South Korea Passes Bill to Directly Punish Hack Makers | Hacker News Reader

South Korea Passes Bill to Directly Punish Hack Makers

pvplive.net

146 pointskbwt131 comments

>While the bans have stopped some players from playing, it's good to know that they will have the weapons they need to fight back with the backing of the Korean government.

In what world is getting a 5 year prison sentence for aimbotting a "good" thing?

This law's goal is to go after the people creating these tools, not the ones using them.

Ok. I'll rephrase:

In what world is getting a 5 year prison sentence for writing an aimbot a "good" thing?

In a world where a lot of money is made in the gaming industry?

How is this different than making security research or even third party mods illegal?

Rather than adding legal penalties that can be wielded at will by companies for less-than-moral purposes (protecting customer-negative revenue streams), they can spend more improving their netcode. Catapults and outlaws, etc.

From the article (I can't read Korean): > Based on this law, manufacturing and distributing programs that are not allowed by the game company and its Terms of Service is now directly illegal. That would include [...] or anything not allowed by the ToS.

In no world, except in HN bizzaro world where apologists justify anything a state does by saying..."in the US blaahbalah can already blahaha"

Cheat making isn't a some hobbyist in a basement. Cheat sellers make tens of millions of dollars per year. It's a big business. And one that actively harms another business (the game). For all players. Even non-professionals.

Perhaps in some cases but can this be really true? I've never heard of a "paid" cheat.

Just google something like "buy CSGO cheats", they are out there for all major games.

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=buy+CSGO+cheats

http://www.artificialaiming.net/

Those guys have been around for over a decade. There are many more like them. I'm not sure which services are popular these days.

It's huge business and very hard to fight. counter-strike hacks can retail for 60+ dollars. You can even download the hack for trial periods and they have customer service. It's not as innocent as one would think.

The problem is that the lines can get pretty blurry. A long time ago there were transparent hacks for everquest[1] that did packet sniffing, and displayed the information in a friendly UI. So is wireshark a hacking tool? Hard to say.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2534061.stm

That's even worse. The guy writing the script might just be having some fun. He's not the one cheating.

Breaking an old BASIC game was how I got into programming. If I did the same thing in Korea now, I could face 5 years in prison.

This will push tinkerers towards open source games and away from commercial ones, which is a good thing for all involved.

This is what happens when you have irritating people who just won't be quiet about something completely inane or awkward.

Sometimes you get an impatient government intervention that attempts to render silence upon a non-issue, as quickly and ham-fistedly as possible.

The motivation for absurd, paternalistic government intervention could find it's source in nepotism, cronyism, or a simply an unexpected groundswell of headache inducing tattle-tales.

The nature of the non-issue will inform you about who is capable of gaining the government's ear. In this case their are people getting mad about video games, who are savvy about government process, somehow.

> In this case their are people getting mad about video games, who are savvy about government process, somehow.

I think this is overlooking just how important video games are to S. Koreans.

To me, I see it not much different than this http://www.dw.com/en/germanys-anti-doping-law-comes-into-for...

In a world where e-sports is a massive enough part of a country's economy that messing with the integrity of it will hurt a large number of people.

(Not saying this is actually the case, but that is a theoretical world where this would be okay)

That's silly. It's the same logic that got us criminal sentences in the DMCA for copyright violations, since movies, music, and television are a massive part of the American economy.

Federal sentences for bank robbery are 5-10 years.

I mean, bank robbery directly affects $X. It is more difficult to determine how much money is "stolen" when someone violates copyright law, but ultimately if it is more than $X why shouldn't the sentencing be on par with or more than that of bank robbery?

Because a bank robbery is a robbery, not mere theft. In a robbery, you make a credible threat to use force against another human being. That's hopefully still worse than stealing $x.

You would have other charges added in addition to the actual taking of the money which related to how threatening you were at the time of the robbery. I'm saying the actually robbery charges being on par with distributing copyright content and ultimately taking money out of the pockets of the content creators are, at the end of the day, both the same if the same amount of money is taken.

