34 min
Pirates, Pilots, and Passwords: Flight Sim Labs Navigates Legal Issues (w/ Marc Hoag as Guest) [e297] Legally Sound Smart Business by Pasha Law PC
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- Business News
Flight Sim Labs, a software add-on creator for flight simulators, stepped into a PR disaster and possibly some substantial legal issues when it allegedly included a Trojan horse of sorts as malware to combat pirating of its $100 Airbus A320 software. The hidden test.exe file triggered anti-virus software for good reason as it was actually a tool that could steal passwords stored through Google Chrome. Flight Sim Labs had to later explain once they were outed by a user on Reddit that the tool was only targeting those who stole the software.
In this episode, Nasir and Matt are joined by good friend, entrepreneur, attorney, and podcaster, Marc Hoag. We discuss the legal issues surrounding this mess of a situation created by what seems an overzealous developer / development team, including hacking, malware, terms and conditions of Reddit, defamation and libel, DRM and anti-piracy, and copyright infringement.
Credit to MeowCaptain who brought this to our attention outside of the /r/flightsim subreddit with his video summary.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast!My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.Two attorneys here with Pasha Law – practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
NASIR: And this is where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news. Legally Sound Smart Business. It’s been a little bit of time here – almost a couple of months – but, today, I think we have a pretty nice story about flight simulators, and aviation, and software, and piracy – the kind where you steal software. Plus, we have a guest. Right, Matt?
MATT: Yeah. As you said, there’s a lot of things in play here, so I think we needed to find a guest who could hit all the checkmarks on this, and I think we found one – at least in my opinion.
MARC: Hoag – licensed attorney, aviation fanatic, podcast host, business owner. I think we’ve hit everything we can here, right?
NASIR: Startup founder, yeah. You’re right. It’s across the board.Welcome to the show,
MARC:!
MARC:: Thanks very much for having me, guys! Great to be here!
NASIR: Now, there’s only two hosts of the show. I know you’re a perfect candidate to take over our podcast but, you know, there are no openings, but I do appreciate you as a guest.We were talking to him earlier. We asked him if he’s an aviation hobbyist. He said, “Fanatic.” You were saying your wife picks out planes and their model numbers? What were you saying?
MARC:: No, I think it’s contagious. We actually recognize flights. We’re up here just north of San Francisco. All the Europe and Middle Eastern flights out of SFO end up arching right over our house here as they head on their way, northeast, out of the bay. Yeah, we actually recognize flight routing and numbers and just call them out just because we’re super weird that way and, yeah, it’s just kind of neat. You see a thing and you know, in eight hours, ten hours, fifteen hours, it’s going to be somewhere else.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s really weird. But, anyway, perfect guest.Let me give you some background of the story we’re getting. It is one of those stories where it’s kind of hard to follow but lots of legal issues which is fun for us to cover, of course.We have this company called Flight Sim Labs. They basically create add-ons for popular flight simulators. The one I’m familiar with that’s been around forever is Microsoft Flight Simulator – great name, very descriptive. From my understanding – Mark, correct me if I’m wrong – Flight Simulator by Microsoft is pretty much the main software that everyone uses for both hobbyists and even people that want to train to be a pilot, right?
MARC:: Well, kind of. It is still true. It’s alive and well in the after-market community.Microsoft, as you might know,
Flight Sim Labs, a software add-on creator for flight simulators, stepped into a PR disaster and possibly some substantial legal issues when it allegedly included a Trojan horse of sorts as malware to combat pirating of its $100 Airbus A320 software. The hidden test.exe file triggered anti-virus software for good reason as it was actually a tool that could steal passwords stored through Google Chrome. Flight Sim Labs had to later explain once they were outed by a user on Reddit that the tool was only targeting those who stole the software.
In this episode, Nasir and Matt are joined by good friend, entrepreneur, attorney, and podcaster, Marc Hoag. We discuss the legal issues surrounding this mess of a situation created by what seems an overzealous developer / development team, including hacking, malware, terms and conditions of Reddit, defamation and libel, DRM and anti-piracy, and copyright infringement.
Credit to MeowCaptain who brought this to our attention outside of the /r/flightsim subreddit with his video summary.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast!My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.Two attorneys here with Pasha Law – practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
NASIR: And this is where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news. Legally Sound Smart Business. It’s been a little bit of time here – almost a couple of months – but, today, I think we have a pretty nice story about flight simulators, and aviation, and software, and piracy – the kind where you steal software. Plus, we have a guest. Right, Matt?
MATT: Yeah. As you said, there’s a lot of things in play here, so I think we needed to find a guest who could hit all the checkmarks on this, and I think we found one – at least in my opinion.
MARC: Hoag – licensed attorney, aviation fanatic, podcast host, business owner. I think we’ve hit everything we can here, right?
NASIR: Startup founder, yeah. You’re right. It’s across the board.Welcome to the show,
MARC:!
MARC:: Thanks very much for having me, guys! Great to be here!
NASIR: Now, there’s only two hosts of the show. I know you’re a perfect candidate to take over our podcast but, you know, there are no openings, but I do appreciate you as a guest.We were talking to him earlier. We asked him if he’s an aviation hobbyist. He said, “Fanatic.” You were saying your wife picks out planes and their model numbers? What were you saying?
MARC:: No, I think it’s contagious. We actually recognize flights. We’re up here just north of San Francisco. All the Europe and Middle Eastern flights out of SFO end up arching right over our house here as they head on their way, northeast, out of the bay. Yeah, we actually recognize flight routing and numbers and just call them out just because we’re super weird that way and, yeah, it’s just kind of neat. You see a thing and you know, in eight hours, ten hours, fifteen hours, it’s going to be somewhere else.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s really weird. But, anyway, perfect guest.Let me give you some background of the story we’re getting. It is one of those stories where it’s kind of hard to follow but lots of legal issues which is fun for us to cover, of course.We have this company called Flight Sim Labs. They basically create add-ons for popular flight simulators. The one I’m familiar with that’s been around forever is Microsoft Flight Simulator – great name, very descriptive. From my understanding – Mark, correct me if I’m wrong – Flight Simulator by Microsoft is pretty much the main software that everyone uses for both hobbyists and even people that want to train to be a pilot, right?
MARC:: Well, kind of. It is still true. It’s alive and well in the after-market community.Microsoft, as you might know,
34 min