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After years of inaction on my part, earlier this year I finally decided to make a donation to the EFF, because I agree with their position in virtually every case they take up.

This is another such case.

If you like what you see, whether in this case or in other cases, then throw some money at them to keep up the good work! Besides, you can even take the donation as a tax deduction... :-)

While the information in question was classified as a trade secret, without him knowing that it was coming from someone under NDA he's not in violation of the UTSA, which is what he's being sued under.

It hasn't been shown that the site operators in question didn't know where the information came from. It's easy to say that they didn't, but it isn't necessarily true.

Bottom line, Apple is bringing it's weight to bear on someone in order to coerce the names of his sources, and those are protected by 1st amendment rights.

If the site operators did know, then those sources are not protected. Apple isn't trying to coerce anything that they wouldn't have the right to. It's up to one side or the other to prove that they did or didn't know where the information came from.

I say good on the EFF for stepping up on this one.

The EFF's website indicates that they are getting involved because Apple was suing the ISP of one of the sites in question for access to the site's email. This is a very specific reason that has little to do with most of what's being discussed here.

I'm a bit puzzled by your increasingly combative tone. Unless you work for Apple, this is not a personal argument, so let's not try to make it one. In any case, I'll try to clarify once more, but then I'm done with this topic.

So you said one can always burn to CD to get around restrictions, and I said that this is not a good solution because of the loss in quality. You replied with, "Blah blah blah. CDs are "lossy" too. But they're good enough. If you don't consider [music storage format X] to be good enough, don't buy it." I think you misunderstand what I'm talking about. I'm not complaining about the fact that AAC is a lossy format, but pointing out that when you decode it and then re-encode it in a different format you loose even more quality, and you end up with a lower quality result than if you ripped an ordinary CD.

Whether or not that loss in quality is acceptable will vary between people; my point is that you have to damage the product in order make full use of it, like buying a record album that will only play on one type of player until you put big scratches across it. It doesn't seem like it would be a very satifactory solution to many people when they paid good money for the product.

I said that I hadn't tried iTMS and was only relating the experience of a friend. You said, "Strangely, this seems not to have stopped you from running off at the mouth about something you don't actually have any knowledge of. Maybe you should spend a minute thinking about that."

I spoke about the general deficiencies of services using DRM. Note, neither you nor other respondants really took issue with my characterization of the facts of the matter, but rather argued the restrictions don't really feel so oppressive. I was hoping others with more expience would provide more insight from the inside, and that happened to a degree. Anyway, I though we were discussing DRM not /. posting etiquette, so that seems irrelivent.

On the point of privacy I thought I made myself clear, but let me try one last time. The right to privacy is an important principle in US law, represented everwhere from the 4th amendment to the Constitution to decisions like Roe vs. Wade. The general purpose of this is to limit government and law enforement prying into our homes and private lives. DRM schemes charge your personal computer, which is in your home and for many a basic tool of day to day life, with being a sort of copyright policeman. I find this to be a fundemental violation of the idea of personal privacy, not because it sends information out to others but because it is an imposition of their powers in our private lives. I feel it's a bad path to start down, and it is not inconceivable that these programs will report on people (like other spyware) in the future. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile, so to speak. Until then they will simply be an intrusion and an obstacle to law abiding citizens.

On the question of whether circumventing DRM is a violation of the DMCA (if copyright.gov uses that term I will as well): I've already said IANAL, so I'll refer you to what the lawyers at the EFF said about it. Of course, my interpretation of the law (or yours) is largly irrelivant if I get sued for trying to use the music I payed for; I'm not independantly wealthy, so like most people I probably couldn't wait to be vindicated in the nth appeal and would have to settle (probably bankrupting myself in the process). One need only look at the Sklyarov, DeCSS, or similar cases to see that legal trouble is common for those who try to allow users to exercise their fair use rights, not to mention the situation between Apple and Real I linked to before. I'm not sure they'll ever go after individual users, but "you might not get sued for using your music" is not quite the guarantee I'm looking for from a music service.

I'm a bit puzzled by your increasingly combative tone. Unless you work for Apple, this is not a personal argument, so let's not try to make it one. In any case, I'll try to clarify once more, but then I'm done with this topic.

