The Edge of Forever —
Roy of SAC posted a copy of the video recording of my talk at DEFCON, “The Edge of Forever: Saving Computer History”.
This was kind of a Hail Mary pass to get into DEFCON; a general nebulous subject, a short explanation of what I was going to do, and graciously, DEFCON’s organizers accepted the speech. I was planning for a one hour (50 minute) speech and then saw that they’d blocked off 2 hours of talk for me. So, I added a couple stories in and blew it out to an hour and a half, plus another 20 minutes of question and answer. I’ve had worse days.
I’ll avoid giving too much context to this speech; I figure it stands on its own, pro or con.
You can watch it here.
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Wow, that’s a pretty bold move, putting the entire collection of Defcon videos online and potentially attracting the wrath of a bunch of evil hackers.
And, are those videos officially for sale yet? I could not find any mention of them on defcon.org, the main site, or the forums. Dark Tangent knows how to throw a con, but he could use some lessons in the Jason Scott school of DVD marketing …
They’re for sale, through The Sound of Knowledge, which is a separate entity from DEFCON. That’s why he doesn’t have it for sale on there. I agree he should have links, but it’s not a case of it being run directly for DEFCON.
I guess, technically, the talks were for sale at the event; I bought a copy myself, although it’s not arrived. (I assume larger orders got priority.) Here’s a link to the page with sales.
Hey Jason,
what did you order exactly? They had a bunch of options. I got the Session DVDs for $299.00 (price for orders at DefCon, now sold for $499).
Are you getting the DefCon 15 Session Videos + 007 Black Hat Briefings – Defcon Communications (Bhb) conference Videos Combo (now sold for $899, I believe it was $500 or $600 at DefCon)???
The 10 DVD Roms are not full. Each of the DVD-Roms has only 1.5-2 GB data on them. They should fit easily on 3 (maybe 4) DL DVD-Rs if you convert them to ISO format (hint).
Furthermore. There are pretty much only the speaker visible on the videos and if you are a speaker, you make your face public. If you are worried about the feds, you would be stupid to become a speaker, because guess who is in the audience? The speakers did not get paid (correct me Jason, if I am incorrect) nor get any royalties from the Video and Audio sales. They don’t even get a free copy of their own session, which is even worse.
$500 for the videos is outrageous. Who can afford that? Even the $300 made me think twice. Other conferences who also record the sessions give them out for free (to promote the conference), such as Affiliate Summit. See
http://www.affiliatesummit.com/videoaccess.php
The conference pass cost $1500 and all they want in return to access the videos is your email address to subscribe to the conference newsletter.
DefCon is for one part about security issues, people should be made aware of. I was talking about the session to the flaws in the new Online Banking security systems at my blog prior to the videos, but the video is much better. It is a much better way to show people the problem.
The black-hat stuff happens behind the doors anyway and is not public and not recorded.
I did not see anything on the DVDs that state that I am not allowed to make a copy and put them up on the web that I can access them while I am on the road. I am no copyright lawyer, but usually is “no copies and distribution” and/or “All Rights Reserved” printed all over protected CDs/DVDs. That’s not the case with the DefCon DVD-Roms 😉 and then … see
I don’t know why somebody would want to hack my sites, because of this, but yeah, I saw a dictionary attack on the next day in the server logs. Somebody tried to guess user accounts. Kiddie.
Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC
Hey Rob,
There are pretty much only the speaker visible on the videos and if you are a speaker, you make your face public. If you are worried about the feds, you would be stupid to become a speaker, because guess who is in the audience?
The speakers don’t get any royalties from the Video and Audio sales.
$500 for the videos is outrageous. Who can afford that? Even the $300 made me think twice. Other conferences who also record the sessions give them out for free (to promote the conference).
It would also sends a positive message out e.g. “DefCon being active in helping guys responsible for internet security to learn about some issues and get some tips how to reduce risk, even though most of them can’t attend the conference in person.”
For example: DefCon is for one part about security issues, people should be made aware of. I was talking about the session to the flaws in the new Online Banking security systems at my blog prior to the videos, but the video is much better. It is a much better way to show people the problem.
The black-hat stuff happens behind the doors anyway and is not public and not recorded.
I did not see anything on the DVDs that state that I am not allowed to make a copy and put them up on the web that I can access them while I am on the road. I am no copyright lawyer, but usually is “no copies and distribution” and/or “All Rights Reserved” printed all over protected Cd’s/DVDs. That’s not the case with the DefCon DVD-Roms 😉 and then … see
I don’t know why somebody would want to hack my sites, because of this, but yeah, I saw a dictionary attack on the next day in the server logs. Somebody tried to guess user accounts. Kiddie.
Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC
Don’t get me wrong Ray; I’m glad you put them online. I’ve watched several of the speeches I missed and, at $499, I would never pay that. I would just be afraid of exactly what you mentioned; that somebody somewhere would be offended at what you did and take it out on your web presence (or worse).