Comment by boredpudding 2 days ago
It's solved, full write-up here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MinecraftUnlimited/comments/1cvo5py...
Tl:dr; It was a release file for their Minecon event. It was never meant to be public. Obsessing over a password protected in a company's S3 bucket is weird and crosses many limits.
> Telling people they should not try and crack something is kind of like the Streisand effect.
More like a reverse-streisand effect. They were honest about the contents of the file, it was Minecraft 1.0 and not interesting, but the community didn't accept the explanation.
I disagree with this and what Dinnerbone says about locks. It doesn’t matter who file was intended for, it’s on the internet, if people want to use their silicon to do some mathematics to turn some numbers into some other numbers that’s their choice. It’s not equivalent to breaking into a house.
I agree it's not the equivalent, but the file could've contained things like Minecon attendees. That would still mean it's badly secured of course, but putting a huge community effort behind it and youtubers making 'Biggest Secret in Minecraft' videos about it would suddenly turn into very bad taste.
I personally don't see downloadability as a significant factor in the morality of breaching security. If it's bad to hack a login screen to gain access to private information, why wouldn't it be bad to hack encryption to do the same thing? What moral dimension does downloadability alter?
I think the house analogy fails because you cannot duplicate a house, take it somewhere else, and attempt to break into it there. If you could, that would undoubtedly be seen as a violation.
I see you haven’t stumbled across the Minecraft community much, because this weirdness is just every day for them.
Take for example, the infamous 2B2T Minecraft server.
Exploits and game breaking mechanics by virtually impossible to discover bugs, and the no rule against hacking and cheating, have led to things people didn’t think were even possible in Minecraft over the servers ~15 year history.
so weird. many limits.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I guess only boxpig41 knows what else was protected that caused them to replace the file just to avoid the chance that the real password might get out and those might be unlocked, though at this point I’m assuming those encrypted files are gone or are no longer important.
>is weird and crosses many limits.
It's similar in format to communities that obssess over "lost media." The inability to pirate or get access to something becomes an obsession. Even if the piece of media exists in an archive somewhere, that doesn't matter to them because it's about the fact that they themselves don't have access to it that has become the obsession.
There's also the piracy communities where a majority of users believe they have some sort of inherent right to watch something merely because it exists. I don't understand where that sentiment comes from.
That should be the default assumption. It's restrictions which require justification in a liberal society, not freedoms.
Freedoms are a balancing of rights between two or more parties, and are never absolute. Complicating the matter futher: it is very unlikely that all parties are going to agree what that balancing of rights looks like. For example, someone who shares knowledge (e.g. a teacher) is going to have a very different perspective on copyright law than a person who sells knowlege (e.g. a publisher).
Yeah yeah, but the one I replied to couldn't understand why people felt entitled to see something just because it exists.
I can totally understand that, it just means they don't buy the various excuses for why they shouldn't be allowed to. I wouldn't either, in most "lost media" cases.
Not only are you being disingenous by generalizing to "anything that exists" (when for the immense majority is "anything you put up for sale", it's just Mossad that wants your family vaction photos), but here's the thing: I do have that right. By default. It might make you unhappy, but I have it. It crosses into a different territory if I deprive you from it (theft), or if the only I would have had to acquired it would be to buy a copy from you(piracy), but ultimately, as a society, we've decided that harming you for it is a line not to be crossed.
I have every right to see a thing. Just like you have every right to try to stop me from doing so. The general rule is that we shouldn't hurt eachother trying to do it/prevent it.
I mean, part of the deal with IP law is you get government protection for your idea, in exchange for society having access to it.
I’m personally of the mind that if my tax dollars went towards protecting your shit, you owe society access.
This is not defending the ones who believe they have the right to things sans that deal
Without IP law it is all or nothing: obfuscate, hide, encrypt, and protect lest it become public domain.
With IP law you are given the exclusive, enforceable right to control the distribution and sale of an idea for N years... at which point it becomes public domain.
In either case the decision to publish an idea will inevitably make it public domain. The government protects their shit because $REASONS but there is absolutely no obligation for it to be made public until that protection lapse. In matters of human culture this seems like a bug, not a feature but enforcing some standard of "reasonable worldwide availability" by force seems impossible. The invisible hand of piracy "solves" this oversight and functions like a safety valve.
Not an endorsement of either side, just an observation.
This argument is so ridiculous I must be misunderstanding you.
By your logic you owe me access your house since my tax dollars pay for the legal system that gives you property rights?!
> if my tax dollars went towards protecting your shit, you owe society access
Well, the protection is only from random people accessing one's stuff, so this is a very silly (in fact nonsensical) argument. "If my tax dollars went towards you having right X, I thus deserve to infringe on that right X".
> I’m personally of the mind that if my tax dollars went towards protecting your shit, you owe society access.
Our tax dollars go towards protecting lots of different things for lots of different people (including me and you) that we have no rights to at all, nor ever will.
Intellectual properties are temporary. Patents and copyrights expire and enter the public domain.
The social contract is we all pretend we can't trivially copy their works for a couple decades so they can turn a profit and then the works enter the public domain.
The constant extensions of copyright duration clearly demonstrate that the copyright industry has no intention to fulfill their end of the deal. They have systematically robbed us of our public domain rights and become rent seekers.
> I don't understand where that sentiment comes from.
If you actually wish to understand, I can point to a thread where this was discussed somewhat at length by others and myself not too long ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44907830
TL;DR:
Public domain is the natural state of information. Intellectual property is an absurd state granted monopoly on what boils down to numbers. Copyright in particular is a functionally infinite monopoly that robs us of our public domain rights. Copyright infringement is civil disobedience of unjust laws and arguably a moral imperative. Copyright enforcement requires the destruction of computer freedom as we know it as well as everything the word "hacker" stands for and therefore it must be resisted even if it destroys the copyright industry. It makes zero economic sense to charge money for information which has infinite availability, therefore society must figure out how to pay creators before the work is produced.
Interest in lost media is a harmless hobby, which occasionally yields positive fruit. Reddit looked for the identity of the song "Subways of your Mind" for 17 years before it was found, and I'm sure the band was pleased to learn their music had found such interest so many years later. Where's the harm? Calling it "obsession" to make it sound bad can be done to any hobby.
Telling people they should not try and crack something is kind of like the Streisand effect.