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ACLU Files New DMCA Challenge
joeblowme writes "Finally, someone is stepping up to the plate to challenge the DMCA. The ACLU is filing a lawsuit on behalf of a 22-year-old programmer claiming that the law hinders the ability to effectively test internet filtering software. The story can be found here at CNet. Hopefully this will lead to one victory in reducing the scope of the DMCA." The ACLU's press release is available, as is their complaint.
i'm glad the ACLU is stepping up to the plate on this one. good that they're on Bruce Perens' side too. renew your membership today!
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Slashdot, come for the goatse, stay for the trolls.
You mean that guy is paid to download porn all day?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
an interview, and more information on Edelman (the programmer/researcher) can be found here here.
Several years ago (pre dot-bomb), I had a friend who worked in Cupertino at Spyglass Software, makers of SurfWatch. While she had a variety of duties, her primary job was to review site-block requests sent in from SurfWatch users, and as time permitted, web surf looking for sites not accounted for in the SurfWatch "blocked" database. She'd sometimes spend four or five hours a day looking primarily for new XXX sites.
;-)
I remember she said it was bizarre to walk into an office where everyone was hard at work with hardcore pr0n on their screens.
err, I suppose that was an unforgivable pun.
-A.
What did the walrus say to the penguin? "No soap, radio."
Are you sure they don't just get involved in a lot of issues, and the only ones you hear about are the ones that involve publicity?
This is a self-referential sig
It's tempting to get a new ID just so I can mod down people like you who post the entire article as a comment.
But, lets extend this a little. There is also issues of consumer protection, where you purchase a product, but then talk about how bad it is, that could violate a term in a license agreement. Or, it could do damage to your hardware and data, but you can get that fixed for a fee. Both these situations could violate a state's consumer protection act.
Fight Spammers!
It only took them a decade or so to realize that there were free speech issues online.
Best Slashdot Co
...couldn't the lawsuit be considered a circumvention device?
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
GREAT point. That is more likely the case. I admit I do not follow all of what the ACLU does.
MessEdUp
#/var/www/v
card carrying member of the ACLU, (I stopped donating because of their defense of MAMBLA)It's good to see them fight a worthy cause.
Second of all, I'm wondering why the ACLU gets such a bad rap here on ./, a place that seems to stand by some of the same basic principles that the organization swears by.
It's interesting how people tend to not like an organiztion which is interested primarily in defending some of the basic tenets of the US constitution.
The ACLU gets involved in many many issues which you do not hear about. Many of these are not "sexy" issues, which make news. For instance, they were recently involved with protecting the rights of Haitian refugess, basically preventing people from being deported into deplorable situations. Sure, many of you don't like the idea of immigrants, even though 99.9% of you (in the US) are descended from immigrants, but it is the basic principles of protection from tyranny of the majority that the ACLU defends.
This particular issue is of direct relevance to /. as they are going after legislation which most here (rightly) hate. However, they exist largely to protect the public from the "mob mentality" that often ignores the rights of many groups whose opinions are in the minority.
Witness their actions regarding the USA PATRIOT act; a ridiculous bill which basically removes many basic freedoms guaranteed in the constitution under the rubrick of protecting us from enemies. Sure there may be a point to trying to be better protected, but I'm of the view that if you remove freedom, there's very little left to protect.
Sure the ACLU ends up getting involved with issues that may end up pissing off some their own constituencies (e.g. Skokie) but it's the principles of freedom that they stand for, not just the rhetoric.
If you're going to bash the ACLU, then provide an alternative.
I can't believe it's not lard!
In my opinion, this doesn't seem like it'll get too far. They need to apply their energies somewhere with a far greater chance of success (video/audio copyprotection that prevents consumers from viewing/listening to products they purchase). It may just be that I don't read the right news sites, but it seems to me that this area has largely been ignored. People complain about the dmca, but they don't seem to want to challenge it in court on valid points. For example, I bought a dvd, i happen to like freebsd, and I don't own a dvd player up at school except for the one on my computer. What happens when I want to view it? I'm not allowed to? Didn't I purchase the right to view that dvd? I didn't purchase the right to copy it and give it to all my friends, that is illegal, and is made illegal under existing laws. The DMCA is redundant and excessive. They make it illegal not just to copy something but to have the means to copy something. Should photocopiers and printers be made illegal? I can scan in and print out a copyrighted book and distribute it to my friends using these tools.
