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Then install whatever the hell you want. Apple isn't *preventing* you from installing flash on your iPhone, it's merely making it difficult.

Actually, they're making it illegal.

No, you just have to commit a federal crime. At least according to Apple, and they're probably correct as a matter of law.

Net Neutrality as proposed is useless.
It has giant loopholes to allow ISPs to do the same exact shit that got them in trouble in the first place.

And we won't be able to bitch because they'll just say they're Net Neutrality compliant.

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/03/04

Which company decided to anonymize their logs sooner to protect users? Oh, that would be Google.

May have to reconsider:
http://www.google.com/privacy_faq.html#toc-anonymize
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/yahoo-anonymize-logs-after-90-days-compared-google

I apologize - had it wrong about the source.

it's you can't publish your application else where

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/iphone-developer-program-license-agreement-all

so if i develop an app using their tools and want to port it i'm sol if they want to come after me..

the EFF refers to section 7.2 and sites competing App stores for Jail broken apps but it's really 7.1 & 7.2 that set it up and 7.3 that locks it down - basically saying how and who you can publish it and then locking it down to just them - and i know the line says using apple software.. BUT if you write a application for the iPhone then later port it.. your going to have a really hard time defending that the port at no point used apple software.

over all - it's a bad agreement..

Well, that comes as a surprise to me, but I'm not ashamed to admit when I'm wrong!

Also found this: An Intellectual Property Law Primer For Multimedia And Web Developers

"A patent owner has the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the patented invention or design in the United States during the term of the patent. Anyone who makes, uses, or sells a patented invention or design within the United States during the term of the patent without permission from the patent owner is an infringer - even if he or she did not copy the patented invention or design or even know about it."

In patents there is the concept of "exhaustion" which is similar to the "First Sale" doctrine of Copyright. Essentially, the patent holders can't come after you for infringing on their patents embodied in a product which has licensed those patents. i.e. If Quanta buys chips from Intel which contain patented technology that Intel licensed from LG, then LG can't go after Quanta for infringement of the aforementioned patents in the chips they get from Intel.

http://www.eff.org/ is IMHO a great place to begin dealing with old laws and new media and technology. They are like the ACLU for geeks, and aim to limit corporate or bureaucratic grip on internet and new media technologies. If the FCC or other government agency can't figure it out, then at least these very smart legal minds will watchdog these issues of the fine print: licensing, patents, privacy, fair use, etc.

BZZZ! Wrong and thank you for playing. If you need an example for the US where a EULA was enforced by the courts, look no further than the BNETD vs. Vivendi/Blizzard Entertainment case.

http://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd

There are links there to all the court filings and the appealed case. The EULA was argued by Vivendi as enforceable and as preventing BNETD from doing what they did.

What causes you to say it was an illegal warrant?

How about the EFF? As has been explained on a whole host of articles about this, if you want evidence from a journalist covered under shield laws you use a subpoena - NOT a search warrant. That allows the proper process to be followed to ensure that sources aren't improperly identified and journalistic freedom, public interest, etc are protected. While it may not matter in this case, journalistic freedom IS important to help protect society and that's why the law is different for them.

The state started a criminal trial

Totally false. Do you even know what a trial is? Charges have to be brought before a trial, and none have.

Warrants are step 2.. charges being pressed are step 1, and if you think that hasn't happened yet, then you are very very behind the facts on this story.

No charges have been brought. Please point to any evidence whatsoever that they have.

I'm ignoring the link to the criminals website

Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law"? Figures...

How on earth is it "somewhat stretched"? He is employed as a full time journalist by a multi-outlet publishing organization, and California law clearly recognizes that internet journalists/bloggers are covered under shield laws. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of their handling of the phone itself, it's pretty obvious that the police royally screwed up this part of the investigation.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/gizmodo-search-warrant-illegal

eff believes it.

I wonder if they found him using the Gizmodo journalist's computer, which according to the EFF, was an illegal warrant. If it is found to be an illegal warrant, I wonder how it would affect this case? Not that I feel sorry for the guy, he sold stolen property, he's a criminal (pending the jury finding him guilty). The only thing I'm questioning is the legality of the authorities' methods of finding him. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/gizmodo-search-warrant-illegal

The situation isn't entirely bleak(see Lexmark vs. Static Control); but I don't think that there is much cause for optimism about that "not much of a stretch" actually being made.