A bank robbery still has about as much in common with copyright violation as with pirating actual ships. I am not threatening anyone when committing copyright violations

A much more convincing argument could be made that theft and copyright violations are the same. Buy theft has quite low punishments (at least in California).

..if that argument were not destroyed by the Supreme Court many years ago. Infringement is not theft, no matter how much big businesses want to equivocate the two in people's minds.

Unauthorized use or reproduction is not theft, as it does not deprive or interfere with use of the original copy.

Stealing your furniture is theft. Taking a look at your furniture, and carving another set exactly like it is copyright infringement.

>It is more difficult to determine how much money is "stolen" when someone violates copyright law

You may violently disagree with this, but if you're struggling to figure out at least a lower bound for how much damage might have been done, the answer is probably "almost none".

I mean if it helps you sleep at night after you pirate a bunch of stuff sure, but ultimately there are people out there who want a digital thing and have the money to buy it. Some percentage of those people pirate the thing and money is lost for the content creator.

Of course this is the incentive that is ultimately at work. It's the same reason referees who point-shave a basketball game will go to federal prison instead of just getting fired.

You'd get jail time in the US for selling steroids, making devices for cheating at casino games or fixing the outcome of sporting events.

E-sports are serious business in South Korea. The Korea e-Sports Association is operated by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and affiliated to the Korean Olympic Committee. E-sports have had serious problems with cheating, match fixing and illegal gambling. We're not talking about some niche hobby, but a significant part of the Korean economy.

I don't necessarily agree with this decision, but I think that it's unfair to characterise it as petty or draconian. The integrity of sport is a precious thing that needs protection. You might see an aimbot as the moral equivalent of a patch, but a professional e-sports player might see it as equivalent to a vial of steroids or a credit card skimmer.

There's a very fine line between cheating at a game and outright fraud.

> You'd get jail time in the US for selling steroids,

which cause bodily harm..

> making devices for cheating at casino games

which cause financial fraud

> or fixing the outcome of sporting events.

same as above.

Cheating in an every day game does not benefit you financially or cause harm to other human beings. If this law was limited to eSport tournaments then I can see it being effective.

You also have to accept that not every gamer in Korea is a professional.

How is cheating an a professional game ('esport') not equivalent to financial fraud when cheating in an other professional game (physical sport) is?

The parent is saying that it is in professional games, but that that doesn't mean it requires legislation making cheating in all games explicitly illegal. Penalties in sports are commonly enforced primarily through the organisations running the sport, and only some offenses even involve actual law. If you cause someone financial harm, it's very likely already illegal.

Match-fixing in professional games is clearly fraud, that doesn't mean that letting your friend win because it is his birthday should be prosecutable.

I'd personally be okay with making cheating in multiplayer games illegal (it's purely antisocial behavior that causes real financial harm and has no legitimate reason to exist), but prosecuting people who write code is beyond the pale.

"Foul on the shot"

"Oh, that wasn't a foul"

"Yes it was"

"Are you going to make a federal case about this?"

"Yes. Yes I am."

Cheating in physical sport is not fraud unless done with the intent to fix an outcome. Similarly, cheating is not always necessary to fix an outcome, but the penalty is the same.

In small amounts steroids have not been shown to cause harm. They are even prescribed by doctors to people like cancer patients who are in remission to help regrow muscle after they get off chemo.

Of course there are people who abuse them, but then that could be said of pretty much anything. Should we also ban fizzy drinks, doughnuts and grandma's apple pie because of type 2 diabetes?

Also, selling and taking steroids isn't illegal. I don't know where that's coming from. Purchasing or selling scheduled steroids without a Rx is what's illegal.

I guess you could get really technical. Cholesterol is a steroid.

Or you could just infer they are talking about controlled anabolic steroids without a prescription.

Yeah, this isn't really comparably to pro sports such as NFL players taking steroids or cheating at a casino. It's more analogous to cheating in your friendly Sunday company softball game and getting 5 years in prison. I also agree that it makes sense for professional sports, but is absurd for casual players.

I hate cheaters in video games, just not enough that I think they should be jailed. Cheating at an event with a monetary reward though...

You don't get jail time for running a bat-corking company, or for making hockey sticks with "illegal" curves, or for deflating footballs, or for building a stock car that intentionally doesn't meet NASCAR standards.