The problem is that our nation has become a nation of corporations and organizations.
We are a nation of individuals with individual rights.
The government has no business making it illegal to do things that have been legal since the beginning of our nation. We have always been allowed to read books, and until recently we have been allowed to view and listen to movies and music which we purchase.
Hmm, this turned into a bit of a rambling rant, sorry.
I usually cannot stand the ACLU. IMHO I feel like they usually get involved in issues that they really don't belong in because of the publicity they recieve. I hope this isn't the case here. I see their power and finances being a great benefit to the fight against the DMCA. I hope they can help fight for rights that I feel like we should have here in the US.
Agreed, I usually get suspicious whenever I hear the ACLU has gotten involved in a case. As most of the cases they tend to get involved in are the highly controversial and highly visable cases. And I rarely find myself agreeing with thier point of view.
However, there is the old axiom, "The enemy of my enemy is my ally". So, in this case, I'm happy to have them onboard.
Maybe there will finally be enough money to throw at this law to get it killed.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
have you considered getting your news from other sources besides right-wing biased news channels. of course, i can't remember many of those when i lived in america. network news, fox news, cnn and msnbc are all biased to the right.
mother jones and salon are about all i can think of actually.
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In that case mirror the site to your own webserver or even your journal and provide a link. There's no reason to put the entire article in the middle of the comments I'm trying to read.
I really don't understand the ACLU's strategy here. Aren't people already allowed to do this kind of research thanks to the librian of congress's decision on exemptions to the DMCA's anti-circumvention scheme?
If he's already allowed to do this type of research, what harm is the ACLU basing their decision on? Won't they just get thrown out of court for bringing an issue that isn't ripe for decision? (i.e. that has no consequences, because the librarian of congress has already crafted an exemption for this research)
Support for this case... how can we support it?
Where do I send an e-mail?
&
Where do I send a hand written letter?
Let me (us) know and I'm lickin' stamps. It's the LEAST I (we) can do, and I'd rather do something than just reading about it. I know, I know, hope and pray for the universe to hit a state of harmony in order for the courts to see the evil-doing(TM) in the DMCA, that'll help too!
Even sent them the recommended $270 for a year. Almost immediately I got tons of letters practically demanding that I be more generous. I decided they were wasting my money and ignored them from then on. I also was a bit ticked when they supported sending that 17 (?) year old kid back to Russia with his parents after he'd lived here for some time and didn't want to go back, and would be an adult in just a year. But it was the obnoxious dunning letters that got my goat.
Infuriate left and right
I mean honestly who do you cheer for here? The ACLU is notorious for picking extremely foolish topics and going after them like its some pressing political issue.
You know the stories I am talking about. "The ACLU has filed suit on the State of Florida for being called the Sunshine State. Mark Walbourne is allergic to the sun and feels inadiquate that he lives in Florida and people refer to it as the Sunshine State in his presence."
Its probably not popular to the slashdot crowd, but the ACLU is just as weak-minded and lame as the DMCA
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
Corporations already have a remedy if someone misuses protected material--a civil suit.
Of course, that is cost-prohibitive to the corporations. Why sue someone over a $10 CD's worth of music.
But:
A criminal remedy is just a civil remedy that the government pays for.
Ta da.
-- Paul
I'm sure this has been tried at some point or another. Anyone know what the legal results were?
Don't you mean NAMBLA?
Before taking up this DMCA case, which NAMBLA organization did the ACLU defend?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Does anyone else croggle at the irony in this? A test-case against an overly-restrictive law, for the benefit of testing software used to restrict access.
Ah, well... we'll take 'em where we can get 'em. ANY ruling that goes against the DMCA is a good start, and even a case that loses can serve to publicise the DMCA's faults.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Where do I send an e-mail? Where do I send a hand written letter?
If you want to contact those 535 Americans who have the power to get rid of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's circumvention ban once and for all, you may contact them here:
Write Your Representative
Write Your Senators
Will I retire or break 10K?
I met Ben at the Internet Law Program at the Berkman Center earlier this summer. I was hoping something like this would happen; he'll make an ideal defendant.
In a test case like this, what we're looking for is an unimpeachable plaintiff -- someone whose motives can't really be questioned, who actually has a good reason to want to do what he's doing, who has great credentials, and who's really bright. They've got that in Ben; he basically has the clout of Harvard University behind him. Not to mention the near-total respect of everyone at the Berkman Center; they refer to him as their "boy genius".