So you said one can always burn to CD to get around restrictions, and I said that this is not a good solution because of the loss in quality. You replied with, "Blah blah blah. CDs are "lossy" too. But they're good enough. If you don't consider [music storage format X] to be good enough, don't buy it." I think you misunderstand what I'm talking about. I'm not complaining about the fact that AAC is a lossy format, but pointing out that when you decode it and then re-encode it in a different format you loose even more quality, and you end up with a lower quality result than if you ripped an ordinary CD.

Whether or not that loss in quality is acceptable will vary between people; my point is that you have to damage the product in order make full use of it, like buying a record album that will only play on one type of player until you put big scratches across it. It doesn't seem like it would be a very satifactory solution to many people when they paid good money for the product.

I said that I hadn't tried iTMS and was only relating the experience of a friend. You said, "Strangely, this seems not to have stopped you from running off at the mouth about something you don't actually have any knowledge of. Maybe you should spend a minute thinking about that."

I spoke about the general deficiencies of services using DRM. Note, neither you nor other respondants really took issue with my characterization of the facts of the matter, but rather argued the restrictions don't really feel so oppressive. I was hoping others with more expience would provide more insight from the inside, and that happened to a degree. Anyway, I though we were discussing DRM not /. posting etiquette, so that seems irrelivent.

On the point of privacy I thought I made myself clear, but let me try one last time. The right to privacy is an important principle in US law, represented everwhere from the 4th amendment to the Constitution to decisions like Roe vs. Wade. The general purpose of this is to limit government and law enforement prying into our homes and private lives. DRM schemes charge your personal computer, which is in your home and for many a basic tool of day to day life, with being a sort of copyright policeman. I find this to be a fundemental violation of the idea of personal privacy, not because it sends information out to others but because it is an imposition of their powers in our private lives. I feel it's a bad path to start down, and it is not inconceivable that these programs will report on people (like other spyware) in the future. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile, so to speak. Until then they will simply be an intrusion and an obstacle to law abiding citizens.

On the question of whether circumventing DRM is a violation of the DMCA (if copyright.gov uses that term I will as well): I've already said IANAL, so I'll refer you to what the lawyers at the EFF said about it. Of course, my interpretation of the law (or yours) is largly irrelivant if I get sued for trying to use the music I payed for; I'm not independantly wealthy, so like most people I probably couldn't wait to be vindicated in the nth appeal and would have to settle (probably bankrupting myself in the process). One need only look at the Sklyarov, DeCSS, or similar cases to see that legal trouble is common for those who try to allow users to exercise their fair use rights, not to mention the situation between Apple and Real I linked to before. I'm not sure they'll ever go after individual users, but "you might not get sued for using your music" is not quite the guarantee I'm looking for from a music service.

Well, so you can keep a copy if you want it, one that persists even if you quit the service. THat's part of the reason people like having moving channels and the reason a lot of people are upset about the broadcast flag. No one would be criticising the Napster service if you got to keep a (usable) copy of anything you want indefinitely. :-)

So I guess I'm saying the situation is not quite analogous. Also, there's the fact that people listen to music over and over, whereas most people don't re-watch movies many times, making a movie subscription service seem more reasonable than a music one. Now that I think about it, Netflix vs. DVDs is a much better analogy to the Napster service. It's worthwhile to a lot of people because they don't plan on rewatching most stuff anyway.

Visit the EFF broadcast flag page, scroll down about halfway, and look under the Linux/Windows/Mac sections on the left.

Also, starting July 1, companies are accountable to the FCC to make their software+hardware difficult to be "defeated or circumvented merely by an ordinary user using generally-available tools or equipment ... [including] specialized electronic tools or software tools that are widely available at a reasonable price". Before July 1, companies have no incentive to do this, and while they may release upgrades that add Broadcast Flag functionality to pre-July-1 hardware, they're not required to do this, and aren't required to make it difficult to continue using older code.

"Will I only be able to watch the HDTV content on an HDTV capable monitor?"

