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SDMI Researchers Cancel Presentation After RIAA Threat
Statement read by Edward W. Felten
Fourth International Information Hiding Workshop
Pittsburgh, PA
April 26, 2001
"On behalf of the authors of the paper "Reading Between the Lines:
Lessons from the SDMI Challenge," I am disappointed to tell you that
we will not be presenting our paper today.
Our paper was submitted via the normal academic peer-review process. The reviewers, who were chosen for their scientific reputations and credentials, enthusiastically recommended the paper for publication, due to their judgment of the paper's scientific merit.
Nevertheless, the Recording Industry Association of America, the SDMI Foundation, and the Verance Corporation threatened to bring a lawsuit if we proceeded with our presentation or the publication of our paper. Threats were made against the authors, against the conference organizers, and against their respective employers.
Litigation is costly, time-consuming, and uncertain, regardless of the merits of the other side's case. Ultimately we, the authors, reached a collective decision not to expose ourselves, our employers, and the conference organizers to litigation at this time.
We remain committed to free speech and to the value of scientific debate to our country and the world. We believe that people benefit from learning the truth about the products they are asked to buy. We will continue to fight for these values, and for the right to publish our paper.
We look forward to the day when we can present the results of our research to you, our colleagues, through the normal scientific publication process, so that you can judge our work for yourselves."
More stories on this subject at Infoworld:
Under RIAA pressure, academic does not present paper
SDMI attempts to quash researcher's findings
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
I believe human race is just now laughing out loud. Do you listen RIAA?... bwaahahahhaha ac
Their paper was leaked anyway. Why bother exposing themselves to lawsuit now? Sure, they don't get to present the paper, but the knowledge is out there for all to see, and I'm sure they'll be telling their colleagues about it privately at the conference.
"He who has the gold, makes the rules"
In this case, the RIAA has the gold (at least enough to launch a massive legal campaign against the authors of the study), so they made the rules ("You can't publish the results of your study, ever, under any circumstances, under pain of legal action").
Another example of economic democracy in action.
Here's an example of what happened to people who spoke up in Nazi Germany: White Rose.
Once you deliver control of speech to government, that control is liable to being corrupted to serve the interests of the current rulers.
Social approbation is an effective deterrent for hateful speech. Free speech identifies those who would potentially harm others.
http://www.riaa.org/PR_story.cfm?id=407 they say call Verance at 858-677-6522 seems like they are a little pissed.
DeCSS fits that definition, for sure - download the software, and you can rip DVD's. (Disclaimer: I'm not at all agreeing that that should be illegal - I'm just saying that DeCSS is a real circumvention device.)
Yep, you're right! The compiled, executable program called 'DeCSS', when running, is an actual circumvention device. The source code, which could potentially be compiled into an executable and then potentially run, is NOT a circumvention device unless ACTUALLY COMPILED AND RUN. This is my opinion.
However some bent judge believes that those ASCII characters of DeCSS are actually circumvention devices. They're also circumvention devices when printed on a t-shirt. If I scrawl the CSS algorithim on a paper napkin, that's a circumvention device. I think that's rubbish, but perhaps you can see why the RIAA could claim a paper about their flawed challenge to be a circumvention device? They need only follow m'learned judge's thinking.
This was well played on their part. Everyone seems to have heard about how the evil RIAA is using the DMCA to block academic research. Heck, even my Mom has heard of it, and she doesn't know how to turn on a computer!
Now, we need to take the next step! Take 10 minutes and tell your Senators and Representatives how you feel about this!
You can find out who they are, and how to contact them, over at:
As usual the facts fall by the wayside. All that is taboo in public schools WRT religion is forced participation. You can't herd the entire student body into the auditorium and have "prayer hour."
The school obviously can't (and doesn't want to) stop you from praying during homeroom, or discussing religion with your friends (as long as its at an appropriate time, ie, not during math class).
Hell, at my public school, there were student run bible study groups. They were allowed to meet in unused classrooms, and there were no problems, as long as participation was 100% voluntary.
I find it rather humorous how rich white suburban kids are trying to play persecuted because they aren't allowed to force all their classmates to pray with them every morning.
Yes:
freenet:KSK@sdmi-paper.html
or
freenet:KSK@sdmi-attack.htm
Justice is dead and the law is in bed with big money, so you can either be ruled by the monied interests or kill them. How many lawyers would be willing to prosecute people for distributing DeCSS if they became walking targets? If there is any lesson to be learned from the knuckle-draggers who are opposed to anyone having an abortion, it is that threats to life and limb work. If you are not willing to fight for your rights, you have already given them up.
DMCA is not world law. Look at all the "law breakers" hosting their porn sites in the haven that is the US just to get around Saudi anti-porn laws.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." First Amendment, ratified December 15, 1791 The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) takes an uncompromising stand against censorship and for the First Amendment rights of all artists to create freely. From the nation's capital to state capitals across the country, RIAA works to stop unconstitutional action against the people who make the music of our times--and those who enjoy it.
...and this is a perfect example of the "chilling effect" that threatening litigation has in a country that doesn't provide that the losing side pay solicitor and his client full indemnity costs for the legal expenses and also punitive damages for malicious, baseless litigation.
Folks, it's time that Americans pass laws that penalize oppressive litigators - including, for repeat offenders, corporate or otherwise, needing leave of the court for bringing further motions and lawsuits.
I am a Canadian lawyer, but I wouldn't practice in California or New York State on a bet (and I have standing job offers in both places).
You get the political and legal system you deserve. Better a Canadian Supreme Court that I disagree with than a U.S. Supreme Court for sale.
Wake up, folks, it's too late when they're breaking down the door.
The saddest part is losing these freedoms to protect what is probably the least valuable, most disposable aspect of our culture: pop music. May your freedoms die so that the Spice Girls may live forever.
The corporations, the power, are one part of that equation. You are another part, just by venting and holding the opinions you do. You're representative of a lot of people.
In particular I always find it amusing when people decide that, just because politicians are corrupt and bribed, that they will STAY bribed. That's a naive view. You've just got to make it a real political hot potato to carry out the will of the corporate 'government', and the reality will continue to be an uncomfortable balance between the various interests involved.
I realize, of course, that this is somewhat orthogonal to the other issue here, which is simply freedom of the press. As a reasonably intelligent non-lawyer, it seems obvious to me that the supreme court would find that this law and the first amendment are in direct opposition. What I can't understand is why nobody has brought one of these cases before it. And this one would be a great choice; it doesn't involve any element of evil on the part of the defendants.
educated, informed and fair-minded
None of those adjectives spring to mind when speaking of the population of the US.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
http://lexx.shinn.net/extra/index.html
Python
Python
In the middle of the lecture, something like this transpires (paraphrased):
"And so you see that there can be occurences when...oh, here's an occurence. My phone's ringing."
[answers his phone]
"Hello?"
"Actually, I can't talk right now. I'm sort of teaching a class."
[class laughs]
"Yeah, you can hear them laughing in the background?"
"Okay, I'll be in my office around 4."
[hangs up phone]
[to class] "That was John Markoff from the New York Times. He wants to have a chat with me."
[resumes lecture seamlessly]
Goto www.eff.org and become a member! The EFF and groups like the EFF are about the only hope we have to stop this trash...
Didn't the RIAA demand that Felten et al. turn over all copies of notes related to the paper for destruction? Did Felten et al. comply with this demand, did the RIAA back down, or are they pushing ahead?
And he still hasn't got his computer back.
Unless you live in Afghanistan next door to Osama Bin Laden or someone, they can get you. You just have to stick your head up enough to present a good target.
The EU just passed a directive on copyright that is at least as draconian as the DMCA. It's very unlikely that this paper would be legal under it.
The UK hasn't passed it into local laws, but will in time. (Given that it's an EU directive, it would take much more than a noise from a few academics, penguinheads and Napatistas to derail the process.) The Reg is in the UK. Thus don't expect this paper to stick around forever.
Not a bad troll. As a European I know you are talking bollocks. What is free speech anyway? This article is an example of the fact that they do not have it in America. In Europe we have free speech enshrined in ECHR but then the French say you cannot deny the holocaust. That is hardly a European law as in other states you can deny the holocaust. As for the views of a Belgian... who cares about what a Belgian says. I do not like what I see on some US sites but then I don't go back to them, I do not like what you are saying... Good bye
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
...they can be suppressed.
For instance, during the '70s and '80s as more and more researchers presented papers on the dangers of some popular oral contraceptives of the era, many of the publications which were supposed to be informing the OB-GYN community were strangely silent on the implied criticism of their drug-company advertisers. The research was seldom reported to the practitioners who most needed the data.
For instance, the medical news group of Cap Cities (owned for at least part of that time by ABC) repeatedly refused to publish stories written by its staff about the dangers documented in these papers, even though the drug companies had come up with safer alternatives.
Paradoxically, this meant the public heard about these problems anedoctally. The problems ended up worse than if the problems (and their solutions) had been better publicized. And the drug companies ended up with a bigger black eye than if the OB-GYN community had been notified.
All of this happened primarily because doctors are so used to getting their info as freebies that they won't pay for subscriptions. Interestingly, Steven Brill has pointed out recently that lawyers expect to pay for subscriptions to their journals. I suspect this produces much less distortion in their magazines.
Brill has argued that if the information-wants-to-be-free crowd wins on the Internet the result might be the same kind of misinformation that has plagued doctors. In other words, if Internet users continue to expect that they don't have to pay for content, the content they get may end up being worth less than they're paying.
My idealistic journalism professors back in college used to tell us that we shouldn't change our coverage or our news judgment to protect advertisers. They argued that what newspapers (or, by extension, other media) offer is the respect their audiences have for their impartiality. If you compromise that for advertisers' short term interests, the value of the advertising is decreased because readers do not associate the periodical with accuracy.
I have seen several instances of this kind of failure (where a newspaper was so completely in thrall to its advertisers that the advertising had no benefit and the paper went under) through the years. So, I suspect this is a case where the idealists' advice also turns out to be the pragmatists' observation.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
exceeds the GNP of many countries.
Not really...by that point, Lloyds of London and the British East India Company were already far and away making more loot than anything Eastern Europian countries could have imagined...
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
When scientific research is outlawed, only outlaws will be performing scientific research.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
It's not actually that simple; if you read the threat letter from the SDMI people it mainly turns on a contract issue about the clickthrough agreement that was protecting the challenge files, not the DMCA circumvention device stuff.
At the little news conference, Felten said he honestly couldn't remember whether he actually clicked through the agreement personally or not, but pointed out that there would have been no need to since the material was widely available elsewhere.
One interesting thing Felten said in the little impromptu news conference when his paper was supposed to be read was when Declan McCullagh asked him if Princeton was not willing to back him up. Felten responded that Princeton had been very supportive of him and the other authors, but that there were lots of other people involved with the paper, and he wanted to go forward in a way that exposed fewer of them and their institutions. I took this as a hint that the real problem is that one of his coauthors is from Xerox and that a corporation is less willing than a university to expose itself to a lawsuit in the name of academic freedom.
You can read the paper on line or you can download all the files a a zip file and read it off-line.
Will we now have a new mirror-this-free-speech frenzy ?
--
Don't use nuclear weapons to troubleshoot faults.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
But the great crime of Nazism, or even Fascism or Stalinism, wasn't censorship. Censorship was one of the relatively incidental tools they used (frankly, Mussolini's state for a while took some pains to avoid censorship - they believed in a strong corporatist state, but they still fancied themselves as progressive and avant-garde and, for some time, encouraged continued discussion. They didn't even kill Gramsci.) The great crime of Nazism was its doctrine of ethnic superiority and its policy of genocide, of identifying entire populations as suitable for extermination or slavery. This doesn't even require censorship per se - just a critical mass of a populace willing to carry out orders (and lest you claim that it could only be a populace indoctrinated in a censorious society, I would remind you of the openness of Weimar society.)
Do I think we're all that different? I see a lot of people who are willing to compromise their nominal principles for a steady paycheck and cheaper goods.
Exploiting our completely reasonable horror of genocide to induce comparable horror of censorship may be effective, but it's intellectually dishonest.
That's, as would my bank say, you're insolyent.
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You would'nt if the devices were to be used on lawyers and RIAA/MPAA people...
--
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Okay, yeah, the main link gave a link to the paper. Sorry.
But my other questions still stand!
Or perhaps someone could sue RIAA, et al, for refusing to permit publication? There must be some way to use the system to the benefit of these researchers, even if they've decided to drop it for now.
Q. What about the cash prize offered by SDMI?
SDMI did offer a small cash prize to be split among everybody who defeated at least one of the six technologies. However, to be eligible for the prize, researchers had to sign a confidentiality agreement that prohibited any discussion of their findings with the public. The terms of the challenge also allowed researchers to publish their findings if they decided to forgo the cash prize. We decided from the beginning that we were more interested in publishing our results than accepting any share of the cash prize.
Q. Didn't the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) criminalize the study of these kinds of technologies in the United States?
Fortunately, the DMCA did not apply to this challenge, since SDMI granted explicit permission to study their technologies. We are not sure whether it would have been legal to study these technologies outside the context of this challenge. We think the DMCA, by criminalizing some kinds of study of important technologies, represents an "ignorance is bliss" approach to technological copyright enforcement, which will not work in the long run. We lobbied against certain aspects of the DMCA while it was before Congress, and we still consider it to be a seriously flawed law.
Above, we mentioned the important role of analysis in the design of security systems. The main problem with the DMCA is that it hinders this analysis, restricting it in order to provide an extra layer of legal protection for existing copyright systems. But this causes the scientific process to stagnate. Imagine a federal law making it illegal for anyone (including Consumer Reports) to purposefully cause an automobile collision. While this may be a well-intentioned attempt to stop road-rage, it also bans automobile crash-testing, ultimately leading to unsafe vehicles and the inability to learn how to make vehicles safe in general. The situation with the DMCA is analogous.
--
Q: What do you get when a Postmodernist joins the Mafia?
HOWTO get better dates on slashdot
It is almost like we are going into another dark age, where knowledge is suppressed for financial gain, and ultimately lost.