As you say, you usually can't get around first sale just by doing something trivial like printing a scary license agreement on the back cover of a book. The buyer can still resell the book, not too much you can do about it. However, objects without clear physical manifestation, which are becoming more common, don't have that defense. If you buy a book through your Kindle(or an app on your iPod, or some downloadable content, or a Steam game...), you cannot transfer it to somebody else(for free or for a consideration of any kind) without either hacking the system(at which point you would draw fire from the DMCA) or with Amazon's consent(if they added a "sell this book" button to the program). Because circumvention is hard for an average person of no special technical skill(and, even for the skilled, attacking closed appliances isn't getting any easier), code is de facto law. If the system won't let you, you can't. Because of the DMCA and its ilk, code is, in many cases, actual law.

Aside from purely digital items, the other main threat is physical items with substantial digital logic embedded in them. This is because, while first sale protects your right to sell something, it has not(historically) faced the case of property that can simply refuse to function if resold, or otherwise used against the manufacturer's wishes.

Do you not understand data mining?
The people you phone crossed against the people on your social networking and email lists that you access through your cellular connection/home PC, crossed against the people in your local pub/bar or restaurant and your wifi connection against your unique browser signature against your proxy IP against your username and passwords and against the exact profile of your typing habits. Then against your friends' unique browser signatures and their home/proxy IPs. Then their aliases and their contacts and the IPs that they connect with regularly, including Skype, Jabber, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo.

Do you really think what you just posted holds water; vis a vis paranoia?

There is no such thing as anonymity. Live with it.

Anything you type into the internet (yes, I did make it sound like "the internet" is a "thing") can be traced back to a profile. Yours. With enough identifying information to pinpoint you exactly by location and/or identity.

If you think that we (us, all of us) are paranoid, then you aren't in possession of enough information. Read more, learn more, assess information you do not yet have. Work it out for yourself and then wonder how we (the paranoid ones) manage to be so restrained in what we say.

It isn't that the gubment is tracking you, or I specifically. They probably don't even care about me ... and I've killed ten men. They track all of us by default. It only takes one query to find out everything about me and everyone I've talked to since I got a computer if I walk into a coffee shop with my cellular phone in my pocket.

Good luck with that whole "grid" thing if you choose to stay off it. Can you erase the first internet conversation you had (69% probability that this typing style is the Anonymous Coward that replied to you 5 years ago from an IP in the Sudan from a Lenovo Thinkpad with MAC 00:03:47:11:22:33 and Windows serial FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8, 1024x768 resolution, accepted HTTP headers and character sets you can use, languages you will read ... etc. Panopticlick is probably something you could have a laugh at, unless you stop laughing and see this whole "paranoia" thing as something that some of us (that may have something to hide ... or not) take a little more seriously.

Did you fill in your tax return honestly? Did you provide your full employment history to your current employer completely, without any alterations in dates to cover up "looking for a job" time? Did you never have a little crunch in your car that you never told you insurance about?
Is all this just bullshit to make you live your life in a state of fear?
Yeah, that's what it is. Fear is the little death and all that. But we all live with it and live around it.

I have nothing against you, but paranoia shouldn't be treated so lightly. IMO. HAND.

Netgear hasn't released all of the source, as they should have to comply with the GPL.

Sue the bastards!

Constitutionally, I think the official justification is that this falls under the Copyright clause, not the Commerce clause.

In Universal v 2600, Universal argued just the opposite. They claimed it was obviously enacted under the commerce clause. The intellectual rights clause "Authorizes Protection for 'Writings,' Not Prohibition of Technologies Regardless of Originality, Duration, or Infringement".

http://www.eff.org/wp/investigating-machine-identification-code-technology-color-laser-printers

Actually, you're wrong. Use of circumvention tools is considered fair use in the same cases as anything else. The problem, is that distribution of said tools is in almost all situations not considered fair use, so it it illegal for anyone to develop a tool that allows people to circumvent protection which they have the right to break. In effect, anyone who does not have the rights to give away the data itself does not have the right to release a circumvention tool in the US.

A good precedent for this is the RealDVD case, where the judge confirmed that it is perfectly legal (fair use) for a person to rip a DVD they own, but not for Real Networks to distribute the software that enables it:

http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/RealDVD/Real%20v%20DVD-CCA%2C%20PI%20Order%20081109.pdf

Sorry to threadjack, but I wanted people to see the actual article the brief blog post links to.

