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Check out the audio on the May 30, 2006 episode of Off the Wall.

This is intriguing stuff...

>> What kind of abuse since both parties need to become into an agreement to setup the system?

The copy of 2600 sitting in front of me (22.4) has an article called "How to track any UK GSM phone (without the user's consent)".

In a nutshell, it involves using an online number spoofing service to OK the request for tracking. So much for the agreement bit....

2600 magazine They don't have ads, except for classifieds, which are free to subscribers.

I've heard about more than one incident of people handing over a domain at the threat of litigation even when they know they're in the right simply because it would be necessary to hire lawyers either way and a cost-benefit analysis yields that they should just bend over and give up. The 2600 guys have had plenty of experience down this path. Have there been cases where people have counter-sued for being, I don't know the word -- extored, blackmailed, whatever -- in a situation where someone with a lot of cash muscles the other side into folding simply because they know the other side has neither the money nor, in other cases, the political capital to defend themselves?

Parenthetically, I like the UK's system in which the plaintiff has to pay the defendant's legal bills if the suit loses. We should do that.

seriously...off the hook?

BTW, Freedom Downtime was made by 2600, the same guys behind The Fifth HOPE.

Freedom Downtime
2600

There are a great number of interesting underground talk radio shows which have sprung up as of late, many of which deal with network security, computer programming, software piracy, individual privacy issues, etc.

I recommend the following shows:

The ARTS: Artscene Radio Talk Show - show archive
BinRev: Binary Revolution - show archive
RFA: Radio Freek America - show archive

and of course we can't forget Emmanuel Goldstein's Off the Hook which has shows dating back to 1988:
2600's Off the Hook - show archive

TEXTFILES.COM also stores a huge library of other radio shows and rants at its newly branded AUDIO.TEXTFILES.COM.

...drew 2600 participants...
Last I checked most of the folks in 2600 were pretty sharp! :)

The Supreme Court has heard no case in which either the Federal Govt or the states have attempted to prosecute a theater-fire-yeller. There are no laws, there are no precedents. Justices tend to become off-topic in their opinions (sort of like this thread), but what Holmes said was no Footnote Four that has had any post-ruling influence. And by the way, in pretty much every subsequent free speech case (other than DMCA-affirming cases like Eldred v Ashcroft) and the lower courts' encounter with Emmanuel Goldstein's DeCSS crusade, the Supreme Court has opted to strengthen the protection of free speech.

So, as I said, it is legal to yell fire in a theater as it does not violate any law (a law which does not exist because what it would be prohibiting does not pose a direct and imminent threat to the Federal Government.

But I invite you to test it out -- maybe you'll get famous.

</ConLaw rant>

I wonder if they realize that they just wireless-enabled a 2600 Meeting ?

Should be plenty of fun this friday !

By the way, NYC has completely phased out tokens. In doing so, they are also phasing out mass-transit employees with sizable layoffs. And they upped the fare from $1.50 to $2. They save money with the more effecient machines and the fare hike, but at the same time thirst for more dollars by laying off lots of good people whom I prefer to deal with over computers. Bastards.

It's a little long to type up here, but I can give you the jist of the article. Basically it describes a way of getting all the active MAC address (of Windows machines) on your subnet by performing a portscan on Netbios (port 139), and using those (ifconfig in linux or perhaps MAC address cloning on you linksys router) to register an IP thru DHCP.

Since most Cable ISPs require the MAC of the connecting device to be registered, you need a vaild one. Any thing you do with an IP registered under an assumed MAC gets blamed on the person with the MAC you stole.

Thats the theory anyway. Could be traced, but probably enough to get you off the hook.

i remember emmanuel on Off the Hook wondering if the CIA paid coolio for their sadaam parody of gangsta's paradise... either way i dunno.

P

Ah yes, when computer magazines weren't 90% ads

There are still magazines like this. Ever heard of 2600 magazine?


Mechanik

Might I suggest attaching a copy of this to their posters while you are at it?

Lock picking? Hacking? Spies? Social Engeering (my favorite)? :> Complete audio archives of previous HOPE conferances are available at Hope2000 and BeyondHope. The 2600 radio program 'Off the Hook' airs each Wednesday at 7pm EST on the web here (I recommend the WBAI live steam) or in the New York City area on member supported WBAI 99.5FM. I also went to the conference this year (and the previous ones as I live just over the tunnel in NJ) and thought it was fantastic. My friends and I are still winding down from what was a VERY long weekend of panels by day and kicks at night...