I don't see how this is any different. People are going to cheat. They should get punished for cheating. If that cheating involves fraud, they should face charges for fraud. But it should not be illegal to drill a hole in a baseball bat and fill the void with ground-up bouncy balls.

This raises a question, if anyone in Korea knows it would be good to find out; is this law a strict liability law or does it require mens rea?

I doubt we'll see stories of people making botting tools getting jail time in Korea but the fact that there is a mechanism where they could get jail time, it makes the rule enforceable.

The situation is you have people who break the rules and profit from that, you have enforcers who know who the people are who are breaking the rules but don't have a practical method for controlling them. So this gives them a bigger stick to threaten the bot makers with and presumably they will back down and try some other way to subvert the system that doesn't have the risk of jail time.

The big challenge is that they don't want to turn of players who are paying a subscription revenue but they don't want players that cheat either. If they can make it harder to cheat they hope to keep the revenue and reduce the cheating. Otherwise they ban players which reduces the cheating and reduces the revenue.

My own opinion is that finding the equivalent of shadow banning for these game players would be much more interesting. Back when I was playing World of Warcraft it was suggested that Blizzard might implement a way of adjusting the odds of reward for cheating players against them and in favor of people who were not cheating. That being a more subtle way of making cheating less beneficial and moving people away from it.

"The integrity of sport is a precious thing that needs protection. You might see an aimbot as the moral equivalent of a patch, but a professional e-sports player might see it as equivalent to a vial of steroids or a credit card skimmer."

I guess it depends on the details. As another commenter stated, it might make sense for professional e-sports. If you are cheating say on a ranked pub, then may be it matters but I wouldn't go as far as indict people on criminal charges. But the way it is stated in the article seems like you can go much further than that and even harm one's private usage of a program. It's like going to jail for playing cards with your buddies in your home but taking a suit out for whatever reason. I hope there are sensible exceptions but this sounds pretty draconian.

I didn't see anything in the article about punishing players - it's the people coding cheat software they're going after. I don't know how that's going to work, given the Internet is international, but anyway, that seems to be the idea.

> You'd get jail time in the US

This is Korea, but regarding the US:

> for selling steroids

Not if you're a doctor or if the steroids you sell aren't scheduled. There are plenty of legal methods for obtaining steroids. Even for performance enhancement reasons. The laws at play here are only concerned with illegal distribution and possession.

> making devices for cheating at casino games

This appears false: http://www.blackjackcomputers.com/ My guess would be that you only get into legal trouble if you actively tamper with gambling machines.

> or fixing the outcome of sporting events

What about the WWF? I would imagine any laws have to do with the application of gambling regulations and not the sport itself.

Using a card-counting computer at a blackjack table in a licensed casino would be illegal in Nevada under NRS 465.075 ("Use or possession of device, software or hardware to obtain advantage at playing game prohibited"). I've never seen a restriction on manufacturing the device itself.

Right.

This is hardly novel. Plenty of secondary activities are also crimes. In most places in the US, possession of burglar's tools is illegal. Contributory copyright infringement is when somebody "with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes, or materially contributes". Conspiracy to commit a crime is just speech, but it is still a crime.

Gaming is something that a) a lot of people care about, and b) is big business. People manufacturing and distributing cheating tools harms that. The whole purpose of the law is to prevent societal harm, and a great deal of law is about eliminating parasitic activity to keep systems healthy. E.g., with the adoption of electronic communication, we had to invent wire fraud laws to keep up.

When it was just us coding in our basements, we could pretend that software was harmless. But as software eats the world, our work becomes just as important and meaningful as people working with atoms. We want the world to take software seriously, but that doesn't happen half way. We can take credit for serious benefits, but we also have to take responsibility for the serious harm.

"The punishment? A maximum of 5 years jail time or $43,000 in fines (50 million KRW). "

...

"it's good to know that they will have the weapons they need to fight back with the backing of the Korean government. "

Is it only me that thinks this law takes things way too far ?

> Is it only me that thinks this law takes things way too far ?

No, this law is bat-shit insane.

