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Anticircumvention Laws Seen as Threat to Science
Scott_Marks writes: "Science magazine has a review by Pamela Samuelson on the effect of anticircumvention rules on the pursuit of scientific knowledge. The abstract: 'Scientists who study encryption or computer security or otherwise reverse engineer technical measures, who make tools enabling them to do this work, and who report the results of their research face new risks of legal liability because of recently adopted rules prohibiting the circumvention of technical measures and manufacture or distribution of circumvention tools. Because all data in digital form can be technically protected, the impact of these rules goes far beyond encryption and computer security research. The scientific community must recognize the harms these rules pose and provide guidance about how to improve the anticircumvention rules.'"
But there is a good side to all of this:
No encyrption = No annnoying formats for DVD/Audio. The people who are going to fight stuff like this the hardest are not scientists but recond and movie componies.
Arguments like this can only be a good thing. It is much more likely that our government will listen to academics than people who write programs such as DeCSS.
NOTE: It's not that people who write DeCSS and e-book decoders have a less valid argument, simply that in our governments eyes, university researchers have a bit more credibility
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
Scientists, hobbyists, you name it: everyone is effected by these laws.
All that I can say is what hundreds of people have already said: write your congressmen and senators! Do NOT let these laws pass.
---
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
The article mainly restates what was previously done and known - no breaking news here. It may be interesting, though, because it's addressed to a different audience than, say, /.
:)
Nice reading if you were somewhere in a hole for the last 2-3 years.
It seems that people are getting too cocky, stubborn, and selfish to allow people to use thier ideas.
This reminds me a lot of the general patent holders who don't say a word until they are completely sure they can make no more money off of another company.
Research will be harder and harder to legally perform, and people will not want to do it any more. Technology advances will be a thing of the past. We won't even get to watch movies because we'll have to pay to decrypt them!
I think it will soon be time to go crawl into a cave with a pizza and a knife.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Surely this will just hurt the industries that are arguing for these restrictions.. Research students studying encryption must make up a large part of the commercial encryption developer population, adding value to these companies by having figured out the in-efficiencies in previous encryption methods.
If that's sarcasm, you're good at it :)
If it's not, I *strongly* disagree. Reverse engineering is the best, most effective way (save of course getting the actual source) to locate (possible) bugs in software, to name only one use.
Do you think you'd be using a mobile phone if the engineers didn't know how ordinary phones work ? There's precious little point in reinventing the wheel over and over again, imho.
As sir Isaac Newton once said, "If I could see that far, it is solely because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Every article I read about anticircumvention laws and policies reminds me of the following quote:
Bruce Schneier says, "It's not so much about what people can do, it's more about how they think. There's nothing anyone can do; trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again." Schneier is the author of Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World (John Wiley & Sons, 2000).
http://tf2.digitaljedi.com
There's a one-page article about Dmitry in the October '01 Scientific American.
It makes the oft-made point that what he did wasn't illegal back home in Russia, but adds a further point that I haven't heard before: in Russia it is illegal to interfere with the user's right to make copies. A lawyer is quoted as saying that you could probably win a class action suit against Adobe in Russia.
The article also touches on the depressing effect on science; the first sentence is -
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Advanced study of computation theory involves the study of forms of mathematics and algorithms that could be seen as circumvention mechanisms. It doesn't matter what format the MPAA chooses next, if you show "this method doesn't work, this is why," you will go to jail. Since this sort of problem is at the HEART of advanced study in computer science (the really important stuff), you really limit advancement of computer science to its next natural step.
IE, they're not talking about "duh, we wanna play DVDs fer free." They're saying "we want to be free to study important things."
Why are companies and governments pushing anti-circumvention laws....? What's the big deal here? What are they trying to hide? Back Doors? (See the encrytption backdoor threads).
The way I see it, there's the e-book:
I wouldn't read one. I can imagine the thought of paying $300.00 for a e-book reader, and then the thought of loosing my book that I paid just as much for a hard cover....
I mean, does anyone really read e-books anyways? If you really want a book, get the real thing. The only way you loose that info is by leaving it on some beach somewhere. So why all the anti-circumvention? It's not like e-books had a chance anyhow?
