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Domain: sooke.bc.ca
Stories and comments across the archive that link to sooke.bc.ca.
Stories · 14
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Lulu Introduces DRM
An anonymous reader writes "Print-on-demand publisher Lulu recently announced that they're offering 'eBooks.' Since they've always offered downloadable books as PDFs, that takes some decoding to figure out what part is new: it turns out that it means now they're handling more formats, they've significantly increased the share they take out of the purchase price ... and for an additional fee, they now offer DRM. I have a few items published through Lulu myself; nothing forces me to buy the DRM, but I'm considering taking my business elsewhere on principle. This isn't what I expected from the people who, when I first signed up with them, were solidly endorsing Creative Commons." -
Yahoo Rejects Anti-Censorship Proposal
Matthew Skala writes "The BBC reports that Yahoo! has rejected a shareholder proposal to adopt an anti-censorship policy, as well as one to set up a human rights committee to review the impact of Yahoo!'s operations in places like China. The interesting proposals are numbers 6 and 7 in the proxy statement available through EDGAR. This news comes on the heels of jailed Chinese reporter Shi Tao, suing Yahoo! for its involvement in his conviction, and Google's rejection of a similar proposal. The anti-censorship proposal was submitted by the same groups (several New York City pension funds) as the Google proposal. The proxy statement also includes the Board's recommendations — "strongly oppose[ing]" both proposals — with explanations of their reasoning." -
Canadian Bill C-416 to Require Wiretapping
Matthew Skala writes "Bill C-416, recently introduced in the Canadian Parliament, would if passed require Internet providers to provide wiretapping facilities to law enforcement — without a warrant, and with 'confidentiality' requirements reminiscent of the secret-spying cases we've seen recently in the States. This new Act is a reprise of last Parliament's C-74, which failed when the Government's term ended. Coming back as a Liberal "private member's Bill" in a minority government, it will have little chance of success without cross-party support; but with the Conservatives in charge, all bets are off if they can find a way to claim it's about terrorism or child pornography." -
Underhanded C Contest announces winners
Matthew Skala writes "The 2005 Underhanded C Contest has announced its winners: the team entry from M Joonas Pihlaja and Paul V-Khuong, and the solo entry from Natori Shin. The contest (which appeared on Slashdot in June) tests programmers' ability to hide malicious behaviour in innocent-seeming code, making it a kind of evil shadow twin to the International Obfuscated C Contest." -
Anti-DMCA Petition in Canadian Parliament
Matthew Skala writes "Last month we heard that the Canadian government is rejecting some of the worst features of the DMCA (more analysis here), but with Heritage Minister Liza Frulla parroting the media-cartel lobby with a promise to "give the tools to companies and authors to sue" and persuade children that downloading music for free is morally wrong even though it's presently legal in Canada, the battle is far from won. Yesterday, Member of Parliament Peter Julian (Burnaby-New Westminster, NDP) introduced the first batch of signatures on Digital Copyright Canada's Petition for Users' Rights. This isn't just a Web click-through petition that politicians can freely ignore; more than a thousand real hardcopy signatures have already been collected from Canadian residents opposed to further expansion of copyright privileges, and the campaign is hoping for many more. Additional coverage on p2pnet.net." -
Anti-DMCA Petition in Canadian Parliament
Matthew Skala writes "Last month we heard that the Canadian government is rejecting some of the worst features of the DMCA (more analysis here), but with Heritage Minister Liza Frulla parroting the media-cartel lobby with a promise to "give the tools to companies and authors to sue" and persuade children that downloading music for free is morally wrong even though it's presently legal in Canada, the battle is far from won. Yesterday, Member of Parliament Peter Julian (Burnaby-New Westminster, NDP) introduced the first batch of signatures on Digital Copyright Canada's Petition for Users' Rights. This isn't just a Web click-through petition that politicians can freely ignore; more than a thousand real hardcopy signatures have already been collected from Canadian residents opposed to further expansion of copyright privileges, and the campaign is hoping for many more. Additional coverage on p2pnet.net." -
P2P In 15 Lines of Code
nile_list writes "Edward Felten of the very fine Freedom to Tinker has written a 15 line P2P program in Python. From the post on Freedom to Tinker, "I wrote TinyP2P to illustrate the difficulty of regulating peer-to-peer applications. Peer-to-peer apps can be very simple, and any moderately skilled programmer can write one, so attempts to ban their creation would be fruitless." Matthew Scala, a reader of Freedom to Tinker, has responded with the 9 line MoleSter, written in Perl." -
MPAA Funds School Programs In Copyright Dogma
Matthew Skala writes "This article from the Boston Globe describes the 'What's The Diff?' program, in which U.S. students and teachers can win prizes by learning to endorse the MPAA's version of copyright law. They're using volunteer labour from Junior Achievement - not an organization I would have expected to see doing this kind of thing. I guess I'll have to move its card over in my mental Illuminati: New World Order game." -
WebSense Patents Censorware System
Matthew Skala writes "As reported in SiliconValley.internet.com, filtering-software vendor Websense has received US Patent 6,606,659 on a "System and method for controlling access to internet sites". The new features in the patented system seem to revolve around using time limits instead of filtering sites out entirely; offering users a choice of viewing a site and having it logged, or not viewing it; and a scheme for automatically categorizing sites that looks very much like the "Bayesian filters" we've heard so much about in recent weeks. You may be interested in the filtering company's press release about their patent, or my own view." -
