Interview with DMCA-challenger

BrianWCarver writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interview with Ben Edelman, the Harvard law student and internet researcher who is bringing suit against the DMCA with the ACLU. Slashdot covered the announcement of this legal challenge. To refresh your memory, Edelman wants to be able to research the lists of sites blocked by internet filtering software, and to be able to publish his research. He's no lawyer yet, but he responds quite well to several objections to the case."

Comments

He's no lawyer...

[Amarok.Org]

He's no lawyer yet, but he responds quite well to several objections to the case.

This implies that one must be a lawyer to understand legality, and to be able to convincingly argue one's position. Sorry, I don't buy it.

Re:He's no lawyer...

[kiwimate]

This implies that one must be a lawyer to understand legality, and to be able to convincingly argue one's position.

I think it may imply the former, but not the latter. People are paid high salaries for the benefit of their expertise.

To put it into a perspective which may carry more weight on Slashdot, many people can understand the principles behind routers and firewalls, but rather fewer are able to competently configure same when complex scenarios are involved. Consider, for example, how many people fail their first run of the CCIE lab portion.

One may argue the semantics behind the formalization and/or certification of the knowledge required for a specialized task, but why be so demeaning? How many Slashdotters would leap to the defense were the above statement to be modified to read:

This implies that one must be a { systems engineer / network engineer / pick your label } to understand { WAN configurations / how to configure a firewall / pick your prized specialized skill }.

There's a difference between understanding something and knowing how to apply knowledge in an expert fashion. Don't demean skills that you don't understand or appreciate.

The real users of filtering?

[teamhasnoi]

Q. What about the counterargument that if people were really upset about their inability to see the list of blocked sites, then they just wouldn't buy the filtering software?

A. There are a few different problems with that argument. First is that the people who are buying the filtering are not, by and large, the people who are subject to the filtering. The person in a particular library who is buying the filter, for example, is likely the network administrator of the filter, probably a pretty savvy computer user who can figure out a way around the filter. If anyone can do it, it's the person who's in charge of putting it in. He's the expert in computers, after all. ... So the person who's making the decision is, oddly, not all that affected by the filter, as I think about it.

I thought the biggest users of filters were clueless parents who heard some horror story of the internet, bought a filter and installed it just so they could be 'hands-off' parents. Parents don't want the responsibilly of monitoring the net usage of their kid.

I think putting the computers where everyone can see them, and actually discussing! what's out there is a far better answer than filtering, which is trivial to get around for even the dumbest of kids/adults. Go to a friends house or other computer (unfiltered), download the QNX internet browser floppy disk for instance.

Actually, unless OSS is filtered (Goddless heathens! Communists! Child Molesters!) you could do that right there.

Best Defense is a Good Offense

[Red Rocket]

I'm glad this case is going forward but it's another one of those fringe cases that is defending against the rough edges of the DMCA instead of striking it at its unconstitutional heart.
We need something that throws a spotlight on the huge potential of this law to do harm to fundamental freedoms that most people take for granted.
Suppose we could enlist the cooperation of one of the major book publishing houses to bring an offensive and egregious suit against a library (for example) that accuses the library of theft of so-called "intellectual property" by allowing people to consume their product without compensation to them as the copyright holder.
When the headlines start blaring about how the DMCA is being used to make libraries illegal then non-technical people might understand what's really wrong with this law.

IANAL (but lawyers are good, despite the corporate "tort reform" rhetoric intended to smear lawyers and limit our access to the only branch of government left that hasn't been closed to the citizens.)

Hollywood, government, and academia

[telekon]

Perhaps the best that could come of this is if people start asking, "why does he need to file a preemptive suit to continue his research?" Academic research has always occupied a privileged sphere, and the DMCA poses a greater threat to these intellectual freedoms than possibly any previous legislation.

It kinda reminds me of the situation when the NSA tried to stop academic cryptographers from continuing or publishing their results, slapping them with secrecy orders and citing national security concerns--however, they were beaten pretty soundly in court. Somehow, though, intellectual property seems more important to this government than national security. Say what you will, but the NSA had a much more legitimate interest in maintaining the breakability of codes than in protecting the rights of companies to obtain security through the combination of weak codes and obscurity.

In the end, the NSA's arguments were found to be less than compelling when it came to restricting academic freedom. It's shocking that Hollywood's interests are not patently irrelevent in the same arena.

It took a while for the courts and congress to stop being scared away from 'crypto anarchy' by NSA spooks, and to side with researchers. My hope for the current crisis is that these same bodies will stop being frightened off by the cries of doom and gloom from spookier spooks like Jack Valenti before academic (and even personal) research is further crippled in this country.

telekon

Hollywood's three leading products: Fear Uncertainty, and Doubt.

It works the other way too

[xant]

He's the expert in computers, after all. ... So the person who's making the decision is, oddly, not all that affected by the filter, as I think about it.

And conversely, the person who's most affected by the filters is the person least likely to recognize the situation as a problem. A non-techie library patron doing a report on Communism (to pick an earlier example) might get a big filter warning message popping up. (This is even assuming the filtering software goes to the trouble to tell you that you've been filtered, which some don't.) As any sysadmin will tell you, end users frequently don't even attempt to read or understand error messages, so the filter error could be interpreted as a down website. Even if it's correctly identified as originating in the filter, the user might believe that this was an acceptable use of the filter, i.e. that the website he attempted to view contained naked Russian chicks or instructions on how to build biological weapons for fighting capitalism. The least likely outcome is for the user to see the error message, realize that the filtered site should have been available for him to view, and then go to the trouble to complain about it in such a way that the installer of the filtering software hears about the problem.

Indeed, the filter is designed that way. If it allowed you to see the content and judge for yourself whether it should have been available, it wouldn't be working, would it?