We are not "heading into another dark age," we're already there. Many have argued for a long time that the cooperation between industry and academic instututions would undermine the independence of academia, and hence our entire intellectual foundation as a society. These dire predictions were being made in the 1980s when Reagan and his cronies gutted funding for our colleges and universities.
The result has been unambiguous: colleges and universities have turned more and more to private industry for funding, sacrificing their intellectual independence in the process. This example, where Xerox may likely have played the pivotol role in caving to the RIAA, is but one obvious example of what is happening over and over again on campuses everywhere.
Couple the erosion of our foundation of intellectual freedom by making our institutions financially beholden and in some cases even intertwined with corporate entities (which are easilly pressured by threats to revinue, licensing, and/or bad publicity) with laws which criminalize intellectual activities such as reverse engineering and certain applications of cryptographic mathematics and you have, by and large, successfully gutted independent thought in your society. The rest of the dominos will fall like clockwork, when and as they offend or run counter to the goals of those who set these destructive policies.
The "cranks" were right, and the foundation of our intellectual thought, and of dissent in general, are virtually gone.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Hey write your congressman and voice your disapproval, oh wait, people here dont actually do anything they just bitch about it.
If every slashdotter write a paper letter to congress we would get attention, (slashdot their office mailboxes and phones... I've done my part with writing 12 letters and making 5 phone calls.)
what have YOU done to fight this? (posting and email dont count, you actually have to go outside, and interact with people in a civil manner)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I agree, where are we heading when a corporation can start telling an academic institution what it can or cannot teach or bring into public light?
It is almost like we are going into another dark age, where knowledge is suppressed for financial gain, and ultimately lost.
You say you want a revolution....
Apparently Felten said Princeton had been very supportive, but some of the researchers were from other organizations that would not have been so supportive.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The only one of the watermark systems that the SDMI folks care about is the Verance system. The others are almost childish in their simplicity, and were probably never serious contenders. On the other hand, the Verance watermark is apparently already in use. The question is, on what? I've heard DVD-Audio. Does this mean that all DVD-Audio discs have a Verance watermark? Or only some?
Given that it is possible to go and buy media with the Verance watermark, and that the same music is almost certainly available in other watermark-free formats, it should be possible to redo this work without any complications arising from the "Hack SDMI" agreement.
It sounds like Princeton is willing to stand behind Prof. Felton, but some of his collaborators' sponsers aren't so brave. By redoing the work with a Princeton-only crew and new media, those issues would disappear. A new paper could be written on the Verance watermark. Such a paper would clearly be legal, for many reasons. The Verance watermark tech is patented, which means cries of "trade secret" are BS. Not to mention that no devices on the market use the watermark to control "access", so right now code which removes the watermark could not be considered a circumvention device. After all, what is is circumventing? Nothing! Finally, even the corrupt DMCA is full of verbiage allowing academic research. The SDMI folks don't stand a chance in court.
Sshhhhhh!!! Hopefully never, if you would please keep your big mouth shut. ;-)
Damn, if I had modded you down in order to keep RIAA from finding out about how their strategy will backfire, then my attempt to supress the information about the strategy would have backfired and RIAA would surely find out about the weakness in their strategy (due to the weakness in my strategy). So there's just no way to win. *sigh* Actiondan, I wish you hadn't let the cat out of the bag.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If they couldn't show the idiocy of the law in this case, then they couldn't ever. The problems are:
1) Do you have enough money
2) Do you have enough time
3) Does everybody agree to proceed
4) Wouldn't you rather spend your resources elsewhere.
As I understand it, the problem is with step 3.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Apparently not in this case. The researchers were registered with the game.
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Poliglut
As you are aware, the Agreement covering the Public challenge narrowly authorizes participants to attack the limited number of music samples and files that were provided by SDMI. The specific purpose of providing these encoded files and for setting up the Challenge was to assist SDMI in determining which of the proposed technologies are best suited to protect content in Phase II products. The limited waiver of rights (including possible DMCA claims) that was contained in the Agreement specifically prohibits participants from attacking content protected by SDMI technologies outside the Public Challenge. If your research is released to the public this is exactly what could occur. In short, you would be facilitating and encouraging the attack of copyrighted content outside the limited boundaries of the Public Challenge and thus places you and your researchers in direct violation of the Agreement.
I say, just re-attack when the stuff is released and publish the results. There is little moral or ethical in agreeing to the terms that these people must have as part of the challenge and then turning around a violating those terms.
--
Poliglut
The day that something like this stops academic freedom to publish, there's something wrong. Surely academic freedom of speech has to take precedence over commercial consideration; In the case of National security, maybe this type of behaviour can be justified, but not in this case.
I hope the authors publish abroad in a country where the copyright laws are more reasonable.
Yeah, yeah. Everybody is aware of how the Europeans are afraid of freedom, and do everything they can to make sure that freedom doesn't spread. Just look at Europe's history.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
20 April 2001. Thanks to Anonymous
From cryptome.org
[Letter, 3 pp.]
MATTHEW J. OPPENHEIM, ESQ.
Address illegible
RIAA
April 9, 2001
Professor Edward Felton
Department of Computer Science
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Dear Professor Felten,
We understand that in conjunction with the 4th International Information Hiding Workshop to be held April 25-29, 2001, you and your colleagues who participated in last year's Secure Digital Music Initiative ("SDMI") Public Challenge are planning to publicly release information concerning the technologies that were included in that challenge and certain methods you and your colleagues developed as part of your participation in the challenge. On behalf of the SDMI Foundation, I urge you to reconsider your intentions and to refrain from any public disclosure of confidential information derived from the Challenge and instead engage SDMI in a constructive dialogue on how the academic aspects of your research can be shared without jeopardizing the commercial interests of the owners of the various technologies.
As you are aware, at least one of the technologies that was the subject of the Public Challenge, the Verance Watermark, is already in commercial use and the disclosure of any information that might assist others to remove this watermark would seriously jeopardize the technology and the content it protects.1 Other technologies that were part of the Challenge are either likewise in commercial use or could be could be utilized in this capacity in the near future. Therefore, any disclosure of information that would allow the defeat of those technologies would violate both the spirit and the terms of the Click-Through Agreement (the "Agreement"). In addition, any disclosure of information gained from participating in the Public Challenge would be outside the scope of activities permitted by the Agreement and could subject you and your research team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DCMA").
____________________
We appreciate your position, as articulated in the Frequently Asked Questions document, that the purpose of releasing your research is not designed to "help anyone impose or steal anything." Further more, you participation in the Challenge and your contemplated disclosure appears to be motivated by a desire to engage in scientific research that will ensure that SDMI does not deploy a flawed system. Unfortunately, the disclosure that you are contemplating could result in significantly broader consequences and could directly lead to the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. Such disclosure is not authorized in the Agreement, would constitute a violation of the Agreement and would subject your research team to enforcement actions under the DMCA and possibly other federal laws.
As you are aware, the Agreement covering the Public challenge narrowly authorizes participants to attack the limited number of music samples and files that were provided by SDMI. The specific purpose of providing these encoded files and for setting up the Challenge was to assist SDMI in determining which of the proposed technologies are best suited to protect content in Phase II products. The limited waiver of rights (including possible DMCA claims) that was contained in the Agreement specifically prohibits participants from attacking content protected by SDMI technologies outside the Public Challenge. If your research is released to the public this is exactly what could occur. In short, you would be facilitating and encouraging the attack of copyrighted content outside the limited boundaries of the Public Challenge and thus places you and your researchers in direct violation of the Agreement.
In addition, because public disclosure of your research would be outside the limited authorization of the Agreement, you could be subject to enforcement actions under federal law, including the DMCA. The Agreement specifically reserves any rights that proponents of the technology being attacked may have "under any applicable law, including, without limitation, the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, for any acts not expressly authorized by their Agreement." The Agreement simply does not "expressly authorize" participants to disclose information and research developed through participating in the Public challenge and such disclosure could be the subject of a DMCA action.
We recognize and appreciate your position, made clear throughout this process, that it is not your intention to engage in any illegal behavior or to otherwise jeopardize the legitimate commercial interests of others. We are concerned that your actions are outside the peer review process established by the Public Challenge and setup by engineers and other experts to ensure the academic integrity of this project. With these facts in mind, we invite you to work with the SDMI Foundation to find a way for you to share the academic components of your research while remaining true to your intention to not violate the law or the Agreement. In the meantime, we urge you to withdraw the paper submitted for the upcoming Information Hiding Workshop, assure that it is removed from the Workshop distribution materials and destroyed, and avoid a public discussion of confidential information.
Sincerely,
[Signature]
Matthew Oppenheim, Secretary
The SDMI Foundation
cc: Mr. Ira S. Moskowitz, Program Chair, Information Hiding Workshop, Naval Research Laboratory
Cpt. Douglas S. Rau, USN, Commanding Officer, Naval Research Laboratory
Mr. Howard Ende, General Counsel of Princeton
Mr. Edward Dobkin, Computer Science Department Head of Princeton
[Paper, 15 pp.]
Reading Between the Lines:
1 IntroductionLessons from the SDMI Challenge
Scott A. Craver1, John R McGregor1, Min Wu1, Bede Liu1,
Adam Stubblefield2, Ben Swartzlander2, Dan S. Wallach2,
Drew Dean3, and Edward W. Felten4 1 Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University
2 Dept. of Computer Science, Rice University
3 Computer Science Laboratory, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
4 Dept. of Computer Science, Princeton University
The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), a consortium of music-industry companies, is working to develop and standardize technologies that give music publishers more control over what consumers can do with recorded music that they buy. SDMI has been a somewhat secretive organization, releasing little information to the public about its goals, deliberations, and technology.
In September 2000, SDMI announced a "public challenge" in which it invited members of the public to try to break certain data-encoding technologies that SDMI had developed [3]. The challenge offered a valuable window into SDMI, not only into its technologies but also into its plans and goals. We decided to use the challenge to learn as much as we could about SDMI. This paper is the result of our study.1 Section 2 presents an overview of the HackSDMI challenge. Section 3 analyzes the watermark challenges. Section 4 analyzes the non-watermark challenges. Finally, we present our conclusions in section 5.
____________________
2 The SDMI ChallengeThe SDMI challenge extended over roughly a three-week period, from September 15, 2000 until October 8, 2000. The challenge actually consisted of six sub-challenges, named with the letters A through F, each involving a different technology developed by SDMI. We believe these challenges correspond to submissions to the SDMI's Call for Proposals for Phase II Screening Technology [4]. According to this proposal, the watermark's purpose is to restrict an audio clip which is compressed or has previously been compressed. That is, if the watermark is present an audio clip may yet be admitted into an SDMI device, but only if it has not been degraded by compression. For each challenge, SDMI provided some information about how a technology worked, and then challenged the public to create an object with a certain property. The exact information provided varied among the challenges. We note, though, that in all six cases SDMI provided less information than a music pirate would have access to in practice.
2.1 Watermark Challenges
Four of the challenges (A, B, C, and F), involved watermarking technologies, in which subtle modifications are made to an audio file, to encode copyright control information without perceptible change in how the file sounds. Watermarks can be either robust or fragile. Robust watermarks are designed to survive common transformations like digital-to-audio conversion, compression and decompression, and the addition of small amounts of noise to the file. Fragile watermarks do not survive such transformations, and are used to indicate modification of the file. For each of the four watermark challenges, SDMI provided three files:
The challenge was to produce a file that sounded just like File 3 but did not have a watermark -- in other words, to remove the watermark from File 3.
SDMI provided an on-line "oracle" for each challenge. Entrants could email a file to the oracle, and the oracle would tell them whether their submission satisfied the challenge, that is, whether it contained no detectable watermark while still sounding like File 3. Entrants were given no information about how watermark information was stored in the file or how the oracle detected watermarks, beyond the information that could be deduced from inspection of the three provided files.
2.2 Challenges D and E
Challenge D concerned a technology designed to prevent a song from being separated from the album in which it was issued. Normally, every Compact Disc contains a table of contents, indicating the offsets and lengths of each audio track, followed by the audio data itself. Challenge D adds an "authenticator" track (approximately 50ms of very quiet audio,) a digital signature derived from the table of contents, which is supposed to be difficult to compute for an arbitrary CD. Challenge D is discussed in more detail in Section 4.1.
Challenge E involved a technology similar to D, but one which would be immune the obvious attack on technology D, in which one compiled an unauthorized CD with the same table of contents as an authorized one, for which the authenticator track is given. Unfortunately, this challenge was constructed in a way that made it impossible to even start analyzing the technology. SDMI provided an oracle for this challenge, but unfortunately provided no music samples of any kind, so there was no way to determine what the oracle might be testing for.
Given these facts, we decided not to analyze Challenge E. It is discussed briefly in Section 4.2.
3 The Watermarking Schemes
In this section, we describe our attack(s) on each of the four watermark challenges (A,B,C,F). Our success was confirmed by emails received from SDMI's oracles. Fig. 1. The SDMI watermark attack problem. For each of the four watermark challenges, Sample-1, sample-2, and sample-3 are provided by SDMI sample-4 is generated by participants in the challenge and submitted to SDMI oracle for testing.
Figure 1 provides an overview of the challenge goal. As mentioned earlier, there are three audio files per watermark challenge: an original and watermarked version of one clip, and then a watermarked version of a second clip, from which the mark is to be removed. All clips were 2 minutes long, sampled at 44.1kHz with 16-bit precision.
The reader should note one serious flaw with this challenge arrangement. The goal is to remove a robust mark, while these proposals appear to be Phase II watermark screening technologies [4]. As we mentioned earlier, a Phase II screen is intended to reject audio clips if they have been compressed, and presumably compression degrades a fragile component of the watermark. An attacker need not remove the robust watermark to foil the Phase II screen, but could instead repair the modified fragile component in compressed audio. This attack was not possible under the challenge setup.