There is one potential problem: he's already written software that does nearly what he wants to do without violating the DMCA. For the ACLU's last test case on filtering, he wrote a script that tried to access everything in non-porn categories of Yahoo's directory, keeping track of what it wasn't able to access. This is a reasonably good (though not perfect) method of determining the contents of the blocked-sites list. We have to hope that the court doesn't decide that scripts like the one Ben already wrote are "good enough," and that there is no legitimate research need to create and disseminate a program that decrypts the list itself.
Agreed, I usually get suspicious whenever I hear the ACLU has gotten involved in a case. As most of the cases they tend to get involved in are the highly controversial and highly visable cases. And I rarely find myself agreeing with thier point of view.
Some other things that are true:
-The only military actions that happen are the ones that you hear about.
-The only ideas that exist are the ones that you've heard about.
The ACLU does a great deal of stuff. The only time they make the news is when something newsworthy happens. It doesn't seem like you've accounted for this.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Wow, excellent question...
Oh wait, no it isn't. RTFA!!!!
From the article:
Filter-hacking protections
There is some legal immunization for blocking-software researchers. When enacting the DMCA in 1998, Congress ordered the Library of Congress to weigh exemptions to the law's broad prohibition against circumventing copy-protection techniques.
In October 2000, the Library of Congress ruled that "the case has been made for an exemption for compilations consisting of lists of websites blocked by filtering software applications."
But that exemption explicitly does not permit a researcher to write and distribute software that decodes the encrypted blacklists. Because Edelman wants to do just that, the ACLU argues, the Library of Congress' decision is insufficient.
The DMCA's limited exemption for some forms of reverse-engineering also does not apply, the lawsuit claims. According to the DMCA, reverse-engineering must be done for "the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program" necessary to create similar software.
Because Edelman's purpose is instead to critique filtering software, the ACLU says, he could be liable under the DMCA unless the court intervenes.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Slashdot does not have a consensus on the value of the ACLU, "basic principles", the quality of various operating systems or programming languages, the best drugs to take while coding, or just about anything else.
IIRC, they gave Hillary Rosen (of RIAA fame) an award for protecting free speech rights. Given the ACLU's long history of fighting for free speech rights, I assume they collect quite a bit of money from the media.
This is true, and it's because the media want the ability to say as much as they possibly can. As soon as it comes to other people saying things that threaten the media's business model, the media becomes a bunch of jackboot thugs ripping out people's vocal chords.
During the 2002 Cybercrime Conference I had the opportunity to talk to one of the RIAA's lawyers. We got to talking about free speech.
"You'll probably find that we're on the same side there. We're huge defenders of free speech."
"I'll believe that when you guys file an amicus brief stating that source code is protected speech."
He had a genuinely hard time grasping what I was talking about.
Finding God in a Dog
Yes. CNN, like the majority of corporate-owned news sources, is center-right in bias. The reason you feel it's left-biased is due to mainly to a twenty-year shift to the right in US political attitudes, and to a fifty-year Republican propoganda campaign. On pure social issues such as abortion and gay rights, a soft liberal bias isn't uncommon. Social issues aren't a threat to the profits of the 6 multinational corporations that control 90% of the media in the US. On economic issues, however, the corporate media has a strong neoliberal bias. Consider CNN reporting that tear gas wasn't being used in Seattle, until internet reports got to enough people to force them to retract their lies. Consider the way issues such as DeCSS are reported. Consider the way the East Timor genocide wasn't reported for twenty years. Consider the complicity of the media in presenting a president such as Bill Clinton, who took positions to the right of those of Richard Nixon on labor, the environment, taxes, workplace safety, and practically every other issue other than abortion and his gay-rights waffling, as solidly left wing. Or portraying Bob Dole and Dubya as moderates. When was the last time CNN reported the way the WTO has been set up as a completely undemocratic supergovernmental authority? The World Bank? The times NAFTA's been used to prevent enforcement of US environmental laws?
One of the claims I'm absolutely certain you're going to bring up is how the majority of the commentators describe themselves as liberal. While many may be soft liberals, there are practically no solid left-wingers who ever appear on the national media. The right, however, is more than adequately represented. When was the last time Noam Chomsky was invited on TV to balance George Will? How often does Michael Moore balance Pat Buchanan? Instead, it's an airhead soft liberal like Elanor Clift or an incoherent authoritarian like Jesse Jackson who supposedly represents the left.
