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Felten & Co. Present SDMI Findings, Finally
chill writes: "Princeton scientist Dr. Edward Felten and his colleagues presented their paper entitled 'Reading Between the Lines: Lessons From an SDMI Challenge' at the Usenix Security Symposium. CNN has an article.
This is the paper that the RIAA threatened legal action (DMCA) over in the past, if he made his findings public. They have since backed off their threats."
Newsforge is carrying a piece on the same thing that goes into a bit more depth, and links to coverage of yesterday's press conference, and the Standard has a decent piece on it as well.
They're right. The RIAA never threatened him with direct action. The letter only said something along the lines of "your actions could subject you to legal action under the rules of the DMCA". Big difference, hmm? "I'm not saying I'll kill you if you come on my property. It's just that if you come on my property, you might...ummm...die a violent death." The RIAA's claim that no threats were made is infuriatingly insulting.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
The stance being taken by the industry to "protect" copyright is amazingly similar to the idea discussed earlier that publishing security flaws helps the Black Hats. If nobody is allowed to talk about it, nothing bad can happen. Of course, in this case, we (the end users) probably want something bad to happen to the corporations. But not talking isn't a solution to either problem.
How much bad publicity is it for a company when they dare you to break their copy protection then threaten a university when it was accomplished and they wanted to publish their findings. This is just typical CYA because I believe that these companies that have pushed for the DMCA know that is in a dangerous state and might get repealed. They want to hold on as long as possible to it and use it for the right fight. It just saddens me that our government "for the people and by the people" has been substituted with "for the corperations and by the corperations"
here
Straight from the horse's mouth... the RIAA letter
He's got the RIAA letter, the statement contradicting the RIAA letter, the agreement to the competition, and other such nifty info.
I'm waiting for someone to use RSA or something similar for copy protection purposes. Then, it will be illegal to do research on prime number theory, because discussing efficient algorithms to factor large numbers will be a violation of the DMCA. Last I heard, this was a semi-hot topic in math research. I for one hope the DMCA makes research illegal, because the media and the public will be MUCH more upset at that than a few hackers who can't get free music anymore. Also, scientists have a much better record of making their voices heard than Russian political prisoners^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h computer programmers.
I would've expected news like that out of the communist bloc just a few years ago, but not here and not now.
"Shortly before the group was due to present its paper at an April conference in Pittsburgh, a lawyer for SDMI and the RIAA sent Felten a letter telling him he could face legal action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law that bars efforts to defeat copyright-protection technologies.
The lawyer, Matthew Oppenheim, has since backed away from the letter, saying the SDMI had an obligation to protect the trade secrets of the companies that developed the anti-piracy technology but never intended to sue."
So if they "never intended to sue", what the hell did they mean by "could face legal action under the [DMCA]?" Oh wait - maybe they thought they'd just drop a dime on him - give the FBI a call and have him arrested at the conference!
no, they can still sue the RIAA for DELAYING the release of their findings. And that is what they were suing about in the first place.
Free as in *BUUURP!*
The DMCA is far from dead. In fact, it appears to be working overtime. We're all doomed!
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
Was it that SDMI is dead as a doornail and they therefore know Felten's study can't do any damage to their cash flow, or that the publicity was so bad? I think we can rule out altruism as their motivation...
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The problem is we've had too many multi-million-dollar judgments against corporations because some loon spilled coffee on her lap or because some idiot couldn't read the Surgeon General's Warning. These are cases where the individuals themselves were the ones who should have been held accountable, but the corporations ended up getting the blame.
As a result, corporations bend over backwards to cover their own asses in these cases with all kinds of legalese. The DMCA, the Felten case, Sklyarov, and all of this nonsense are a result of this; since individuals have gotten judgments they didn't deserve, corporations have been able to get more protection than they really needed.
It's not just "Oooh, evil corporations are taking over everything!" Individual citizens failed to be accountable for their own actions, and convinced uneducated juries that the world owed them a living. As a result, companies have gone ape-shit to try to protect themselves, and now this practice has gotten out of hand.
There's a historical cause behind what we're seeing today. It isn't "us" against "them."
It's also not a zero-sum game, where one group gains freedoms at the expense of others.
"These are hypotheticals. We have no idea what he may or may not write," said RIAA spokesman Jano Cabrera.
That sentence says everything that is wrong with the attitudes of those wielding the DMCA as a weapon. It should not matter what Professor Felton or any other person (academic or not) should write - so long as it is not covered under the dangerous restrictions (i.e. national secrets, "Fire" in a crowded theater, etc.) Freedom of Speech is at issue here and someone's ENTERTAINMENT copyright does not deserve as much protection as an intellectual discourse. It appalls me that apparently, entertainment profits are more important than scientific knowledge.
Don't just complain - DO something about it!
some of those sound pretty ridiculous. Got any references? My doubts are raised because I live near Claymont Delaware and follow the paper and local news carefully. I never heard of such a case....