Well, this calls for action. This clueless lawyer is probably going to get an order from a kangaroo court, maybe from Kaplan, the judge who ruled that publishing a link on 2600.org was an act of DVD piracy. If this happens, Tom Murphy is going to face huge legal costs.

Since this is really bothering me a lot, I went to EFF's site and made a small donation. Come on, do it now! Do something for your rights now!

If the EFF starts getting donations each time these bozos fling the DMCA around, then maybe they'll understand.

Do you feel safe? Huh uh. Want to admire the handywork of Lewis Kaplan against your right to put a link (a freakin' link!) into your web site? Feel free to bask in his wisdom.

Got the message? Donate now.

Hodie mi, cras tibi - Today it's me, tomorrow it's you (famous last words of a Roman dragged to his execution by his tyrannic government.)

-- SysKoll

The only difference I see between this and current ongoing cases with DeCSS is that they are trying to get permission from the court system before they get sued. There is allot of history available on this topic. For those that are just hearing about this, check out 2600's DVD lawsuit history page and more at the Electronic Frontier Foundation website.

Eh, "we"? Who is "we"?

The problem, in the eyes of hackers and general Slashdot visitors

Why should we care about what criminals (i.e. "hackers") consider to be a "problem" (i.e. an impediment to their illegal activities)?

Why do you insist in speaking for the collective body of visitors to this site? Do you have mind-reading powers? Or do you just wish to usurp others' voices for your own ends?

The commercialization of the internet has given rise to free web page services that only give you 2MB of space and 300MB of bandwidth per month

Well, there's a lot that private individuals can do with that. So your objection is that it's not enough for heavy-duty warez trading?

cable modem services that will disconnect you if you run anything even remotely resembling a server

We already know why you want to run servers, right?

Anyway, did you stop to think that the people who pay for these cable modem services don't want an idiot on the same network as them creating a virtual traffic jam with his server? This is the exact online analogue to real estate zoning laws. People deserve to be protected from their neighbor setting up a big retail business right next to them, attracting tons of traffic and general degradation of life for the people who live there.

and a greater feeling among non-tech-heads that any site that isn't run by a multinational corporation that already owns fourteen newspapers and three TV stations "isn't trustworthy".

Yeah. They should trust tiny fly-by-night websites run by w4r3z d00dz in Slovakia, right?

The silencing of the average person for the sake of keeping internet speech under the control of multinational corporations because it is more profitable, however, is a bad thing.

Excuse me. I, contrary to what you seem to attribute to yourself, can't read minds. Would you explain to me which fruit (turd?) of your imagination you are talking about?

Oh yeah. I forgot to add that Jamming Eschelon wasn't so much of a program, but rather a unified effort in an attempt to jam. No one knows if Eschelon was effected or not since they are unsure of how it works at this point.
A nice 'day-after' follow up article is over at Wired with some comments from Macki of 2600

BTW: When I "preview" my post.. it looks fine. But the final post includes [the.website]. I previewed.. I promise... Ask ALLA!

What we need to do is take the fight to them.

It's being done. Professor Felten (who wrote the paper on SDMI for an Information Hiding workshop) and the EFF are suing the RIAA. The RIAA are trying to get this dismissed, as it is exactly the kind of lawsuit they don't want. It's all very well to sue members of the "evil Open Source movement", or for that matter nasty hackers, but a professor at MIT is a different matter.

What you want to do is traditionally known as "fair use". There is a strong common law tradition in most countries, including the United States, establishing a person's right to make fair use of a copyrighted work. Specifically, with respect to audio recordings, this tradition has been codified into law under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992.

However, in this case, no one is legally preventing you from making fair use of a work. No laws have been passed forbidding you to do it. You are well within your rights to circumvent that copy protection for fair use purposes. But, under the DMCA, you are forbidden from helping anyone else break that protection. That is, you are forbidden from publishing information or providing devices that aid in the defeat of encryption on a copyrighted work. Which is to say, under the DMCA, unless you have a hell of a lot of technical knowledge about breaking encryption, you can't make a backup of your CD (practically, but you are legally free to do so).

Does the DMCA violate your traditional right to fair use? Of course it does. Get pissed off! Write your representative...

At the end of the day, its about perception. Let me try to explain.

It is possible that I might be able to explain the merits of the DeCSS case to a disinterested party such as my mother. However, if she discovered that the person behind DeCSS was also creating web sites with expletives in their names then she would conclude that Corley was a foul mouthed yob who doesn't deserve her support. I agree that this conclusion has no legal validity, but it is how very many ordinary people think. Also remember that although judges are supposed to consider cases purely of objective legal grounds, anyone who believes that they are not influenced by their personal feelings towards the plaintifs needs a reality check.

