US Publishing Industry Might Soon Be Infecting eBook Pirates with Malware
Leaving the ethics of media piracy completely to one side...
While it's an interesting idea, I think it's been generated by people who don't understand a whole lot about computers, malware, or psychology.
A publisher's virus would be no different from any other malware, which most applications have evolved to anticipate and intercept. Also, applications typically run in a "sandbox" and have certain permissions. I'd actually be rather surprised if most media software could grab the administrator-level permissions needed to start mucking around in the OS (e.g. to stop future boots and require a password). That's assuming the content encoding could even support that level of operation. Sounds like you'd need considerable buy in from application developers...and the chances of that happening without a scaffolding of supporting law would be nil. Even with the law, users would likely just switch to open source software developed outside the jurisdiction.
Lots of malware already does this sort of thing, of course, *if* it manages to get the user to execute something (or exploits an unpatched security hole in the application). Writers of fake anti-virus software like this approach: insert a program into the set of startup programs, and cause hell for the user until they submit to blackmail. Computer-savvy users (which often includes torrent users) know how to get around malware of this type. But as anyone who has extricated a virus can tell you...it makes you very, very angry.
Which leads to the final concern that publishers should have: they will have pissed off a community that--on the whole--is probably much more familiar with wreaking computer havoc than they are. Not sure I'd want to be writing malware with my name plastered all over it. Not unless I also felt like painting a huge target on my forehead.
All in all, it's a thought...but publishers should be wary of starting the equivalent of a land war in Asia. It's one of the classic blunders.