Depends on TV, no problem on computer monitor. I have a athlon 2500XP system, but I can not watch HD content while recording it. I have read that you would at least need a P4 3GHz to watch and record. At least the easier way: http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/cookbook/

"Does that mean that I need to have both a regular TV-in card and a HDTV-in card to record both types?"

The PCHDTV card will do both, but I don't think that Mythtv will switch between HD and NTSC. To tune from HD to NTSC, you have to switch the card to another mode. If you have spent the $189 on the PCHDTV what is another $40.

..is that WHY, oh why do these sites keep logs like this about their users? Basic anonymous statistics and logging of unusual activities like port scans are fine for me, but why did they log up/downloads that they knew to be illegal in many (most?) countries?

What really bothers me is that even when they knew that the MPAA was coming to them and they started raising money to defend themselves why didn't they securely delete all the logs they had? Smells like a plea bargain or even something more rotten to me.. I hope I'm just too paranoid.

This wasn't the first time though, remember how Suprnova's logs were turned to MPAA too.

Also remember how Sharereactor also wanted donations and after raising $15k+ (and considerable ad revenue) it's owner simply vanished, the site was still shut down and nobody has heard from their donations since.

The only reasonable explanation that I've heard is that it's simply illegal to host a site without any logging in some countries. Similar sites in Sweden and Switzerland at least claim to have no logging whatsoever. Anyone know where Lokitorrent was physically hosted?

As a side note, here's a free tool to search for log files from EFF and an article at Ars Technica:
http://www.eff.org/osp/
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050210-4606 .html

Get I2P. It is a totally anonymous network, but unlike Freenet, it supports the client-server model; and unlike Tor, it also anonymizes the servers! Everything is referred to by its cryptographic key, yet it supports any existing TCP service. People have already set up BitTorrent trackers on it (a modified version of the standard BT client is available for download within the network).

It won't be as fast as normal BT, of course, but it's still better than risking a lawsuit, eh?

(Keep in mind that one should NOT try to use regular Internet BitTorrent over a Tor proxy; it'll anonymize you, but they don't want people to use Tor for file-sharing because it requires too much bandwidth. So play nice.)

I think it's this TOR.

In upholding the dog's sniff-search of the trunk, the Supreme Court held that it did not "compromise any legitimate interest in privacy." Why? Because, according to the court, "any interest in possessing contraband cannot be deemed 'legitimate.'"

Is it my imagination, or does this sound a lot like the rationale of, "If you aren't a criminal, you shouldn't have anything to hide."

If this were an isolated story, I would probably not worry too much about it. But along with the warrantless GPS tracking article, the USAPATRIOT Act, and other such nonsense, it is obvious that we are not on the way to giving up our privacy and liberty at the whim of the government, we are already there.

I hope that this is just one extreme of a cycle that will eventually swing back towards moderation, but when a court sets a precedent like this, it is infinitely harder to overturn than if people just defend their right to privacy to begin with. This is why it is more important than ever to support organizations such as the ACLU and the EFF.

Pair it with TOR and hacking becomes untraceable! 2005 is going to be a great year.

It's always good to try. I'm dense, but repetition sometimes makes it stick. :)

The difference is that there is a plausible explanation for why the police can't find a hidden message in the picture: because the suspect isn't hiding any messages- he just likes to trade pictures of flowers and kittens. What possible excuse could a suspect use to to explain why he repeatedly transmits invalid zip files?

Firstly, they wouldn't be recognizeable as zip files because they'd been randomly rearranged, after being encrypted, after being zipped. But more to the point, the scenario I'm proposing is that this zipped then encrypted then swizzled data would then be steganography-ied by (say) putting its bits into the low bits of a picture. I think perhaps this part of my intent did not transmit, which would explain why you think I may not appreciate steganography (I do) and why you think the police would be questioning me about invalid zip files (they'd have no basis to even think zip data existed).