Hang your head in shame, Timothy.

Actually free software stands in contradiction to "Every manufacturer has the monopoly on his own products." because free software means users have the freedom (permission) to develop competing products based on the free software they run. Hardware manufacturers are beginning to appear which allow one to develop competing products in much the same way. Apple's restrictions in their iPhone API license agreement are unusually hostile to distributing applications Apple does not approve of (see section 7.3 which says rejected iPhone applications can't be distributed anywhere else). The thing to note about Fiore's second bite at the Apple (so to speak) is that Fiore has an audience large enough to complain. Others who would use their freedom of speech (permission) by "ridiculing public figures" won't get a second chance because nobody will chat up their misfortune at choosing to deal with such an arbitrary power.

Actually free software stands in contradiction to "Every manufacturer has the monopoly on his own products." because free software means users have the freedom (permission) to develop competing products based on the free software they run. Hardware manufacturers are beginning to appear which allow one to develop competing products in much the same way. Apple's restrictions in their iPhone API license agreement are unusually hostile to distributing applications Apple does not approve of (see section 7.3 which says rejected iPhone applications can't be distributed anywhere else). The thing to note about Fiore's second bite at the Apple (so to speak) is that Fiore has an audience large enough to complain. Others who would use their freedom of speech (permission) by "ridiculing public figures" won't get a second chance because nobody will chat up their misfortune at choosing to deal with such an arbitrary power.

The EFF offers a copy of the developer's agreement here.

If the relevant clause appears to be this:

3.3.14 Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or
defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or
other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by
iPhone or iPod touch users.

I don't see how Fiore is "obscene, pornographic, or defamatory" though I guess there is some off-color content. But the "objectionable" line seems hopelessly vague, and I have no idea what limit "reasonable" places on Apple. I think they can block virtually whomever they want but question whether this clause is particularly meaningful as a contract. Because Apple can "revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time," the developer has little or no protection; a court might (?) have a problem with the reckless exercise of this -- contractual obligations aren't always spelled out in full on paper.

Certainly Apple has a monopoly over iPhone/iPad apps, one they will hold as long as they can. Some argue that vertical integration like this is bad for companies, and Apple is the unusual exception in pulling it off. The only solution may be for consumers to vote with their feet -- Android.

One wonders if Apple would go after him for doing such a thing. As the EFF shows, you're never on sure ground with Apple because Apple accepts/rejects app submissions seemingly arbitrarily. And they are working off of a history of legally threatening people on baseless claims and profound misreads of policy. I don't think it a stretch to wonder if Apple would consider a different version of the application they refused to distribute to be a violation of section 7.3 of their most recent revision of the Apple iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which aims to stop developers from distributing rejected iPhone applications via other means. Granted, a different program would no doubt use different API and possibly offer users entirely different features, a different look and feel, and it could even be distributed under a FLOSS license (or "FOSS" as Apple prefers to call it—can't have people thinking about "libre" as that might lead to people inquire what software freedom means!), but from Apple's perspective: there's a monopoly to sustain here.

One wonders if Apple would go after him for doing such a thing. As the EFF shows, you're never on sure ground with Apple because Apple accepts/rejects app submissions seemingly arbitrarily. And they are working off of a history of legally threatening people on baseless claims and profound misreads of policy. I don't think it a stretch to wonder if Apple would consider a different version of the application they refused to distribute to be a violation of section 7.3 of their most recent revision of the Apple iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which aims to stop developers from distributing rejected iPhone applications via other means. Granted, a different program would no doubt use different API and possibly offer users entirely different features, a different look and feel, and it could even be distributed under a FLOSS license (or "FOSS" as Apple prefers to call it—can't have people thinking about "libre" as that might lead to people inquire what software freedom means!), but from Apple's perspective: there's a monopoly to sustain here.

One wonders if Apple would go after him for doing such a thing. As the EFF shows, you're never on sure ground with Apple because Apple accepts/rejects app submissions seemingly arbitrarily. And they are working off of a history of legally threatening people on baseless claims and profound misreads of policy. I don't think it a stretch to wonder if Apple would consider a different version of the application they refused to distribute to be a violation of section 7.3 of their most recent revision of the Apple iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which aims to stop developers from distributing rejected iPhone applications via other means. Granted, a different program would no doubt use different API and possibly offer users entirely different features, a different look and feel, and it could even be distributed under a FLOSS license (or "FOSS" as Apple prefers to call it—can't have people thinking about "libre" as that might lead to people inquire what software freedom means!), but from Apple's perspective: there's a monopoly to sustain here.

