Oh good, to further prevent counter-arguments, we're starting to resort to not using the quote functions. Good show, but what's fair for you is fair for the rest of us. Glad you're also still taking the high road and mentioning your qualifications, ignoring that it's fallacy, and still trying to be superior to everyone else here. How hard it must be to ride on the belief that you know more simply because.you have some notion that you have more experience and education than anyone else here, which hasn't been verified. So condescending and narcissistic.

But let's go to arguments instead of vain ad hominems:

As for damage, it is unverifiable, true, but it shouldn't be that hard to make some implicit case. You're probably right that they won't be sued into oblivion, but I'm willing to bet someone's already got a valid claim or two on them. The only question is whether or not anyone's going to see this company worth going after. Odds are, the valid claimants are likely to be non-confrontational, which science points out to be the nature of human beings, surprisingly.

But that doesn't really change the legality of it at all.

Whatever dude. Keep using the word "fallacy" as if you understand what the word even means....
From the sound of it, you are either still in high school or just graduated.

I made my case...I discussed it in detail...
I explained how almost every law has multiple conditions that need to be fulfilled.
I explained which of these conditions this case doesn't fulfill.

But no, you ignore all that and resort to insults.

Narcissistic? Sure seems you believe everything you have to say is full of pure gold...even though it's your one voice just saying it as if you "know".

Simply put, on what basis do you believe someone has a "valid claim"?

Do you really think this developer stole money from someone?
Do you really think the developer activated the installer on someone who purchased a legal copy?
Show me a law of this nature which doesn't include a clause such as "with intent to defraud" or :damage"?

So far you have provided nothing except your broad claims that this is "highly illegal" because it seems that way to you. That is worth virtually nothing.

Did you read Title 18? Have you even tried to find a specific law the developer has violated? Or are we supposed to be impressed by you claiming how all malware is highly illegal because it sounds good?

So what are the damages here? And if there is no actual damage (the developer doesn't seem to be stealing money, defrauding anyone, selling the information for profit) why would there even be a law against it? Why? Because "malware is bad"? You should have learned from your one class that laws are far more precisely defined than that. And two major elements of most laws involve both action and intent.

But hey, clearly insulting me seems to be the best argument you have. You sure as heck aren't responding to what I have explained. Guess you will just continue to spew your hot air and yell "malware" "criminal" or whatever.

Edit, nvm, i lost over half the reply because the site is broken and the text editor i typed it into (notepad) doesn't allow undo very far. My own fault for not checking before clearing the undo history. Trying to find the broken "quote bracket" didn't go over well. Turns out, i had quoted too much BS and hit the quote limit.

but, I will post a few cases:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=13148712280933713558&q=Rene+G+F+Fishers&hl=en&as_sdt=2003

http://www.internetlibrary.com/pdf/Beverly%20Ann%20OBrien.pdf

Of course this would be highly unlikely and this never was the point - at least not for me.
Nobody ever wanted to say that the pirates would not be punished but you said that the devs would not be able to be sued because the people suing them would be guilty by themselves (which is not proven but let's make it simpler here) and that is not how the law is working.

So are you ok if someone without a warrant would have hacked your computer, but once being found out would claim to not having done any harm to you? The level of temperment you have shown in this thread makes that hard to believe.

You are still avoiding to comment about the fact that multiple users could be using the same computer/account/browser as the suspected pirate and how you would justify collecting their data as well?

Imagine if this was done on a public computer and the installation process was killed before the keylogger was deleted and it just kept collecting passwords from anyone using Chrome on that computer? Nowadays even making a prank program that is only meant to do some seemingly harmless thing like playing the Windows startup sound once per day would get you in big trouble if someone calls tech support to figure out why this is happening and the ones paying the bill would be as adamant about seeking out retribution as you are towards piracy.

Legal speak even in my native tongue is too foreing to me for even attempting to come up with the proper search words that my terrible Google-Fu would still manage to turn into either zero results or thousands of links that don't actually cover the topic I was looking for. So unfortunately I must leave that excercise to the experts of that field...

But while I am sure that claiming fraud would be a stretch unless someone can show some prove of that, I would consider it a severe damage to the authority of our justice systems if private companies are allowed to continue to do this without at least needing a permit for that beforehand and requiring to pass all kinds of checks to ensure that the collected data is stored responsibly.

Edit: Typos, typos everywhere...

Ok, the first one, is merely a denied motion to dismiss. The "wiretap" claim was dismissed prior to the court hearing because it was inappropriate. The other two claims continued on to the regular court case. Nothing was actually decided here...and I cannot find a resolution, so my guess is the case was dropped before going to court.

The second case actually talks about a real-time spyware program with a wife spying on her husband who was chatting up some gal playing Yahoo Dominoes and the court chose not to admit those communications as evidence.

