this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
353 points (99.7% liked)

Malicious Compliance

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People conforming to the letter, but not the spirit, of a request. For now, this includes text posts, images, videos and links. Please ensure that the “malicious compliance” aspect is apparent - if you’re making a text post, be sure to explain this part; if it’s an image/video/link, use the “Body” field to elaborate.

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[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 108 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Reminds me of a professor who linked a pirate copy of the text book in his syllabus and warned several times do not attempt to use these sources because doing so is a violation of copyright law! Please purchase the book!

[–] philpo@feddit.org 55 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I know someone who did that with his own book. Why? The publisher fucked him over in terms of pay. He even corrected a mistake in the original one.

[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 31 points 5 days ago (3 children)

As a counter to your story, I had one professor who required his students to purchase his own locally produced textbook, which had a new version with different exercises every semester or year, and I guess he made good money off of that because everybody thought he was an asshole for doing it, but he did it anyways.

[–] despoticruin@lemmy.zip 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Oh, name and shame for that shit.

Richard Burke at Casper College does this and doesn't even use the book. Costed over $150.

Garbage practice that should be criminal fraud.

[–] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 days ago

I had a professor do this too but the book only cost like $5 so it seemed fine compared to the loose-leaf math book I had to buy for $300

[–] philpo@feddit.org 16 points 5 days ago

Yeah, happily enough that wouldn't fly here and is actually considered a felony and surely cost someone tenure.

Not that they won't try to find ways around it (and surely some do), but if it's too obvious it lands them in hot water fast.

There was a law professor who lost both his tenure and law licence for it at the other university in the town I studied while I was there.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 26 points 5 days ago (4 children)

I fear that calling them out so obviously it will just push them to target vpns next.

[–] lena@gregtech.eu 42 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Then Brits can use TOR 😎

If they block the publicly-accessible nodes too, they can use bridges.

[–] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Hell yeah.

It's very hard to block TOR, because it's an hydra. Block one method, multiple other methods take its place.

[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 4 days ago

Bonus prize if it makes sites accept Tor users as legitimate.

[–] NikolaTeslasPigeon@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I use TOR because over on Reddit I got unjustly permabanned. It works great! I rarely use reddit but there just happens to be one community that has some helpful information that I'll likely need to follow for the next few months. So TOR has been great for that!

[–] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Reddit is bad

It had potential, but it has gone to waste.

[–] nanoswarm9k@lemmus.org 1 points 2 days ago

Reddit has done things in it's lifespan, and is dying of financeer-cancer, like about half egregors and autonomous zones that come and go. The smaller ones usually die of generational trauma.

It all goes to compost and echos though, not all to the void.

I the mistake of telling asking a mod not to be condescending.

[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 37 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Blocking vpns is tricky in a western society because so many companies cannot function without them.

[–] herrvogel@lemmy.world 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They wouldn't block the protocol, just the most common commercial providers. That's very easily doable.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

hey Alexa, deploy an ec2 instance of openvpn with a socks proxy and email me the connection info.

[–] abs_mess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 days ago

what is "dumb club" ? will vmess prevent authoritarians from packet sniffing?

[–] rikudou 21 points 5 days ago

Many have tried that, IMO getting the word out about VPNs even to non-technical users is important because most people still don't know what that is. If they ever try to ban VPNs, even non-technical people will know how to use them and how to avoid the bans.

[–] LilB0kChoy@piefed.social 9 points 5 days ago

That’d quickly become a game of whac-a-mole.