3.1 Attack and Analysis of Technology A
A reasonable first step in analyzing watermarked content with original, unmarked samples is differencing the original and marked versions in some way. Initially, we used sample-by-sample differences in order to determine roughly what kinds of watermark- ing methods were taking place. Unfortunately, technology A involved a slowly varying phase distortion which masked any other cues in a sample-by-sample difference. We ultimately decided this distortion was a pre-processing separate from the watermark, in part because undoing the distortion alone did not foil the oracle.
The phase distortion nevertheless led us to attempt an attack in which both the phase and magnitude change between sample 1 and sample 2 is applied to sample 3. This attack was confirmed by SDMI's oracle as successful, and illustrates the general attack approach of imposing the difference in an original-watermark pair upon another media clip. Here, the "difference" is taken in the FFT domain rather than the time domain, based on our suspicions regarding the domain of embedding. Note that this attack did not require much information about the watermarking scheme itself, and conversely did not provide much extra insight into its workings.
A next step, then, is to compute the frequency response H(w) = W(w)/O(w) of the watermarking process for segments of audio, and observe both |H(w)| and the corresponding impulse response h(t). If the watermark is based on some kind of linear filter, whose properties change slowly enough relative to the size of a frame of samples, then this approach is ideal.
Figure 2 illustrates one frequency response and impulse response about 0.3 seconds into the music. These responses are based on FFTs of 882 samples, or one fiftieth second of music. As can be clearly seen, a pair of sinusoidal ripples are present within a certain frequency band, approximately 8-16Khz. Ripples in the frequency domain are indicative of echoes in the time domain, and a sum of sinusoids suggested the presence of multiple echoes. The corresponding impulse response h(t) confirms this. This pattern of ripples changes quite rapidly from frame to frame.
Thus, we had reason to suspect a complex echo hiding system, involving multiple time-varying echoes. It was at this point that we considered a patent search, knowing enough about the data hiding method that we could look for specific search terms, and we were pleased to discover that this particular scheme appears to be listed as an alternative embodiment in US patent number 05940135, awarded to Aris corporation, now part of Verance [5]. This provided us with little more detail than we had already discovered, but confirmed that we were on the right track, as well as providing the probable identity of the company which developed the scheme. It also spurred no small amount of discussion of the validity of Kerckhoffs's criterion, the driving principle in security that one must not rely upon the obscurity of an algorithm. This is, surely, doubly true when the algorithm is patented. Fig. 2. A short-term complex echo. Above, the frequency response between the watermarked and original music, taken over 1/50 second, showing a sinusoidal ripple between 8 and 16 KHz. Below, the corresponding impulse response. The sinusoidal pattern in the frequency domain corresponds to a pair of echoes in the time domain.
The most useful technical detail provided by the patent was that the "delay hopping" pattern was likely discrete rather than continuous, allowing us to search for appropriate frame sizes during which the echo parameters were constant. Data collection from the first second of audio showed a frame size of approximately 882 samples, or 1/50 second. We also observed that the mark did not begin until 10 frames after the start of the music, and that activity also existed in a band of lower frequency, approximately 4-8 Khz. This could be the same echo obscured by other operations, or could be a second band used for another component in the watermarking scheme. A very clear ripple in this band, indicating a single echo with a delay of about 34 samples, appears shortly before the main echo-hopping pattern begins.
The next step in our analysis was the determination of the delay hopping pattern used in the watermarking method, as this appeared to be the "secret key" of the data embedding scheme. It is reasonable to suspect that the pattern repeats itself in short order, since a watermark detector should be able to find a mark in a subclip of music, without any assistance initially aligning the mark with the detector's hopping pattern. Again, an analysis of the first second revealed a pattern of echo pairs that appeared to repeat every 16 frames, as outlined in figure 3. The delays appear to fall within six general categories, each delay approximately a multiple of 1/4 millisecond. The exact values of the delays vary slightly, but this could be the result of the phase distortion present in the music. Fig. 3. The hypothesized delay hopping pattern of technology A. Here two stretches of 16 frames are illustrated side-by-side, with observed echoes in each frame categorized by six distinct delays: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 times 0.00025 sec. Aside from several missing echoes, a pattern appears to repeat every 16 frames. Note also that in each frame the echo gain is the same for both echoes.
The reader will also note that in apparently two frames there is only one echo. If this pattern were the union of two pseudorandom patterns chosen from six possible delay choices, two "collisions" would be within what is expected by chance.
Next, there is the issue of the actual encoded bits. Further work shows the sign of the echo gain does not repeat with the delay-hopping pattern, and so is likely at least part of an embedded message. Extracting such data without the help of an original can be problematic, although the patent, of course, outlines numerous detector structors which can be used to this end. We developed several tools for cepstral analysis to assist us in the process. See [2] for in introduction to cepstral analysis; Anderson and Petitcolas [1] illustrate its use in attacks on echo hiding watermark systems.
With a rapidly changing delay, normal cepstral analysis does not seem a good choice. However, if we know that the same echo is likely to occur at multiples of 16/50 of a second, we can improve detector capability by combining the information of multiple liftered2 log spectra.
____________________
Three detector structures are shown in figure 4. In all three, a collection of frames are selected for which the echo delays are believed to be the same. For each, the liftered log of an FFT or PSD of the frame is taken. In the first two structures, we compute a cepstrum, for each frame, then either average their squared magnitudes, or simply their squares, in hopes that a spike of the appropriate quefrency will be clear in the combination. The motivation for merely squaring the spectral coefficients comes from the observation that a spike due to an echo will either possess a phase of theta or theta + pi for some value theta. Squaring without taking magnitudes can cause the echo phases to reinforce, whilst still permitting other elements to combine destructively. Fig. 4. Three cepstral detector structures. In each case we have a collection of distinct frames, each believed to possess echoes of the same delay. The first two compute cepstral data for each frame, and sum their squares (or squared magnitudes) to constructively combine the echo signal in all frames. The third structure illustrates a method for testing a hypothesized pattern of positive and negative gains, possibly useful for brute-forcing or testing for the presence of a known "ciphertext."
In the final structure, one cepstrum. is taken using a guess of the gain sign for each suspect frame. With the correct guess, the ripple should be strongest, resulting in the largest spike from the cepstral detector. Figure 5 shows the output of this detector on several sets of suspect frames. While this requires an exponential amount of work for a given amount of frames, it has a different intended purpose: this is a brute-forcing tool, a utility for determining the most probable among a set of suspected short strings of gain signs as an aid to extracting possible ciphertext values. Fig. 5. Detection of an echo. A screenshot of our CepstroMatic utility shows a combination of 4 separate frames of music, each a fiftieth of a second long, in which the same echo delay was believed to exist. Their combination shows a very clear ripple on the right, corresponding to a clear cepstral spike on the left. This is a single echo at a delay of 33 samples, the delay suggested for these intervalus by the hypothesized delay-hopping pattern.
Finally, there is the issue of what this embedded watermark means. Again, we are uncertain about a possible signalling band below 8Khz. This could be a robust mark, signalling presence of a fragile mark of echoes between 8 and 16 KHz. The 8-16KHz band does seem like an unusual place to hide robust data, unless it does indeed extend further down, and so this could very easily be hidden information whose degredation is used to determine if music has already been compressed.
Of course, knowledge of either the robust or fragile component of the mark is enough for an attacker to circumvent the scheme, because one can either remove the robust mark, or repair or reinstate the fragile mark after compression has damaged it. As mentioned earlier, this possible attack of repairing the fragile component appears to have been ruled out by the nature of the SDMI challenge oracles. One must wait and see if real-world attackers will attempt such an approach, or resort to more brute methods or oracle attacks to remove the robust component.
3.2 Attack on Challenge B
We analyzed samp1b.wav and samp2b.wav using short-time FFT. Shown in Fig. 6 are the two FFT magnitudes for 1000 samples at 98.67 sec. Also shown is the difference of the two magnitudes. A spectrum notch around 2800Hz is observed for some segments of samp2b.wav and another notch around 3500Hz is observed for some other segments of samp2b.wav. Similar notches are observed in samp3b.wav. The attack fills in those notches of samp3b.wav with random but bounded coefficient values. We also submitted a variation of this attack involving different parameters for notch description. Both attacks were confirmed by SDMI oracle as successful. Fig. 6. Technology-B: FFT magnitudes of samp1b.wav and samp2b.wav and their difference for 1000 samples at 98.67 sec.
3.3 Attacks on Challenge C
By taking the difference of samp1c.wav and samp2c.wav, bursts of narrowband signal are observed, as shown in Fig. 7. These narrow band bursts appear to be centered around 1350 Hz. Two different attacks were applied to Challenge C. In the first at- tack, we shifted the pitch of the audio by about a quartertone. In the second attack, we passed the signal through a bandstop filter centered around 1350Hz. Our submissions were confirmed by SDMI oracle as successful. In addition, the perceptual quality of both attacks has passed the "golden ear" testing conducted by SDMI after the 3-week challenge. Fig. 7. Challenge-C: Waveform of the difference between samp1c.wav and samp2c.wav.
3.4 Attack on Challenge F
For Challenge F, we warped the time axis, by inserting a periodically varying delay. The delay function comes from our study on Technology-A, and was in fact initially intended to undo the phase distortion applied by technology A. Therefore the perceptual quality of our attacked audio is expected to be better than or comparable to that of the audio watermarked by Technology-A. We also submitted variations of this at- tack involving different warping parameters and different delay function. They were confirmed by SDMI oracle as successful.
4 The Non-Watermark Technologies
The HackSDMI challenge contained two "non-watermark" technologies. Together, they appear to be intended to prevent the creation of "mix" CDs, where a consumer might compile audio files from various locations to a writable CD. This would be enforced by universally embedding SMDI logic into consumer audio CD players.
4.1 Technology D
According to SDMI, Technology D was designed to require "the presence of a CD in order to 'rip' or extract a song for SDMI purposes." The technology aimed to accomplish this by adding a 53.3 ms audio track (four blocks of CD audio), which we will refer to as the authenticator, to each CD. The authenticator, combined with the CD's table of contents (TOC), would allow a SDMI device to recognize SDMI compliant CDs. For the challenge, SDMI provided 100 different "correct" TOC-authenticator pairs as well as 20 "rogue tracks". A rogue track is a track length that does not match any of the track lengths in the 100 provided TOCs. The goal of the challenge was to submit to the SDMI oracle a correct authenticator for a TOC that contained at least one of the rogue tracks.
The oracle for Technology D allowed several different query types. In the first type, an SDMI provided TOC-authenticator combination is submitted so a that user can "understand and verify the Oracle." According to SDMI, the result of this query should either be "admit" for a correct pair or "reject" for an incorrect pair. When we attempted this test a SDMI-provided pair, the oracle responded that the submission was "invalid." After verifying that we had indeed submitted a correct pair, we attempted several other submissions using different TOC-authenticator pairs as well as different browsers and operating systems3. We also submitted some pairs that the oracle should have rejected; these submissions were also declared "invalid." Though we alerted SDMI to this problem during the challenge, the oracle was never repaired. For this reason, our analysis of Technology D is incomplete and we lack definitive proof that it is correct. That having been said, we think that what we learned about this technology, even without the benefit of a correctly functioning oracle, is interesting.
____________________
Analyzing the Signal Upon examination of the authenticator audio files, we discovered several patterns. First, the left and right channels contain the same information. The two channels differ by a "noise vector" u, which is a vector of small integer values that range from -8 and 8. Since the magnitude of the noise is so small, the noise vector does not significantly affect the frequency characteristics of the signal. The noise values appear to be random, but the noise vector is the same for each of the 100 provided authenticator files. In other other words, in any authenticator file, the difference between the left and right channels of the ith sample is a constant fixed value u[i]. This implies that the noise vector u does not encode any TOC-specific information.
Second, the signal repeats with a period of 1024 samples. Because the full signal is 2352 samples long, the block repeats approximately 1.3 times. Similarly to the left and right channels of the signal, the first two iterations of the repeating signal differ by a constant noise vector v. The difference between the ith sample of the first iteration and the ith sample of the second iteration differ by a small (and apparently random) integer value v[i] ranging from -15 to 15. In addition, v is the same for each of the provided authenticator files, so v does not encode any TOC-specific information.
Third, the first 100 samples and last 100 samples of the full signal are faded in and faded out, respectively. This is illustrated in Figure 8. The fade-in and fade-out are meaningless, however, because they simply destroy data that is repeated in the middle of the file. We conjecture that this fade-in and fade-out are included so that the audio signal does not sound offensive to a human ear. Fig. 8. In a Technology D Authenticator, the signal fades in, repeats, and fades out.
Extracting the Data Frequency analysis on the 1024 sample block shows that almost all of the signal energy is concentrated in the 16-20kHz range, as shown in Figure 9. We believe this range was chosen because these frequencies are less audible to the human ear. Closer examination shows that this l6-20kHz range is divided up into 80 discrete bins, each of which appears to carry one bit of information. As shown in Figure 10, these bits can be manually counted by a human using a graph of the magnitude of signal in the frequency domain. Fig. 9. Magnitude vs. Frequency of Technology D Authenticator
Fig. 10. Individual Bits From a Technology D Authenticator
Close inspection and pattern matching on these 80 bits of information reveals that there are only 16 bits of information repeated 5 times using different permutations. using the letters A-P to symbolize the 16 bits, these 5 permutations are described in Figure 11. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP
OMILANHGPBDCKJFE
PKINHODFMJBCAGLE
FCKLGMEPNOADJBHI
PMGHLECAKDONIFJB Fig. 11. The encoding of the 16 bits of data in Technology D
Because of the malfunctioning oracle, we were unable to determine the function used to map TOCs to authenticators, but given an actual SDMI device, it would be trivial to brute force all 216 possibilities. Likewise, without the oracle, we could not determine if there was any other signal present in the authenticator (e.g., in the phase of the frequency components with nonzero magnitude).
For the moment, let us assume that the hash function used in Technology D has only 16 bits of output. Given the number of distinct CDs available, an attacker should be able to acquire almost, if not all, of the authenticators. We note that at 9 kilobytes each, a collection of 65,536 files would fit nicely on a single CD. Many people have CD collections of 300+ discs, which by the birthday paradox makes it more likely than not that there is a hash collision among their own collection.