If the government has the power to abduct citizens for lengthy torture, they also can enforce access logging at the ISP level, so you weren't actually anonymous when you posted. (And no, you can't use any kind of mass-anonymizing proxy system, because just distributing or executing such an application is enough reason to get dragged off in the night)

Distributing such a program is not a draggable-off-in-the-night offense everywhere, clearly, so not to put too fine a point on it but I think what you mean is that IF one lives in a police state where there is no anonymity then one has no anonymity. Agreed. For the record I happen to not live in such a police state. I'd concede that perhaps my musings are the luxury of those like myself who don't live in such a state, but on the other hand I'm not really trying to address utter totalitarianism. But even in such a state, if one successfully downloads an anonymizing program, then said download may not have been anonymous, and the distributor of said program may be about to experience much pain, BUT once the program is downloaded, subsequent posts of data are, well, anonymous.

Jason Scultz, staff attorney for the EFF, will be giving a seminar next week titled "Current legal threats and potential patent threats to Linux" at the Southern California Linux Expo. He will discuss patent and copyright attacks against open source projects, as well as the DMCA.

For a free exhibit hall pass use the promo code "free" when registering or use the code "NEWSP" for a discount on a full access pass.

They've patented the standard way of doing online cross-game friends detection, but With an IM client. I see they've found up my patented "Way of patenting things with superficial addition X, with a browser" Since they already know it, I'd like to share it with you all.

Remember that this way of patenting things (with a browser) is patented, and is available for a nominal lawsuit when I catch you.

First take an everyday concept, like buying dogfood or raking your lawn. Explain this in excruiciatingly exacting language, carefully crafted to be as broad and unintelligible as possible. If necessary, run it through an obfuscation program to get the broadest possible interpretation bork. Then, and this is key, to the end of the patent add the words "with an X" where X is something the patent clerk doesn't really understand with a browser.

Here are some examples of things that you can get away with, err, add to the end of everyday activities, to get your own shiny new patent.

With the internet
With a CPU (whatever that would mean)
With an IM client
With XML
Live
With one click
With a shared data management paradigm arrangement
With multiple people at once
With an electronic circuit
With a cellular data network*
With a frick'in laser beam
With an open-source environment
With a closed-source environment
With a plug-in
With metadata
Automatically
With subdomains
With an encryption layer (cover all of your bases and encrypt this patent)

If you are still having trouble thinking up things to patent, see also this helpful list. No idea is too obvious or too widely in practice to slip by the patent office with a browser. Yes, for just 20 million dollars in theoretical damages awarded by a judge who also didn't know what they were doing, you too could sue the pants off of anyone mowing their lawn in a closed-source environment. I guarentee it!**

*Note that while "With a multiuser telephonic networking connection" is acceptable, "over the phone" is not.

**Not an express or implied guarentee.

Longhorn will be the first release of Windows authored completely after Microsoft began their Trusted Computing Initiative and released .NET. Longhorn will reimplement and convert major Windows subsystems to managed code.

This really starts to get boring. I have already written about it countless times only to get completely ignored every time I dare to point out that the emperor is naked.

I find it truly amusing that people who say that there are other advantages than only Digital Restrictions Management of using "trusted" computing and Palladium-like platforms usually talk with great enthusiasm and excitement about the new and innovative security features that have already been implemented in the 1970s for crying out loud, only better and with no strings attached. All TCPA zealots are usually completely ignorant of the existance of such operating systems as KeyKOS or EROS with formal proofs of correctness for God's sake and without all of the silliness of "trusted" computing.

And no, this is not only my opinion that we don't need DRM to get security. I am not the only one who says that everything that TCPA can possibly do to security can also be done in software, with the only exception of DRM, and in fact it has already been done, decades ago. I am not really surprised at all why it is completely ignored by the TCPA and TCI pushing industry. I am only outraged that there are so many naïve people who once again will gladly do anything no matter how dumb it is, if only their good uncle Bill Gates says that it's good for them.

Please, people, if you want to learn about real systems security, then read some old papers by Jerome Saltzer, Michael Schroeder, Norman Hardy and Jonathan Shapiro. If you want to learn about cryptography, read texts by Bruce Schneier. Microsoft is not a reliable source of knowledge in that field.

People always ask me where are the real innovations in systems security and I always say them that they are in the seventies, and have been being ingnored since then by major software vendors because people don't demand using them. This story and this thread is a great example: "Yeah, this version of Windows may suck, but still I am looking forward to buy the next one."