You don't go to jail for modifying your car, computer or mobile phone so the reach of this law is insanely over the top.

You are however breaking the law for making illegal/unsafe modifications to your car, mobile phone; probably not your computer though.

I think it's fair to make it illegal to utilise modifications during competitive play that involves making money - it's basically a form of fraud to cheat in those circumstances.

However, if you want to mod/hack a game for your own personal enjoyment then that absolutely seems reasonable.

Or perhaps like taking performance-enhancing drugs as an Olympian. But you just get disqualified from the games not thrown in jail.

Arguably though it's sabotaging the experience for other players which can be thought of as damages to the company directly.

There's a number of countries with legislation passed or pending (Germany is one) to criminalize doping. Marion Jones spent time in prison for it here in the US (though her case was linked to check fraud too, and that's likely what made her go to jail instead of getting off with community service)

In that context doping is considered damaging to the country's reputation (to my other point) and should be deemed illegal. Or at least until biological enhancements become widespread and the games become too ordinary. :)

>it's basically a form of fraud to cheat in those circumstances.

Yes, and there are already anti-fraud laws to handle this case. The law sounds more like a PR stunt to promote SK as the "e-sports capital" of the world.

I don't see any reason whatsoever why breaking a private agreement between you and a company should be criminally punishable. There's contract law that handles these kinds of things - and no one needs to go to prison there.

>like a PR stunt to promote SK as the "e-sports capital" of the world.

Sounds more like it will achieve the opposite of positive PR.

The "state" has no place in regulating competitive video games by use of force. Already in place no doubt was the ability of the state to enforce private party contracts. But, bringing the state into the mix... that's like saying the state, i.e. the citizens, have some standing in every such contract/instance. This is bad,

Civil penalties would be fair. Any criminal penalties, such as jail time, are insane.

Not only that, but this goes directly against cheat developers. Cheat development is pretty interesting stuff from a reverse engineering perspective. Cheat developers also have in the past caught anti-cheat companies doing some very invasive shit, like taking screenshots of your desktop or sending your process list to their servers. And depending on how exactly they legislate that, it may also impact other reverse engineering projects like private servers, malware, security research, etc.

I definitely don't think a blanket ban like this is at all appropriate.

That also means a lot of good stuff might not be legal as well. Like unofficial servers (even for games that are not longer officially supported), or mods?

I hope other countries won't follow this regulations.

So any violation of the ToS is now illegal? Has anyone read Apple's or Google's ToS lately?

Yes, a violation of the terms of service (TOS) is a crime now in South Korea, but it's worse, if a right is not provided in writing that it's explicitly reserved; meaning if you do anything that's not forbidden, but also not explicitly approved, you are a criminal.

Is that what the law says, any violation of TOS? I can't read Korean so I couldn't read the linked amendment and the article didn't go into much detail.

>> "Based on this law, manufacturing and distributing programs that are not allowed by the game company and its Terms of Service is now directly illegal."

Very possible that's not what the law says, but it is what's stated in the linked news article.

So basically corporations are directly making laws in South Korea now, which really seems to be the final goal of a process that's already happening in other countries, including the US. Perhaps we're really going to get those "corporate governments" we see in some dystopian sci-fi books and shows/movies.

Maybe, though it's also more commonly lazy governance mixed with inactive citizens in a democracy; South Korea is a democracy.

Well there's massive protests going on to oust their president.

http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/massive-protests-against...

Protesting is a lazy expression of self interest, done in massive, etc.

Taking the time to independently form and express a legally enforceable position takes substantial and ongoing effort.

Generally speaking if you were to take a group of protesters and separate them and have them express the their concerns, related reasoning, their desired change, and expected outcomes... you would get non-sense.

You would not get nonsense, you would get emotional charge. Emotions can easily overpower thought-process. Because of this, emotional charge is the de facto force of social change.

Apparently Samsung is 24% of South Korea's GDP. That can't be healthy.

I guess that'd make LG responsible for around another 12%. Definitely doesn't seem healthy.

Oh please. Corporations are blameless here. Its in Govt nature to try to control every part of life and most of the time, succeed.