Our results indicated that the hash function used in Technology D could be weak or may have less than 16 bits of output. In the 100 authenticator samples provided in the Technology D challenge, there were 2 pairs of 16-bit hash collisions. We will not step through the derivation here, but the probability of two or more collisions occurring in n samples of X equally likely possibilities is:
If the 16-bit hash function output has 16 bits of entropy, the probability of 2 collisions occurring in n = 100 samples of X = 216 possibilities is 0.00254 (by the above 1.5 equation). If X ~ 211.5, the chances of two collisions occurring is about even. This suggests that either 4 bits of the 16-bit hash output may be outputs of functions of the other 12 bits or the hash function used to generate the 16-bit signature is weak. It is also possible that the challenge designers purposefully selected TOCs that yield collisions. The designers could gauge the progress of the contestants by observing whether anyone submits authenticator A with TOC B to the oracle, where authenticator A is equal to authenticator B. Besides the relatively large number of collisions in the provided authenticators, it appears that there are no strong biases in the authenticator bits such as significantly more or less 1's than 0's.
4.2 Technology E
Technology E is designed to fix a specific bug in Technology D: the TOC only mentions the length of each song but says nothing about the contents of that song. As such, an attacker wishing to produce a mix CD would only need to find a TOC approximately the same as the desired mix CD, then copy the TOC and authenticator from that CD onto the mix CD. If the TOC does not perfectly match the CD, the track skipping functionality will still work but will only get "close" to track boundaries rather than reaching them precisely. Likewise, if a TOC specified a track length longer than the track we wished to put there, we could pad the track with digital silence (or properly SDMI-watermarked silence, copied from another valid track). Regardless, a mix CD played from start to end would work perfectly. Technology E is designed to counter this attack, using the audio data itself as part of the authentication process.
The Technology E challenge presented insufficient information to be properly studied. Rather than giving us the original audio tracks (from which we might study the unspecified watermarking scheme), we were instead given the tables of contents for 1000 CDs and a simple scripting language to specify a concatenation of music clips from any of these CDs. 'Me oracle would process one of these scripts and then state whether the resulting CD would be rejected.
While we could have mounted a detailed statistical analysis, submitting hundreds or thousands of queries to the oracle, we believe the challenge was fundamentally flawed. In practice, given a functioning SDMI device and actual SDMI-protected content, we could study the audio tracks in detail and determine the structure of the watermarking scheme.
5 Conclusion
In this paper, we have presented an analysis of the technology challenges issued by the Secure Digital Music Initiative. Each technology challenge described a specific goal (e.g., remove a watermark from an audio track) and offered a Web-based oracle that would confirm whether the challenge was successfully defeated.
We have reverse-engineered and defeated all four of their audio watermarking technologies. We have studied and analyzed both of their "non-watermarking" technologies to the best of our abilities given the lack of information available to us and given a broken oracle in one case.
Some debate remains on whether our attacks damaged the audio beyond standards measured by "golden ear" human listeners. Given a sufficient body of SDMI-protected content using the watermark schemes presented here, we are confident we could refine our attacks to introduce distortion no worse than the watermarks themselves introduce to the the audio. Likewise, debate remains on whether we have truly defeated technologies D and E. Given a functioning implementation of these technologies, we are confident we can defeat them.
Do we believe we can defeat any audio protection scheme? Certainly, the technical details of any scheme will become known publicly through reverse engineering. Using the techniques we have presented here, we believe no public watermark-based scheme intended to thwart copying will succeed. Other techniques may or may not be strong against attacks. For example, the encryption used to protect consumer DVDs was easily defeated. Ultimately, if it is possible for a consumer to hear or see protected content, then it will be technically possible for the consumer to copy that content.
References
1. R. J. ANDERSON, AND F. A. P. PETITCOLAs. On the limits of steganography. IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications 16,4 (May 1998),474-481.
2. R. P. BOGERT, M., AND J. W. TUKEY. The quefrency alanysis of time series for echoes: Cepstrum, pseudo-autocovariance, cross-ceptsrum and saphe-cracking. In Proceedings of the Symposium on Time Series Analysis (Brown University, June 1962), pp. 209-243.
3. R. PETROVIC, J. M. WINOGRAD, K., AND E. METOIS. Apparatus and method for encoding and decoding information in analog signals, Aug. 1999. US Patent No 05940135 http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05940135__.
4. SECURE DIGITAL MUSIC INITIATIVE. Call for Proposals for Phase II Screening Technology, Version 1.0, Feb. 2000. http://www.sdmi.org/download/FRWG00022401-Ph2_CFPv 1.0.PDF.
5. SECURE DIGITAL MUSIC INITIATIVE. SDMI public challenge, Sept. 2000. http://www.hacksdmi.org.
My email addy? should be easy enough.
They won't.
Until CNN, Fox News, NBC, ABC, CBS, Newseek, The New York Times, et. al... publish about this all it does is expose the DMCA for what it is - "a crude weapon intended to bully and threaten" to the people that already understand this.
The fact that a lot of academics and Slashdot readers now know that the DMCA is broken won't contribute towards any significant amount of change.
1) The RIAA for their endless pursuit of Justice and the American Way.
2) To Hillary for being such a caring and loving human being when it comes to protecting the rights of "artists".
3) The legion of lobbyists for pursuing our Congressmen and showing them that "this is the right thing for the American people"
..and finally to the entire American Congress for passing one of the broadest, most unfucking believable pieces of crap legislation (DMCA) I have seen in a LONG time and essentially selling out the American public to Corporate America. Thanks. I feel like a better American now that I have these types of laws protecting my rights.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
First a decryptor is a circumvention device, then a program that makes a decryptor is a corcumvention device, then a paper detailing techniques that could be used to create such a program is a circumvention device.
How much further would it have to go before the RIAA declared the human brain to be a 'circumvention device'?
Everyone with an IQ above 120, please report to either the lobotomy room or the courtroom.
Kevin Fox
--
Kevin Fox
- it has already permeated the internet, and...
- the story of the RIAA's threat against academic researhers is all over the mainstream media.
Brilliant move, RIAA. What is you SDMI worth now? Where are the anti-DMCA crowd going to turn for PR, and what are they going to mention the next time we have congressional hearings or a court case involving the DMCA? And which side of the fence do you think any remaining waverers are going to come down on?--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
But you WILL incur crippling legal expenses, even if you ARE right. That's why C&D letters are so popular nowadays. They cost nothing, and they're 90% as effective as a lawsuit...
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I can't attract a high-powered team, because I can't afford to pay their retainer. High powered legal teams almost never work on contingency.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
That won't help. Say I go up against RIAA with a competent, reasonably priced lawyer. I incur legal expenses of $50,000, and she's going to be paid on a contingency basis (zero out-of-pocket cost to me unless I win. Fine.) RIAA comes to the table with five wickedly high-priced lawyers. They incur legal expenses of $2,000,000. My lawyer, outnumbered and outgunned, loses. I am now a wage slave. That's NOT a chance I'm willing to take.
The bottom line is that legal expenses, win or lose, are trivial for these large corporations, and disastrous for any but the wealthiest private citizen.
I can't believe Princeton nellied out on this one! That's what colleges are FOR...
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
In addition to preventing the ever-increasing definition of "circumvention device", there's an important free speech issue at stake here. If they had pressed the issue, they could have reeled in the RIAA a bit.
-sk
You must be joking...
>What transpired in Europe 60 years ago has show to us that freespeech should not be abused to give
>speaking rights to those who would deny those rights to others.
If you just stayed the hell out and didn't censor anyone, or allow anyone to be censored, then nobody would be able to take away anyone's rights.
If you don't give nazis the power to supress the rights of the jews, then you don't have to censor the nazis. They'll just be another group of harmless idiots completely out of touch with reality.
Actually, you have to laugh, their idea of the master race is suicidal. They want to inbreed themselves until all differences are gone. That's a chuckle, they'll all be perfect 6' well-built blonde, blue-eyed, and dreadfully retarded. Much like collies or any other massively overbred dog. "Oh, eek. It's an attack of the nazi beach bunnies with the 60 point IQs, eek, eek."
If someone denies the holocaust, why don't you get off your little censorship powertrip and actually bother to refute what they say? Otherwise you'll end up throwing a real scholar into jail when they merely try to correct a historical innacuracy, just because their views don't fit with the politically correct ones. You certainly don't seem smart and well educated enough to understand where to draw the lines.
They won't be very intelligent if they succeed with inbreeding themselves.
And the leaders are the supporters of that, they'll gladly have little aryan children regardless of the cost.
And how long were they in power? How long would it take to produce any results from a breeding program?
Thanks to the DMCA, the RIAA, SDMI group, and Verance are running around suing on the grounds that people are reverse engineering their trade-secret "access control" mechanisms for today's digital music media, when a patent on the technique could already have percluded unlicensed decryption for longer than the current technology will likely remain in favor. Why? 'Cause they'd have to tell us how it worked to get the patent. 'Cause they'd have to make sure they didn't miss any important claims in the decryption patent, or some clever sole might come up with an alternate solution which violated none of the claims. That'd be pretty hard. So maybe they could have made the encryption/decryption algorithms stronger, so you couldn't practically break them any way other than the one described in the patent. Well, that'd be pretty hard too .. probably cost a lot as well. What if they could just do anything, not tell anyone how, but get the laws changed so it was protected like a patented technique. Hell, while their at it, maybe they can do away with the expiration of the legal protection. That'd be cheap and easy. Just pay some lobbyist once to get the law changed, and blammo, now IP can be protected by threat of litigation without a patent.
Knowledge of how bad torture used to be is pretty common. In britain at least it's common for a schooltrip to a castle to be shown the dungeon or the other ways they mutilated people ("These are the slits through which the defenders would pour hot molten lead on the attackers", "this is the spike they would mount heads on" etc). Maybe in the US we don't have any handy real mediaeval torture hanging about in public monuments - something should be done, education is suffering!
Dear ...,
I would like to complain about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
I find it disturbing that I can go to jail, and/or be fined, for the crime of trying to watch a DVD I have legally purchased.
I find it disturbing that works I create: poetry, humor, fiction; Can be banned on the grounds that they can be mathematically combined to produce DVD decrypting software.
There is a distinction between a copyright holder being entitled to compensation if someone reproduces their work without permission, and the copyright holder being entitled to control what works others may create, and how their works may be used after a sale has taken place.
The most recent travesty goes too far. The RIAA has successfully utilized the DMCA to suppress the presentation and publication of an academic research paper. The paper, by Dr. Edward Felten, a professor at Princeton University, and others, was to be presented at the Pittsburgh Information Hiding Workshop conference earlier today.
In a statement, read earlier today, Dr. Felten said:
This tragedy only serves to highlight the problems with our existing legal DMCA framework.
The truth is far more frightening. We have an industry that is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. They are trying to retain outdated and outmodeled technological approaches.
The truth is that there are alternatives to technological and legal barriers to copyright violation with digital media. Alternatives that provide superior protection, and enhance revenues.
Please do something about this atrocious piece of legislature called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It only serves to block progress while providing monopoly status for a select few.
This reminds me of a quote from the game Alpha Centauri. I believe Pravin Lal says is: "Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he sees himself your master." Just a random observation...
You speak as if you're voice is one with the rest of Europe, is it possible there are citizens there who disagree?! You speak for "the people of Europe"? You know as well as everyone else that your single voice is but your opinion and that there are others who would wish for something different!
Yes, free speech means that you must actually listen to people that you do NOT agree with. How would you feel if the opinion you've just expressed above wasn't one that the rest of your neighbors agreed with and they prevented you from speaking? Who decides what's "racial"? What's "moral"? What's "Socially Acceptable"?! Has it ever occured to you that at the time Hitler spoke the people of Germany ACCEPTED IT?!
Who decides what gets published and what doesn't? You make it sound as if these are easy and simple decisions, and in some extreme cases they might be. But what happens when it's a more gray area? What happens when you think it's wrong and someone else disagrees? This even happens in the United States where "Politically Correct" twits strive for ever more restrictive and silly laws and rules. We're being slowly stripped of our rights while it's apparent that you've already lost much of what we've got and are prepared to give up still more. I pity you and your mindset - it's the sort of mindset that allows others to take over. While it may not be the Jewish people who are your scapegoat this time I'm sure someone like your Father Leman will step in with a target sooner or later. Oh wait - it sounds like perhaps this may be occuring already?
You'd have us believe that you learned from Hitler, judging from what you've written I'd say that's not so at all. You're more than happy to go with the flow and not question the stripping of freedom from others - does this not ring alarm bells anywhere? It should...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Then Dr. Felten's OK, since Amazon will be suing SDMI for breach of patent on the "I Agree" button.
Reading Between the Lines: Lessons from the SDMI Challenge In HTML or mirror-able ZIP file.
---
DMCA can only be defeated in two ways:
1) Judicially neutering it, either by judicial construction of its provisions that broaden its scope to permit free discussion and disclosure of the technology, or by finding broad constructions unconstitutional absent fair use provisions; or
2) Politically, by getting the Congress to change its mind and send RIAA home without its supper.
In view of the decreasing credibility of RIAA outside its spin rooms, and increasing interest by the public in Napster and its progeny, Congressmen and Senators are beginning to publicly suggest a substantial "rethink" of its provisions.
Until recently, folks have been pooh-poohing the alleged downside of the Act, suggesting that only the pirates or collaborators are getting nicked, and this has held sway in the halls of power; and in the halls of justice. The suggestion that mere enforcement of (or threats of enforcement of) DMCA provisions doesn't chill freedom of speech or sound academic freedoms (pointing to the so-called "research exception") has been set aside in the broader interest of "protecting artist incentives."
This can no longer occur without a substantial rebuttal.
Sure, I would have far preferred Professor Felton to cock a snoot at them, fight the good fight and win in the Supreme Court a great victory for us all. (Ultimately, I believe he must prevail on the merits -- his argument is even stronger than the one Kathleen Sullivan is going to make before the Second Circuit in the DeCSS case).
