> If you report a minor robbery to the police in any large American city and you aren't a public figure, there is functionally a 0% chance of them following up on it much less solving it.
I have known people that had stolen things returned because the police found the items while investigating/arresting the thief for other crimes. It seems foolish to not bother with filing a report just because they aren't actively investigating every report they receive.
I think "partnership" seems like too strong a word for what appears to be the simple use of an affiliate program. Why would OneRep know or care about an individual affiliate and the content of their site, as long as their behavior with regards to the affiliate program is above-board?
Affiliate programs have application processes intended to filter out bad actors and mis-alignment with a brand. To use an extreme example, a web site promoting terrorism would typically be rejected. Approving data brokers as affiliate partners for a data broker removal service is viewed by many as questionable. To use an another extreme example, how would you feel about an anti-virus software company that approved as affiliate partners creators and distributors of computer virus programs.
It's just a Hacker News convention to include the year in parentheses if the article isn't freshly published. It doesn't have anything to do with the content of the article itself.
There's a distinction between trademark and copyright, and the ability to imply a Disney source and to include Mickey in your work are not controlled in the same way. Using the 1928 Mouse in your work while making it clear your work doesn't originate with Disney wouldn't violate trademark law.
that would first of all take a lot of work to make it absolutely clear, a lot of work to use the mouse, and finally a lot of work to fight the lawsuits until it was established that you didn't violate and could do what you were doing.
In short nobody but a crazy person or someone with a real deep artistic need that absolutely required that version of Mickey to work would ever pursue it.
OK, yeah I remember seeing that - not seeing the film but seeing it existed. On the other hand that is understood as a property that originally was not Disney.
I think as well Disney protection of its characters might be a more ingrained than just normal copyright protectionism - Walt was notoriously a bastard to anyone who messed around with not treating Mickey with the respect he deserved.
I'm working on a "Pedophile Willy" adaptation of Steamboat Willy, complete with raw (stick figure) sex scenes and Willy promoting the "pedophile lifestyle".
That's almost the most infuriating thing about their copyright grabs; it hardly even gets them anything of interest. They're not making any money on the actual Steamboat Willie movie. We're still a ways away from anything of even modest commercial interest from Disney entering the public domain, and even when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs does finally come into public domain, I can't imagine it meaningfully affects their bottom line. The ability to roll into a store and just buy it isn't going to meaningfully affect Disney. Meanwhile, they still have all the trademark control, which itself means you can't really do anything to Steamboat Willie that would "offend" Disney. (I'm going to just leave that vague for now.)
Meanwhile, to keep this at-best modestly interesting historical film locked up for those last few marginal drops of IP, they've kept the entire rest of the culture locked up. Hell of a cost society pays just for that. I'd almost rather we just grant Disney copyright in perpetuity if it would shut them up and leave the rest of the culture alone.
> even when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs does finally come into public domain, I can't imagine it meaningfully affects their bottom line.
Given that Disney is infamous for its practice of rereleasing its older films periodically and otherwise making them completely unavailable (the "Disney Vault"), it seems that they have a business model which is fully predicated on copyright exclusivity.
Yes, obviously, there's someone buying it when they release it. But even in Marvel's current anemic state I doubt sales of Snow White reaches even .1% of the revenue from The Marvels, a single movie. Their revenue on direct sales of stuff about to go public domain is a rounding error, and nowhere near enough to justify locking up the entire rest of the nation's culture just for that.
Further evidence that it must not be that big a deal is that the Mouse seems to have finally relented and doesn't seem to be lobbying for more extensions anymore.
> Meanwhile, to keep this at-best modestly interesting historical film locked up
Well, it's not just the film, it's also everything in it, including (that design of) the characters themselves. When that enters the public domain, anyone can use (that design of) those characters for any purpose, including in their own works that have nothing to do with the Steamboat film. I can go make a platforming video game ala Cuphead using those characters and sell it. While I think that's a good thing for society, you can probably understand why Disney doesn't.
Those characters are trademarked, and Disney has a good case that they are still using those trademarks. Trademark is different from copyright - it doesn't expire, but also has more use it or lose it parts, along with defend it or lose it. Disney is doing both with most of the characters so if you try to use Micky mouse in anything you are likely to lose a lawsuit.
Consult a lawyer for exact details. there are things you can do with the characters after this expires, but the rules are very complex and I don't really understand them.