>Perhaps we're really going to get those "corporate governments" we see in some dystopian sci-fi books and shows/movies.

Ever seen a movie called "The Network". It is quite old, 1976. You should see it.

You should at least see this scene, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxiT30N6ti4

Then it is time for the people of south korea to throw away proprietary software and use only open source software licensed under ISC and the likes.

>Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

>THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

Unless terms of service start getting a lot more specific, this sounds harmful even to the gaming industry.

The status quo is that the TOS of most online games just have a blanket ban on anything that modifies the game experience, but in practice enforce this very selectively. Basically the players develop software and then the game publisher decides whether the software is acceptable. An aimbot probably isn't, something that logs the ingame chat probably is, in between there is a huge gray area to explore.

But if the worst punishment for a misstep isn't an account ban but five years in jail, people might think twice about developing anything for that games community. On that front, everybody loses.

This is a good thing.

The less programmers work for free on proprietary game systems, the more they can work on open source games, where they don't face criminal charges and where their work enriches everybody, instead of a specific corporation.

Be honest brother, hardly anyone plays open source games and they aren't up to par with proprietary games. Proprietary games have had similar issues (although without a jail sentence) forever and the 20 quake-likes out there have existed forever but the communities that play them are still a niche.

Except the programmers working in this case work directly against the interests of the creators, and players, of those games.

So the hackers are driven away from working on Counterstrike so they can ruin my Sauerbraten game instead? Fantastic! /s

So coercive legal action against modders is a good thing because... Open Source?

Allegedly this was the incident that prompted the creation of the amendment: https://www.akshonesports.com/2016/12/south-korean-police-bu...

BRB, making a games company in South Korea that prohibits Korean localized software in it's TOS unless unless our company gets a 5% cut of profits.

Some people on the thread (most of whom did not read the article) are reacting like people's rights are being violated here. It's the other way around. There's been a lot of commotion lately about how online games are being ruined by cheats and aimbots. It's impossible for game makers to keep up. It should be illegal to make or distribute cheats for online games for the same reason it should be illegal to shit in a water fountain: you're not just modifying your stuff, you're ruining it for everybody else.

It should be illegal to pollute a water supply, but really, we can find another water fountain which isn't soiled. A law seems heavy handed, as it does here to protect the narrow interest of online gamers.

The way I see it, this looks more like an attempt by the video game industry to pass the cost of preventing cheating to the taxpayers.

Wow this will give even non-libertarians a pause.

This law makes it illegal to create arseholes that can shit in water fountains.

Not shitting in water fountains.

How is this law going to help when the hack developers can simply operate in another country to evade the law?

It might actually rejuvenate the underground community as it triages the new limitations.

I'm really opposed to making writing something a crime.

Translation of https://imgur.com/a/jzQQm

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this may be an inaccurate translation for legal purposes. Talk to a lawyer.

Left panel:

9. The act of creating, distributing, offering or brokering game material [sic; note that it doesn't say software]

10. The act of creating or distributing computer programs or instruments for the purpose of illegal activities outlined in Article 9

Right panel:

Article 44: Punishment

Any person who meet the criteria below will be punished with prison not exceeding 5 years or a fine not exceeding 50 million won.

A lot of people here seem to misunderstand the nature of the hacks that these laws are targetting. The intention here is to punish those who abuse these hacks to gain a competitive edge when playing against others, which can be extremely sizable especially for FPSes. Professional teams also rely on the in game competitive rankings to scout for new talent, so this abuse can have further ramifications apart from brusing egos.

Isn't the intention of these laws to punish those who make the tools for those who abuse these hacks, and not the actors themselves?

Does it have effect on non-korean citizens?

Lays the foundation for other countries.

It means you don't have to worry about any competition from South Korean companies in the field of cybersecurity.

I like this statement.

You also probably don't need to worry about competition from SK programmers.

(My WoW account got banned back in the day because I had an instance of the Visual Studio Debugger running while playing WoW. No, I wasn't debugging WoW ...)

The way I understand it, your citizenship is irrelevant here. If you happen to visit South Korea, they can usually prosecute you for a crime you allegedly committed on the internet while abroad. Seeing as you'd be charged with creating or distributing a ToS-infringing program, it's likely sufficient that at least one person located in South Korea received (or could have received) a copy of that program for the crime to fall under South Korean jurisdiction.

