach an in depth understanding. The IPs that I check are nearly all from the three countries mentioned with an occasional European country.

I can say that the virus senders and the spammers are connected since we receive the same emails with and without viruses detected. My view is that they are likely part of a system of buyers and sellers of stolen data that also includes some of the hackers.

I live in Japan. We have a very low level of piracy and hackers. Maybe near to zero.
All people are used to buy original software, original DVD, original CD, etc etc.
Why? Because we have enough money to do it.
A normal monthly salary is 2500-3000 USD.
The price of a good original DVD is 30-60 USD : nobody has problems to buy it.

I remember one time that I went to watch a movie in Bangkok.
After I finished the movie, walking in the streets near the cinema, I found the same movie on DVD at 3 USD. It was a copy.
Going to the cinema was twice that price.
Buying the original DVD was 4-5 times that price.
What had I to do? Calling the police?
No.

Why not?
Because this is the way the things go.
Because this way everybody can enjoy that same movie, even if in different ways.

Who has money would not buy a copy.
A copy has lower quality; no original box; no booklet. no extras.

Who has no money will buy the copy.
He accepts that it is lower quality, but he can't buy the original and he can't go to the cinema.

It is very silly when some companies or the police fight small piracy:

1. They only succeed to stop that some poor people may have fun.

2. They don't increase the sales of any company, because who has no money can't buy the original movies/software/music.

3. They spend time and money for these actions, when ....
- The police could care to arrest killers and corrupted government members.
Instead they fill the pages of the newspapers with these things, distracting our attention from the real problems.
- The companies could lower the price of their products. Many more people would buy them if the prices were cheaper, instead to waste money for expensive protections.

Another example?
Go to Indonesia.
Most of the shops sell only copies.
Do you know why?
Because the price of an original software is almost like 1 month of the salary of many people. How do you think that they can buy it?
This way, every shop buy 3-4 originals; they sell 2-3 of them to few rich, then they sell copies.
Without this, the sales in those countries would be zero.

What about me?
I buy originals only.
I have over 5000 CD and DVD of music, movies, software. Not even one is a copy.
But other people are less lucky than me, and I don't think it is worth to ruin their happiness. They already have almost nothing in their life: do we want to take away from them also the short nice time that they have listening to a song, watching a movie, or using a program, even if copied? Doing that to get what? Just to fill the next Presidential Election with the words "We fought against international piracy!!"?

Last year Thai police found a Cambodian boy in the streets, asking for money.
He was only 6. He had no legs and no tongue.
Cambodian mafia captured him in some village. They cut his legs at the knees, they cut his tongue ( so he couldn't speak ), and they put him in a street of Bangkok to ask money.
( Thai economy increased a lot; Thai people have more money than in the past. Thai people are Buddhist and they always help who is in very bad situation. Cambodian mafia took advantage of this ).
Every night some mafia guy passed to take the money that the child got.
They told him to hide himself when Thai police passed, so nobody could find him, and they hit him to blood many times and menaced him to hit him again if he didn't do.
Luckily one day the police found him, helped by some citizens.
There are many cases like this.
I think we should solve these cases before to waste time with the copy of a CD.