Why do you think that of all the sites containing DeCSS the MPAA went after 2600? Just go to www.2600.org and have a look at it. Can you conceive of a site better designed to offend the average judge. The MPAA know that once they have won against 2600, it will be much easier to move on to more difficult targets like university professors.

Now, I am sure that DeCSS and F***GeneralMotors are both cases of great merit (although the latter does strike me as being remarkably juvenile). But I can't help feeling that the former would be better off if they were being fought by different people.

• nice little article on
• 2600 from Grant of the Australian chapter of 2600 who is...

• I guess you could fight this through the australian legal system but the article goes on to further state the following....

However Many Email programs such as those made by M$ and SUN convert plain text URL's into links. So are these programs illegal? Are they aiding and abetting circumvention devices?

That wouldn't be too unusual for those folks. In the 17:3 issue of 2600 they posted a scan of a letter from the MPAA asking for "permission to use the '2600 The Hacker Quarterly Magazine' as a backgound setdressing/prop," and the letter was written, of course, on the same letterhead they used to tell 2600 that they were suing them.

-B
benjones@superutility.net

The Iraq situation is quite debatable, and that site is a good little propaganda outlet.

I still remember the WBAI Clinton interview (go to 2600). He got quite pissed when confronted with this issue. Apparently, Iraq has more income now than before the invasion, and it isn't getting to the people. The holes in the sanctions are huge, especially going by truck through neighboring friendly countries, so he could buy what his people needed if he wanted to.

Let's see, leave your own people without medical attention to make a political point? I wouldn't put that past him. Remember, this is the guy who moved military forces into hospitals and schools during the war so there'd be less chance we hit them (and if we do hit them, who cares? Better PR for Saddam).

Doug

ps. Your ps made you sound like a karma whore.

Dr David Touretzky of Carnegie Mellon University, who testified on the 2600 case and was commended by the Court for his "lucid explication" and "candour", has a Gallery of CSS Descramblers, including an English prose version.

(4) Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish any rights of free speech or the press for activities using consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing products.

Incidentally, reading Touretzky's wonderfully eloquent and stirring defence of what effectively amounts to civil disobedience, a sudden irony bludgeoned me unconscious like a baby seal: one day this somewhat clichéd story of the little guy taking on the faceless dehumanising monolith and prevailing through resourcefulness and passion will be made into a Hollywood Movie starring Robin Williams as Touretzky, that kid from Jerry Maguire as Jon Johansen, and Alanis Morisette as The American Constitution.

The tagline on the DVD (just above the Oscar garlands)? 'Information Wants to Be Free.'

http://www.2600.org/news/1999/1227-help.html (scroll down)

Can be found here.

(Probably redundant at this point, given the speed of posting. Oh well:)

I say we blame Canada!

hmmm... Though, it could be aliens behind it. They're always up to no good. Green little buggers.

Close. Boycott everything associated with the MPAA. That means:

• Don't buy DVDs (already noted) or movies on any media
• Don't rent DVDs or movies on any media
• Don't go to the movies (except as noted below)

With all that new free time: you should find plenty now free to write letters to editors, do a little clothes shopping, talk to your friends and colleagues about the situation, send a contribution to EFF, or maybe even join the Call to Action.

Personally, despite a number of titles being on my wish list, I have neither purchased nor rented a single DVD since this started. Nor have I purchased or rented any tapes. Nor have I gone to any movies.

I wonder: do you suppose slashdot defaults to "flat" mode these days to improve its hit count?

Yes, if you can copy it, you don't need to read it.

However a lot of piracy concerns would be over other formats (eg MPEG) that are more easily copied/downloaded, and you do need to decrypt to put the data into those formats.

Yes and no. Perhaps the funniest thing about this whole story (although with a story as absurd as this, it's hard to choose) is that according to this article over at 2600, a program already exists precisely to save DVD video in other formats. In fact, it's been around since 1997.

Of course you're right that the data has to be decrypted before this can happen. But, of course, the data is decrypted before it's sent off to your video driver, which is exactly where this hack sits. So even without DeCSS, pirates can make both bit-for-bit copies and format conversion copies of any DVD they want, provided they have a licensed DVD decrypting player to begin with.

On the other hand, I can't seem to find a copy of this program (in 5 minutes of searching), but the point is that, just like with all those SDMI proposals to steal back digital music...as long as it has to be sent to open hardware--your video card in this case; your sound card in the case of digital audio--it can be copied. When they start getting closed hardware inside your box--like they have with the advent of DVD players--then it's time to start worrying.