Extradition is more complicated; depending on your country of origin, the crime you are charged with must also be illegal under local laws in most cases.

basically: dont go to south korea.

this raise the question of how much you want to give in order to play.

i myself am fine encountering the occasional cheater. it sucks but it's only a game. and to be honest, sometimes its lots of fun when all honest players gang up on the cheater on AoE2 :)

now, i won't put up with a closed code having to run as root. i gave up online gaming because of steam, which i consider a rootkit.

and the scary thing is that I'm so in the minority that university of California now does not even give you the option for paper tests in some classes. you have to install a rootkit that turns your webcam on and report back a list of all open and installed applications to their servers, while you take a online test. and of course, no Linux support and it tries (badly, thankfully) to not run inside a vm.

as a security expert i can run it in a vm with a fake webcam feed just fine. but everyone else will have to be subjected to this if they want a diploma subsidised by tax dollars. would you put up with it? the alternative is to book time on the few computers in the lab they allow this thing to be installed (remember, it denies vms, which is what the lab admins use to have always clean systems).

oh, and everyone cheats by leaving open books behind the monitor. this whole thing only serves the software vendor. just like the Korean cheating will only serve who actually uses cheats for monetary gain. as i doubt it wasn't criminal before if money was involved.

> now, i won't put up with a closed code having to run as root. i gave up online gaming because of steam, which i consider a rootkit.

Since when does Steam need to run as root?

In a bit paranoid so I run Stream as a separate minimally-privileged user out of its own home directory, but "rootkit"? Come on...

on windows it runs as admin. never used on linux, but i wouldnt be surprised that your low user would be denied to play counter strike online

I would. I'm sure I'd there was a game that required root privileges on Linux, I would have heard of it. Doubly so considering it apparently works well on wine.

I don't have CS and don't have any interest in buying it, but I'd welcome being proven wrong.

(I would be more apt to consider telemetry-era Windows a rootkit, personally :)

> as a security expert i can run it in a vm with a fake webcam feed just fine.

> oh, and everyone cheats by leaving open books behind the monitor.

?! Proctors doesn't ask you to hold up your camera and do a 360 to show your room and under/behind your desk? I go to WGU and that's the first thing they ask me to do once they connect. Also, if they see something they don't like, they will pause the exam and ask you to do something, such as: adjust the camera so that it can view the monitor, etc.

I've always thought of attempting the VM, but don't want to risk my bachelor's... and they usually have me point the webcam at the monitor anyways.

you can take the test at any time. the professors only look at the camera feed later on. and i am a TA and never heard about telling students to do a 360

FTA: "Based on this law, manufacturing and distributing programs that are not allowed by the game company and its Terms of Service is now directly illegal. That would include aimbotters, hacking programs, scripters, or anything not allowed by the ToS. The punishment? A maximum of 5 years jail time or $43,000 in fines (50 million KRW)."

Five years in prison for an aimbot? This is South Korea we're talking about?

E-sports is basically the national sport of South Korea. They take the E-sports scene very seriously and this would be akin to doping in a competitive sport which caries up to 5 years jail time and fines of up to $250,000 in the U.S at least.

So really it's just bringing E-sports up-to-par with sports...which is already how they treat it.

For writing the aimbot, not for using it.

I'm fine with you being charged if you contract to not do something (steroids, for instance) for a voluntary event, but did so without intending to uphold your promise. That's fraud.

But me, for ripping apart some game and tying into the internals? I should be charged because you could do something bad with it? That's just nonsense.

And what counts as a cheat? In an old game I used to tape a crosshair to the screen because it didn't have one. What if we create an aimbot from vacuum tubes and light-sensors?

Stupid politicians, sticking their noses into things they don't understand. The laws were already adequate to charge any actual cheater.

>For writing the aimbot, not for using it.

So equate it to production and distribution of illicit material?

Cultivating food isn't illegal in many areas. Cultivating magic mushrooms is another issue altogether. Chemistry isn't illegal but manufacturing MDMA is. Programming isn't illegal - but coding a program for a game that directly goes against the Terms of Service of a company is.