This will dramatically lessen the exploitation potential of code flaws in the Windows application libraries. Microsoft has to maintain support for legacy application, but that doesn't mean they can't get a fresh start on the underlying code, and doesn't mean that existing Microsoft applications can't be converted to managed code as well.

Wait, I've already heard it... In 1995, 1998, 2000, 2003... Oh, you mean that this time they really mean it?

Has there yet been a judgement in a RIAA case? Or has everyone settled or otherwise had the case dropped?

... and allowing them to be used as investigative tools (again with court orders) against terrorists

Substantial parts of the PATRIOT act can be used without any kind of court order. The 'sneak-and-peek' provisions can be carried out without the government ever telling you that you were searched or investigated.

The ACLU and EFF have pages up about the PATRIOT Act, and clearly show how the effects are not limited to "terrorists". (Unless, like Ashcroft, you feel that breasts and calico cats are weapons of mass destruction.)

More importantly, can you give me the number of people whose civil liberties have *actually* been violated (N.B. not those who "felt" they were violated) under specific provisions of the PATRIOT Act?

Not easily, because it's secret. I can certainly say that Maher Arar had his civil liberties violated, but since the US government won't talk about it, it's hard to say whether it was PATRIOT-related or just plain extra-legal.

Of course, you may feel that using the PATRIOT act against pot-smugglers is excessive.

It has been said a million times, yet apparently it bairs repeating. The "security" aspects of TCPA are redundant, unnecessary, and at best useful but could be made a lot better if the chip was designed for security rather than DRM. The whole system really exists only for one purpose: as a trojan horse to implement something called "remote attestation" in PCs.

What is remote attestation? Basically, it means that the TCPA chip, which you cannot control, can read what operating system you have loaded, and send a reponse proving that you are running a certain operating system to others on the Internet. The purpose of this, of course, is so that the operating system can be verified not to have it's DRM functions cracked, so that the RIAA and MPAA can send you data and make sure that they get to decide what you do with it.

The people pushing TCPA will claim that it is not for DRM, but that is a smokescreen and only a smokescreen. While TCPA does not do DRM itself, it is the enabling component that is needed so that software can implement DRM without being circumventable.

What does this mean for a "trusted Linux"? It means that while it is completely possible to have a Linux system working with TCPA, once you change anything in the system, the TCPA chip will notice you are running a modified system, and nolonger let your data. So while the software may nominally remain under the GPL, it will be the death of the free software model, because users who wish to tinker with their systems will be locked off the Internet (Cisco is already talking about systems to have ISPs demand remote attestation when TCPA is in place). TCPA and Linux can be combined in theory, but only in theory - in reality they cannot ever coexist.

Those who do not believe me (or those who are inclined to believe the MS shills who will respond saying that I am wrong), should read EFFs analysis of TCPA where they give a simple way that the chip could be changed to allow all uses except remote attestation intended to force people to use certain operating systems and enforce DRM over the user. It has been completely ignored by the manufacturers of TCPA.

The technology is already there. It is still experimental or beta, but the more people support it, the faster it will grow mature.

Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system


-silence

Well, quoting from your/EFF's document, it says: "Figuring out what is popular can be accomplished through a mix of anonymously monitoring what people are sharing"

That sounds like monitoring to me.

To follow one typical line, how can you "anonymously monitor what people are sharing" but also detect attempts to "game" the system?

btw, I'm not sure if you've seen my suggestion: DRUMS, imho, it's the most loical next step forward.

Oddly enough, EFF wants a govenment/entertainment industry agency to monitor network traffic when it comes to compensating authors for filesharing.

But that wasn't exactly filed yesterday. According to the EFF website it was filed on Jan. 14th

No doubt some people go too far in their fansubbing, but on the other hand it is very rare indeed that a corporation will be or even can be reasonable (think of how their stockholders would react to a corporation allowing unauthorized copying of their content). That is why the law must provide the balance. If you think that there ought to be a reasonableness to this kind of thing the I recommend that you make your feelings known. Support the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

One thing I know for sure, if we do nothing then eventually we will live in a world where you have to pay every time you read your kid a bedtime story.