"We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonwealth, our governance will emerge.
Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions.
The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule.
We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis.
But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose. "

http://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/barlow_0296.declaration

Ever have a phone before the new Nokias? EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM NEVER GAVE YOU ROOT, on your own device as well. Ever own a SNES, NEW, Megadrive, etc...

what he means is that it's a sad day when the device manufacturer explicitly prevents (or tries to prevent) you from getting root access, even going so far as to try and classify it as illegal.

Even if some brain-dead bureaucrat grants the patent - I can't imagine one easier to defeat. Thank goodness for EFF!

If you forced a login with a quick time out for all of those gmail accounts, that's a hell of a lot more secure than storing the documents on your laptop, which can be stolen and broken pretty easily. (These kids aren't going to password protect bootup and encrypt the hard drive. ) If you need an e-mail even if the internet is down, it should probably be in your notes in your word processor anyway. And unless you're not going to use WiFi, you are already sending your data over insecure connections.

And if you think other ISPs don't give up your data already... well, you're just not paying attention.

If you want to use and share data on the internet, there are risks. If you want to remember something that cannot possibly be intercepted by a third party, write it down on a piece of paper, put it in a safe, and hope no one steals the safe.

Couldn't Warden have sent requests to the EFF to provide lawyers so he could fight an evil corporation to use freely publicly available information?

About once a month or so, somebody comments about a landlord doing something abusive to a tenant, or a school district violating its student's rights, or citizens being wronged by the police or Feds. Somebody else always responds, "Why don't they just get the ACLU to step in?"

True, the ACLU has over a half-million members. Between it's political advocacy and charitable foundation arms, it has over $120 million per year of revenue. Yet STILL, it can only be bothered to get involved with a tiny subset of possible cases. It is ultimately a political and public policy organization, and has to pick and choose the battles that will give it the biggest strategic impact with the smallest possible commitment of resources.

Meanwhile, the entire EFF staff could comfortably hang out at my house and watch a football game. Their annual revenue of $3.4 million is less than the average cost of ONE patent infringement lawsuit... and moreover, they're running a $400k annual deficit over there right now.

There's a reason why the EFF isn't lead counsel on any multi-million dollar pro bono lawsuits, and it's not because they "didn't get the memo". Rather, it's because that's like asking your local Boy Scout troop to fly down and singlehandedly fix Haiti. It bugs me when people assume that lawyers magically grow on trees to fight your political crusades for free. There is a very low ratio of real support for things like the EFF... compared to Slashdot babble about software patents, stealing MP3's, cracking video game DRM, and all of the other things people do to make-believe that they are "heroes of the revolution" or some such laughable bullshit. More people should put at least a few bucks where their mouths are and lend some support.

Couldn't Warden have sent requests to the EFF to provide lawyers so he could fight an evil corporation to use freely publicly available information?

About once a month or so, somebody comments about a landlord doing something abusive to a tenant, or a school district violating its student's rights, or citizens being wronged by the police or Feds. Somebody else always responds, "Why don't they just get the ACLU to step in?"

True, the ACLU has over a half-million members. Between it's political advocacy and charitable foundation arms, it has over $120 million per year of revenue. Yet STILL, it can only be bothered to get involved with a tiny subset of possible cases. It is ultimately a political and public policy organization, and has to pick and choose the battles that will give it the biggest strategic impact with the smallest possible commitment of resources.

Meanwhile, the entire EFF staff could comfortably hang out at my house and watch a football game. Their annual revenue of $3.4 million is less than the average cost of ONE patent infringement lawsuit... and moreover, they're running a $400k annual deficit over there right now.

There's a reason why the EFF isn't lead counsel on any multi-million dollar pro bono lawsuits, and it's not because they "didn't get the memo". Rather, it's because that's like asking your local Boy Scout troop to fly down and singlehandedly fix Haiti. It bugs me when people assume that lawyers magically grow on trees to fight your political crusades for free. There is a very low ratio of real support for things like the EFF... compared to Slashdot babble about software patents, stealing MP3's, cracking video game DRM, and all of the other things people do to make-believe that they are "heroes of the revolution" or some such laughable bullshit. More people should put at least a few bucks where their mouths are and lend some support.