Can you provide me an example of aimbotting in a multiplayer game that isn't "bad"? What else could you possibly be doing with it?

> So equate it to production and distribution of illicit material?

No, that's missing the point. I know what silly legal maneuverings are, but I know that they're self-contradictory and worthless.

If I went far enough down that rabbit-hole I could justify banning anything by relating it to child abuse.

> Programming isn't illegal - but coding a program for a game that directly goes against the Terms of Service of a company is.

Sorry, but I don't consider ToS binding. Maybe on my use of the site, but not simply on software I bought. Otherwise the word "bought" is meaningless.

Also, if they can do that then they have the ability to simply forbid reverse engineering, etc, which is utterly ridiculous.

> Can you provide me an example of aimbotting in a multiplayer game that isn't "bad"?

Can you prove you aren't a nazi sympathizer? No, and it isn't your responsibility to do so.

Similarly, it's not my job to defend aimbots.

If you want to play without aimbots, play with friends or with people who contract away their otherwise legal rights.

>Sorry, but I don't consider ToS binding. Maybe on my use of the site, but not simply on software I bought. Otherwise the word "bought" is meaningless.

Then don't agree to the Terms of Service! To connect to the servers you must agree to the Terms of Service. Feel free to buy a copy of your game but be unable to play it because you cannot connect to their servers (which you are not paying for). If you do not like that, then do not purchase the game or purchase a single-player game that does not rely on servers to play on.

Also "I don't consider laws binding" wouldn't be a permissible defense. The T.O.S is now backed by law.

>Can you prove you aren't a nazi sympathizer? No, and it isn't your responsibility to do so.

You cannot prove the non-existence of something. I'm asking you to prove something exists. You make the claim that aimbots have a legitimate reason to be created: name that reason.

I can list ways to use a gun that don't involve killing people - hunting and sport (skeet shooting). There are no alternative purposes of cheating software other than to cheat just like there is no other purpose of a calculator other than to calculate.

> The T.O.S is now backed by law.

Pft. Which law, where? And what provisions? It's vastly more complex than that even where it did sneak in.

And between me and South Korea? Very little chance.

> I'm asking you to prove something exists.

No, you're asking for me to prove something to your satisfaction when you're predisposed to dislike it regardless. It's similarly impossible.

> There are no alternative purposes of cheating software other than to cheat just like there is no other purpose of a calculator other than to calculate.

Which isn't actually true. It can exist just for the sheer joy and reversing and controlling a new program.

But even at that, "to cheat", isn't damning. Even perfect aimbots aren't perfect players and a lot of people enjoy fighting someone using an aimbot. Personally I'd rather play against an aimbot than a camper. At least one justifies their slot on the server.

Anyways, it's your responsibility to curate your friends list to find people you enjoy playing with, not to sanitize the gaming population until you're sure nobody is left who might offend you. And especially not to enforce general purpose bans on computer exploration which this amounts to.

Then build your own game and run your own servers and hack those. Problem solved. You don't need to purchase their games, agree to their T.O.S, or have any affiliation with them. The majority of the gaming community doesn't want people like you in it which is why companies spend such large amounts of money to develop tools to keep hackers out. If it didn't "kill" games (see: The Division losing over 95% of the player base on PC due to overwhelming amounts of hackers) then companies wouldn't care.

>"to cheat", isn't damning

In nearly every other aspect of life and any other comparison you'd be laughed out of the room for this. Go cheat at a casino? At a competition? And see where it gets you. But for some reason it's okay for video games?

> Then build your own game and run your own servers and hack those.

No, hacking something you wrote doesn't make sense. You couldn't surprise yourself, or learn anything.

> You don't need to purchase their games, agree to their T.O.S, or have any affiliation with them.

Even if I purchased their game I wouldn't agree to their ToS so no worries. Nor would I have any affiliation with them.

> The majority of the gaming community doesn't want people like you in it which is why companies spend such large amounts of money to develop tools to keep hackers out.

