On the 15th of this month Universal Pictures France filed a takedown request with Google (archived) demanding they remove from results sites hosting or linking pirated copies of Jurassic World. Among the addresses Universal demanded Google sanction was 127.0.0.1 which is the IP address a computer reserves for communicating with itself. This means that not only was Universal seeding its own film to pirates, it was likely doing so from the same machine used detect and prepare a report on infringement for Universal.
Time might be able to tell whether this is a warning sign that Universal might be experiencing the early stages of a Sony style information technology compromise, a more mundane and common malware infection, or if this was some sort of misconfiguration on Universal's part, revealing that they participate in torrents to identify potential copyright infringers.
This incident highlights a present contradiction in the way that legal liability is handled on the internet. On one hand people are often being found liable for copyright violations based merely on their IP address having participated in a torrent. Google goes so far as to automatically forward demands and fines from copyright holders to their own customers without any actual legal process being involved. At the same time no one is being held liable in any jurisdiction for the millions of malconfigured WordPress installs, routers, and "Internet of Things" trash being used in denial of service attacks. In the situation where a limited commercial interest is threatened the barest evidence is seen to introduce liability even when malware unknown to the connection's subscriber may actually be the culprit seeding the torrent. Yet, in the situation where the very fabric and reliability of the Internet at large is threatened no one is given the prerogative to care that they are offering on open Denial of Service attack amplifier on their connection.
This hypocrisy is inherent in the fiat system and its arbitrary assignment of value. It leads to herds praising Matt Mullenweg as a sort of Internet saint preaching "Code is Poetry" while his signature hair ball of code ships by default with an open vector anyone can use to draw a WordPress install into participating in a Denial of Service attack. A vector he insists on leaving open because someone out there just might have some use for that exact behavior which isn't an attack. Various home router vendors similarly leave root exposed by default to the outside with common credentials available allowing the routers to be owned wholesale.
In a way the state of the fiat Internet mirrors the fiat state. It's moribund with diseases of its own creation. Spam to force you into Gmail, Denial of Service attacks to force you onto Cloudflare, and Copyright lawsuits to force Adobe Flash on to you. Fiat arbitrarity forced these problems into existence, and fiat arbitrarity forces the worst possible solutions for the problems that never needed to be. Universal seeding its movie to pirates, however it ended up doing so, reveal how fetid the decay is wrought on the Internet by the sores of the fiat regime.
Lol! Such win for teh empire of lulz.
A, ps : there is strictly no usecase for Automattic's ddos vector. Everything it does could be done correctly just as well. They do not wish to do it correctly, is all.
Don't you know WordPress is fueled by unadulterated possibility?
a present contradiction in the way that legal liability is handled on the internet.
This is correct. Legal liability has nothing to do with restitution; it is nothing more than a makework industry designed by lawyers. The State is the enforcement arm with its monopoly on violence, and its army of immune thugs as the troops.
The State deliberately forces these problems into existence through the creation of "law", and with its fiat money, acts as a constant destructive pressure on the market, distorting it, introducing friction and harming essentially every man on Earth.
The root problem is the State. Without it, the mass adoption of bad money would be less likely if not impossible, and its system of monopoly law, police and courts would never be accepted. In no other sphere is the root of a problem not sought, or off limits, but with the State and its infrastructure, this is exactly the case. People reflexively reject even the suggestion that the State is fundamentally illegitimate, or that its coercive functions can be replaced by market providers.
The question of wether or not the monopoly money of the State is impossible to replace has been answered now, thanks to Bitcoin. Justice and policing are next.
If you take away the ability of the state to control money and rob and swindle everyone for their own purpose, you take away its rotten 'justice' and policing. Once they have to abide by the market, they will only be able to do justice and policing if those with money legitimate it. Money underpins everything else. In other words, thanks to bitcoin you'll have a legitimate State, which may be quite different from the current fiat one, instead of a criminal gang exercising illegitimate power. This current illegitimacy stems from nothing else than their ability to issue and debase currency.