Tag Archives: Laws

Not changing sides

It was a setting I found myself in. You see, there is nothing wrong with bashing Microsoft. The question at times is how long until the bashing is no longer a civic duty, but personal pleasure. As such I started reading the article (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/new-york-times-openai-lawsuit-copyright-1.70697010) where we see ‘New York Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft for copyright infringement’ it is there where we are given a few part. The first that caught my eye was ““Defendants seek to free-ride on the Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment,” according to the complaint filed Wednesday in Manhattan Federal Court.” To see why I am (to some extent) siding with Microsoft on this is that a newspaper is only in value until it is printed. At that point it becomes public domain. Now the paper has a case when you consider the situation that someone is copying THEIR result for personal gain. Yet, this is not the case here. They are teaching a machine learning model to create new work. Consider that this is not an easy part. First the machine needs to learn ALL the articles that a certain writer has written. So not all the articles of the New York Times. But separately the articles from every writer. Now we could (operative word) to a setting where something alike is created on new properties, events that are the now. So that is no longer a copy, that is an original created article in the style of a certain writer. 

As such when we see the delusional statement from the New York Times giving us “The Times is not seeking a specific amount of damages, but said it believes OpenAI and Microsoft have caused “billions of dollars” in damages by illegally copying and using its works.” Delusional for valuing itself billions of dollars whilst their revenue was a lot less than a billion dollars. Then there is the other setting. Is learning from public domain a crime? Even if it includes the articles of tomorrow, is it a crime then? You see, the law is not ready for machine learning algorithm. It isn’t even ready for the concept of machine learning at present. 

Now, this doesn’t apply to everything. Newspapers are the vocalisations of fact (or at least used to be). The issues on skating towards design patents is a whole other mess. 

As such OpenAi and Microsoft are facing an uphill battle, yet in the case of the New York Times and perhaps the Washington Post and the Guardian I am not so sure. You see, as I see it, it hangs on one simple setting. Is a published newspaper to be regarded as Public Domain? The paper is owned, as such these articles cannot be resold, but there is the grinding cog. It was never used as such. It was a learning model to create new original work and that is a setting newspapers were never ready for. None of these media laws will give coverage on that setting. This is probably why the NY Times is crying foul by the billions. 

The law in these settings is complex, but overall as a learning model I do not believe the NY Times has a case. and I could be wrong. My setting is that articles published become public domain to some degree. At worst OpenAI (Microsoft too) would need to own one copy of every newspaper used, but that is as far as I can go. 

The dangers here is not merely that this is done, it is “often taken from the internet” this becomes an exercise on ‘trust but verify’. There is so much fake and edited materials on the internet. One slip up and the machine learning routines fail. So we see not merely the writer. We see writer, publication, time of release, path of release, connected issues, connected articles all these elements hurt the machine learning algorithm. One slip up and it is back to the drawing board teaching the system often from scratch.

And all that is before we consider that editors also change stories and adjust for length, as such it is a slightly bigger mess than you consider from the start. To see that we need to return to June this year when we were given “The FTC is demanding documents from Open AI, ChatGPT’s creator, about data security and whether its chatbot generates false information.” If we consider the impact we need to realise that the chatbot does not generate false information, it was handed wrong and false information from the start the model merely did what the model was given. That is the danger. The operators and programmers not properly vetting information.

Almost the end of the year, enjoy.

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Christmas comes early

This came to me in a dream. It seems a nice setup for a story, but I am already dealing with 4. How to assassinate a politician is about 90% complete in my mind. Then Kenos Diastima a series in three seasons which is at 40%, Residuam Vitam the mini series is at 30% and Engonos is I have no idea, but it is still ongoing, season one is about 75%, the rest is less clear. What I got now did not fit anywhere and I do not want to start something else at present, so I am making it public domain. Perhaps it will be useful to someone else at present.

The story is in the first person (it is easier for me that way).

And so it begins
It is a late afternoon, I am working in a data centre owned by Heineken. I am not sue what I am, but I am doing my job. Something about cleaning data. We are suddenly attacked and Heineken is subject to ransomware.

3 hours earlier
In the WebCentre of Heineken people are doing their work, they are editing, they are checking and they are aligning on a global scale. One person is doing something else. He is embedding a small code tabulator, alternate 0255, tabulator, alternate 0255, tabulator. A simple code a mere 5 bytes, but that was all that was needed and it was embedded in several places. Someone higher up would clean the data and that was the purpose. 

You see, the hackers were smart but not the brightest. They had a database, but one that mattered. They had a database with disgruntled employees and several worked at Heineken. This was the setting, the honey was a payday of 50 Bitcoin cents. And two applied for that, the hackers knew that the invasion would get them 150 bitcoins in a week, spending one coin was a wise investment setting. 

So here we are, I am at my desk and I see the Ransomware invade, system after system becomes useless. That was what was intended. As the employees with much higher security settings cleaned out the 5 bits, the system saw that as a call to include a small script, a mere 73 bits and it was included in several places and as these systems started to buckle, people with higher security clearance took up the hammer and they infected even more systems. The operation took less than 25 minutes and in that time everything was smitten with Ransomware. All systems and the log files were getting encryption. All these systems and more were now Ransomed and they had no clue who was behind it. 

Now you want to see some clever way out of this, but there is none. As systems buckle governments are forced to put in place draconian laws whilst cleaning what they can and it is with that stupidity the hackers are subject to prisons and executions and as the dust settles, the hackers go deep underground. They are now regarded a global enemy. In the days when there was surplus people never cared, now as governments will buckle they are ready to hold these people (including children too smart for their own good) to account and it was not going to be a nice stage. Just like these ‘Just Stop Oil’ idiots. 6 months was merely the beginning. When the oil starts being reduced even more, the people will start their vigilante justice, as well the IT people against hackers and their supporters. A cleansing unlike any we have ever seen, the agents of chaos will hurt and suffer for a long time to come. A setting no one wanted, a setting we all denied, but we all saw that there was no other direction and that was when we realised that at times we cannot be nice to the monsters, we have no other choice but to put them out of their misery.