But this is just as well. Good lord, a Princeton professor being squelched from delivering a pure research paper already published and readily available on the internet? This is of enormous political advantage -- it will overwhelm the spinners, and perhaps be more valuable than anything else that could happen.
This is because it makes it enormously harder for folks to hand-wave the first amendment issues, and to show how ludicrously broader the DMCA is than any sound basis for Copyright incentives can justify.
In recent years, no good has ever occurred when the legislature has tried to "catch up" IP law to the present -- every time it has reduced to a handout to the politically powerful media lobbies. The formerly powerful library lobbies were bought off with express excemptions, and the traditional academic forces and liberal civil liberties organizations have not been so effective lobbying the increasingly Republican-controlled legislatures.
Now, there is real ammunition. New, more powerful constituencies are realizing their commercial well-being is being affected by the overbearing and overreaching exploitation of these laws well beyond the bounds of reason. And traditional civil liberties organizations are begining to make more sense to the public because of the "realness" of losing Napster, and the pretty decent story that Felton would make.
What's more, by complying with the law as outrageously asserted here, Felton can NEVER be cast as a pirate. He will be a poster-child for DMCA reform far more powerful than any limited victory he could win in court -- at best just a finding that a research scientist performing crypto research falls within the crypto research suggestion. That syllogism wouldn't be as big a win as the repeal or political neutering of DMCA.
So, despite the emotional letdown I feel, this is probably a Really Good Thing.(R) RIAA probably lost more by winning than they would have by losing.
Please keep in mind that the RIAA and MPAA have already argued in court that their license terms are binding on consumers. Therefore, the "agree not to hack" constraints will be applied to anyone doing postmarket research on these watermarks.
What? The Court would throw the suit out on the grounds that there is no contract? That might be, if you can afford several million up front for the defense. Let's have a show of hands:
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This should catch the attention of any academic researcher -- do your part to help raise awareness in the academic community! Below is a letter I sent to my math advisor:
Dr. ******,
As you could probably guess, there are many political issues about which
I have strong feelings for whatever reason, especially in the realm of
computers and cyberspace. While it is normally most appropriate to keep
these to myself, an issue has come about which I believe has a very
direct impact on you and on other professors with respect to the
academic research you regularly conduct. This is why I am writing to you
today.
In September of 2000, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI)
announced an open contest to the computer community
(http://www.sdmi.org/pr/OL_Sept_6_2000.htm), inviting people to try and
break a watermarking scheme they had developed for digital sound files.
They challenged anyone to remove the watermark present in several audio
samples they published on their web site, without noticeably degrading
the quality of the signal. The reward was to be up to $10,000 in
exchange for non-disclosure of the solution.
A group of researchers from Princeton University led by Dr. Edward
Felten decided to take on the challenge and found several successful
methods for removing the watermark. The researchers decided against
accepting the prize money with the attached requirement that they keep
their research secret, and instead authored a paper titled _Reading
Between the Lines: Lessons from the SDMI Challenge_. It was their
intention to present it today at the 4th annual International
Information Hiding Workshop in Pittsburgh
(http://www.cert.org/IHW2001/).
However, on April 9th, they received a letter from the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) threatening a lawsuit if they
presented the paper as planned, claiming that the contest agreement did
not "'expressly authorize' participants to disclose information and
research developed through participating in the Public challenge.
As a result, Dr. Felten made a public statement today that he and his
colleagues would not be presenting the paper as planned. "Litigation is
costly, time-consuming, and uncertain, regardless of the merits of the
other side's case," he announced. "Ultimately we, the authors, reached
a collective decision not to expose ourselves, our employers, and the
conference organizers to litigation at this time."
His statement, the letter from the RIAA threatening litigation, and the
paper itself can be viewed at (http://cryptome.org/sdmi-attack.htm).
I believe this is a frightening precedent, and a major blow to academic
freedom and the research community. Felten's crime was conducting
research that was seen as threatening by the business community--what
research will they decide they don't like next time? What can be said of
"academic freedom" when a rich company need only write threatening
letters to suppress troublesome knowledge?
If you agree that this is relevant and pertinent information, I would
appreciate it if you would forward this e-mail to any of your colleagues
who might be interested.
Sincerely,
Joshua Haberman
--
And what I think what they should do is take a page from the DeCSS proceedings and introduce the research paper itself into evidence... therefore making it public. heheh
Steve
Torture is still used as a common means to obtain confessions around the world.
One of the more heinous methods of torture used today is water torture:
You are bound on your back, a funnel is put in your mouth, your nose is closed, and water is poured in. You have two choices: drown, or drink the water. Most choose number two. But the water keeps coming, and your belly fills up. When your stomach is full to a certain point, then the real point of the torture begins: You are beat with a paddle, stick or bat on the stomach - repeatedly, to confess! You must confess! Needless to say, you either puke the water back out and have bruises, at which point the torture is repeated, until you confess (then you are likely to be burned at the stake, or something else - or you die from your injuries), or your stomach bursts, and you die an agonizing death of internal bleeding and extreme pain.
This museum viewing (it was a "self-guided" tour) was not something for kids - in fact, one had to be 18 or older to enter, no kids allowed. To illustrate:
One particular device that was shown was used on individuals who were found to homosexual, or had extramarital affairs (both male and female) - a wooden pyramidal shaped wedge was mounted on a tripod like structure, and the accused was suspended above it, and repeatedly dropped on it so that it would pierce their anus or vaginal area, until they confessed, or died. Sometimes weights were applied to the ankles. Any movement of the accused would only increased the pain. It is worth remembering that these sessions were generally public, and drew large crowds, as well.
I am not trying to be disgusting, or get a rise out of people with this comment - I am merely trying to illustrate the impact these exhibits had - how they drove home the point that we are at base uncaring animals - and how throughout history, and even today, we seek to demean others through the most painful and violating ways...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Think of it as the difference between being told a close friend of yours was shot and killed, versus being right next to the individual when it happened.
In both scenarios, there is major grief, and shock, but in the latter, there is extreme shock.
I had read about torture and the Inquisitions many times prior to seeing the exhibit, and I knew and comprehended the misery that people suffered. It wasn't until I saw the the actual devices used, in person, that I really understood the level of fear and misery - I knew there was misery, I understood there was misery - but seeing these instruments, knowing that some were actually used, was like a sucker punch in the gut - a new understanding of a level of misery, and cruelty that no mere knowledge could impart.
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Ok, this time it is lawyers instead of torture. But, I don't see that much difference, really.
trentfoley, I fully support your opinion and ideas on this whole thing - you are most certainly correct that the corps are acting in a similar way as the Catholic Church did so long ago...
But to say a horde of lawyers is anything like torture only belittles the actual hell that torture is.
Want an eye-opening experience?
Go to the Museum of Man in Balboa Park in San Diego, California (USA). They currently have an exhibit (or at least they did when I was there in February) on torture, the Inquisitions, and the machines/devices used.
Oh sure, they have your standard rack and Iron Maiden (actually an 18th century period-repro of the original), guillotene (sp?) and thumbscrews. But there are other devices there - some reproductions, some actual devices that were once used. All with descriptions detailing how they were used, why (ie, the "crimes") and when. The horrors one used to (and in some regions today, still have to) have to endure just for being a woman, or being a "fool" (or a loudmouth, or similar) are sobering, to say the least.
And disgusting.
I entered into that exhibit with curiosity - I exited ashamed of being human.
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
But once the paper is published the journal owns the copyright to the paper not the author(s). IANAL, but would that mean the RIAA would need to go after the publishing house? They have lots of lawyers.
I agree, this is akin to schools in the bible belt saying you can't teach evolution.
I disagree. In the case of evolution in the schools the decision is made at a very local level, by people who were voted into that capacity by the folks that live in that place.
Generally speaking, if the schools don't teach evolution it's because the parents don't want them to - the board is carrying out the Mandate of the People.
(Yeah, I know that you might consider that a Mandate of Idiots, but hey, some people think differently than you do, and they adjust their local environment accordingly. It's diversity in action.)
The RIAA is a corporate entity, we can't vote the fsckers out. And the reach is nation wide, rather than someplace like Dryhump Nevada. The only interests they're protecting is that of soulless mega-corps.
"The Congress shall have power...to promote the progress of science and useful arts...by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries."
Sad. Sad.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
claiming the research paper is a circumvention device
NO!
The paper is (among other things) a description of how to go about making a circumvention device. Not a device in itself. Big difference. cf. "bombs" vs "list of bomb ingredients."
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
My mirror is at http://www.flyingbuttmonkeys.com/mirrors/sdmi-atta ck.htm
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
It's a conference on information hiding, what did you expect? RIAA just happens to interpret that phrase a little more literally than the rest of us :)
"HALT, Citizen! Put down the math textbook!"
Why don't you hire an equally high powered team, and when you win, they collect their $2M from RIAA?
If it truly is a frivolous lawsuit, those lawyers will be happy to work under the condition that they only get paid if they win.
"Loser pays" is the law in many countries that, for some odd reason, does not have nearly the same volume of crazy or hostile lawsuits as the US.
Step 1. Invent some kind of poor encryption.
Step 2. Make a contest to break it.
Step 3. Everyone who steps up to claim the prize, sue them!
This page was generated with the help of DOC++.
Oh, yeah noticed it right off the bat. The paper was a funny read for anyone with a background in signal processing. The SDMI should definitely be worried. While it took some ingenuity to determine what scheme was being employed. Most undergrad EE's and some CE's armed with this paper could write the necessary filters to remove the watermarks.
Of course, remember when it was illegal to print the RSA algorithm on a tee shirt within the United States?
That was done in the name of National Security.
Here, it's done in the interest of stock holders.
Amazing to think that disclosure of something as simple as a mathmatical equation could land you in court, or worse, jail . And stock holders will profit from the fraud perpetuated as they go forward and manufacture devices incorporating this "secure" technology.
RD
Folks, this is a big league PR move, and it's quite well-timed.
The oral arguments for the DeCSS case happen May 1. Given the critical decision the 2nd Circuit will be making in the next few days, the goal should be to bring the anti-DMCA sentiment to a crescendo, and Felton's action should help achieve that. By withdrawing his paper, some very negative press should be aimed at the DMCA by major news organizations.
People should keep in mind that the anti-DMCA push is very well orgainized, and that Felton has already participated in it. I have no doubt that the paper will be published in a few weeks (not counting that it has already been leaked!). Meanwhile, major media organizations have a great reason to run "The DMCA is draconian" stories soon, citing Felton's case.
The timing of this is supurb, and it's frankly a sharp tactical move. Felton will probably publish this paper in a few weeks. Hell, more people will read it because of the suspense. IMHO, he's on very sound DMCA footing as he clearly qualifies for 1201(g).
Your claim that the researchers were just helping out the RIAA has been made to the researchers many times.
From the faq:
--
-jacob
-jacob
It's one thing to attack everytime someone does something that may be used to circumvent intellectual property rights, but, come on! Threatening someone because he took up a challenge you made?
What I would like to know is this:
This being said, I am almost certain any judge reviewing this case would just throw it out. Suing the SDMI challengers is almost as stupid as suing Galileo for saying the Earth is round and not flat...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
The DeCSS case was different; in the DeCSS case we were talking about a piece of software which does something. Here we're talking about a paper. A paper with printed text on it can't help me circumvent any copy protection! That's crazy talk! It's like saying it's illegal to carry around a concealed drawing of a hand gun on the grounds that the drawing is a weapon.
The anti-act of circumvention exemptions that lack corresponding anti-device counterparts constitute one of the most signficant deficiencies in that law.
It NEEDS to be challenged in court. I'm extremely disappointed in the paper's authors.
From the Register mirrored version of the article....
http://www.theregister.co.uk/extra/sdmi-f05.jpg
it appears as though they did this anaysis using the BeOS. It's good to see JLG's tech being used for what it was intended for, and I guess this is a dodge for the blame being placed on "that anarchic linux crowd" for cracking another flawed protection scheme.
- passion
http://www.theregister.co.uk/extra/sdmi-attack.ht
Is it out on Freenet yet?
--
--
E2 IN2 IE?
And here is US Patent 05940135, as mentioned above.
- David
This is why when someone brings a law suit against someone else and looses[sic], they should not only compensate that person/company, but should do so 100X the costs it took to defend themselves. Then the RIAA would have to reconsider next time it was to use terrorism and its bought Senators to push researchers around.
This is a truly awful idea and I'm ashamed that it got modded up to '5'. Who benefits most from a situation where a failed lawsuit can rebound and cost the plaintiff 100x the cost of defense? Big companies, the same big companies you rail against. Little guys with solid cases against big businesses will be pressed to the wall to justify a lawsuit when they tally up the $250-$500/hour that a lawyer costs and multiply by 100.
Does anyone believe that a scheme like this would be anything but a lever used by well-funded entities to cow the aggrieved into settling and pervert the legal process? Right. It will stop frivolous lawsuits by guaranteeing that they are not brought by any group that can't pony up an escrow of a few million dollars per month as the suit drags on.
I don't think this is what the founding fathers had in mind.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is the site set up by SDMI for the challenge, not the researcher's paper.
It's a general miror site, part of http://diddl.firehead.org/censor/
I have a paper done by two French dudes who hacked it. I am currently getting what I hope is a copy of the paper in question for this article.
All of this stuff, as well as the original watermarked files, can be found here.
-----
>There must be a better way to make ourselves >truly heard. There is. Problem is, people aren't willing to do it. If consumers were organised, _they_ would have all the power, not the Corporations. If every single consumer boycotted the RIAA, they would be out of business. Same goes for almost all of the large Corporations. If a bank loses all of their customers, they're out of business. It is that kind of power that gives leverage. That takes discipline though, and a little sacrifice from every one of us. Not to mention a willingness to support other people, even strangers, perhaps even when you don't agree with their claims. And I guess that makes it impossible, most people don't bother. Not being organised is giving away the power. I guess the poeple that founded the Labour Unions were aware of that fact. They managed to take away some of the power from employers, and give it to the employees. That principle could be applied to the supplier/consumer relationship.