The corporate media is not in any way left wing. They range from CNN's neoliberal economic/social soft liberal presentations to Fox News' neoliberal economic/social conservative. But if you want reporting without a neoliberal bias, you have to look beyond ABC, CNN, or Fox.
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
ah, see, if you lived in a country that actually had a left-wing, you'd see your mistake.
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Now that Traficant has finally been kicked out.
Nope, no sig
IIRC, they gave Hillary Rosen (of RIAA fame) an award for protecting free speech rights.
You're right, they did... in 1997. Perhaps you aren't deliberately being trollish, but the water shouldn't be muddied to fool people into thinking the ACLU agrees with Rosen's more recent behavior.
Time will tell. If the ACLU just wants an exception to the anti-circumvention clause and doesn't seek to overturn it entirely, wouldn't this do more harm than good? Asking for an exception would be like agreeing with the DMCA otherwise, it seems.
the ACLU had a pretty bad rap in the late 80's and early 90's for fighting for things many people in America disliked. (ACLU was anti school prayer, very pro abortion, I know there was others but I can't remember them) Basically getting into subjects that split the nation, and don't nessesarly have a definate constitutional mandate but simply an interpretation. Anyways, nowadays they tend to not be as extremly left wing as they used to be. But they havn't really tried to gain any PR with the middle line conservatives. Which they could do if they tried, but they arn't. Most conservatives have no idea that they have changed at all, and only recently have I figured this out myself. Though I'm still not quite sure if I should donate or not, as I used to think they were a bunch of jerks. So you know.
So basically, are you saying you don't mind if people are deported into a deporable living environment if they are "foreigners"?
Actually, the exception to this is privately owned businesses. There are quite a few of them out there and they are run for the benefit and whim of the owner(s), not necessarily to screw anybody or maximize revenues. Some people don't want to maximize revenues, just make their numbers so they can take the rest of the year off.
There's no mechanistic law that says businesses have to be unethical or immoral, just a collective decision by the shareholders to do so whether it's explicit or just shutting their eyes to the consequences of their decisions.
Personally I don't like the ACLU because of their hypocricy. They claim to be defenders of the Constitution but they are quite selective about which parts of the Constitution to defend. To paint ACLU opponents as all closet racists is its own special type of bigotry.
While there isn't much call for a lot of 3rd amendment work, there certainly is a lot of call for 2nd amendment litigation. Even 1st amendment issues like the grossly bigoted Blaine amendments haven't attracted a lot of ACLU condemnation over the years and these anti-catholic efforts are enshrined in dozens of state constitutions.
When the ACLU is evenhanded in its defense of the Constitution, I'll take it all back. Until then, no money for them and they can talk to the hand.
Funny, I've seen academic studies (Lichter-Roth-Lichter did an entire series) which documents that reporters' political beliefs are to the left of the general public in the US, that their voting is to the left (85%+ Democrat) and that their coverage on issues tilts left. I've never seen any academic refutation of these studies for errors either in methodology or conclusion nor any counter studies showing that the media are, in fact, center-right.
The facts are not on your side here.
This is an absurdity. Every polity has a left, a center and a right. The center moves as people shift their opinions.
Then again, the definition of what is left and right shifts too. 75 years ago to agitate for a color blind government that does not take race into account was considered a radical left-wing position in the US. Today, that opinion generally appears on the right.
This sort of center shift is what marks great politicians like FDR, Reagan, and Thatcher. Agree with them or not, the center shifted in their direction during their political time at the top and stayed their afterwards.
Well, it's about time. Not that I particularly like the ACLU, I generally don't. But they have a good track record of picking battles that can be won. And then winning them. And the DMCA is definitely one foe that deserves to lose, spectacularly.
If he's learning .NET he'd become an MCSD
Try looking up a case study for Ace or TrueValue hardware. These are networks of 'little guy' hardware stores who have banded together and are giving the big boys a run for their money in the hardware space.
There's no reason that big is necessarily better. In fact, with B2B and buying collectives, there's a good business case for small.
I'll stick to my position that it doesn't *have* to be this way but it's the way it is by choice of the owners.
