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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.
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.
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"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
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...
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."
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...
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
>
> Translated to Slashdot-speak:
> D00d, DMCA is fsckin LAME! IANAL but we need to get this fscker struck down. I heard you can go to jail and stuff just for ROT13ing your name. There are real examples of this but I'm not gonna bother quoting them or posting links.
Funny you mentioned translation.
I'm in a cynical mood today. I mean, I bet she gets paid a hell of a lot of money, and all she has to do is read Slashdot at +5, and translate into academicspeak.
Nice work if you can get it. But I wouldn't dignify it by calling it research.
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.