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
Look. We shouldn't have participated it in the first place. WHY help them to better protect when they try to censor us?
I urge everybody to refrain from any sort of cryptanalisys on RIAA/MPAA protections BEFORE they're in wide use. Secretly do it, and proclaim that you have found a hole after it's already implemented by the mass.
Step 1: Collect RIAA Lawyers and executives
Step 2: Dress them in football and cheerleader uniforms
Step 3: Round up all the kids that wrote "me too" geek persecution stories for Jon Katz's book
Step 4: Lock them all in a small room with lots of video walls.
Step 5: Pipe footage of DOOM and ROBOCOP onto said video walls for a few hours
Step 6: Toss in the handguns and run
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
After the accusations of marketing music with "mature" content on it to kids (pretty bogus, but amusing nonetheless), the RIAA has been getting a lot of bad publicity lately.
Good.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
This could even go further, in my mind. It's not just that we must defend our own rights by defending someone else's. Free speech gives rise to reason. Nobody knows the full story; it is only through hearing those who disagree with you that you come to understand the flaws in your own argument, and reconcile them. Free speech, and the ability to hear those who you disagree with and disapprove of, isn't just the companion of reason; it is the origin of reason.
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Cool i got it, freenet rules..
but still takes forever
this is my sig.
check this out:
"Litigation is costly, time-consuming, and uncertain, regardless of the merits of the other side's case. Ultimately we, the authors, reached a collective decision not to expose ourselves, our employers, and the conference organizers to litigation at this time."
"regardless of the merits of the other side's case." in other words, even though they have no legal grounds for threatening us, they still might win so we're not going to try it.
jon
-- http://www.cerastes.org
The corporations are not yet engaged in slaughtering their critics and competition. Until they do, it's not as bad as what the Roman Catholic Church did.
I agree with you that the danger is equal, though I don't think it's that bad yet.
Sigh, this is off-topic, but as someone who grew up at times in the north, the southern bible belt, and the west, I will say that WE DO celebrate our christian culture all the time - why does everyone say "Merry Christmas" when you leave for winter break as a default, unless they are jewish or other religion? Sadly, because of the KKK and similar organizations, "white pride" just does not mean the same thing as "black pride", "gay pride" or any other. But that's just semantic. It is easy to be innately proud of your race/religion (which I'm assuming is Caucasian/christian) when the president has always been caucasian/christian, pictures of 'beautiful' people thrown at us by the media are (or at least were until v. recently) 90% caucasian, and even the pledge of allegience firmly states "One nation, under GOD." It is not so easy to be innately proud when there is a sneaky undercurrent of opinion in the culture that (for example) african americans are more prone to be drug addicts and rapists, mexican american women are 'ugly' because they are generally hairier/more voluptuous than the caucasian models we see, jewish families are at best misguided to not believe in Jesus and at worst some sort of shylock-stereotype, and muslims are seen as completley scary, probably terrorists. All I'm saying is that these groups on few times in school or they got to "show off" their culture/religion, you were already living in a media culture that has let you be proud, let you feel capable, promoted your group as the moral and law abiding one, let you feel normal, let you feel in company with the 'majority' that is in reality no majority at all.
That being said, I've found that with open discussions and appropriate teacher guidance, children today are MUCH better at discussing these issues than we are without excluding anyone for their views/race/background. Watching a class of 13-yo discuss easily and intelligently the tribe song "Sucka Nigga" and its message of why the artist feels it is ok for black people to use this word, and the class adding their OWN interpretations on the unsaid context, or why it is NOT ok for any other group to use this word, was truly inspiring.
Creationism has no scientific evidence to back it up, so it should not be taught in science classes. That's not to say that you shouldn't believe it instead of what you're taught, shouldn't be taught it at YOUR home and YOUR church. But teaching it at school instaed of scientifically-based knowledge, facts, data, and theories will just harm these children's scientific background, and violates the separation of church and state. And they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, you know, so it's not going to drive christain children batty or anything to learn about evolution. As my very religious mother says, "WE don't know how god DID anything, or even how long a day to him is. All we have is an interpretation of the deed, written by a HUMAN in a very poetic and metaphorical style."
ooky
Never trust a Hal 9000. - bboys
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Justice is dead.
So is science, art, and practically any other advancement that we can make as a civilization. When the sheer cost of litigation even when you know that the other side has their heads up their collective asses dissuades people from engaging in "Science and the useful arts", there's nothing more to be said. It's over folks. Enjoy the plunge.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
The paper is NOT illegal in itself. A perfect analogy would be the instructions on how to make a nuclear bomb. They're not illegal. (IIRC, TIME or some other high profile magazine printed out the instructions in one of their issues). However, if you go out and MAKE a nuclear bomb (easier said than done) and use it, THAT's when it becomes illegal.
This paper is no different from that article. It just provides the framework for being able to make the hard/software (also easier said than done) to circumvent SDMI, and using THAT is what's illegal, NOT the paper itself.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Grab the paper here.
I also included a nifty FAQ.
Feel free to correct me on any of my silly ramblings in the FAQ...
--Fred
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Public." - H.L. Mencken
Everbody who actually cares about the technology of digital watermarks has already read this paper, because it's been on-line for weeks. It's even been discussed on Slashdot and trashed in high-end audio journals. The RIAA's move guarantees that thousands of people who never cared about digital watermarks before will now read the paper and get interested in the subject.
Hitler's Holocaust has thought us that terrible lesson. Only morally and socially acceptable speech should be fully allowed to be spoken freely, hateful and harmful speech should be restricted fully.
If the laws you talk about were in place in Hitler's time (for all I know they were), it would then have been 'socially unacceptable' to denounce the Nazis for genocide.
The Nazis, of course, did not really need a law to shoot anyone who disagreed with them.
When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
Thus, we had reason to suspect a complex echo hiding system, involving multiple time-varying echoes. It was at this point that we considered a patent search, knowing enough about the data hiding method that we could look for specific search terms, and we were pleased to discover that this particular scheme appears to be listed as an alternative embodiment in US patent number 05940135, awarded to Aris corporation, now part of Verance [5]. This provided us with little more detail than we had already discovered, but confirmed that we were on the right track, as well as providing the probable identity of the company which developed the scheme. It also spurred no small amount of discussion of the validity of Kerckhoffs's criterion, the driving principle in security that one must not rely upon the obscurity of an algorithm. This is, surely, doubly true when the algorithm is patented.
The stick has two ends to it. On one hand a corporation wants to patent technology that prohibits use/copy circumvention, on the other hand, the same patent can be used as a FAQ for an attacker to circumvent the anti-circumvention mechanism. Of-course, in this case the patent information was not used by the attackers, they only recognized it after the 'oracle' let them know they have won.
You can't handle the truth.
We remain committed to free speech and to the value of scientific debate to our country and the world.
In what way is that commitment evidenced? You only are committed to free speech when no one threatens you with litigation? Sounds like someone else is calling the shots.
We will continue to fight for these values, and for the right to publish our paper.
Looks like the towel is in the ring (at least for this round)...
FWIW, I don't really care what they do -- it's their call. But this kind of rhetoric doesn't hold much water...
Wow. A paper as a circumvention device? The DMCA is just stretching things too far.
It has be said before, but really now, what will it take for the DMCA to be overturned?
Cut to: Business Street - Day
"Citizen! You are under arrest!"
"For what?"
"You are in possesion of an illegal circumvention device!"
"What the fsck are you talking about?"
"You have a manual, paper, or other printed material describing how to circumvent, illegally, copyrighted or other intellectually protected material."
"You mean this!?"
"Yes, now put the decss t-shirt down and stand away!"
Big Brother ain't got nothin' on Big Corporations.
Thank God I live in Canada
Unfortunately, a policy like this works both ways, and it would almost certainly chill the efforts of individuals to sue companies who've wronged them.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Don't back down! The DMCA doesn't cover security research! This is an opportunity for a young lawyer (does Princeton also have a good law school?) to make a great case that just might break the DMCA.
If anyone has the specific part of the DMCA covering research, please post it.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Some people in Sweden (where I live) tried that with the secrets of Scientology. The information was available for a while, until the US Congress pressured the swedish government a bit... Sigh.
It is a purely American viewpoint. It is one that stems from the tremendous faith that we have in what is generally conceived of as a natural system, wherein ideas that are good and true are borne out by their goodness and truth, while bad ideas are found to be so based upon the negative effects that they have, or their inherent "badness." We believe in equity . . . giving every idea a fair shake. If it's evil and so forth, because mankind is generally pretty good, it'll all come out in the wash, with the now-achetypical triumph of good over evil.
The RIAA might be able to successfully sue the researchers for circumventing the protection at all (since they didn't exactly enter the contest) but the paper itself is still legal. Even Kaplan (collective boo's, hisses) would give the paper protection.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Yeah, yeah, same thing every story, but I find it useful, so here are the links:
Write your Senator.
Write your Representative.
Remember, snail mail only-- e-mail really doesn't do shit. And include that return address everywhere, so they know you're in their district. And finally, if your state is considering other similarly draconian measures such as UCITA, write your state government as well (site at www.[two letter state code].gov).
...trying to deploy Weapons of Math Instruction!
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
--The Sphinx
IANAL either, but it seems to me that the RIAA has standing in this. The bit you quoted merely says that a researcher can in good faith circumvent an encryption method, but it does NOT grant the researcher the right to discuss those circumvention methods with her or his peers. They met all the requirements of (2)(A)-(D) when they broke the encryption. That much was legal. Presenting a paper to tell the world how they did it is not permitted under this law.
No, boys and girls, they made the right call. Its not likely that they would have prevailed in court. The RIAA's pockets are far, far deeper, and they're in a much better position to kill resistance through litigation. The battle over the DMCA must be chosen wisely, and this case just aint the grail.
This is why when someone brings a law suit against someone else and looses, they should not only compensate that person/company, but should do so 100X the costs it took to defend themselves. Then the RIAA would have to reconsider next time it was to use terrorism and its bought Senators to push researchers around
I bet the corporations would love that. Nobody would ever bring suit against them again. It would be way too risky.
Secondly, even if your university doesn't support you you should at least fight for what's right. I'm disappointed that the scientists gave up the fight without making more noise. I guess the career means more to them than the truth. Ok, unlike me they're established scientists and "can't afford" to lose their status, but still...
But still what ? If they can't afford the social damage, the stress, the time, potentially losing their jobs and especially not the price of the legal battle, what do you really expect them to do?
Why don't you become the martyr you'd like them to be? You consider all of these things to be less important than the truth, right? Crack the same codes on your own and have your results published. All of us here at Slashdot will be singing your praises while you're in court.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Moderators: grow the fuck up! . This guy is not a troll or a flamer, and you have no business labelling him as such just because you don't care for his opinions. I don't care for them either, but he is expressing a widely-held opinion in a calm and rational matter. It's important that he get a proper hearing.
Now, let's have an actual discussion:
I'm aware of how widespread this attitude is in Europe, and how it is used to justify censorship that the U.S. courts would never permit. With all due respect, I have to assert that this attitude is simplistic and short-sighted. It has no logical basis in actual history. Censorship existed in Europe before the war, and did absolutely nothing to prevent the rise of totalitarianism. Indeed, it made things worse, by making it more difficult to deal with the social issues of the day.
And you're doing it again. Not that I fear Germany starting another war, not with pacifists wielding so much power in national politics. But you accomplish nothing by preventing the neo-Nazis from wearing their swastikas or spouting their racist nonsense. You're just forcing them to do these things where you can't seem them. They become invisible to you, but not the ethnic minorities that suffer at their hands.
"Free speech" is not simply about everybody's right to say stupid and hateful things. It's about the free flow of ideas, and about making it difficult for people to claim that they are responsible, sovereign citizens while keeping the heads firmly planted in the sand.
The most dangerous thing about censorship is not its repressiveness, it's the way it allows people to play social ostrich. That is a right I refuse to respect.
__
But however you define the word, there's no excuse for the kind of abusive moderation we saw in this case. It would be pretty stupid to think this guy was "trying to jerk us around". Then again, "stupidity" is often the label that seems to apply when the real problem is a lazy application of ignorant prejudice.
__
There goes the theory that violent games don't influence people to commit violence
In my book, fragging lawyers counts as violence about as much as a insect exterminator thinks himself a hired killer.
--
Dyolf Knip
On second thought, that's a little harsh. Perhaps that should apply to the kinds of lawyers in question; ie, ones who drool at the thought of pointless, endless, heartless litigation.
--
Dyolf Knip
Lawyers get laws passed (hell, how many congressmen are lawyers?) that let plantiffs sue people over the time of day who then pay lawyers gobs of money letting them get even more litigious laws passed.
Who can deny that the DMCA is practically a license to sue?
--
Dyolf Knip
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
We get a friendly congressbeing to insert DeCSS, the Princeton research, and anything else being threatened by the RIAA, MPAA, CIA, NAACP, et al into the Congressional Record. Then let these groups take on the federal government if they dare. Not only will it be entertaining, it'll let the legislature find out what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of their laws. It might even get the Congress to decide what they really meant in the DMCA.
RIAA doesn't have to power or authority to silence anyone. RIAA asked the reseachers not to publish the paper, and they didn't. Sure, hey could have asked nicely instead of threatening a lawsuit but they did what they thought they had to in order to get the desired result. You're mad at them because these "academics" gave in instead of fighting? Why aren't you upset at the authors who chose not to present to paper?
/. again would you care?
If I sent you and email and threatend to sue you if you ever posted to
As for all the people bitching about the DMCA, remember that the RIAA only threatend to use the DMCA, at this point whether or not they would have won is ambiguous since no judge ever got to hear the issue.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Rather than mod you down unfairly, I will save my mod points and give you an honest reply.
You are somewhat correct in saying that free speech is an American viewpoint. It is also one of the things I love about America.
More than the prosperity, more than the lack of overcrowding, more than anything else, the thing that makes me want to live in America and makes me willing to lay down my life to protect it for future generations (if I must), is the freedoms we hold as absolute.
