344: 1337: Part 4
| 1337: Part 4 |
 Title text: Mrs. Roberts would have gotten up sooner, of course, but she was busy piping find ~ and find ~nomad into xargs shred, just in case. |
[edit] Explanation
Jon Lech Johansen, also known as DVD Jon, is famous for DeCSS a DVD decryption program that removes the copy protection from commercial DVDs. The Motion Picture Association of America, also known as the MPAA, was not amused. Both the MPAA and the RIAA use the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, shortened to DMCA, as a kind of brute club to silence "infringements" on their copyright. In a perfect world, the DMCA provides safe harbor protection to websites and consumers to make fair use of copyrighted content while also affording copyright owners the ability to protect their works from being pirated. In this world, this means that any content protection system, no matter how weak and poorly executed, cannot be circumvented and discussion of circumvention is illegal as well.
Of course, Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project and stalwart defender of freedom and copyleft, cannot stand for this kind of repression of freedom.
The title text is talking about a Linux-ism. In Linux (and all Unix derivatives) ~ is a symbol for a user's home directory (usually /home/<username>). xargs shred is an application that recursively walks a filesystem and securely erases every file it finds with pseudorandom data. This is different from simply deleting a file, which merely removes the pointer in the filesystem's record tables to the file's location on the hard disk. The latter can usually be recovered from, secure delete however requires physically taking apart a disk and reading individual bits for remaining magnetic charge to attempt to reconstruct what was there.
All comics in "1337" series:
- 341: 1337: Part 1
- 342: 1337: Part 2
- 343: 1337: Part 3
- 344: 1337: Part 4
- 345: 1337: Part 5
This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.
[edit] Transcript
- As time passed, Elaine intensified her hacking work, anonymously publishing exploit after exploit.
- [Elaine is sitting under tree, typing on a laptop.]
- To crack open proprietary hardware, she teamed up with one of the top experts in signal processing and data transferring protocols.
- [Elaine, wearing a backpack, is walking up to a door where a woman is greeting her.]
- Elaine: Hi, mom.
- Mrs. Roberts (Elaine's mom): Hello, dear. Did you have fun?
- They were an unstoppable team.
- [Elaine is on the floor with her laptop and Mrs. Roberts is on her computer at a table.]
- Elaine: I finished the CSS decryptor.
- Mrs. Roberts: Good, dear. I'll send it along to Jon.
- And were eventually noticed.
- [Two men in black hats arrive. One holds a briefcase that reads RIAA and the other holds a briefcase which reads MPAA.]
- RIAA man: Game's over.
- MPAA man: You're coming with us.
- [Elaine stands up.]
- Elaine: Oh, are we?
- [Mrs. Roberts is still sitting at her computer, typing.]
- Mrs. Roberts: Now now, Elaine -
- shink [Elaine pulls a knife out.]
- [The two men each pull a katana out of their briefcase.]
- shing shing
- Mrs. Roberts: Don't let them provoke you, dear.
- Men: We don't want to hurt you, Ma'am.
- Mrs. Roberts: Don't by silly. Record company employees can't just go into houses and slice people up.
- RIAA Man: Ah, so you haven't read the DMCA.
- MPAA Man: Title IV, Section 408: Authorization of Deadly Force.
- [Voice comes from off-panel]: Hark!
- [Everyone looks surprised. Mrs. Roberts stands.]
- [Richard Stallman enters, bearing two katanas.]
- Richard Stallman: Cease this affront to freedom, or stand and defend yourselves!
- MPAA Man: Stallman!
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