Virus writer charged with destroying property Japanese police have arrested a suspected virus writer over allegations he created and distributed an old-school virus that targeted freetards and destroyed data. Masato Nakatsuji, 27, from Osaka, allegedly created the "ika-tako" (squid-octopus) virus. The malware programmed to searched out and destroyed data files from file …
"So tell me how file sharers are freetards then?
the reg seems to be against p2p :/"
If the virus was seeded as ubuntu9.iso.exe then I agree wholeheartedly with you. However if it got seeded as avatar_1080p_proper.avi.exe then it was obviously targeting freetards.
Given the stated intent of the miscreant was "to punish filesharers" then I'm confident it got seeded masquerading as popular copyrighted content, and therefore was in fact targeting freetards, and not perfectly legal file sharers of non-copyrighted, freely distributable content ;)
This idiot is basically doing what some idiot US senator proposed a couple of years ago. I'm pretty sure that the *AA's would do exactly that if they could; in fact, they might be doing it already. P2P is a surefire way to get all kinds of crap, which is why I have restricted P2P to a VM.
But truly, I'd expect this from a big media company, not from a jackass virus writer. Destroying personal files, "pirated" or not is a no-no. Jail him!
...that somebody previously convicted for copyright infringement all of a sudden claims to be so hot-and-wired about it that he wants to "punish" other infringers by his virus.
<rant>On basic principles, I regard any software that flies false colours and installs itself on any machine I own or control (as its primary user and/or administrator) without notifying me first -- and giving me an easy option to prevent the installation -- as malware, no matter how well-intended the software may be.
People who write such software, or cause such software to be written and/or distributed (certain executives at Sony come to mind...) should be committed to gaol for no less than the number of years equal to the number of computer users whose rights they have thereby infringed. Make that a French or Turkish gaol.
</rant>
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