You obviously do not hold these freedoms as highly as we do here. That's fine with me. Better that you stay on your side of the ocean and grumble about how misguided we are than emmigrate to our shores and vote for tyrants would would limit our precious liberty.
But to give credit where credit is due... most of our ideas about the inherent and self-evident liberties of Man came from great European thinkers. Voltaire in particular comes to mind. I regret to see that his ideas have not taken hold as well on his own continent as they have here.
France does not have a lot of important exports, but if you want wine, oboe reeds, or philosophy from the Age of Enlightenment... they are pretty tough to beat. (On the other hand, California wineries make great cabernet, oboe reeds can now be made synthetically, and the supply of Age-of-Enlightenment philosphers ran out a long time ago, so I guess we don't really need France for much any more.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Lawyer 1 : Can you imagine those geek punks decided not to share the SDMI crack with us ?
Lawyer 2 : Really ??
Lawyer 1 : And they even told us that they dont want the prize money which they could have got in the first place. What a bunch of jerkoffs ?
Lawyer 2 : Thats so stupid dude. I mean, why else would they wanna crack this stuff. I mean..if not for money, then what the fuck for ?
Lawyer 1 : Dunno. maybe for the betterment of humanity...(both laughs)
I wish I had a shotgun and that I were left loose in the RIAA building with a license to kill. Oh man, it would be a frag fest by the time I come out.
Rapid Nirvana
This should be something the EFF and the ACLU should be tackling. A scientific review, that is not-for-profit, being censored by an industry that put out the challenge to the public to break it's code.
This would be in the same vein as Apple suing someone because they made their themes look as pretty as OS X. Oh wait, they did....nevermind...
B
Flamebait
Serious inquiries only.
It would have been really great to see a legitimate challenge here. The issues at stake are almost identical to those in the DeCSS case, but having professors fight the good fight means a lot more to judges and the public than the free-speech claims of a few hackers.
Wow, this totally amazes me! Who'd have thought that the RIAA would try to supress information. Aren't they all for open source?
I'm just waiting for the day for the RIAA to dig themselves a grave. I being a musician, this concerns me. I hope to be able to distribute my music without having to ask the RIAA (or anybody) permission to let anyone else hear it.
I guess I just don't understand why the RIAA has any sort of grounds to suppress this.
I have no signature
Seriously, this is the best result anybody interested opposed to the DMCA could possibly have hoped for. It exposes the DMCA for what it is - a crude weapon intended to bully and threaten. There are very few things that could attract as much attention as the thought that purely academic research is being suppressed. Felton's letter will sqay opinions strongly against the tools used to threaten these researchers. I, for one, welcome this as the critical step in the road to seeing these laws repealed (or at least completely rewritten).
Had the RIAA actually gone ahead with the threat, they would've crossed the battle line and in time dug their own grave.
t it ution.billofrights.html#amendmenti
Read here:
http://www.law.cornell.edu:80/constitution/cons
The first amendment says that Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of the press (read: the presentation paper) or the freedom of speech (read: the formal presentation).
The DMCA was made into law by Congress. It doesn't matter whether the RIAA or whoever lobbied for its passure. Only Congress has the power to make law, not the lobbyists. Therefore if the DMCA can be used to diminish the freedom of the press or freedom of speech, then a court would've declared the DMCA unconstitutional.
It has happened before. The EPA was deriled by the courts when their severe restrictions placed on wetlands that belonged to private owners was found to have violated the fourth amendment's rights against unreasonable seizure of private property.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
http://http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/8/1843 4.html
The RIAA seem's to have trouble understanding if you want to keep something a secret you don't ask unpaid members of the public to do your work. Just because you look foolish does not mean people are not allowed to point that out in public.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. - Albert Camus
As a scientist this disappoints me on two fronts.
Firstly, apparently Princeton decided not to defend their scientists. This most disappointing and signals how modern universities are dependent on the external funding.
Secondly, even if your university doesn't support you you should at least fight for what's right. I'm disappointed that the scientists gave up the fight without making more noise. I guess the career means more to them than the truth. Ok, unlike me they're established scientists and "can't afford" to lose their status, but still...
Ok. This matter is political all the way, so I might as well say this: this is what we'll all end up with if WTO gains more ground. Please remember, that his is not just a US issue.
Galileo did recant, as the church was the equivalent of a large-multinational government during his time. Excomunication was worse than being sued-it was basically telling you that you had no rights in a society that was controlled by the church heirarchy. He would not have only been poor, he would have been homeless, ostricised and potentially tortured.
science is a religion
I looked at the patent, and the first 18 or so claims look like they are described by a TV and cable decoder. I didn't read the rest of the 27 claims (too much legaleeze is bad for the brain -just look at the decisions and arguments made by lawyers, judges and politicians). ;-)
science is a religion
Well, the DMCA is obviously one of the worst laws ever passed by Congress. But instead of expecting good people like Felten to undergo the punishment of expensive legal wrangling to eventually overturn the DMCA in the courts, why not attempt to democratically bring down the law in Congress itself?
This whole situation is making matters ripe for a strong grassroots movement to begin doing the good work to force Congress to repeal this bad law. We've got the Internet to spread this movement like wildfire. What's stopping us?
Oh, that's right. The elected dictators don't give a shit about what's best for the public. But it's at least worth a try to shake up the politician-elite class (from their brain-dead antics) as hard as we can.
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Bully for all you said, and I'm now starting to lament that I didn't cast my vote for Nader last November. Ralph was right about corporatism.
We're seeing increasing "attacks" (for loss of a better word) against ordinary consumers and citizens by corporations who think there are no limits to what they can perpetrate, all in the name of profit. This is all not just an issue with the SDMI and RIAA, but a much more far-reaching issue.
The next time you feel your freedom being restricted, like in the case of simply not being able to make a copy of your favorite music, remember that a corporation or corporate-financed organization is most likely to blame. And compared to the auspices of government, corporations are in the process of building up far greater power than governments could ever muster in trampling the people's will and economic well-being. This is what the anti-globalists are ranting about... the eventual loss of freedom in favor of the new "corporate monarchies."
Yes, I believe in capitalism, but only as part of an overall scheme that embraces wide competition, true democracy, freedom of information and the self-determination of all people. The big corporations DO NOT WANT THIS SCHEME... they want ABSOLUTE POWER.
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
If the challenge has been met, by these researchers, then it means it can be met again and again(the whole point of scientific process and such)
Which means any player or device that uses any of these technologies can be hacked or cracked or tampered with (or not, depending on what the research conclusions were) reliably and consistently.
Which means *not* publishing is actually fraud and lying to the various stock holders and people in charge of the music industry who may otherwise never know that they are about to pull another 'CSS'
Right?
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Wearing it will result in a series of cease & dissist notices- how's that for clothing making you feel important. For my case, I have other means of getting sued.
C'mon, people! We're Americans! They restrict *our* freedoms, we restrict theirs! This should be enough for everyone to get started. Write. Call. Mailbomb. Make 'em sorry that they f**ked with other peoples' liberty!
Registrant:
Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA2-DOM)
1330 Connecticut Ave., NW #300
Washington, DC 20036
US
Domain Name: RIAA.ORG
Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
McCaffrey, Howard (HM66) hmccaffrey@RIAA.COM
Recording Industry Association of America, Inc.
1330 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036
202-857-9618 (FAX) 202-775-7253
Technical Contact:
Dean, Christopher (CD7268) cdean@RIAA.COM
Recording Industry Association of America, Inc.
1330 Connecticut Ave., NW #300
Washington , DC 20036
202-857-9616 (FAX) 202-775-7253
Record last updated on 27-Feb-2001.
Record expires on 09-Jan-2003.
Record created on 08-Jan-1997.
Database last updated on 25-Apr-2001 23:27:00 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
PDNS1.ISC.CW.NET&nbs p; 208.134.245.2
PDNS3.ISC.CW.NET&nbs p; 208.134.245.10
NS4.CW.NET&nbs p; 204.70.4 9.234
slashdot % traceroute -n 208.134.245.2
traceroute to 208.134.245.2 (208.134.245.2), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
...
17208.134.242.20989.558 ms90.012 ms95.870 ms
18208.134.242.11095.463 ms !X94.116 ms !X89.937 ms !X
Oh, look!A firewall!Guess they're safe, huh?
This is why when someone brings a law suit against someone else and looses, they should not only compensate that person/company, but should do so 100X the costs it took to defend themselves. Then the RIAA would have to reconsider next time it was to use terrorism and its bought Senators to push researchers around. "We remain committed to free speech and to the value of scientific debate to our country and the world. We believe that people benefit from learning the truth about the products they are asked to buy. We will continue to fight for these values, and for the right to publish our paper."
I like the language he chose here: "We believe that people benefit from learning the truth about the products they are asked to buy.". This sums up the nature of the music industry as it exists today. All of the weathy labels have united to form a monolopy over artists. These artists are forced to release their copyright, or they don't get the large resources of the Labels promotional firm at thier disposal. As a result of this, these companies hold the copyrights to the majority of the popular music in the United States and work togethor, with hardware makers, to force on the public any format the RIAA wants. If they wanted to switch to an "encrypted" cd format in the next 5 years, just like MPAA did with DVD's, they could. Then when "DeCSS" for music comes out so people can encode mp3s, or listen to there "AudioDVDs" on Linux, the RIAA could sue some kid into the ground for breaking their equivalent of ROT26 encryption.
Fucking bullshit, I tell you. I no longer fear my govt, I fear the companies the Senators are giving the power too. Before you pass me off as some "Rage against the Machine" fanatic, I'm not. I'm just pissed that the RIAA has more control over the Senators and Represenatives that I voted for, that my fellow citizens and I.
I say publish the damned paper, break all of their encryptions, and take a piss on the steps of the steps to the RIAA's lawyers.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Read the paper that the RIAA, SDMI, and our government say is illegal.
h tm
t m
http://www.theregister.co.uk/extra/sdmi-attack.
http://www.boneville.net/slashdot/sdmi-attack.h
Download, mirror, link... rinse & repeat. Don't let the scum of humanity dictate the rules. I would encourage anyone and everyone: Anytime any corporation threatens to sue in order to supress information, ensure by copying and distributing it that the information they are attempting to supress stays free forever.
-------
-- russ
"You want people to think logically? ACK! Turn in your UID, you traitor!"
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
It really wasn't that long ago that scientists were persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church. Some may argue that it continues to do so to this day. But back when, if you said that the Earth revolved around the Sun, you were a heretic. And, when The Church declared people to be heretics, it was fair game to go after them in the eyes of the fearful public.
Now, I have always felt that organized religion was the most effective method of mind control, with the bonus of making a profit. But, now I see that organized religion was nothing more than a precursor to the corporations that are now controlling the masses, and making huge profits. The corporations are the ones now declaring people as heretics, by calling them hackers. These same corporations dictate what science is suitable for publication using the same fear techniques the Church used: fear of persecution. Ok, this time it is lawyers instead of torture. But, I don't see that much difference, really.
My question is: Who will be the next Martin Luther?
Thanks, I'm feeling much better now.
In the world of animal experiments it's not unheard for a group to publish papers under the name of one person in the group. This person is typically paid danger money to compensate their risk from animal extremists.
Would somebody be prepared to stand up and publish papers written by somebody else to deal with the SDMI extremists? Would we be prepared to pay them danger money?
Another alternative might be to publish under a pseudonym. The Student's T-test is named after the statistician Gossett who published in the name "Student". Student worked for the Guinness brewery, but they didn't allow publication to be associated with the brewery. (The "drink guiness makes you smart" slogan didn't go down well :-)
...yet. I don't think it's an issue of any of the Universities not willing to back them up but they have to have a strategy before they can test the DMCA in this fashion. Think about it. If you knew that you were gonna be sued over the content of a seminar or publication you would do everything to prepare beforehand. The cancelling of the talk/publication of the subject is a CYA move, which is not a bad thing. It would be bad if it never gets published but I don't think the researchers will remain quiet about this.
Maybe they are either gonna wait for the DeCSS case to conclude, or maybe they are going to reorganize to protect the parties that can't afford to have their names appear at the top of a breif but I suspect that this is Far from over.
BOSTON SUCKS!
I for one would be willing to donate...
There is a simple reason why the RIAA is able to get away with this. The US high court judges are corrupt as they come, and corporations know it. They might have different political ideologies, but the nomination process makes it impossible for honest judges to go up the ladder, since both parties are beholden to the same corporations. Thus we have sleazy, unethical slimeballs like "Judge" Kaplan and the cunning bastards in the US appeals court spouting whatever nonsense that they want and getting away with murder.
Of course, the journalists whose job it is to expose these criminals are themselves beholden to the same corporations! They are employed, directly or indirectly, by the media companies who constitute the RIAA. Thus we have the unholy alliance that operates without any fear of exposure or reprisals.
Magnus.No, it makes perfect sense. The SDMI is threatening a lawsuit because their watermarking techniques were never _really_ meant to provide security. They were meant to provide the facade of security so that they can claim it "adequately" protects their music and sue the pants off anyone who tries to break it. It's all been carefully crafted. Last fall they opened their watermarking algorithms to the "hacker" community for a month to see if they could break it. 1 month. Which they thought wouldn't be enough time. Part of the _legal_ restrictions of the "contest" were that if you cracked it, you couldn't tell anyone how. Another part of the _legal_ restrictions of the contest was that trying to crack the watermarks the day after the contest ended was a violation of the DMCA. The contest was a complete success, for the SDMI anyway, and now they have proof that the watermarks are "adequate." This adds beef to their claim that the DMCA applies to their watermarks and can do what they have been wanting to do all along: sue (or threaten to) everyone and anyone who pisses them off. Say, for instance Dr. Felten
THE RECANTATION OF GALILEO GALILEI^H^H^H^H ED FELTEN
I, Ed Felten, Associate Professor of the Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, of Princeton, aged forty-something years, arraigned personally before this tribunal, and kneeling before you, most Eminent and Reverend Record Industry Lawyers, Inquisitors general against heretical Fair-Use and Digital Piracy throughout the whole American Republic, having before my eyes and touching with my hands, a printed copy of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, written by Corporate Lobbyists and duly ratified without question or concern by their paid Representatives in Congress -- swear that I have always believed, do now believe, and by the entertainment industry's help will for the future believe, all that is held, litigated, and proxy-legislated by the Recording Artists of America ("RIAA") and the Motion Picture Association of America ("MPAA").
