Last "Hackers On Planet Earth" Conference In July

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Last H.O.P.E. ('Hackers on Planet Earth') Conference is set for July 18-20, 2008, at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. The organizers have announced their supplemental speaker list, adding on to the initial list. Topics will include 'Crafting a Security-Enhanced Wikipedia,' 'VoIP (in)security: Italians Do It Better,' 'AntiSocial Networking: Vulnerabilities in Social Nets,' 'SWF and the Malware Tragedy,' 'Simulating the Universe on Supercomputers,' and my personal favorite, 'RIAA Litigations: How the Tech Community Can Help.'"

2007?

[DavidJSimpson]

The "Last" conference is set for last year? Ironic.

RIAA Litigations: How the Tech Community Can Help

[John Hasler]

Set up honeypots to entrap the RIAA into sending bogus notices. Thoroughly document this and make the results available to those defending themselves against RIAA suits (and to those pursuing class action suits against the RIAA).

Also try to trick them into breaking into and/or DOSing bittorent trackers (preferably ones not being used to infringe any RIAA copyrights).

Re:This one's obvious

[skeeto]

You say that like copyright infringement has something to do with the RIAA lawsuit selection process.

Re:Where will the next one be ?

[DeathB]

But seriously, now that Hotel Pennsylvannia will be turned into millionaire's housing, maybe this thing can be moved to a cheaper and more accessible part of the country. Especially in light of the economy, we should focus on a place that is central and is a big Greyhound hub. Having everyone all camp out might be a bit of a stretch,

So it's not cheap, but more accessible and more of a Greyhound hub than NYC? Does such a place actually exist? NY has 3+ airports, good connections by bus and train and is central for the East Coast (which has half of the US population). Even the center of US population is right around the Mississippi.

Perhaps some people could get together to organize a complementary conference, to be held in January (cheaper travel and most time separation from the real Hope). I suggest we put it in some place like Albequerque or Los Cruces, which might be bearable at that time of year, and is generally cheap.

There are alot of hacker conferences in the US other than Defcon (Las Vegas) and HOPE (although those are the two biggest). Off the top of my head there is also Summercon (Atlanta), Notacon (Cleveland), Schmoocon (DC), Carolinacon (NC), and ToorCon (San Diego). Further abroad there is the Chaos Computer Camp in Germany. Obviously you can go off and start your own, but I'd take a careful look around first.

Re:This one's obvious

[somersault]

just cause something is illegal doesn't mean it's wrong

That is perfectly true, but just because you want something to be legal doesn't make it right. Do you think that authors shouldn't be able to try to enforce the copyright on their books, or artists shouldn't be able to enforce copyright on their digital photos? Suddenly just because you can copy something with trivial effort, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Don't get me wrong, I've done it too, but if I like a band then I will buy their album because they deserve recognition and support. All too many tight arse bastards would just copy their music and leave it at that.