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What the fuck is this shit!? How has Riot not taken these sites down?

AMADEUSdotEXE·6/3/2017, 5:14:01 AM·2 votes·684 views

This is not a Riot flaming thread, please know that... Excuse my French please.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DatKkYt7IPk

Before I start: I've very recently been learning about what drop hacking is, ddosing, and how to spot scripters. Mainly for self protection, and educational purposes because I've never been effected by these types of issues. I'm not an expert on the subject, I'm just a regular league player in the bottom half of ranked community.

What brought me to this: So today I was browsing youtube and a compilation of scripters exposed came up, so I watched it to see the different types so that I could attempt to identify them should it happen to me. I noticed one particularly disgusting hack.

To put it simply, its basically a hack that allows the user to essentially one shot people with the botrk's active. The two games that I saw footage of this hack being used in revealed that the users would not even have Botrk purchased (the item has been reworked but this was from last year.) One video displayed a Twisted Fate with a GA and sorcerers shoes equipped, casting the active with little to no cooldown. (At 8 minutes I believe) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzShoxvsUCM)

I know that Riot is very responsive to their players and they do everything they can to make the game as pleasant to play as possible and tries to protect players from unfair gameplay. But seeing that there are multiple websites that promote downright infuriating play like this and fucking tutorials on it really pisses me off. I'm more than aware that websites that offer these hacks and 'tools' are likely to come with viruses. (People that try to download them deserve it. Serves them right.)

The point: Why has Riot not found a way to get videos and websites that promote this kind of bullshit taken down? Are players clearly shown hacking in these compilations actually punished?? Is there any way for Riot to stop this? Now legal claim or countermeasures? Sites that give out these hacks should not be tolerated or left on the internet!! can't they have these videos taken own? Are players discovered hacking by Riot permabanned or warned?? A warning will just make them change their strategy...

I'm sorry if i come off illogical, I'm not well educated on countermeasures for this sort of issue.

12 Comments

Zezockary6/3/2017, 5:25:21 AM2 votes

Most people that hack get banned. The bans for 3rd party applications come in waves to make it more difficult for developers of them to see what got them caught because they won't know what changes to their programs got them caught.

Riot also occasionally takes against organizations that distribute these programs, but that doesn't really do anything to them tbh.

DrCyanide6/3/2017, 5:43:53 AM2 votes

http://www.insidegamer.net/2017/03/04/riot-games-10m-lawsuit-leaguesharp/

Yes, Riot has found a way to deal with these kinds of things. A very big, very public way out sending a message.

Chermorg6/3/2017, 5:21:19 AM1 votes

In the United States, where Riot and the platforms you discuss are, for a large part, based, there is not a general method for removing content unless it falls under a few limited exceptions. From my legal understanding, these don't cover mere use of the Riot software in a video, unless they are attempting to imply Riot endorsement.

There are many cases where this could be construed as releasing trade secrets, misusing copyrighted/trademarked material, etc. However, Riot's legal team has found it to be a waste of money for no good to attempt to pursue litigation/continually issuing takedown notices.

That's my guess at least.

LSA6/3/2017, 6:59:35 AM1 votes

how do you spot a scripter besides them doing things that are mechanically impossible without 3rd party programs?

Martensitic6/3/2017, 2:05:07 PM1 votes

The point: Why has Riot not found a way to get videos and websites that promote this kind of bullshit taken down?

I think you have kind of a misunderstanding how the internet works my friend.

#You cannot just "Take down" a website without a legal reason, just because you don't like what's on there.

And "Legal reason" is a bit more complicated than some people think.

Because to have a website "taken down", one must have a legal reason, which compels the authorities of the country from where the website is hosted to do so. And there are 4 big caveats here.

Number 1: Cheating in a video game (unless the conditions I point out below are met) is, by itself, not a criminal act in most jurisdictions. Its a violation of a service agreement in most games, including League, certainly, but if we started to apply the will of service agreements that private companies cooked up to manage freedom of speech, or lack thereof, on the internet, then this world and its society would be in deep trouble...read "Blade-Runner-Robocop-Dystopia-Kind of trouble"

Number 2: If the cheats interfere with the game servers, for example, Dropattacks and the like, those are criminal acts in many countries of the world. But even then its hard in most jurisdictions, to take down websites which MERELY HOST THE TOOLS TO DO THAT. There are a lot of websites which offer tools for activities that can be potentially illegal, but are also used for completely legal things...for example IT security experts use the Kali Linux Distribution to carry out penetration tests of computer systems to find security loopholes and fix them. This Distribution is hosted on a website, and that's completely legal...despite the fact that, of course, Kali can also be used for basically any nefarious application in hacking and black hat activity in general, that comes to mind. Long story short, just because someone HOSTS tools, doesn't mean hes responsible for what people do with them, and is thus, in many jurisdictions, not doing anything wrong.

For the same reason, taking down videos explaining how such tools work is either not easy, or not possible at all. There are 10h long videos which, in exhaustive detail, explain things such as ARP-spoofing or WiFi cracking. Can both be used to do something illegal? Of course. Does that make it illegal to talk about it? Nope.

Number 3: The jurisdiction that applies for a potential takedown, is that of the country where the website is hosted. It may be the case, that hosting some tool, which is clearly used for nefarious purposes only, is illegal in the US, or EU countries. However, that is irrelevant as far as takedown requests are concerned, if the website is hosted in, for example, Tuvalu, Monaco, Nigeria, Singapur, Micronesia or Nauru. (Yes, all of those exist). A lot small countries actually make a point of having lax legal regulations when it comes to all things internet, precisely because people like hosting shady stuff there...for small economies, the relatively inexpensive task of hosting websites under their TLD (top level domain) is a big source of income.

Number 4: Even if the jurisdiction of the websites origin would, in theory, allow to take it down, its up to the local authorities to do so. Good luck getting a takedown carried out in some court in god-knows-what country, which may effectively be a dictatorship, with corrupt courts and police, where criminal activities bribe or influence local authorities (or worse: Are tolerated by the local government).

And a post-scriptum here: Most websites in the open internet offering such services, are merely easily replaced front-ends. The actual sources of most of the stuff reside within anonymization networks, such as TOR hidden services.

And hitting those with any efficiency, is a challenge even for large intelligence and police networks such as the FBI and CIA. A private company can do next to nothing in that area.