Conference gyro::internet_toolss

4509.0. "Microsoft copyrights everything?" by BIGUN::nessus.cao.dec.com::Mayne (Churchill's black dog) Wed Feb 26 1997 19:03

In an infinite universe, anything can happen. This was just forwarded to me, and 
makes amusing (if nothing else) reading.

Remember, being paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

PJDM


Hi,
I just got this *very* interesting article from aus.net.news

Seems that Bill is scanning many of the australian www servers.
More specifically, the robot(?) is looking for images.

There is talk of MS collecting a huge number of images from the Internet,
and then copyrighting them, before reselling the data back to the 
users of the Internet.

I do not know how much of that part of the tale is paranoia,
and the original posting is a bit of a rant (who can blame him?)
but one thing is for certain, the scan from MS is determined,
since it is also doing *IP* scans on port 80 looking for 
unlisted http servers.

There seems to be several people hit, and I have forwarded off a 
copy of the message to our network admin, as I am certain 
he will be quite interested.

Has anyone else had the pleasure of Bills company 
through their routers?

I don't like the sound of this - but here is the original message.
You can read the rest on aus.net.news...

rachel

Subject: Whats this shit from micro$oft ?!?!
Newsgroups: aus.net.status,aus.net.announce,aus.net.access
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 20:23:37 +1100
Organization: Triple G Corporation
From: Scott Weston <[email protected]>

Hi 'net dwellers,

I'm just posting to try and gauge what the f*ck micro$soft is upto at
moment.  I was just paging thru our router logs (the ones that trap
out the really foolish and stupid crackers) and found that someone at
micro$oft has been doing an all out IP search of our domain in a vain
attempt to find out which machines we have got running HTTP servers !!

Basically I'd like to know if anyone else has had similar experiences?
All accesses came from 131.107.3 between 22-Feb and today and all to
port 80.  So far they have gone thru approx. 20 hosts on our network.
Now for our network thats not a high load, and if it was anyone else
except micro$oft I'd probably not be quite as angry as I am, but if
they're doing this to the whole internet (and I bet they are)....
well thats too scary to think about!!

<SOAPBOX>
Am I the only one thinking that this is just an out right shocking
abuse of our already limited bandwidth ?? (esp. to the states)  I for
one do not want someone going thru all the IP addresses on the net,
trying to find elusive HTTP servers... now maybe micro$oft is trying
to figure out once and for all which HTTP server has the most market
share, and maybe one of the f*cking brain dead VP's of microsoft
thought to best way would be to log into every IP address and ask it -
it wouldn't surprise me, just look at the f*cking shit software they
produce (all of which consumes all available resources, and when exits
doesn't return them to the OS ... which is also crap btw) so of course
they would think that the internet is just another resource to be
plundered.... but I have to be a realist and say it's too early to
think thats the case, maybe the bastards have some special interest in
us (thus this post to see if anyone else has had similar experiences).
</SOAPBOX>

Anyway let me know what you think, or if you have had similar
experiences.

Scott.

ps. is it just me or do the above dates correspond to the poor
    internet throughput recently ? ;)

the lunatic fringe

    Boy - why doesn't the guy stop beating around the bush and come out and
    say what's really on his mind?    Did he have a bad day with an Excel
    spreadsheet or something?
    
    /Chris/

The idea of Microsoft downloading a bunch of images and then 
copyrighting them is preposterous.  If Microsoft had to download the 
stuff without permission to get it, it means that either (1) it's in 
the public domain, or (2) somebody else already owns the copyright to 
it.

This is just Usenet scare-mongering.

--PSW

> The idea of Microsoft downloading a bunch of images and then 
> copyrighting them is preposterous.  If Microsoft had to download the 
> stuff without permission to get it, it means that either (1) it's in 
> the public domain, or (2) somebody else already owns the copyright to it.

	if anything, it's more likely that Microsoft is looking for
	sites using images that Microsoft already owns, w/out permission
	or paying licensing fees to Microsoft.

    Per an unsubstantiated report from a vendor that shall remain
    nameless, Microsoft is apparently attempting to trademark "Web".

Someone was actually granted a Linux trademark.

I'm still waiting for someone to misappropriate the ultrix trademark.
Think we could interest microsoft?