Now the dreaded MP3's:
Has mp3's really hurt the cd sales? Was it really that bad?
I have yet to hear of an artist going broke because his music was sooooo popular, but the cd's just wouldn't sell....
Just some thoughts of a raving Friday lunitic
Linuxrunner
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
The truth however, will always find a way. :-)))
(As Gallelao (sp) proved when he said the Earth was round and the church refused to let him speak
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
I'm not a cryptologist or someone that regularly creates new drivers or software. But, I wont stop reverse engineering. I'm working on making a linux app for a popular kids learning toy, so I am reverse engineering it's communications. I will publish my software and findings no matter what silly laws are in place. But, I will be publishing them anonomously and outside this country. That way the information is available and I am protecting myself from being arrested by the united states copyright infringement assult force..
If there is any real solution to the problem of corperations buying laws I am sure it doesn't include how our government really works today.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I must be half asleep still, I read that as
Anticircumcision Laws...
- The old massive wood wheel
- The wheel with spokes
- The wheel with spokes and an iron band around it
- The wheel with massive hard rubber around it
- The wheel with airfilled rubber around it
- etc.
And all these were reimplementations (with new methods!) of the same old concept.use Bielefeld.pm
The Washington Post is reporting that Phil Zimmermann, the creator of PGP, has gotten hate mail in the wake of the WTC attacks.
Best Slashdot Co
To be fair, it was in Science magazine. What do you expect? A few years ago I was doing research for a high school project, and picked up an issue of Science. One of the first things that caught my eye was a perfectly normal advertisement, with all the ad-wording you'd expect, except that their pitch was along the lines of :
We know a secret the other cryogenics companies don't want you to know - our cryogenic freezing chambres are more energy-efficient!
I think that with ads like this, you can expect that this article is reaching its target audience.
Last post!
I see a time where you will no longer be allowed to open the hood of your car... you could find out that the car manufacturer made design mistakes, you might copy the 'algorithm' (engine, transmission) if you happen to build cars yourself or - god forbid - use those parts to build your own car.How long will mechanical engineers be able to publish their research: Is a engine of type A better then one of type B build by another company?
I doubt that something like that will happen: There are more people interested in the inner working of cars then those that care about what happens inside their computer. So the political pressure to keep cars 'open' is much higher.
How can we increase the political pressure to keep reverse engineering open? The only way I see is by educating the non-geek masses that this is important. But how can this be done? The only way I can think of is by providing everyday examples of reverse engineering: like the car example I tried. Do you know any better examples?
Regards,
Tobias
Regards, Tobias
No encyrption = No annnoying formats for DVD/Audio. The people who are going to fight stuff like this the hardest are not scientists but recond and movie componies.
This is all wrong. This article is about the record companies using the DMCA to prevent legitimate scientist from examing encryption, publishing work, etc. The record companies are behind this, not fighting it.
---
Hey man, can I bum a sig?
U d0n't know because U are not a 1337 d00d like the rest of us.
/. less and less because it seams to be more and more some kind of geek speek underground. There's really nothing new around here just the same old recycled swill over and over again.
No really I agree with you and I've been coming to
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Just an observation.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We need more public commentary like this from folks in respected professions.
Would the DeCSS case end result have changed if they weren't going after 2600 magazine, which is clearly known as an information source on how to break the law? (Regardless of their liability in the end.) 2600 was singled out for a reason; ethos. They lack it. It's not something that Joe Q. Public would acknowledge as legitimate and respectable.
But the scientific community, there we have a body of people who have that innate respect and the credentials for their words to carry weight. That's the sort of dissenting voice we need to fight the DMCA since they will be listened to and their needs will be addressed.
While the DMCA is flawed regardless and I'd say 2600 and the white lab coat type folks have equal justification, it's all about the spin and image of who's saying 'No' to it that matters.
What other communities or professions which get instant respect from the general populace could be affected by the DMCA? Maybe those sectors could speak up as well.
The scientific community must recognize the harms these rules pose and provide guidance about how to improve the anticircumvention rules.
No; the scientific community must completely abandon the field in the United States, and let us become a backwater third-world country in that particular field, with all the research that isn't done by the NSA being done in other countries.