Again, both these cases involve real-time interception of data. Which doesn't seem to apply in this case at all. Neither case was criminal nor even implied the actions were "highly illegal". And it doesn't appear either case awarded any damages for the actions.

My point is that you and others are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Let's just break this down simply...

Here's where most of us might agree. We don't like or are at least worried about adware, ad vehicles, software asking for personal information, cookies, all that. We are concerned about the extent of data collection from our software whether that is Microsoft or others. What is getting done with it and how this might affect us.

The truth is, this sort of data collection is often legal. May be hidden in legal agreements that us as layman have no real understanding of exactly what rights we are giving up.

Am I alright with it? I guess I have to be because that seems to be the state of legality these days and it's not like there is any real choice.

So I buy a piece of software. The developer puts in a backdoor which allows him to combat piracy. Frankly, I don't have a problem with that as long as his intentions are pure. If he starts using it to defraud me, then I'm not. Pretty simple as that.

To me it comes done to how it is going to affect me. If the FBI or NSA or even a concerned citizen were to somehow hack me to investigate me. If I'm guilty, I should accept the consequences. If I pirate a piece of software, and the developer catches me with some routine in his software, I should pay the price. Simple as that.

This whole, "I pirated the software, yeah, but the developer invaded my privacy to catch me" argument sounds like excuses to me.

If this same developer were to be grabbing my personal information and then selling it for profit, that would be a problem. But as long as his goal is to protect his investment, and especially since he seemed to put some thought into protecting the interests of legal owners, I really don't have much of a problem with it at all.

In short, he's not a hacker breaking in to cause damage or disrupt or hijack my computer. That is what worries me. This developer, I'd be okay with that assuming this is what he is truly doing, which by all appearances is true.

Maybe you don't see any problem at allowing even the concerned citizens (!!!) to hack you, but most of us would want to limit such actions to the law enforcement officals as they need to follow the correct procedures like presenting a probable cause in order to obtain a permit for wiretapping and limiting the access to the gathered information to a select few investigators who are properly trained to handle privacy issues. Using Base64 to "encrypt" the data and leaving the RDP port open to the internet should be enough to show why we don't want to allow amateurs the free reign to collect our passwords no matter how noble one might see their cause to be.

I am not arguing over this to protect the pirates, had the developers just made the installer send them the MAC address and also recorded the external IP address and handed them over to the proper authorities to invesigate further, I could have been fine with that. But by chosing to collect passwords from Chrome they lost any moral high ground over the pirates by becoming potential identity thieves themselves. It doesn't matter that no info got sold to third parties, otherwise someone could steal passwords from any large network service like Google and as long as they got caught before offering those in the black market they could just pretend to be a noble white hat who was just doing us a service by finding a flaw in Google's security.

And you are entitled to your opinion.
Just to me, the calls of some to string the dev up are quite overblown. I don't consider this worse than piracy. This is not nearly the same as hacking and to equate it as such is misguided. Since seemingly the only passwords sent came from computers which installed the pirated software, it's targeted at the thieves. Play with fire, maybe you get burned...I see a certain poetic justice in it even we all know nothing can probably be done to stop the cracker as I wouldn't be surprised he lives in some country which wouldn't take any action anyway no matter how clean the evidence.

You can shoot to death someone who trespass your lawn, but is it necessary in every case?

(I'm in no way a law expert and all that is what I deduct from "GET OFF MY LAWN" stereotype in American movie)

A few years ago a cat burglar breaks into a guy's house, steals his laptop.

He gets home, turns on the laptop, it's LOADED with child pornography. He takes it to the police. The police scold him for B&E, but let him go, and instead arrest the owner of the laptop.

Fair?

A three-legged dog walks into a bar and hops up on a bar stool. He looks around at the other bar patrons and says, "I'm lookin' for the man that shot my paw."

We are telling jokes, right? Oh, is this the wrong thread?

Given how most of the thread has progressed, I'm good with that. :P

-Why are turds tapered?

-So your asshole doesn't slam shut.

Funny thing is that isn't even a one time story...
Did a quick Google search and in both the U.S. and Britain multiple stories about burglers finding child porn or videos of child abuse, reporting it to the police and the police arresting the man stolen from based on the tip.

Pretty much throws out the theory some have that the police can't act on information obtained wrongly by citizens, now doesn't it?

And look at all the idiots downvoting every one of my posts. You are all a bunch of morons and losers. You have no right to harass me and GoG really should give each and every one of you fools a timeout! Seems people here didn't want a real discussion on the issue. Instead they want a lynch mob. There are so many jerks on this forum it isn't funny. No wonder this forum seems to bleed members all the time. And I bet the same jerks causing it are clueless that they are the reason.

Why is 159 downvoted? I'll tell you, because this forum is full of *******s.