Don't worry. I've been in that business for a while. Trust me, there is no reason to create malware. Why bother? It's done for you. For free. Because they have a business model as well.

Quite seriously, even if you don't "trust" anti-malware companies to not create them themselves, simply follow the laws of the market: Why create a disease if it exists anyway? Why bother wasting money on something that is done for you without your intervention? It's like saying, I dunno, mobile home vendors are behind tornados in Kansas. Why the fuck bother, these things come themselves, no need to do anything. It happens. Free of charge.

That some vendors of AV kits go and blow every minor, insignificant malware release out of proportion and predict falling skies if we don't immediately buy their latest and greatest is another thing. Think of it as the computerized version of the Swine Flu.

No. I know that I am.

You get that way after a while, I guess, if you have to see too much of what's going on in the world. Bitter, cynical, jaded and eventually sociopathic. And quite antisocial. And very pissed.

What makes me bitter, jaded, cynical, antisocial and a few other things is that I can't with a straight face defend anymore what my, or any, country is doing. I uphold the laws for the one single reason that I have not found a good enough reason to warrant risking jail time. As far as I'm concerned, a few people are only still alive because they are not worth the time.

That is pretty sad. But it makes being apathetic on top of all that quite easy.

Why bother? He can ruin your life far easier and far more profitably.

Erh... detach yourself from the idea that malware is something some pimple faced 17-27 year old does in his mom's basement. Malware is a business. And of course with the relevant staff.

In other words, distribution is not your concern when you're a programmer. That's what marketing is for.

Of course. It depends on the corporate culture. It works in startups and small businesses where the higher ups tend to notice people who get things done and who are not afraid of getting their hands dirty. Because they care about the business.

In corporations, nobody gives half a shit about the company. Nobody. For everyone it's a means to the end: Earning money.

Seriously, am I the only one noticing that? I mean, whenever there is some kind of blatant incompetence in anything people are dealing with on a semi-regular base, you may rest assured that some comedy troupe or at least some comedian will start a routine about it.

I've never seen one about the TSA. Never. And the TSA is by far not some obscure entity that nobody ever got bothered with. Hell, anyone who ever boarded a plane in the US not only saw them but can almost certainly tell some story about their incredible stupidity.

What did he do to deserve this? Flaunt his contempt for the law? So? A damn lot of CEOs do it all the time, and all they get for it is bail outs, not jail terms.

Tell me, what did he do that was worse for you, me, the economy or anyone who doesn't want to deal with him than anything bank managers have been doing the past 8 years. Please tell me! What damage did he do to deserve this?

Gladly. Mind you, I'm in the pitchfork and rope business.

But that's legal. You see, taking your money and giving you nothing in return is fine, but giving you something to make you feel good is not.

Fucked up country.

So far for the accusations, now let's take a look at what they actually manage to get sticking, shall we?

What's left is drug trade, money laundering, document forgery and the criminal charge of doing it all for money and being the head of it all. In short, nothing worse than the average pharma or bank CEO does, too. Only that they get bailed out if they fuck up, not locked up.

Just so you know, the average malware jockey makes money that makes me wonder why I remain on this side of the fence. So much for "getting a good job that pays well".

Don't worry. He already has one.

Actually, no.

I've learned one thing: Never ever touch the hot topic everyone else seems to avoid. Not even with a ten foot pole. There are exactly three things that can happen. Either it resolves itself. This is the norm and gets you off the hook. Or someone else is stupid enough and tackles it, gets burned and loses his job. That's fine as well. Or it blows up and the blame is shared within the department. That's ok as well since nobody gets fired for it.

Since promotion happens today by tenure and not by merit, what you do is less important than what you don't do.

How? I thought it caps at 100%.

Create something original. Good luck tiptoeing through the mine field. I'm in that business (yes, guess what, someone dependent on copyright for income is against it in its current form) and I'm very glad that a very good friend of mine decided to become a lawyer for copyright. Which, btw, is also far more lucrative than actually trying to use copyright to earn something by creating something. But that's not the point.

You talk about an entitlement generation. I have to say that the only kind of entitlement I get to see in this field is from studios who think they're entitled to a cut from your works regardless of whether they did anything to contribute. Copyright on works has descended into something not unlike stock options at the stock exchange, where holding works is a tool to make money from doing nothing but, well, holding those works hostage. When you create something today, you better have the whole works ever conceived memorized, for if whatever you create only vaguely resembles something held by some studio, rest assured that in the off chance you actually manage to write a hit, you will be sued. On the off chance that you either cannot afford legal representation and cave in or that a judge will side with them. Yes, 8 out of 10 times he won't, but that doesn't matter. Studios can easily afford it and the ones that cave in because they can't afford the legal battle and would rather take the "deal" to have at least a little instead of nothing will easily pay for that.

And the area gets more narrow with every song in the stock option portfolio.

As for your last sentence: your quality of life is more and more dependent on pure luck. Not the amount of work oyu put behind it. If there ever was a time when working could make you rich, it's been over for a long, long time now.

Copyright in its current form is not only not enforceable, it's actually harmful to artistry in general.

The idea behind copyright was to encourage to create. Before copyright, you needed a patron. Either that or you were busy running from one bar to the next with your new song to play it yourself before someone else copies you. Back then, the main danger was someone else playing it (that was long before the means of reproducing sound and moving image), not someone "copying" the song itself. It was more to protect composers against what happens now constantly: Some orchestra playing a song composed by Mozart, Beethoven or Bach. With the difference that these people were still alive back then. So the best they could get without copyright was to be the first to perform their new compositions.

It was worse for writers who really had to hurry from printing to selling because often before the first batch of books was sold reprints would appear, then of course cheaper because there was no artist who wanted money. Actually, it was worse for printers (producers) who actually bought books from artists. And they were also the ones pushing for legislation in this area.

Or, in other words, copyright was never intended to protect the artist. It was from its very start an attempt of publishers to protect their investment in artists.

But I digress. Original copyright was 7 years, and that was pretty tight back then because then it took a long while for things to get published and noticed by the public. But 7 years was enough to be an incentive for publishers to actually buy books from writers. And later to buy songs and even movie ideas.

Today, in a time when publishing, advertising and selling content has reached the level where it's measured in days and hours rather than years and months, we have a copyright of 70 years. Counting not from the moment of its creation but from the moment the author died. That's pretty much the lifetime of a person. I will probably not see the copyright expire of an artist who died when I was born. To give you an idea just how long this is, James Brown had his first hits just after WW2. He died in 2006. His works would enter public domain in 2081 if this law had been already in existence when he created it (actually, the insanity only dates back to 1978). Another thing that a lot of people probably know is "White Christmas". It's near impossible not to know it. Copyright expires under this law in 2051. That's over a century after its creation.

Who, I have to ask, is to be protected by a copyright that outlives the content's creator? His heirs? Why should essentially three generations of descendants be entitled to royalties of something their grand-grandfather created? Do you even know your grand-grandfather? Imagine you still got money from something that guy once did.

Nobody can tell me that this has any roots in reality. This is insanity.