Ideally, a good percentage of the scientists would leave the country, but I wouldn't advocate that personally.
When the US feels like rejoining the world in this field, our government will. In the meantime, all the information will be open to hackers, and it'll be just like a William Gibson novel.
Where would elasticity be, if there had been anti-circumvention laws in 1676? (Robert Hooke initially published his law, ut tensio sic vis, as an anagram: CEIIOSSOTTUU.)
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
I disagree. The style was different from what we read here, or in the NYTimes, or in Doonesbury, but it was still plain, comprehensible, and well-written. I honestly don't know what you found incomprehensible about it.
Carousel is a lie!
You know, I think scientists are starting to wake up. For one thing, the equally prestigious magazine Nature had a short note recently about Dmitry's case, which was clearly sympathetic towards him.
Also, you have 27758 scientists signing the Open Letter of the Public Library of Science, and you've got physicists publishing pretty much all their material as pre-prints.
I don't think the open systems that science requires to function can co-exist with the closed systems wanted by the entertainment industry. If an open system exists, it can always be used to circumvent a closed system.
Now, it is easy to demonize "hackers" but it is harder to demonize scientists. Therefore, I think the first real battle will be over scientific publishing, and I want to be there when it happens.
Now, I don't think it will be a battle between scientists and artists, though the entertainment industry may try to portray it as such. The openness established by scientists and scientific publishing will be good for the whole of society, stimulate cultural diversity, and art will flourish along with science.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Mm...laziness and greed, sez me. Greed: music/movie companies can't bear the thought of all those bits going around w/o money coming back to them for it; laziness because they are willing to come up with (relatively) crappy encryption/watermarking/protection, and then slap a lawsuit on anyone trying to break it, rather than spend the extra time coming up with rilly good methods. (IANACryptographer, but what I've read makes me think that the whole concept of nearly-unbreakable encrypted bits is a pipedream anyway...so maybe we should add a bit of old-fashioned Crack(tm) to their motivation.)
Carousel is a lie!
The article is talking about laws that have already passed...
I'm sorry, but the only way to improve anti-circumvention law is by revoking it.
Reverse engineering has value in gaining greater understanding of existing technology, maintaining, and improving upon it.
If wily customers choose to violate warranties and license agreements, it certainly poses a problem for companies, but in no way should laws be passed to prohibit them, for the damage such laws do to legitimate research. If companies need a legal method of deterring such behaviour, let them sue for violating a license agreement that specifies no reverse engineering. They should not need, nor get, a stronger remedy.
In fact, remedies like DirectTV used (the small incremental updates of ROM code that eventually locked out hackers) should be applauded. (Even if it was a bummer to those getting free services) DirectTV needed no legal recourse, but preserved their business through creative techological means.
The point is simply this:
Just because a company has made money in the past, there should be no law guaranteeing them that they will continue to do so in the future. It is not up to Congress to preserve the business models of corporations. That duty lies with a CTO, CIO, CFO, and board of directors.
Scientific inquiry relies on peer review to validate research, and when corporations/the government/research try to prevent scientists from publishing research, they short-circuit the process.
Is this really all that different to what happened to Galileo? His scientific research was perceived as a threat to the established power structure.
Add in the increasing corporate sponsorship to fill in for diminishing budgets for research, and we're headed toward a world with no concept of the public domain.
Patents are not meant to allow firms hoard research indefinitely, but now that's what they have become. Now, instead of giving a reward for furthering the knowledge base for everyone, we've got a system where firms stake out concepts (like gene patents - don't get me started on those!) and prevent anyone else from trying to duplicate the work.
All this is happening just at a time when it is slowly becoming possible for everyone on this planet to share ideas with every other person. What a shame we're all gonna get hamstrung.
I'm waiting for my ISP to claim partial ownership of anything I transmit on their network. Why shouldn't I have to click "I agree" to giving away an interest in anything? It's their network, after all.
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
...and how would we have broken Enigma in WWI if scientists weren't used to reverse engineering?
To create/solidify monopolies. It's a form of product-tying.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
While I believe the most egregious pieces of the current trade alphabet soup need to be elminated, I think a longer-term solution would be the restructuring of copyright duration.