That's what you're told, but the companies are far more hostile against cheats in games like WoW where cheating simply means playing the parts you want without the grind (and the inevitable in-app purchase to get past the grind.)

> >"to cheat", isn't damning

> In nearly every other aspect of life and any other comparison you'd be laughed out of the room for this.

No, that just shows your prejudices. I cheat at the parts of single-player games that I find boring. If the room is full of boring rule-followers who can't play the game of solitaire that they enjoy playing, I'd be laughing at them.

> Go cheat at a casino?

I don't know a single person who'd be upset about that. They'd all laugh and say "Don't get caught" but no more.

> At a competition?

Oh, are you the sort of person who likes to cheat in competitions? That is lame.

I like bikes because they let me cheat at walking. I get where I want to go faster. I have no compulsion to be seen to be better than you so I don't care about racking up "victories".

But I still think it's mentally defective to pass a law preventing reverse engineering just to let some people have their trophies.

It seems it's going to be just another one of those laws that technically exist but never enforced. Unless, of course, the government doesn't like you for some reason.

Governments are such a blunt instrument.

Lol this planet is going to hell in a handbasket.

I want to laugh, cry, care and not care at the same time.

Can anyone tell me what sort of feeling this is?

Sounds like Mania: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mania

"a “mirror image” to depression, the heightened mood can be either euphoric or irritable;"

rubs chin seems to be a xor, though what I felt was simultaneous - maybe shock. rubs chin after some digging around it seems to be this

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

My brain experienced a slight shock and went a bit joker on the emotions.

Generally speaking, self evaluation takes considerable knowledge, skill, experience and time.

To me, the update you provided didn't add clarity, but an additional degree of understanding what you're attempting to express.

Someone experiencing pure cognitive dissonance would not act manic, they just realize that there was a paradox in their reasoning that needed to be resolved.

Literally wanting to laugh and cry in series is an emotional response and to me, sounds manic. Emotional responses are a better predictor of understanding someone than reasoned expressions.

Well I literally DIDN'T laugh and cry. Felt a deep sense of Sadness/panic at the stupidity of this move. And just felt that sort of giving up,realising I can't do shit about a country half a,world away that wouldnt heed my advice even if it did reach it.

Must admit, it caught me by surprise that my own "are you fucking dense?!" reaction was so strong. That all said and do done my friend, such a public exchange should have remained a more light hearted one - and not a me possibly suffering from a chronic psychiatric condition.

On that note, I think I'll end this,and go light a candle to lament our collective intellectual regression, and pray that cthulhu be a merciful God when he eventually rises.

@mods: how did the thread just plunge from #1 to #12?

extremely worrying that now they have the good reasons for getting my all .exe files :(

A bit off topic, but the phrase "Hack Makers" - is that a thing?

Makers of a hack, that is "hack makers" - is grammatically okay. The title is in title case, so the capitalization of the text is meaningless.

But hacks are not made -- they are performed. It may be grammatically okay, but not semantically.

Yes, hacks are original performed, but some cases, especially those referenced in this context, the hacks are made to be used by 3rd parties, most who likely would be unable to preform the hack from scratch, much less discover it.

Just to make clear - are we sure we are talking about South and not North Korea?

So long as it doesn't violate a games tos, its not illegal. What's the problem here? Seems like its targeting hack developers only.

> So long as it doesn't violate a games tos, its not illegal. What's the problem here? Seems like its targeting hack developers only.

I'm sorry but tos is NOT the law. We get all riled up against CFAA in the US (I know I do) but we turn around and see this stuff go on in other countries and say "well, they have good intentions".

Well there is a saying that the road to the other place is paved with good intentions.

Remember when Goldman Sachs effectively ordered FBI to handle a case as if FBI was some department within GS? I don't think jail time is warranted unless people are dying as a result of these hacks. If we are targeting commercial unauthorized usage of network resources, slap a big fine. There is no need to add jail time here.

Well to draw a parallel, in the US if there a doctor enabling an athlete (or group of them) with performance enhancing drugs, wouldn't he face jail time for providing that? esports are huge in south korea.

No. It's not illegal for a doctor to prescribe medication. It's on the user of that medication if they break their game's rules with them.

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