They were, as far as I know, the first site to have to deal with this technique on a major scale. Fortunately, this attack requires that the attacker's system communicate with your server, playing the role of a typical user.

They could use TOR to get around that.

Yeah, you're right, it's not as if he co-founded the EFF or has a fellowship at Harvard Law or anything like that.

hmm.

" If you want to "support your artists," then you shouldn't give money to the RIAA companies. Fact is that the vast majority of the money you pay for CDs doesn't go to the artists, but to the corporate coffers."

Huh? About 30% of the price you pay for a CD goes to the store that sells it to you. Likewise, most of the money that the record company gets for the CD goes to paying the various people who helped create the CD. "Corporate coffers" sounds like you think it's going into some Gringots-style bank; the reality is that when you buy a CD, a mouse, or most any other consumer good, most of the money you pay ends up paying somebody's salary. In fact, the record industry makes do with margins that are lower than the PC mouse industry, so it's likely that if you buy a CD and a mouse, a higher percentage of the cash you paid for the CD will end up going to help somebody make their living.

"Why do we like breaking DRM? Because if I pay for something, I might want do things with it. You know, throw it on a few computers, play it in my stereo downstairs and also have a copy up at my summer home (I'm dreaming). The Constitution gives us that right, and calls it Fair Use. DRM attempts to defeat our constitutional rights, something that nerds don't like, you dig?"

The constitution says nothing about "fair use rights," and neither does US copyright law. If you'd like to learn more, you can read what US code has to say about fair use. There's also the Wikipedia entry and EFF primer. Fair use doctrine gives you a set of legal outs if you're brought into court for copyright infringement (ie. you can attempt to use the guidelines in that section to show that your actions were fair use), but fair use doctrine most definitely does not disallow a rightsholder from taking steps to prevent their work from being copied in an unauthorized manner.

Either way, you're allowed, under fair use doctrine, to make a copy of music you've purchased for personal use. I do this all the time with stuff I've purchased from iTunes, without breaking their DRM -- the folks at Apple who set up the DRM policies took a sensible approach, and their DRM allows me to move tracks between multiple iPods, make backups of the tracks, burn them to CD as often as I want, and even burn multiple copies for friends (which is definitely not fair use, but iTunes doesn't stop me from doing it anyway). In short, Apple's DRM has not stopped me from doing anything I've wanted to that would fall under the realm of fair use. Apple's DRM does not allow me to put a track in a P2P share directory so dozens of people I don't know can download it and listen to it, but that's not "fair use" by any stretch of the imagination.

If you ever come across a music download service that doesn't allow you to make copies for personal use, then that service is retarded and will hopefully die the death it deserves. Apple's DRM is remarkably easy-going, and I think this is one of the reasons that the iTMS is such a wild success.

Take a look at what the EFF's legal team has accomplished, thanks to the fact that they got people to donate money to pay the lawyers.

Part of protecting the public from Big Copyright involves making people understand what's at stake, and part of it is paying people to do the hard work.

EFF Defends the apple Ipod here and will defend ThinkSecret against Apple there

Funny world but it shows that EFF and their staff/volunteers are standing for principles and not products/behaviour

Actual list is http://www.eff.org/endangered/list.php.

Mirrored here, but the link is NSFW so I can't check to make sure I got it right.

If you want to be truly anonymous you need to employ a vastly more inefficient p2p protocol where peers NEVER directly communicate with each other (which would reveal their IP), but instead route through other random nodes. See FreeNet and Tor for example.

First, my background. I am an Evangelical Christian, as well as a future law student. I vote Republican more often than Democrat (not particularly liking either party), but am also a financial supporter of the EFF.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I fully expect this decision to be appealled. Remember, this decision is coming out of a district court, which is subject to review by Appeals and the Supremes. Specifically, I would argue that this case interprets Lawrence v. Texas too broadly, that Lawrence dealt with liberty concerns of regulating homosexual behavior vs. heterosexual behavior, and that this instant case incorrectly applies those liberty concerns to regulation of sexual obscenity regardless of "actor" orientation.

When it comes to sexual obscenity in general, there is more to consider than simply individual liberty. There is a undeniable cost to society from the dissemination of sexually obscene material, although I will be the first to admit the difficulty of quantifying that cost.