Wrong organization though, this sounds more like a case for the EFF. http://www.eff.org/

uh, fucktard, obama claimed that there will be full documentation of anyone he met with, anyone congress met with and any meetings that happened. if you're so fast to forget they had closed door meetings and i have yet to see a single list of industry representatives obama or the legislature met with during this process. so the op is correct, obama lied.

even the eff is bitching about his lie: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/obamas-transparency-

You mean stuff like this: http://www.eff.org/issues/acta ?

Tor

Who are these people who would entrust every detail of their business and personal life to a for-profit company?

Chances are, it's you.

Do you have business-critical conversations over the telephone? Few suspected AT&T would open up their network to the NSA to listen to your conversations

That's why I go secure for all my phone conversations.

Who are these people who would entrust every detail of their business and personal life to a for-profit company?

Chances are, it's you.

Do you have business-critical conversations over the telephone? Few suspected AT&T would open up their network to the NSA to listen to your conversations.

Do you use a social network to share with your acquaintances? Can you trust Facebook to keep your messages private?

Do you do anything on the Internet? If so, can you trust your service provider to not be doing the same sort of thing?

People trust companies with this sort of information all the time, but in the end we tend to continue to trust these companies until they do something to lose our trust. In the end, trust is just another economic value proposition; we weigh the cost of trusting with the cost of not trusting, and so far Google hasn't done anything to erode my trust. They came close with Buzz, but the end result was that they saw that they could improve things, and they did.

I've never seen Google sell the information it collects. Yes, it does perform data analysis, but it does this using automated systems in order to better-target their advertising, which is a far cry from my idea of "data mining". The closest that they come to data mining is with their GoogleGeist aggregated analysis, which they give away for free to everyone. Not offering services "out of the goodness of their corporate heart" doesn't have to be nearly as nefarious as you would lead us to conclude. I'm not saying that Google doesn't have the potential to become evil or careless, but I am saying that I don't think they have yet.

And yes, everyone, please keep asking these difficult questions. But don't try to lead us to false conclusions by asserting false assumptions, especially about Google's "silence". We're smarter than that...

It's almost like the corrupt corporations are in league with the government. If only somebody had told us this was going on...

Sorry, I had no idea they rehired her when we stopped looking. But they really did fire her, once.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

User tracking, targeted advertisements, etc.

Just recently, the EFF showed that seemingly-innocuous information is probably enough to uniquely identify you from the hundreds of thousands or millions of visitors to a particular site. And that’s not even on the same playing field as a vendor-assigned unique device ID.

You know who else has your phone number? EVERYONE.

No. Nobody has my phone number except the people I’ve given it to.

AT&T has your phone number too...where is the uproar?

And I’m pretty sure they can’t sell it to 3rd parties without my consent.

It's so fast that you won't notice the lag of deep packet inspection sending everything you do to the NSA or to censoring politically subversive blogs.

where that warranty is not otherwise protected by statute for the purposes of public safety, as in the case of safety features)

In my friends case, the State law is very clear that the condition of the car at the time of the accident is the only thing relevant. If the car had remained in it's race track configuration it would have not qualified for warranty repairs. Since it did meet the all safety requirements at the time of the accident it did qualify. Just to be clear, all parties were aware that the modifications had been done (and undone).

As for the additions/alterations to his car. I am not by any means a car expert. I can say that one of the additions was a nitrous system. I am fairly confident that this would one of the things you claim would always void the warranty. He also tampered with the computer system. After the race (on a race track) the alterations were "undone" for lack of a better term and the car was brought back to street legal requirements.

And again, the warranty was honored. You can argue anything else you want but the simple fact is that all parties involve agreed that the law was clear on this issue and the man was paid.

To go back to the software issue. We have two issues. 1) Who OWNS the phone. 2) What rights does the owner have.

Under 17 U.S.C. 109 it is clear that if you PURCHASE a device you own that device. With the exception of the DMCA you have every right to do anything you want with that device. You can make any modifications you want and use it for any purpose (legal purpose). You can also re-sell that device. However Apple has placed several "security" measures on the iphone that prevent you from adding any software to the device without their permission.

