Heroes and Pirates

My favorite new tv show for this season’s got to be Heroes. It’s a story about certain individuals who, during the course of the series, discovers that they possess special abilities. It’s an eclectic mix of characters: the naïve Japanese drone who can teleport, the addict who can paint the future, the invincible cheerleader, the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde “like” mom, the dedicated cop who can hear thoughts, and the idealistic kid brother who, like his ‘kuya’, could fly. On the surface, IMO, it’s a revival of the X-Men plot. But who doesn’t like X-Men? (Personally, I know no one who fits this category.) I think for the most part, our fascination with this type of story is the seemingly remote possibility that anyone of us, mere mortals, can possess such awesome abilities and be able to save the world. (Not too shabby, huh?)

Not too long ago, cable tv was the only medium that allowed us to watch American, British and other imported tv shows. And usually, they’re shown a season later or, if you’re lucky, just several episodes later. DVD copies of tv shows were just too darn expensive and hard to find. But that was before the dawn of Bit torrents.

Bit Torrent is the name of a peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution protocol, and is the name of a free software implementation of that protocol. Users only need to download their desired torrent and open it with a Bit Torrent client, e.g., BitComet, Azureus, uTorrent, etc.. As an innovation, Bit Torrent is an excellent distribution network for digital materials. Many users declare that only by using BitTorrent technology, with its dramatically reduced demands on networking hardware and bandwidth, could they afford to distribute and share their files.

However, the current stigma around Bit Torrent is that bit torrent is all about piracy. There are innumerable torrent sites in the Internet today which provide torrents for copyrighted and licensed materials. Torrents for music, software, film and videos, games and any other media type are aplenty online. Not to mention that it doesn’t take a genius to use bit torrents.

And while Section 33(b) of the E-Commerce Act provides that piracy or the unauthorized copying, reproduction, dissemination, distribution, storage, uploading, downloading, communication, making available to the public, electronic signature or copyrighted works including legally protected recordings and phonograms or information material on protected works, through the use of telecommunication networks, such as, but not limited to, the internet, in a manner that infringes intellectual property rights, shall be penalized by fine and/or imprisonment, I wonder if the Philippines is fully equipped to implement this particular provision. Undoubtedly, downloading an episode of Heroes through bit torrent is a violation of the aforementioned section. But does the NBI or the agency tasked to monitor such violations possess the sophisticated equipment and enough manpower to completely put the fear of god to all amateur pirates out there?

That remains to be seen.

Cybercrime and the Trojan Horse

My pc caught a Trojan horse virus today. Trojan horse. Witty. I’ll give it that. But since it’s my computer that was infected, I can’t say I appreciate the humor of calling it after the Greek gift/trap. I’m no computer geek, so it’s very very frustrating when my pc gets any kind of virus. The technical mumbo jumbo of computers leaves me glassy-eyed and dumbfounded. No matter how simple it is to take out, I get nervous at the idea that my computer has a virus lurking somewhere, ready to wreak some form of havoc. And I get even more nervous when I realize I don’t know what to do. Although I think my computer is fine now after having Googled for a remedy, I wasted the whole day searching the net for some answers to my problem and following whatever advise I thought would help cure my ailing computer.

Almost everyone has experienced having his or her computer infected with a virus. In an internet forum, one guy revealed that he got it several times a week and it was routine for him to purge his computer of these buggers. This is something that, for years since the emergence of the internet, we’ve had to deal with. We’ve been so used to these viruses that we don’t automatically see virus dissemination as a criminal offense. Yes, it is offensive. But a crime? We easily associate crime with traditional ways of committing theft, fraud, assault, and other illegal activities, wherein direct physical contact is present between the offender and the complainant. A virus seems too petty or commonplace to have to relate to crime, not to mention that those who instigate this are nameless faceless strangers whom an ordinary person would find hard to track. So we tend to dismiss it as simply part of the risks of owning a computer. Once we find that our computer is infected, the first thing we do is look for a solution: maybe ask a friend for help, get a virus scan or call a computer technician. If we lose some data in the process, then it’s just too bad. We get on with our lives. We don’t go reporting to the police of a crime committed against us, even though it is a violation of one’s property rights as it involves unauthorized access to our property – the computer.

Although we now have Republic Act 8792, also known as the E-Commerce Act of 2000 (thank you, “love bug”), which penalizes such conduct and a cybercrime law in the works, availing the law to bring the hacker to justice is still too bothersome for many internet users who are victims of these viruses. Unless the virus is such that it infects a great number of computers, whether in a national or global scale, to the point of destroying many files and programs and impairing business or government productivity – as in the case of the high-profile “I love you” virus – victims would not turn to the law for help. In the first place, problems of identity (of the offender), jurisdiction, criminal investigation and enforcement arise when addressing this crime under the law. Since cybercrime law is relatively a new field, there are many loopholes in the legal process which require much study and discussion. Until we come up with the proper rules and procedures to adequately and effectively set an environment that can promote security in online communication, users would have to rely on themselves and make do with remedies that are readily available.

Let’s just hope I’m virus-free for the next couple of months.