Slashback: Recusement, Homecoming, Cubism

More on the conflict of interest in the 2600 / DeCSS case. More on the South African penguins trapped in a world of petroleum, currents and love beneath the panopticon world of satellite observation. And congratulations to Distributed.Net for setting in place their new milestone. All below!

Why no, gentlemen, I see no conflict of interest. You may recall reading that Lewis Kaplan, the judge in the DeCSS trial underway in New York right now, consulted for Time-Warner, raising questions about conflict of interest. Jim Tyre of The Censorware Project writes: "Yesterday, CT posted a piece on 2600's attempt to disqualify Judge Kaplan in the New York DeCSS trial. Last night, Kaplan's 51 page Order denying the motion made it to the Net. No doubt he spent the weekend writing it, putting him in a nice mood for when trial commenced yesteday. Interesting reading for those who like to slog through such things."

The first 1000 days. emerson writes "According to their RC5-64 Stats Page, distributed.net's RC5-64 project turns 1000 days old today (July 18th; the stats page will show 1000 days when today's stats are digested and displayed tomorrow), with just over 28% of the keyspace checked out. Makes me feel pretty safe about RC5-64 versus brute-force attacks ..." Oskuro writes: "Today is the 1000th day distributed.net is searching for a winning key on RSA's RC5-64 contest. In that long time, the 28% of the keyspace has been tested, so there's a long way to go still. Maybe you want to download a client and start crunching for Team Slashdot?" Note: this means that as of today (day 1001), the stats reflect the 1000-day figure.

Wish I had scientists helping find me a mate ... John B. Hayes writes "Yahoo! News has a great story on an heroic high-tech penguin and his surviving the impossible. I wonder if there is a deeper meaning here... I mean, he made it 600 miles without a re-boot; ok, so there were some unexpected obstacles to deal with and the programmer had to step in, but that's the beauty of it. I'm charged!" cvd6262 writes "It seems that all's weel that ends well. Our Beloved Jackass Pequin, Peter, arrived home. I quote from the site: 'At 0456 this morning, Peter's satellite tag reported that he was at 33 48 S 18 22 E. Wait a moment. Those are the coordinates for Robben Island. Peter is home.' Now he only has to find a suitable Jackass Penquin mate."

All the same, I think I'd prefer some privacy. Oostendorpophile writes "I got this email today:

'Thank you for your inquiries into the FBI's "Carnivore". We have received many inquiries, many Kudos and many sneers for what has been in the news in the last couple weeks. Much of the information that the press has published has been inaccurate or misleading. Earthlink takes the following stance (in quotes below).

"We do not allow the installation of Carnivore on our network because it has the potential to compromise the privacy of our legitimate users and the performance of our network. We have an internal solution which allows us to comply with court orders without the presence of government personnel or equipment in our buildings. The government accepts this solution since they still receive the requested information about the criminal suspect, and we sleep well knowing that our customers are safe from unauthorized surveillance."

Sincerely,
Mary Youngblood
Privacy Policy
Earthlink/Mindspring Abuse Team Manager'"

This isn't the most satisfying possible answer, but at least it's nicer than block committees and "an enthusiastic welcome to the nice gentlemen who'll be sharing the building with us" ... Earthlink / Mindspring is one of the largest if not the largest ISP, though -- will smaller ISPs be able to stare down Carnivore as well?

And Apple Legal hasn't said a thing about this yet? Hollis writes "After months of discussion and work, linuxppc.org has been rewritten and is hosted at penguinppc.org. The new site has a slick design and lots of new content... check it out." And today's announcement of the new cube PowerMac puts a different light on the criticism Ryan Meader received for posting about such a thing on MacOS Rumors. It's a good thing to be wrong about! Dual G4 in a cube. Linux on PPC. Repeat.

Comments

More on the MPAA/2600/deCSS case.

[Black Parrot]

Here is some interesting reading about day one of the case. (The first two links were collected by Linux Today. In general, it looks like MPAA and friends got off to a flat-footed start.

EON's MPAA v. 2600 - Day 1:

Under cross-examination by Marty Garbus, Shamos the phony expert, admitted he could not have conducted his test for MPAA without the skill and help of real expert, Eric Burns [a student at CMU]. As a result Burns is now to become a witness to tell what he actually did to get the DivX, get it decoded synchronized and playable. Shamos looked swell while being examined by Proskauer and got blown away by Garbus. Even the judge took a few whacks, and approved Frank Stevenson and Eric Burns as witnesses over Proskauer's objections. ... An attempt is to be made to bring him over to the angel side.

EFF's Movie Studios Admit DeCSS Not Related to Piracy:

Schumann's affidavit and testimony that DeCSS was created to be a tool of piracy was severely undermined on cross-examination by EFF's defense team when asked about a report he submitted to the MPAA concluding that members of the Livid mailing list (where DeCSS was published) were attempting to build a Linux DVD player.

Wired's Movie Studios on the Warpath:

"Do you know of any DVD that has been sold anywhere in the world that has been decrypted with DeCSS?" asked Martin Garbus.

"Not with absolute certainty, no," Schumann replied.

He also said that he didn't know of anyone who distributed a DVD online that had been decrypted with DeCSS.

As Garbus kept pressing, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan seemed to become irritated.

