thanks for exploiting the commons
When I wonder if I should publish something in the cyberspace, I use a simple rule: nothing negative. Because cyberspace is a great reasoning box which amplify everything, especially negative contents. But today I’ll make a little exception to that rule for some prevailing feeling: Sadness.
We’ve already told you in a previous newsletter[1], France Identité (service to prove our Identity) have been impersonated in a phishing mail from their own domain. The two explanations are a) the target’s mail server have been badly setup or b) a vulnerability have been exploited at France Identité.
The interview I made for Le Parisien have been reused by some other journalists at Clubic [2], TF1 [3], Juriguide [4] and Cahiers Libres [5].
- https://www.clubic.com/actualite-541556-si-vous-recevez-cet-e-mail-de-france-identite-n-y-repondez-surtout-pas.html
- https://www.tf1info.fr/high-tech/france-identite-alerte-sur-une-campagne-de-phishing-utilisant-l-une-de-ses-adresses-mails-2330385.html
- https://www.juriguide.com/2024/10/30/alerte-france-identite-nouvelle-campagne-phishing-mail-ne-repondez-surtout-pas/
- https://cahierslibres.fr/alerte-phishing-en-france-ne-repondez-pas-a-ces-courriels-ils-pourraient-compromettre-votre-identite/6562/
None of them made any effort to contact us. Of course, it wasn’t mandatory or required and they have the right to uses those quotes (art. L122-5 of Code of Intellectual Property, point 3°b) but it makes me sad to see the social cohesion crumbling. A simple little mail “Hi, we’ve just use some quote of you in this article [link here], thanks” cost nothing but do so much good…
Perhaps that after having virtualised our relations through impersonal computer interfaces (i.e. market places such as Amazon, Vinted and alike), we’ve forgot how be in relation? That a pity because speaking to unknown make us happier [6] (more than by buying discounted knick-knack).
It’s almost the same for the roleplayers that organise our murder and mystery games. Some are kind enough to send us some good words (thanks to them), but lot of them never do. And some other ask their player for paiment (e.g. 25€ [7] or 30€ [8]) using our PDF published under CC BY-NC-SA (hint: NC stands for Non Commercial)…
- https://www.gdfl.be/convention-2024-les-aventuriers-de-la-cite-ardente-tome-10/
- https://allevents.in/mobile/amp-event.php?event_id=200023086544155
It’s not about the money involved (between 200 € and 300 € for the organisers) but compared to the price of our printed versions (25€ per scenario [9]) and you get the idea of how much have been saved to avoid saying thank you to the authors.
That’s why we stopped to publish such murder and mystery scenarios. Even if player enjoy them and organisers are happy to use them, so many energy spent (20 full time days per scenario) in order to be exploited, it dishearten.
One often speaks about the commons and what a beautiful and noble project it is. Lot of the times one forgots that behind every free work, stand a benevolant in Nebraska [10]. And without any fair compensation, the whole project is a triangle [11].
It’s even worst with generative AI. The freely accessible works
(whithout any free licence) are systematically looted to enrich
counterfied. Sold to clients accomplice. Without any
retribution to authors. Not even any thank you.
Some are complaining about the lost of quality in cyberspace content but do they support the creators? Our book’s PDF have been downloaded 7000 times in november, 21364 times the day we published it, and around 50 000 times since we published it in mid-september. The only content that have been downloaded more in 2024 is our RSS channel (366 000 times). How much have bought the printed book? 6 basic version and 1 community version (and we thank tham warmfully).
I understand that some of them are not interessed in a book that explain how to write shellcodes (even if it’s an excuse to explain some low level system principles). But we have more than 7 readers interested in this field if we look at the number of times our shellcodes are reused in cyberspace (in lectures, write ups and videos) and the answers we’ve got with a survey in 2020 (120 people said they were interested).
All this confirmed us to publish the ebook in Creative Commons at the same rate as the community edition is sold, and to propose a basic version for those who only want to thank us. It’ll take as long as it takes.