Rather than making copyrights last for some large X number of years, or the life of the author + X years, why not make a copyright short term, but infinately renewable, at an exponentially increasing cost? This will allow corps to protect their most valuable content, while forcing them to relinquish claims on anything that does not sell enough to cover the cost of renewing its copyright.
I do not claim to know what durations and costs would be required to make it work, here balancing the needs of the small publisher for protection, with the need for a large corps content to expire sometime, but I think it's an idea that's worth a thought.
It may not be just, but it is fair, and that is more important.
The USA could sue us for copywrite and reverse engineering of their laws ;-)
Don't laugh, it will happen, we don't have a governmet of our own so we need to copy others.
And the law won't work for the US if others coutries don't follow suit, it will force r&d overseas, an example of which is IVF/Stemcell research in Aust. which went to Singapore and Italy after laws in '85 were implemented hampering research.
Incidentally, this case really frightens me.
Interesting that congress seems to be working at cross-purposes to itself (but then what else is new...):
On the one hand, it is looking for ways to increase the ability to view the contents of encrypted messages. On the other hand it is trying to decrease our ability to research methods of decryption...
In the present (and near future) climate, I wonder which will win out?
Given the 'new reality' after the WTC, I would think that Congress would be putting whatever efforts they could toward research that increases what they would see as the intelligence community's ability to monitor terrorist communications.
In any case, they can't have it both ways.
I posted this earlier and it got modded down as off topic, but maybe I didn't say enough about why I thought this link was relevant.
My point in posting this link was to help people write their representatives to express their concern about the DCMA. We can whine all we want to in forums such as slashdot, but all we're really doing is preaching to the choir. If you want to change things, you have to contact your elected representatives. The U.S. is a participatory democracy, and those who actually take the time to participate have disproportionate power.
If you are a U.S. citizen, write your congressional representative a short note politely asking them to read the Science article mentioned in the original post. Tell them why you think this is an important issue. Make your voice heard.
To find out who your Congressional representative is and how to contact them, visit:
http://www.house.gov/writerep
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
If you are a U.S. citizen, write your congressional representative ...
Does anyone have any idea how a non-US citizen can register his concern about US policy? Write to the US ambassador?
We have our own share of dumb IT legislation (*cough* RIP act *cough*) but I don't want to import any more. I find that legislation agreed in the US already has a direct effect on me: try buying a copy of "Forbidden Planet" on DVD in the UK, for example.
There's a saying in the UK - when the USA sneezes, Britain catches a cold. The USA has already sneezed up the DMCA - I don't want the same thing happening over here.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
I would think that writing the UK ambassador to the US would be more effective than writing the US ambassador to the UK, but that's just my first guess.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
If I write a virus, and someone cracks it, I can sue due to the DCMA?
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Palm for my Palm that I'd like to read on a different platform. That document seemed to be saying that I am allowed to reverse engineer the reader for the purposes of program interoperability. Does that mean I am allowed to crack the program (pretty trivial I guess seeing as all the decryption takes place in the executable itself and you can just single step through it) so that I can read it on a Desktop PC instead? IANAL but maybe someone who is knows the answer to my question.
-- SIGFPE
Why would you need a backdoor to a DVD or an ebook? Backdoors are so you can get access to the data that was encrypted... You can already do that with a DVD or an ebook, just not in a very useful format.
... only outlaws will be able to circumvent encryption, read our emails, watch free movies, launch ICBM's from their laptop, etc....
compare:
"I could be wrong, but I'm not" -Don Henley
As increasing numbers of us bank, shop & work online it seems a little odd to introduce rules that mean we have to trust those that supply the banks, retailers etc. to come up with sound code. Time & time again code is released with holes, weakneses etc. Currently 'recreational'* crackers find & publicise these. If no one can legitimately check on the strength of encryption it, fewer will take the risk of exposing poor implementations & only those with criminal intent will find the exploits & shaft the rest of us. I'm not to bothered about being able to get a free ebook, but if the law is wielded carelessly it will put our money & our work at risk. Do you really trust comercial organisations not to make any mistakes??? Didn't think so. D. * as in for the challenge not the profit