So what you're saying is that if any one from a nasty country with sub-standard living conditions can make it to the USA that they should be allowed to stay? Wow that is bright! We have to protect the USA.
What are we protecting the USA from? From foreigners? That seems like a pretty racist view. There are some people (foreign and US-citizen) who are enemies of the USA, but certainly not everyone. I don't know you but I suspect the USA didn't feel the need to protect itself from your ancestors, regardless of how they were admitted into the country.
I support anyone's ability to come here without "paperwork". There is plenty of room in the USA for anyone who wants to enjoy the freedoms we have here.
His request was flatly refused because, according to an emailed reply from an N2H2 representative, "I am sure that you have enough intelligence to know that [the list] is proprietary information and will not be shared. I am also sure that life will some day bring you greater things to do with your time."
That's what the blocking software company sent to this guy when he requested the full blocking list.. I bet that guy's wishing he had been a bit more professional when he wrote that e-mail...
This is nothing new. US corporations have been undermining the system which enables them for many years. How to get them to stop doing it is the real problem.
Say what you like about the ACLU, it could be worse. If it were the American Civil Engineer's Union, they'd just pour a lot of concrete on all of us and leave.
For the sake of the EFF I'm very glad that the ACLU is taking up this cause. The EFF has only so much money- far fewer people donate than you think- and money is their limiting resource: if they had more, they could take on more cases. Even with their limited budget (much, much smaller than the ACLU's) they fought the DMCA. Now they can move funds to equally important technology cases without fear that the DMCA is legally unopposed. Being ahead of the curve is expensive: you don't get the same sympathy donations from the general public. I've written it before: join the EFF so they'll be there (on principle *and* with enough funds) for You.
Slashdot does not have a consensus on the value of the ACLU, "basic principles", the quality of various operating systems or programming languages, the best drugs to take while coding, or just about anything else.
Isn't there a statistic that says that 50% of all software projects fail? One wonders...
Looking at the ACLU's website, the only things I can find about spam are: several suggestions that they are looking closely at the problem and the proposed legislation, which is unarguably sound; and the assertion that the disputed e-mail in the Hamidi/Intel case is not spam, which does not seem to be supportive of spam in itself. Can you provide a current link to ACLU policy on spam?
The article linked to (from 1997) says that the many bills that seek to control commercial e-mail on the basis of content face First Amendment issues, and that state-specific legislation also has jurisdictional problems. Personally, I'd rather see spam fail for social and technical reasons, rather than legislative. Certainly if I had to choose between Free Speech and eliminating spam, I know what my choice would be.
I just gave the ACLU $250 this morning. Vote with your voice or your pocketbook! The multinational corporations already do..
cpeterso
Courts don't usually like cases like these, because they are entirely hypothetical:
We plan to do X, and we're afraid that we will be sued and/or prosecuted under laws Y. Can you please tell us whether or not X will be legal?
The problem is, you can come up with any number of possible X and Y's of this form and ask a court for an opinion. Courts would be swamped if they had to rule on every possibility like this. Courts prefer to deal with actual disputes, not hypothetical ones. They may throw this whole thing out on that basis.
In this particular case, while Edelman *plans* to pursue this research, don't forget that he's entering Harvard Law School in a couple of months. From what I've heard, that's a pretty challenging program. He may not have that much time on his hands to pursue his hobby of saving the world. So until he actually engages in the activity, it is all hypothetical.
Further, while the suit envisions various responses that N2H2 and/or the government might bring, based on the DMCA and the license agreement, these are again entirely hypothetical. If the court does rule on these matters, nothing would prevent N2H2 from proceeding on other grounds not anticipated by the ACLU. So the court would be faced with the same lawsuit twice, and its efforts to rule on the hypothetical case would turn out to have been a waste of time.
In the end, ruling on hypothetical actions and hypothetical responses usually involves too much uncertainty to make the effort worth the court's time. Sometimes they will do it if it is a sufficiently important case, but more often they'll say, come back when there is an actual dispute with facts on the table. That's basically what happened with the Felten case, and chances are the same thing will happen here.
In any case, simple polarisation of political views along a left-right divide is a nonsense and an unfortunate artifact of two-party systems.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
He said he was doing it to protect researchers from future hypothetical lawsuits (such as protecting what this guy wants to do). Let's hope this judge has more sense for the good of the people.