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LINKS FOR ADDITIONAL READING FOR THIS VIDEO & ALL INFO IN TEXT DOWN BELOW:

What is Ransomware: https://www.malwarebytes.com/ransomware/
Ransomwear on the Rise: https://www.coindesk.com/malware-crypto-ransoms-rose-by-almost-90-in-q1-report
PayPal Patent: https://www.coindesk.com/paypal-wins-patent-for-way-to-defend-against-crypto-ransomware
What is a Patent: https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general-information-concerning-patents
Fractals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCpLWbHVNhk&t=61s

What is ransom wear?? When a hacker gains access to your data, they often do one of two things. The hacker can threaten to publish your personal information, or they can lock you out and prevent you from being able to access your data.
They do this for money of course and give you a nice friendly threat that if you don’t comply to their demands, your information will be made public or you will never gain access to your data again.
Sounds like a pretty terrible situation am I right?

It’s something that we are seeing occur more often in this cryptocurrency space due to the relative anonymity granted by transacting in cryptocurrencies. Not only are these types of attacks occurring more often, the amount of money being demanded is spiking up as well. It’s kind of insane, but there is a whole market for this now. There are different “strains” of ransom wear that vary in both who they target and how they function and the amount of crypto being demanded.
PayPal has taken steps to prevent this possibility from happening to their customers. Which is great, but the way they did this isn’t what I would consider to be the best way. They filed for a patent. Here’s what I think about patents. And also, how an alternative method could have bore better and faster results.

Number one, patents exist to prevent others from benefiting from your tool and when you get down to it, they are nothing more than evidence of greed and selfishness.
Patents don’t benefit from other eyes being able to analyze them, find the weaknesses, and ultimately make the idea or tool better.
Not to mention the time it took for this particular patent to be approved was time wasted, PayPal filed for this patent way back in 2016 and ended up leaving their customers without the potential protection of the anti-ransomwear for years.
Open source on the other hand would encourage others to take part in helping to develop the tool or idea and make it stronger, more effective. This route also would have enabled more people to benefit from the innovation.

Additionally, PayPal’s new patent addresses only one type of ransom wear. Had this been open for a discussion among the crypto community, others may have had the knowledge to expand this solution and explore how it could be adjusted to address many kinds of strains and possibly could have found a number of different applications for it.

The cryptocurrency space is introducing so many ways to improve different processes, and this is yet another example.

I know there are plenty of people out there who support patents for one reason or another, but think about this:
If you’re scared of sharing your ideas, why? Because you think you’ll only have one good idea in your lifetime? Even so, to go through those great lengths in protecting it from others is selfish and closes you off to others. Consider the benefits of learning from others and how that could make your ideas better. Collaboration, it’s awesome.

source

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19 COMMENTS

  6. "Patent law is proof of greed"
    Spot on! "Patent law" and "Intellectual property" are pc names for theft and greed and ignorance and disrespect to others and future generations to come..In the future there shall be no patents .They hinder progress and creativity.

  13. Personally I've spent a lot of $ through Pay Pal and over the years , I've stopped, There protection policies have nothing to do with the customer, those are ALL put in place to protect PayPal profits and 0% to help clients from my experience. Service works until something goes wrong, they don't seem to be there, like a bad insurance company lol

  15. wow … two videos in a row where I feel the need to provide a counterpoint. I totally agree that Paypal handled this situation and solution badly, but to categorize patents as representing dirty greed is going to the extreme. If you write a song or a book should you give it away? … if you find an elegant solution to an engineering problem or write a particularly useful bit of code, is that it? … just hand it out to anyone to use and go back to your day job of waiting tables?

    The ability to monetize creativity and new ideas is a huge driving force in encouraging that creativity and in addition, helping creative people free themselves from the daily grind of earning a living (in work not related to their talents) is vital in the progress of every field where creativity is an ingredient. It is definitely galling to see huge companies insisting on patenting every idea one of their employees has (don't get me started on patenting genes), but they are not the only ones benefiting from a system put in place to protect the creators in our societies. I applaud people who selflessly post for the world work they think will change things for the better, and we should all encourage that behavior, from bands who post new songs as free downloads, to developers who upload their code to GitHub for anyone to view/change/use …. but we can't vilify those artists who copywrite their music in hopes of being able to sell it and write songs full time, or developers who are working nights on coding a coin with a new, better consensus protocol who use a private repository because they don't want to just hand it to Binance to fold into their behemoth coin.

    Central banks and finance laws were created to protect people, and of course crypto is a system which is trying to make those central banks and finance laws unnecessary … which is EXACTLY what is needed because laws can be exploited … centralized systems can be influenced. In the same way patents were created to protect people, and, in the same way, there probably needs to be a system that can make them irrelevant as well, but until that happens the protections, however inadequate or exploitable need to be there.

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