It is that cost that must be balanced against the demands of personal liberty.

I think it also important to bring up the still-binding 1973 case Miller v. California . That Supreme Court case held that sexually obscene material was NOT Speech, and as thus could be regulated by the several States.

The Miller Test for obscenity was that something is obscene if it "[A] appeals to the prurient [lustful] interest in sex; [B] portrays, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and, [C] taken as a whole, does not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value [the SLAPS test]." (Bracketed text is my own.)

It should be noted that Miller applied to regulation by the several States, whereas this instant case deals with federal regulation. How and why different rules apply to the federal vs. the state government is beyond my current level of skill to discuss adaquetely and in-depth.

Personally, do I believe pornography should be banned? No. But I do believe that some level of regulation is warranted, and that the benefits of that regulation must be balanced against the cost to personal liberty.

- Neil Wehneman

P.S. I have previously posted additional thoughts on how pornography regulation is and is not justified based on specific secular criteria in an older Slashdot story.

If you read the brief (which is a rather long read, especially by /. standards), that is one of the core issues discussed by the VSDA. They argue that in the Betamax case Sony won largely because there was no remedy that could reduce the probability and gravity of copyright infringement without creating an unduly large burdon on others. Although not specifically addressed in Betamax, VSDA noted these burdons included First Amendment issues (stifling the free speech of copyright holders who want to permit use of the technology for their expressions), expanding the rights of copyright holders beyond beyond those legislative provided (control over the products on which their copyrighted works are performed), and competion issues (copyright holders suppressing the works of other copyright holders by limiting the technology for distribution).

The VSDA tries to differentiate P2P by pointing out that it need not be an "all-or-nothing" remedy, that the infringing and non-infringing uses need not be "enjoined". They don't specifically say that such technology exists to separate infringing from non-infringing (though they imply it), but rather they state that none of the lower courts examined this possibility largely because they erroneously only viewed the software as it currently existed and not some hypothetically different software that could tell the difference. (For the reasons why they only considered the current software, checkout the transcript of the 9th Circuit arguments or listen it in one of the available formats.)

Generally, the answer seems to be no, you can't take away the rights of the innocent to prevent the illegal activities, but really it is a balance of probability, level of harm caused by the activity, and the burdon such a remedy would impose. It's seems it's not a black-or-white issue but one of balance, though thankfully tilted towards the freedom side.

Though VSDA's arguments seem to be well research and argued (though IANAL), I see one major flaw. Their argument seems to rely on the fact that the types of remedies available if Grokster is found guilty should have bearing on whether they should be found guilty. Though they discuss this briefly it seems to be glossed over without much focus. It is my understanding that remedy can only be considered after a finding of liability. It's analagous in criminal law to finding someone innocent or guilty based on what punishments are available to punish them, which just doesn't make sense.

In civil law it seems a little less clear to me. They argue (with precedence) that liability depends on whether or not there was an ability to prevent the infringement, and this ability goes beyond the existing structure (e.g., software) to hypothetical actions. They cite the other big case (after Betamax) in which a swap-meet organizer refused to stop a vendor from selling infringing works and was held liable because he could have added to the contracts that vendors must not be infringing copyrights, which was the remedy.

Overall, and interesting read. They want Grokster overturned (found liable), but clearly want the remedy to require P2P to separate infringing and non-infringing works. They want to make use of P2P for business purposes, or at least don't want it shut down. That doesn't mean it's possible, or can be done without undue burdon. I still find Grokster's arguments much more compelling, though I'm admittedly biased.

This report was published earlier this month by http://www.eff.org/

January 14, 2005
Can the FBI Monitor Your Web Browsing Without a Warrant?
EFF Demands Answers from DOJ about PATRIOT Act Surveillance

Washington, DC - Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI and other offices of the US Department of Justice, seeking the release of documents that would reveal whether the government has been using the USA PATRIOT Act to spy on Internet users' reading habits without a search warrant.