A sad day on this day so close to Christmas.

Enjoy today, have a muffin.

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Historic view versus reality

We all seem to have views, it is not wrong, it is not bad it is not evil, it merely is. I saw in 1998-2002 how governments sat on their hands, how lawmakers sat on their hands (and optionally on their mistresses) and they all vocally agreed that hackers were nothing more than a nuisance, and as I see it the traitor Bradley Edward Manning (aka Chelsea Elizabeth Manning) gave up secrets that it was not allowed to reveal and gave it to the world. There is no doubt on guilt, there was no doubt on treason, there merely was the act and that was that, it was the first moment where governments got the first clear hint that hackers were a much larger danger. After that came Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Julian might be many things, but technically he was not a traitor. Edward Snowden was one, and the law again disregarded the steps that were taken, he went intentionally to a place where he might get the most value out of his deeds, Russia picked him up, just to piss of the US, which they were speculatively allowed to do, yet the stage is rather large, more hackers, all under the guise that the law saw them as a mere nuisance, we all got introduced to ransomware, now we see governments hacked through a sunny breeze (Solarwinds), and the voyage does not end. Now we see less than a day ago ‘Hackers threaten to leak plastic surgery pictures’, as well as ‘National Security Agency warns hackers are forging cloud authentication information’, now I do not care for the plastic surgery part, but it is another case where personal and person inclined data is no longer free, the two elements also give a rather large stage for us to place a new premise. One could now argue that hackers are the clear and present danger to personal and corporate needs and as such they can be hunted down and put t death. So from nuisance to global danger, as such when all these mommies cry that their little boys did not know what they were doing, I have no issues putting a HK model 23 to their foreheads and executing them (optionally with silencer as to not scare the neighbours). 

I think it is time for lawmakers and government administrative types to wake up and smell the situation, and in this, perhaps some remember the words of Martin C. Libicki in Newsweek (2015) where he pushed the view ‘Cyberattacks Are a Nuisance, Not Terrorism’, well that is not really true, is it? When we see the definition of terrorism we see “The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims”, there we see two parts up for debate, the fist is that ‘mental violence’ is still violence and the setting of intimidation is already achieved, the stage we still need to address ‘the pursuit of political aims’, not all terrorism is set to political aims, unless if you call self-enrichment the pursuit of political aims. 

And with ‘National Security Agency warns hackers are forging cloud authentication information’ we see an initial stage where commerce will come to a screeching halt. My IP does not cover for that, darn. But there is the old way (1981-1991), just kill them, be done with it. 

Now some (especially in law) will state that I am overreacting, yet am I? It is the lawmakers that could optionally be seen as cowards, hiding behind their golden calf called jurpisprudence. The law, for the most does a good job, it is not perfect, so be it, but for the most, it is OK. This covers the never trespassers and the limited trespassers, they make up for 75% of all people, then there are the criminals, 24.99%, the law takes care of them, they are repeat offenders, career criminals and as such the law was designed to deal with them, then there is the remaining 0.01%, these criminals are in it for the kill, to create a maximum amount of cadavers physically, mentally and financially, to make life for nearly all impossible, and that golden calf, the law cannot deal with them and we accept that, so we remove them in other ways. We hunt them down and put them to death, and when it is some 16 year old claiming he didn’t know what he was doing, we know, he did it to seem cool, he was willing to make all others suffer, just to look cool, to get the tits, to rub the vagina, his friends never could, as such there is a 9mm solution that solves it, if only his parents had raised him right. 

You think I am kidding?
You forget the poverty line is shifting massively because of COVID-19 and soon the insurances will not cover the impact, the media will merely snigger and cash in on all those clicks they got from the $x donation to an unnamed source, and it is now time to make the long overdue change, before governments are pushed to take away more and more of our freedoms, which will push us into the dark-web, a situation these criminals would love. And it is close to 15 years too late, but in this case it is better to be late to the party than not get there at all. 

Am I overreacting?
That would remain a fair question, I do not believe so as this step is well over a decade overdue, it is not something that was pushed to the top in the last few days, and it is partially due to governments and lawmakers not acting when they could have and especially when they should have, now the dike is levied and people are soon to be drowning and something must be done. From my point of view, to hit terrorists, you hit them harder, so the more extreme you hit these hackers, the clearer the message becomes. And a clear message is years overdue.

In this there is a two step setting, there are the “cool wannabe’s” who are mot likely teenagers, some of them are easy to find and after the first examples a lot of them will hide like cockroaches, but the second tier, the one the media and governments intentionally ignore are those in organised crime, they will be the real challenge and as most governments have nothing on stopping them, at best they can limit the damage, which is basically no solution, that gap will take time, but with ‘hackers are forging cloud authentication information’ less than a week old, there is now a chance that the NSA and other intelligence networks will realise that compromised clouds will have global commercial implications, as such governments must now act, the moment any cloud is openly seen compromised, it will be too late for well over a decade. It becomes a clearer situation  when you consider that global e-commerce was set to ‘Global e-Commerce hits $25.6 trillion’, by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), s how much losses must global commerce endure before we act? Oh and if you think that this is the end? How much more powerful will organised crime become if they only get their fingers on 0.1% ($25,600,000,000)? It will become a sliding scale that goes from bad to worse, and governments knew that, they knew for well over a decade, but their delusions saw other non-solution, like perhaps, it will go away on its own, so tell me when was that ever a solution?

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