"Well that does not matter you can always jailbreak the phone." Except under DMCA that is prohibited. See section 1201:

http://w2.eff.org/IP/DMCA/hr2281_dmca_law_19981020_pl105-304.html

Apple's view is that it is a Federal crime for you to place software on your phone unless they approve it: http://www.pcworld.com/article/159532/apple_files_opposition_to_dmca_exemption_for_jailbreaking.html

The reason this is all an issue is that currently the only legal way for me to place software I have created on a device I own is to. 1) Purchase a SDK. 2) Agree to a contract that restricts my freedom of speech (NDA). 3) Create the product, however I either have to do this on my own or only accept help from those who have also completed steps 1 and 2. Next if I want to share this application, I must then apply for approval to a third party which can reject my application for any reason.

Apple is not preventing, nor can they legally prevent, developers from developing apps for their own iPhones or other people's iPhones. This is why there are many apps available for so called "jailbroken" iPhones.

Actually they have been trying to do just that. It is Apple's stance that jail-breaking a phone is a violation of the DMCA (which it almost certainly is). According to Apple's view you would be committing a Federal crime by jail-breaking a phone you owned. The scarry part about the DMCA is that you most likely ARE committing a Federal crime when you jail-break your phone.

When the EFF tried to add in an exemption to the DMCA, Apple opposed the motion. You can read more in PC Worlds article. Or simply Google it:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/159532/apple_files_opposition_to_dmca_exemption_for_jailbreaking.html

While you really need to read the full text of the DMCA to fully appreciate what is going on. You can find the full text here:

http://w2.eff.org/IP/DMCA/hr2281_dmca_law_19981020_pl105-304.html

Or here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.2281.ENR:

This issue can pretty much be summed up by the first paragraph of section 1201:

`Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems `(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.

The only defense in this situation would be fair use:

`(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED- (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

However you have to do all of the work your self:

`(b) ADDITIONAL VIOLATIONS- (1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--

Now these are only excerpts. You really NEED to read the entire statute to understand what is going on. The thing is massive. In my opinion it is written in such a away as to be terrible for the average product owner.

If you have a company who manufactures things like...communications equipment do you want them selling that to national enemies?

National enemies like Iran and China, right? Suddenly, the loosening of restrictions seems a bit more disingenuous.

I'll admit I'm probably out of touch with the current state of crypto.

I remember a time when DES (56 bit symmetrical) was revered as high security. Then, a few years later, a test showed it was cracked in 56 days. Then, a year later, it was 2.4 days. Then, a few years later, it was under 1 day.

Once upon a time, we thought computers with 640k of RAM were huge. Now, you can buy a machine with 128gigabytes or RAM and 24 processor cores for about the same price as a small car. My first hard drive was 10 megabytes - I've now got a USB drive the size of my thumbnail that holds 4gigs, and that's old. Lots of numbers that used to seem huge now seem trivial. I have to believe we're going to see the same scale of changes in crypto, within my lifetime.

I've seen some technological evolution over the years. I don't want to be on the receiving end of a nasty surprise in a few years because I guessed wrong.

Fearmongering? Maybe. It's only paranoia if they aren't actually out to get you. If they actually are out to get you, it's called caution.

And so far they've never been found guilty of it because they've been able to stretch the meaning of "in good faith".

They haven't been found guilty of perjury yet. In Lenz v. Universal, on August 20, 2008, Judge Jeremy Fogel held that sending a takedown notice under OCILLA without giving the first thought to whether the use of a work is a fair use is misrepresentation:

An allegation that a copyright owner acted in bad faith by issuing a takedown notice without proper consideration of the fair use doctrine thus is sufficient to state a misrepresentation claim pursuant to Section 512(f) of the DMCA. [...] The DMCA already requires copyright owners to make an initial review of the potentially infringing material prior to sending a takedown notice; indeed, it would be impossible to meet any of the requirements of Section 512(c) without doing so. A consideration of the applicability of the fair use doctrine simply is part of that initial review.

Bruce Sterling wrote what is still probably the best article for the layman about the inevitability and dangers of bacteriological antibiotic resistance.

Bitter Resistance

Check it out, peeps.

EFF Action Alert: Rein In ACTA: Tell Congress to Open the Secret IP Pact

EFF Action Alert: Rein In ACTA: Tell Congress to Open the Secret IP Pact