I would be unsurprised Disney has skeletal outlines of lawsuits in place already asserting that uses of Mickey Mouse from Steamboat Willie in an unrelated video game or something violates their trademark, and are just waiting to fill in the blank for the first person audacious enough to do it.
I kind of expect them to win that. But maybe they won't. Still, I wouldn't touch Mickey with anything less than the metaphorical ten foot pole and a really, really solidly constructed LLC or other corporate structure isolating it from any other asset I care about.
Note I am limiting this to just things they have clear trademark to. Grab the steamboat itself and do as you like. The soundtrack will be up for grabs. But I wouldn't expect to be able to defend myself in a trademark suit with the claim that the Mickey Mouse I used is not copyrighted; I expect the counterargument will basically "Yeah, but who cares? This is a trademark lawsuit".
> That's almost the most infuriating thing about their copyright grabs; it hardly even gets them anything of interest. They're not making any money on the actual Steamboat Willie movie.
It's not about making money from Steamboat Willie, it's about preventing others from enjoying it without a monetary transaction happening. I'm sure if they could, Disney would rather destroy all copies of a work they weren't making money from than release them for free. Look at game companies fighting against people distributing abandonware. It's not about the value of that particular good--it's about the value of the other things they are trying to sell, and not letting customers get something for nothing.
"The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country."
I would say your comment is most definitely rude, especially the part where you reduce the reason for the text to two options, neither of which are very flattering. Incidentally, it seems like neither of your given reasons are accurate either.
You could have gotten the same idea across by saying something like "This is a visual project so I feel like it should include more screenshots in the main description" and leaving the insulting assumptions out entirely.
Thats not my main point, though - my point is that this rambling text doesnt work as a readme, for me, and i feel its much too long and has little content for the amount of text
The individual example videos are nearly 1080p (1024 height) and they look pretty good to me. There is some glitchiness on the hands but it's very minor and could definitely be fixed easily in post-production or through further refinements. In fact, if you play the high resolution videos and pause at random points, it's hard to even find a frame where there are extra fingers, though there are a few.
Not necessarily 'unjustly vilified', but most of Edgar Hoover's biography were done before the extend on soviet spying in the US was declassified. It talked about a very interesting podcast on a previous comment [1].
For example, Harry Truman, and his sacking of MacArthur. Now that there's been more info released regarding Army biowarfare programs in the late 40s/early 50s, recruitment of the Japanese specialists immediately after WW2, etc...
So what's the story with these seemingly unrelated, but very serious, bugs being found at the same time? Was this the result of a security audit or were three bugs of this magnitude really discovered spontaneously?
For a more serious answer though, they just got acquired. Definitely a possibility that they were holding back on announcing bugs out of fear of harming the acquisition.
If php_info is really as dangerous as this article makes it out to be these ‘vulnerabilities’ would be rather easy to scan for.
I think it’s time for a debate though what information is considered secret and what isn’t, and have php_info not reveal the information that is secret and the applications not store their secrets in a location that is not secret.
> Could you enlighten us? How does one launder money through some iOS apps?
You use stolen credit cards to purchase the app. It's a very common method of fraud and does not require a criminal mastermind or a group of people to perform.
I have no opinion on what happened in this particular case, but it's crazy to imply that nobody is doing this stuff.
How would you get the money you possess and want to launder on the stolen credit card? That more sounds like a method to extract money from stolen credit cards, but not a valid way to launder money.
It sounds like you have no idea what money laundering actually is, to be honest. Money laundering is concealing the source of illegally obtained money.
You use stolen credit cards to buy gift cards (or just defraud people to obtain gift cards). This is dirty money.
You pay it to yourself on the App Store by getting an app listed and buying it. Apple then deposits money (minus their 30% cut) in your bank account, which is clean money.
The stolen CCs are not part of the laundering (that's just fraud/theft). I think it's easier to talk about laundering cash from drug sales. You buy an Apple Gift card with the cash. Use the gift card to buy jewels in an app you control, and now you have cleaned your drug money.
The challenge with doing this at scale on the App Store is the account requirement. Apple also likely has controls on how many gift cards you can redeem over a period of time. You also need an app that looks plausibly functional. The amount of money people supposedly spend on gems or whatever will help though.
"this suspension by Apple couldn't be due to Apple catching them laundering money"
because
"this isn't money laundering"
because
"if someone laundered money this way, they would get caught"?
Do you not understand that you just destroyed your own argument?
