Piracy has always been a problem for software publishers and game makers, but over the years other parties has been struck with the same problem. We have the music industry fighting the spread of illegally copied music with formats such as MP3, WMA and OGG. One of the organizations fighting this battle is RIAA, the leading organ for music artists in the US. RIAA has during the years intensified their efforts to minimize online piracy. There has been new technology that has been developed to make sure people aren’t able to spread their legally downloaded music with DRM, and intensified efforts and co-operation with ISP’s to catch huge contenders in the piracy scene.

Not only that, but the spreading of big Hollywood blockbusters before they hit the movie screens has increased vastly the last years, and the MPAA is fighting this battle with claws, scissors and what not. Even though Kazaa and other pirate resources has been removed, it is still easy to find and download illegal material. Just before Christmas, there was a huge raid against pirate sites that hosted bit torrents. One of the internet’s most visited pirate sites, Suprnova was shut down along with well over 200 other sites. This was made possible with the co-operation with people from RIAA, MPAA and ISP’s all over the world. A majority of the bandwidth used on the internet is not used for web surfing, e-mail downloads or other legal activities. It’s used for online piracy. Of course, this has huge economical impact on the firms involved and it’s in their best interest to get rid of this growing problem.

Just recently, a unofficial program was made available for users of iTunes to download their music without the content being tagged with DRM information. Thus, the users were able to copy their legally downloaded content to other sources, such as other pc’s or to other users. I can understand the record industry’s need for the implementation of DRM, but it severely limits the end user’s ability to handle their content in the way they want. If I download some music from say iTunes, that I’ve paid for, I want this music to be available to me everywhere. That be on my desktop, my laptop or my portable MP3 player. With current DRM implementations, this is not possible. I would really wish for a world without the need for such.

But what about the fight against piracy, will it ever be won? In short, I have to say; “No way in hell!”. It’s a battle that can’t be won, there will aways be ways to limit it in some ways, but every technology made by man can be broken by man. Nothing is unbreakable, everything can be tampered with. And by that I mean, everything. Given enough time and resources, computer nerds across the world will find ways to avoid copy protections and other similar technologies. I’m not saying software publishers, record companies and Hollywood should stop the battle, but they have to face the fact that the problem will always be there. The key to this issue is to make it possible for everyone to co-exist in the same sphere, and develop solutions that works for the average consumer. By that, I mean a more versatile and flexible DRM system, and make downloadable music and movies cheaper. They have to set a price line that will be very competitive with buying the actual CD or DVD. The fact is that buying music or movies over the internet, means that you suffer a quality loss from buying the real deal. This is a sacrifice I sure as hell don’t want to pay extra for, I want a discount. Thus the price line has to be much keener than the real deal. If the big boys and their lawyers will listen to me, well, hell no. They’ve probably never heard of me. But spread the word, say your opinion. Start the revolution! Make us be heard! Only if they listen will they be able to minimize their problem with online piracy.

I had a really big fight against spyware yesterday. Recently, my boss had complained about sluggish performance on his office computer, and processes that started on its own and really annoying pop-up windows. When I was first approached with this scenario, I just told him in plain text. You are infected with the plague of the web; spyware. So what to do!? Well, here comes our good friend Ad-Aware in. It’s just like a virus scanner, but it scans for malicious programs running that virus detectors doesn’t scan for, but might do just as much damage.

The first scan revealed that the computer was infected with quite a list of different types of spyware. Some where key loggers, some where usage statistics gatherers, some were drone like processes, just waiting to be used in a coordinated DDoS attack. After three scans, and the removal of more persistent spyware the computer still showed signs of being infected, even though Ad-Aware was saying everything was fine. So I started to dig a little, and by a sign of good luck, the process that caused this havoc crashed, leaving a dialog that revealed my the name of the executable. I tried to delete the file, but that of course was impossible at first, since the file was in use by the system. So I had to dive into the system registry, and see what trails it had there, and of course to remove its startup presence in the system. So after having cleaned up the registry by hand, I was ready to reboot. The computer rebooted, and I was finally able to remove the persistent little bastard that caused the havoc on my bosses computer. Nothing like playing a digital Sherlock Holmes.

But what was really good about this whole thing was that I learned something new, I learned my boss to enforce a little more aware surfing pattern, he will now use Ad-Aware on a weekly basis to scan his computer along with his already existing anti virus solution. But, the best thing is of course, that I made him ditch Internet Explorer and move over to Firefox! Yet another follower added to the loyal user base of the best browser on earth! Go Firefox!