Wired goes on to quote part of the snit between Kaplan and Garbut.

Stay tuned folks; this is going to be entertaining.

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What I want to know

[Gurlia]

What *I* want to know, is whether the guy at MacJunkie ate his hat/shorts/whatever it was that he said he would eat should the G4 Cube photos turn out to be real.

On a related note, I think sometimes slashdotters behave like that too... spout off about something they *think* they know, and totally make a fool of themselves. But I digress.

(Obligatory note to moderators: this is NOT flamebait. I really want to know what happened to the MacJunkie guy after this embarrassment...)

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Earthlink and Privacy

[muldrake]

Quoted from Arnie Lerma's website:

DECLARATION OF ROBERT J. CIPRIANO

I, Robert J. Cipriano, hereby declare and state as follows:

[. . .]

38. I was befriended the first day of my employment at Earthlink by a Mr. Michael Hamra, another sales associate. I quickly started a friendship with Mr. Hamra and spent countless hours talking about various things including how Earthlink started with investments, by Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other wealthy Scientologists, into Sky Dayton's idea of an internet service provider. Mr. Hamra told me how Sky Dayton had a coffee shop before starting Earthlink and that he, because of being a Scientologist and his friendships with celebrity Scientologists, he was able to build a multi-million dollar company that could, "Watch over the entire internet from within the internet."

39. Additionally, Mr. Hamra told me he was one of the founding group of Scientologist who ran Earthlink out of a Glendale one room office where he made sales calls from a bathroom in the office. Mr. Hamra said, "The Church of Scientology now had a database of information on every subscriber which included names, credit card info., credit reports, telephone info., computer info., who had referred them to Earthlink and who were their previous ISP providers." Mr. Hamra told me about the "other Earthlink building" which was next door on New York Avenue in Pasadena. Mr. Hamra told me that the other building was high security and is where Earthlink and the Church of Scientology did all the monitoring of the internet. Mr. Hamra was always very interested in my testimony in Berry v. Cipriano. It became clear to me that he was reporting what I was saying to other in Scientology.

40. I received many incoming sales calls while at Earthlink from individuals who would ask, "Are you a bunch of Scientologists?" We were trained to never admit that we were involved with the Church Of Scientology.

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There is also an article on this in the Phoenix New Times.

Incidentally Earthlink is now owned by Mindspring, so the same conditions may not currently prevail. Cipriano is also not the best source, as he is virtually a pathological liar, but he did indeed work for Earthlink, and whatever else Cipriano may have said, it's disturbing a Scientology lawyer could duke people into a job there at will.

No Dual PPC Cubes

[mattkime]

The post mentions something about a dual processor G4 Cube. This simply isn't true. The G4 cubes come with either a 450 or 500mhz G4 chip. One lonely chip.

I'm not sure who this box is for. It costs about the same amount at the full G4 machines but its less upgradable. (It does have more mhz than its bigger version, but not necessarily more processing power.) I think its targetted for people who reguard looks over function. (You can't even set a stack of post it notes on top of it - you wouldn't be able to get at the dvd drive.) Perhaps its a repackaged iMac with a better processor.

I find it strange that you can upgrade the ethernet from 100Base-T to gigabit. There's an expansion slot - and a fast one, thats asking to take more than just ethernet upgrades.

As for the dual processors - thats one answer to Motorola's problems with getting the G4 up to speed. Too bad you'll need Mac OS X to really take advantage of it. And too bad they're doing this just to keep up, rather than get ahead.

Re:Can't wade through the Judge's crap...

[bwt]

Basically he says that antitrust is not an issue in the trial and so his former partner's advising of Time Warner on DVD antitrust issues has no relevance to the proceeding. The fact that his firm represented Time Warner and/or Warner Brothers is not alone sufficient to sustain the need for recusal and any request based on this is not timely. (You can't hold onto recusal requests to see how you do first).

The personal bias against Garbus claim he dismisses as wildly exagerated and not timely. He also make the arguement that it has to be bias against the party, not the attourney. These arguements are based on the recusal statues.

He also reviews the major decisions he's made in an attempt to rationalize them and point out that several things have gone the defenses direction. He says the defendants have tried to exagerate the trial's scope larger than what it should have been and misused their discovery time and are upset because he set an agressive schedule and wouldn't relax it to accomodate their mistakes.

My take is that Kaplan is probably right about the personal bias against Garbus stuff, but that Kaplan doesn't realize or is in denial that antitrust is an issue. The defense clearly thinks it is, so it remains to be seen what happens if/when they launch into antitrust issues.

Suppose the FBI demands to use Carnivore?

[Tau Zero]

I can see one situation where the LE's might demand to use their own sniffer. Suppose one or more of the people under investigation are working for the ISP (or has a friend doing the same)? If anyone at the ISP knows whose messages are to be captured, that fact is likely to leak back to the subject.

Thus, if an ISP with its own sniffer capabilities encounters a demand to use Carnivore instead, someone is going to know that something's up. The only way for the FBI to avoid this is to demand to use Carnivore (or the equivalent) as a matter of course, regardless of the capabilities of the ISP to meet the requirements of the court order without it.

It's for this reason that I think we can expect to see the FBI demand that ISP's do it their way, no matter what's best for the customers, the Constitution, or the society at large.
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