And I have inside knowledge that you're wrong at least much of the time. This particular case, I have no idea, but extremely competent teams inside FAANG believe that there are many billions of dollars of attempted money laundering of this form, that they catch and stop.
Money laundering is not "making money through illicit means" as many people confuse it with. Money laundering is the act of concealing that money, so that it becomes clean money in the face of any curious observer. They often go hand in hand but they are different things.
An example, you have 1M cash but you need it in your bank account, because you want to buy a house or a car or groceries. If you just go to your bank with 1M in a briefcase a lot of people are going to ask you "where did that money came from?". But if you do ???? and you have a legit (or legit enough) excuse for that, you may get away with it and now you can use your money and people think you're a mastermind entrepreneur or something.
There's a reason why the first money launderers were laundromats and similar businesses, anything with plausible cash flow, because then you can go to the bank and tell them "I just run a very successful laundry business, and that's why I have a big bunch of $10 and $20 bills, some of them may have a bit of blood in them, though". Much more complex ways exist but the gist of it is this.
If you take legit money from someone's bank account, move it through Apple, then send it to Chile(?), then take it out(?) that's literally the opposite of what you'd like to achieve, hence why this argument is so absurd.
> Money laundering is not "making money through illicit means"
This is correct.
> Money laundering is the act of concealing that money, so that it becomes clean money in the face of any curious observer
This is the middle step, layering. Before that is placement, introducing the funds into the financial system; after, integration, withdrawing clean money.
Here, stealing the credit cards is the original crime. That per se is not money laundering. Running them is analogous to placement. Mixing those stolen numbers with people who legitimately forgot to cancel their subscriptions is layering. Getting a bank deposit from Apple: integration. (Banks won't question deposits from Apple.) That process, altogether, is absolutely money laundering.
The stolen credit cards are actually irrelevant. If the developer's dirty sources need to layer their funds, they can subscribe to the app and have it laundered for a meagre 30% haircut. Do that across a number of assumed identities and it's a decent cottage money-laundering operation.
> it almost always involves putting cash into a bank account
It very rarely does anymore. Certainly not at scale.
>it almost always involves putting cash into a bank account
Yeah, I edited my comment shortly after but you were already writing this probably.
Only an observation, it almost always starts as money flowing into a bank account, though.
>If the developer's dirty sources need to layer their funds, they can subscribe to the app and have it laundered for a meagre 30% haircut.
No, because you cannot pay for apps with cash. If you already have cash into a bank account somewhere in the world then ... you most likely don't have the need to conceal it anymore. Buy shitcoin, send it to a tax haven, whatever, why would you make it dirty again by sending it to (of all damn options) Apple. Lol.
> If you already have cash into a bank account somewhere in the world then ... you most likely don't have the need to conceal it anymore
This is where you’re going repeatedly wrong. Most money laundering doesn’t involve cash.
If you embezzle funds, or defraud an investor, you wind up with dirty money in a bank account. While it’s there, it’s hot. You could do the crypto trade, but you’d still be in a position of holding cash (even in a tax haven, depositing loads of cash is expensive) and/or having a tainted account.
Running it through Apple yields a bank account tied to a developer entity that receives deposits from Apple. You can leave your money in that account without too many worries for extended periods of time, and produce KYC receipts to wary counterparties when asked to. That’s valuable.
A (stolen) credit card isn't cash. The whole operation here is to turn someone else's credit line into usable funds.
But also, why would sending funds to Apple make them dirty? That doesn't make sense—as GP pointed out, sending funds to Apple so that Apple sends those funds back to you is what makes the money clean. It's the difference between depositing $50k in your bank account from a drug deal and getting a $50k direct deposit from Apple's developer program. The latter won't raise a single eyebrow.
>sending funds to Apple so that Apple sends those funds back to you is what makes the money clean
No, because it is extremely easy for anyone to see that these funds came from an illegal activity, Apple would just say "these were stolen credit cards" within hours of it happening. That's the literal opposite of concealing the origin of money.
I check GitHub's Trending page for Python projects every day or so. I was a little confused why this repo was trending today, particularly because the note at the top indicates that a lot of the services patched the exploit long ago.
It's interesting to see that this being posted here on Hacker News is presumably enough to push the GitHub repo to the trending page for Python.
I have known people that had stolen things returned because the police found the items while investigating/arresting the thief for other crimes. It seems foolish to not bother with filing a report just because they aren't actively investigating every report they receive.