At issue is PATRIOT Section 216, which expanded the government's authority to conduct surveillance in criminal investigations using pen registers or trap and trace devices ("pen-traps"). Pen-traps collect information about the numbers dialed on a telephone but do not record the actual content of phone conversations. Because of this limitation, court orders authorizing pen-trap surveillance are easy to get -- instead of having to show probable cause, the government need only certify relevance to its investigation. Also, the government never has to inform people that they are or were the subjects of pen-trap surveillance.

PATRIOT expanded pen-traps to include devices that monitor Internet communications. But the line between non-content and content is a lot blurrier online than it is on phone networks. The DOJ has said openly that the new definitions allow pen-traps to collect email and IP addresses. However, the DOJ has not been so forthcoming about web surveillance. It won't reveal whether it believes URLs can be collected using pen-traps, despite the fact that URLs clearly reveal content by identifying the web pages being read. EFF made its FOIA request specifically to gain access to documents that might reveal whether the DOJ is using pen-traps to monitor web browsing.

"It's been over three years since the USA PATRIOT Act was passed, and the DOJ still hasn't answered the public's simple question: 'Can you see what we're reading on the Web without probable cause?'" said Kevin Bankston, EFF Staff Attorney and Bruce J. Ennis Equal Justice Works Fellow. "Much of PATRIOT is coming up for review this year, but we can never have a full and informed debate of the issues when the DOJ won't explain how it has been using these new surveillance powers."

The law firm of DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary assisted EFF in preparing the FOIA request and will help with any litigation if the DOJ fails to respond.

Contact:

Kevin Bankston
Attorney, Equal Justice Works / Bruce J. Ennis Fellow
Electronic Frontier Foundation
bankston@eff.org

Posted at 09:27 AM

Holy crap, well, let's hope he takes some of his policies with him.

So this is the third attempt and one at the supreme court too.. When will these people give up ?. Of course the Betamax case clearly puts the distributors of the technology (which has clearly legal uses) out of the danger area.

Kenosis-enabled BitTorrent is not anonymous. But anonymous P2P is being worked on.

Seriously, we need to pull together and help this guy. It could have been anyone of us that reports spam. Maybe we, as a community, can donate enough cash and help this poor guy get the EFF to defend him?

They refuse to change their business model to reflect the changing technology, so they're trying to legislate their dying business model back into existence, just like they did in the VHS vs. Betamax days.

How can we stop this crap?

For starters, Join the EFF!

Please!

The SS? Don't these guys use Enigma? :p

The Mac Mini is probably not powerful enough to playback the HDTV that the EyeTV 500 records. See the review from EFF:

http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/eyetv500.php

I think there is a real need in the market for a good HDTV DVR device. My ultimate wish is for one that can record HDTV from cable TV, complete with a cable card slot. So far, the only solutions available seem to involve putting antennas on the rooftop.

You don't use the MacMini to directly output optical audio, you use it to feed an Airport Express which outputs optical audio.

Although I imagine that somebody outthere could make a firewire frob to output optical audio if there is really a market for it. Firewire really gives you enough bandwidth to do anything you like, up to HDTV .

Okay, then you should be able to cope with all those "hints" having gone bad. When those hints are all bad, what do you do, Mr. D. Centralized Program?

• Depend on my user to replace me with the latest version, which is available, since not every user of that is a copyright-limit-explorer.
• Pray that in those years multicast is finally implemented by the ISPs, and listen to the next periodic update on the hash-dependent randomized multicast address.
• Wonder who could shut down the whole Tor network (useful for many things citizens really need to do), and how could they find all of the tor-hidden 4914a6dfd3634e54f9f8457ca4cb6f39.onion hosts.

Just my two cents. I happen to be that bitter too sometimes, but I more and more believe technology *will* be advancing us. Not as in entrepeneurs, but as humanity.

Why yes. It sounds like torrent tracker sites, which host no files, being taken down for the crimes of their users.

Have we forgotten already? Money talks, you know.

Would some other people please hop on the torrent for the HD LoTR sample? I'm getting a whopping 1.5 K/s down and 6.8 K/s up. :-)

Smuggle tor into the country?

There was an article on Tor back in December. Seems like a nice simple solution to these kinds of things and works on many different levels besides just web browsing. Just so long as you can get a program to work with SOCKs