WebSense Patents Censorware System
Matthew Skala writes "As reported in SiliconValley.internet.com, filtering-software vendor Websense has received US Patent 6,606,659 on a "System and method for controlling access to internet sites". The new features in the patented system seem to revolve around using time limits instead of filtering sites out entirely; offering users a choice of viewing a site and having it logged, or not viewing it; and a scheme for automatically categorizing sites that looks very much like the "Bayesian filters" we've heard so much about in recent weeks. You may be interested in the filtering company's press release about their patent, or my own view." -
Canadian Bill C-234 to Require ISP licensing
Matthew Skala writes "In Monday's House of Commons proceedings, Canadian Member of Parliament Peter Stoffer (NDP member for Sackville-Musquodoboit Valley-Eastern Shore) introduced Bill C-234, an anti-child-pornography Bill. It requires all Internet Service Providers to get licenses from the Government, specifically including non-profits and individuals. Licensed ISPs then must block Web sites named by the Government as containing child pornography, and must "report information [of the Government's choice] to the Commission for the purposes of this Act" - a requirement that neatly slips in spy-on-your-users requirements under the radar of the ongoing Industry Canada consultation on "Lawful Access" (wiretapping/CanCarnivore)." -
Recording Artists File Brief Against RIAA
Matthew Skala writes: "The Recording Artists' Coalition, which includes such luminaries as Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, and Sheryl Crow, is still annoyed about the "Work for Hire" legislation we heard about in August 2000. They've filed a brief in the Napster cases, urging the court not to accept the RIAA's copyright registration documents as proof of ownership, because accepting the documents would allow the music cartel to sneakily destroy artists' claims to the music they recorded. They don't take a stand on other issues we might be interested in, but it's still worth thinking about. If the artists are against the RIAA, then whom exactly does the RIAA represent? Some quotes and info are on Siliconvalley.com." -
The Breaking of Cyber Patrol 4
In the wake of recent announcements by Peacefire that they'd decrypted the secret block lists employed by two brands of censoring software, the "encryption" used by another major brand of software, Cyber Patrol, (produced by a company repugnant enough to advertise the increase in sales after Australia passed national censorship legislation), has also been broken. Matthew Skala and Eddy L O Jansson report in an in-depth essay about the practical difficulties encountered when undertaking this task. Their announcement follows.Their announcement:
"March 11, 2000 - ANNOUNCEMENT
Cyber Patrol(R) 4, a "censorware" product intended to prevent users from accessing undesirable Internet content, has been reverse engineered by youth rights activists Eddy L O Jansson and Matthew Skala. A detailed report of their findings, titled "The Breaking of Cyber Patrol(R) 4", with commentary on the reverse engineering process and cryptographic attacks against the product's authentication system, has been posted on the World Wide Web at this address:
http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1/reveng/cp4/cp4break.html
The abstract of the report:
Several attacks are presented on the "sophisticated anti-hacker security" features of Cyber Patrol(R) 4, a "censorware" product intended to prevent users from accessing Internet content considered harmful. Motivations, tools, and methods are discussed for reverse engineering in general and reverse engineering of censorware in particular. The encryption of the configuration and data files is reversed, as are the password hash functions. File formats are documented, with commentary. Excerpts from the list of blocked sites are presented and commented upon. A package of source code and binaries implementing the attacks is included.
Eddy L O Jansson
srm_dfr@hotmail.com
http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1/index.htmlMatthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca
http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/" -
The Breaking of Cyber Patrol 4
In the wake of recent announcements by Peacefire that they'd decrypted the secret block lists employed by two brands of censoring software, the "encryption" used by another major brand of software, Cyber Patrol, (produced by a company repugnant enough to advertise the increase in sales after Australia passed national censorship legislation), has also been broken. Matthew Skala and Eddy L O Jansson report in an in-depth essay about the practical difficulties encountered when undertaking this task. Their announcement follows.Their announcement:
"March 11, 2000 - ANNOUNCEMENT
Cyber Patrol(R) 4, a "censorware" product intended to prevent users from accessing undesirable Internet content, has been reverse engineered by youth rights activists Eddy L O Jansson and Matthew Skala. A detailed report of their findings, titled "The Breaking of Cyber Patrol(R) 4", with commentary on the reverse engineering process and cryptographic attacks against the product's authentication system, has been posted on the World Wide Web at this address:
http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1/reveng/cp4/cp4break.html
The abstract of the report:
Several attacks are presented on the "sophisticated anti-hacker security" features of Cyber Patrol(R) 4, a "censorware" product intended to prevent users from accessing Internet content considered harmful. Motivations, tools, and methods are discussed for reverse engineering in general and reverse engineering of censorware in particular. The encryption of the configuration and data files is reversed, as are the password hash functions. File formats are documented, with commentary. Excerpts from the list of blocked sites are presented and commented upon. A package of source code and binaries implementing the attacks is included.
Eddy L O Jansson
srm_dfr@hotmail.com
http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1/index.htmlMatthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca
http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/"