But whereas -- after a threat had been legally intimated to me by these powerful Corporate Plaintiffs, to the effect that I must altogether abandon the false opinion that a digital watermark may be effectively removed from a digital audio signal, and that the resulting signal shall suffer no loss of fidelity or audio quality relative to the original while yet removing the said watermark sufficiently to prevent its detection by SDMI-compliant devices, and that I may hold, defend, publish, or teach in any way whatsoever, verbally, in a technical scientific journal, or at a scientific proceeding, the said doctrine, and after it had been notified to me that peer-reviewed scientific disclosure of the said doctrine was contrary to the fair provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act -- I wrote and printed a scientific paper in which I discuss this doctrine already condemned in great technical detail, and adduce arguments of great cogency in its favor, without presenting any viable solution to the resulting attendant Question of how Powerful Corporations will be able to extract Payment from individual Consumers for the same song, album, or movie Many Many Times; and for this cause I have been pronounced by the Legal Office of the aforementioned Plaintiffs to be vehemently suspected of HERESY, that is to say, of having held and believed that legitimate scientific Research does not constitute criminal activity under any reasonable legal Standard, that intellectual Freedom and open scientific Debate is vital to the future of a Democracy, and that free speech as guaranteed in the Constitution is more inviolate than a fucking stupid law enacted solely to protect corporate profit margins by muzzling all those who would dare to point out any technical shortcomings in poorly conceived half-assed industry copy-protection schemes:
Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all other litigious Corporations with well-financed teams of Attorneys, this strong suspicion, reasonably conceived against me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error and sect whatsoever contrary to the said RIAA and MPAA; and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me; but that should I know any heretic, or other legitimate scientific researcher suspected of similar heresy, I will denounce him to the high-powered Legal Departments of these two corporate Entities, or to the Inquisitor and ordinary of the place where I may be. Further, I swear and promise to fulfill and observe in their integrity all gag orders that have been, or that shall be, imposed upon me by the RIAA and MPAA. And, in the event of my contravening, (which God forbid) any of these my promises, protestations, and oaths, I submit myself to all the pains and penalties imposed and promulgated in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, general and particular, against such delinquents. So help me America, and this flag that stands for it, which I touch with my hands. I, the said Ed Felten, have abjured, sworn, promised, and bound myself as above; and in witness of the truth thereof I have with my own hand subscribed the present document of my abjuration, and recited it word for word in Pittsburgh, PA, in the Fourth International Information Hiding Workshop, this twenty-sixth day of June, 2001.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
And how does the paper represent a "circumvention device"? DeCSS fits that definition, for sure - download the software, and you can rip DVD's. (Disclaimer: I'm not at all agreeing that that should be illegal - I'm just saying that DeCSS is a real circumvention device.) But there is no way to combine the paper and a piece of encrypted music and get unencrypted music out. One must first complete the non-trivial task of creating software or hardware that acts upon the knowledge in the paper - in short, the device has yet to be created (at least for widespread distribution).
Time to write my representatives again...
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Boycotting will give them grounds to cry about. Rather then people seeing it is people boycotting they will blame it on filthy pirates. They are there for a reason, they are lowlife scum, the cream of the crop of big business. So boycotting gives them ammo, when you are boycotting, write to you local papers, and congress men, MP's or what ever saying you are boycotting, that way we can say that Napster is not hurting them, but thier bad tactics.
Guess who has more money? The record industry or Princeton?
Princeton is sitting on a GIGANTIC HEAP of money. All the legal $$ from this case would not even dent the endowment. If the professors were really serious about publishing their papers, I would bet the U would back them up.
...of course, why publish when it is on the web in so many places? In fact, I am glad that they're won't be a lawsuit--less $$ for the lawyers, one less dispute settled by a stupid judge! Court sucks!
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
(Do not sign anything.) -- Fell, Planescape: Torment
`(2) PERMISSIBLE ACTS OF ENCRYPTION RESEARCH- Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), it is not a violation of that subsection for a person to circumvent a technological measure as applied to a copy, phonorecord, performance, or display of a published work in the course of an act of good faith encryption research if--
(Do not sign anything.) -- Fell, Planescape: Torment
"You may, of course, elect not to receive compensation, in which event you will not be required to sign a separate document or assign any of your intellectual property rights, although you are still encouraged to submit details of your attack." They're encouraging the submission of details of a successful attack. Unfortunately they didn't say to whom they encourage it to be submitted. *mischievous grin* I'd recommend submitting it to several major news sources per the agreement.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Last week, after paying an outrageous sum of money for an ADT security system, I posted a sign outside of my house. The sign offered my DVD player to anyone who could find a way into my house.
I have come to find out that you realized I left my window open. I know you spent a long time studying my house and its security system. It is a feat to be proud of. While I understand you don't really want my DVD player and you were not attempting to steal additional items, I must ask that you do not reveal the open window to anyone else. While it may protect others from similar security flaws, revealing this could cause others to steal things from my house.
Perhaps, I should have studied the house more or asked you to look at it before I moved my belongings inside, but that is immaterial and I will sue to protect my interests
Sincerely,
Mr. Cocky-Ass-Caught-With-My-Pants-Down
Don't forget filing RICO charges as well.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Censorship is any attempt to control publication of information. In this case the threats were successfull, it would have been a censorship issue regardless.
The fact that it is a threat of a civil lawsuit is irrelevant. One of the oldest censorship laws still in operation is the English Libel law which was expressly intended as an effective means of censoring the press.
Self censorship is still censorship. The audience at the conference was prevented from hearing the paper.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
This is not as hard as it may appear since most of the members are technology companies looking to hawk their technology. Those whose watermarks etc. have not been choosen are thus likely to be looking for an excuse to withdraw on principled grounds.
If an industry standards group is not going to endorse my technology then it is not exactly in my interests to continue to endorse them but resigning for that reason is going to look kind of bad. Give such folk an excuse to dis SDMI without looking bad and they will be out.
Another group that might well be detached is the second tier of device manufacturers. Sony is the only company to have tried to deliver an SDMI compliant device, an MP3 player that was a spectacular failure until the SDMI component was disabled.
The plain fact is that the record labels have not lived up to their side of the deal, they have not made their content available to download even if you do implement SDMI.
Another company that might be detachable is Microsoft. They have their own DRM package which works pretty well without the SDMI schemes. If Microsoft were to leave SDMI it would effectively be dead.
The fact is that SDMI has met none of the goals it set out to meet. The technology missed what the promoters admitted was the critical market window. We are now in the post Napster period in which the RIAA and labels are getting complacent about the net again, believing that the court case will kill Napster. The court case probably will kill Napster but the replacements will be even harder to deal with.
Having failled to come up with a secure scheme and having resorted to threats of lawsuits to supress discussion of the flaws in the scheme it is going to be very hard for SDMI to credibly claim that it will deliver a security scheme good enough to entice the labels to permit their content to be sold over the net. Without that key belief SDMI is nothing. Chiariglione would not be stepping aside as director if SDMI was coasting along to a huge success.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
A blatantly untrue statement. Or rather it is true to the extent that the creep does not claim that they did not threaten legal action, merely claiming that the threats made were unfounded. However as the Salon article points out the RIAA realized it had screwed up big time.
With the first ammendment implications of the DMCA being debated next week the last thing the RIAA needs is a proof that the act is unconstitutional and being used to chill free speech.
Proof that the RIAA and SDMI folk are not as smart as the cryptographers. Which is pretty much as expected. I mean if you are going to pick stupid fights best not choose folk whose entire mindset is attack and counter measure to six or seven degrees out.
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I am saddened to think that reasearch (with no profit attached) can be halted this way. If the RIAA had even the slightest trace of intelligence, I'd think they'd support such public research so that they can improve their own products, unless of course they knew their watermark was bogus in the first place. Hey, that sounds a little like fraud to me...
----------- Sig what?
Dear Slashdot users and moderators,
Why aren't we formally boycotting the RIAA and MPAA yet? We talk alot about legal arguements and political wrangling, but let's face it, the corporations definitely have the edge there. But as consumers, we ultimately have control over the almighty dollar. We should show them who's boss.
It's not like we don't have a reason, what with all the bullying, monopolizing, and litigation they jerk us around with. It's not like their business models aren't totally outdated. And it's not like geeks don't have influence - particularly slashdot. We're some of their biggest consumers. Make enough of a ruckus, hit 'em in the pocketbook, and they'll bend. Hell, we might even be able to take them out and give control back to the artists.
Love 'n Stuff,
cryptochrome
P.S. And just something to consider - years ago there was this big corporate squabble between VHS and Betamax. Everyone said it was stupid and expensive to have two standards, which is why a single DVD standard was settled on early. Then they split it up into 8 standards (aka "Region codes"), meaning you can't watch movies from foreign countries without a new player. Jerks.
P.P.S. And now would be a great time to hurt the film and TV industry, what with the double whammy of writers and actors strikes.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I seriously think a "Johnny Cochran" of some sort should take this case pro-bono. I know it would mean endless hours, weeks , months or even years to finally finish this case and maybe win but just think of the potential precedent here.
It would mean so much to free speech.
More here...: http://www.ramdac.org
Go see ramdac
In our legal system, where a person may be sued for any reason whatsoever, You have no hope of winning unless you can outspend your opponents. Otherwise, under a mountain of motions, you will simply lose by default.
Defending freedom of speech by suppressing an article that questions it. Downmodders: are you even dimly aware of the dichotemy?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What nonsense! As a Christian, this offends me. Christianity is not a culture, it's a religion. Many people try to label their bias and prejudice as "christianity" and defend it with the banner of religious freedom but it's all redneck asshole intolerance to me. You may come from a culture of intolerance, but don't call that "christianity". True Christianity is all about tolerance (Love your neighbor as yourself and all that).
"Creationism" is not science, it's religious belief foisted upon school boards in a cloak of psudo-science in an attempt to get around the First Amendment. Next time you want to force everyone in your community to pray to your god, think how you'd feel if someone else tried to make you pray to their god.
Finally, this (the RIAA legal threats) is nothing like the example you site. It's more like if, say, you wished to teach a class in comparitive religion and the Scientologists sued you for using their copyrighted materials. For that reason alone your post is not at all "insightful" (more like "inciteful") and should have been modded down as Flamebait.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
That's where we fundimentally differ. If I agree to this point, then I agree to all your other points. But I don't. I don't believe your culture is based upon Christianity. I do believe it is based upon someone's idea of what they think Christianity is, but it's not my idea of Christianity.
It wasn't a racial slur, it was a geographic one. My mistake; instead of 'redneck' I should have said 'cracker'.
You said "Northern schools" and then went on about how you were prevented from sharing your "culture" with your classmates because it was a "christian-based" culture. I believe you were prevented from sharing your religious beliefs with your classmates, and to me you apparantly equate proselytizing with "sharing your culture." That is what makes me think that your "culture" is one of intolerance (typically found within the "bible belt" as the earlier post put it). Consider the example of the Methodist family from Wisconsin who moved to (I believe it was) Alabama, and were called Devil Worshipers by the Baptist town. This is intolerance, and it's ingrained in their (the Baptist's) culture, but it certainly is NOT based on Christianity. Sharing this "culture" would certainly involve telling everyone else that they are damned to Hell if they don't change their evil ways and do as the majority, and your post sounded like that's what you were trying to do. If you believe that culture is "christ-based" then you may have a point, but I believe that culture is intolerance-based, and that your teachers were correct in preventing you from "sharing" it with your non-Christian classmates.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
"The New (1)" by (2) (3)
"(4) (5) your tired, your poor, Your (6) (7) yearning to (8) (9), The (10) (11) of your (12)ing (13). (14) these, the homeless, (15)-(16) to (5). (17) (18) (19) (20) beside the (21) (22)."
1. Trimble Navigation Ltd. 2. Seattle Lab Inc. 3. Michael D'Aigle (indiv) 4. Give Music Group 5. Mancini Enterprises 6. Mark Mandzick (indiv) 7. Mass USA Inc. 8. Love and Beauty LLC 9. Andrew Suttner (indiv) 10. David Bascom (indiv) 11. Jay Thaxton (indiv) 12. Pepsi Cola Corp. 13. SD&M AG Corp. 14. Benjamin Slotznick (indiv) 15. Applied Materials Inc. 16. American Restaurant Corp. 17. Net Apparel LLC 18. Lift Apparel 19. Marble Sportswear Inc. 20. Lightsand Communications Inc. 21. Samuel Kevin Price (indiv) 22. Storefront Door Service, Inc.
This is the biggest crock of shit. Invite someone to break your crypto, then threaten to sue them when they do, and want to share the results. When will these idiots learn that security through obscurity and lawsuits doesn't work. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that copyright needs to be protected, and that content providers have EVERY right to compensation for their works, but the consumers have rights too. Like fair use, parody, etc. Making the reverse engineering of these infantile protection schemes (read DeCSS) illegal is wrong. Sorry about the rant, it couldn't be helped.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
I just send an email to the RIAA asking them to contact their congressmen to have DMCA withdrawn. Hopefully this will take care of everything.
OK this is just an example of bullying by the RIAA, Fair Use, and even the original copyright Laws state that educational use is permitted, and therefor exempt from any action taken by a copyright holder.
I say they should stand up and hold their ground.
If everyone just appeases groups like the RIAA out of fear of lawsuits then we have surrendered our rights.
what makes it worse is that we didn't even get threatened with our lives.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
If I read the paper and have the knowledge it contains, does that make ME an illegal circumvention device?
What a great way to publicise the findings of this paper. Without the threat of legal action, its presentation would probably have been largely unnoticed outside its field.
Now that free speech is involved however...
When will large organisations learn that trying to suppress information just leads to its wider distribution?