Slashdot Mirror
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."
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
Mr. Edelman: We've seen a pattern emerging of cases where legal action is threatened under the DMCA, but when push comes to shove, the entity making the threats backs off, and thus the law remains.
What set of criteria do you feel must be present in a challenge to the DMCA that will give us our best hope of it being overturned, and do you feel your challenge meets these criteria?
Who wants to bet that chronicle.com is going to be added very very soon ..?
Only lawyers can truely understand the law. You lesser life forms only have a superficial understanding and marginal charisma to argue your position.
While you're being stupid, why don't you lecture us on how not all black people like rap, or you don't have to be an auto mechanic to have in-depth knowledge on auto repair! Stop! You're blinding me with insight! Ahh!!!
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
At least he is doing something good before he becomes consumed by the love of money.
would be very glad to see this work out. Apparantly, the filter they use at my local public library uses filters a lot of stuff that isn't pornographic at all. My sister had a report to do about communism and was trying to do stuff there, but they blocked communist-related websites. my school for the longest time blocked http://www.gnu.org (the BSD websites were unaffected though). I also could not find stuff about UK politcal parties from school. They cut out a lot of stuff that is blatantly unconstitutional to cut.
WHY isn't the current laws enforced instead of creating new ones?
Maybe I'm missing something but why the hell isn't the police busy searching all the napster clones and gnutella? No matter how much it's encrypted in the end you still connect to another machine and download the material so it IS traceable.
We are talking about several houndred thousands of people commiting crimes every day, why not trace them down and drag them to court? Why are new laws needed?
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.
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.)
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Your biting edginess amuses me! Here goes my karma...I agree with you. But you forget, the parent poster here is a slashdot reader. To him, everything is perfectly understandable. He understands the subtleties of law and how to effectively debate them. He understands physics, cryptography, biology, auto mechanics, needlepoint, basket weaving, and calculus. Everyone here is an expert on all things. On the flip side of this, non-geeks know nothing. How could a politician ever understand technology? Laws are so horrible because politicians "just don't get it". Nobody really understands anything, except the slashdot reader. So, yeah, I agree with you entirely, but you're just gonna get modded to oblivion...like me.
do not read this line twice.
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.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
My argument was not that I am (or anyone else is, for that matter) an expert in law, physics, cryptography, biology, etc, but simply that this attitude that all things in the realm of law are exclusively in the domain of lawyers is ludicrous.
This is exactly the same attitude I refer to. Everyone seems to thing that they are the masters of their domain, and no one outside it could possibly be reasonably competent in it.To quote Mel Gibson, "Let's just say I'm agreeing with you in a totally unusual way."
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
I'm no lawyer, but I plan on going to law school after I finish my poly sci degree. Laws like the DMCA really irritate me, so I was wondering if there are any slashdot nerds who are also lawyers, people who could consolidate and help inform people of the troubles such laws cause for people trying to remain within his or her fair use rights. We don't need more laws, we need more enforcement.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Did the Church of Scientology not use the DMCA to clobber Google a while back? If the clams (q.v.) think that using the DMCA as a club is a lot easier than suing posters of their sacred texts the hard way, then they might just choose to step up and protect it. This would be a Bad Thing (TM).
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
censure the aclu website, under "advocacy group" label...
He has a one-up on the rest of us because he can preface any legal uncertainty on /. with IAAAL.
I was under the impression that Mr. Edelman was the plaintiff in this case.
(Following is a short excerpt from the article.)
Did you actually read the article? The above is from the second paragraph, for crying out loud.
No wonder you post anonymously.
Is there some way people can contribute to a fund to help with his legal costs?
I'm not a rich man but i'd definately fork over us$40 towards such a fantastic and important cause.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Guilty as charged. I was trolling. Even so, I appreciate that to some extent I'm sure we ALL understand laws. The point is, if there's any chance to fight the DMCA, it lies with competent lawyers and not just some guy who sort of understands law. But the whole part about the general slashdot attitude of "I understand all things, for I am g33k. All others know nothing" wears thin after a while. Sometime, just for fun, actually READ some of the shit that gets modded up here, when the poster is obviously clueless. I guess that's what makes /. fun.
do not read this line twice.
People can handle being insulted by the intelligent, it's when the stupid take shots at them, it really hurts.
Hey wait a minute...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
So what you're saying is that a list of URL's and the decision making trees to add to that list of URLs is now a trade secret? Bollocks.
Most of these filtering programs use fairly simple (read: stupid) decision-making trees to determine whether a site is banned or not. Sure, it's real easy to see that most pr0n sites are banned, but guess what... they haven't gotten them all.
And quite frankly, with the idea of "government mandated" filtering software, as a tax-paying citizen, I should have the right to know what sites and/or topics will be banned should I decide to use any of the computers that have these filtering programs on them.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
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?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Whether or not it is a trade secret in the traditional sense of the term is irrelevent. These companies spent signifigant man-hours compiling these lists. Forcing the publication of these lists would be unfair to the companies.
Yeah, it brings me to tears to force a company to be accountable for it's actions. It produces a software that claims to filter web-sites. We cannot judge how accurate that claim is because of the DMCA. Therefore, as far as we, the consumer, knows, we are buying the program blind. And with government mandated filtering software, we're paying for it with our tax money. We deserve to know if that money is being spent effectively and productively.
Are libraries forced to provide lists of all the books they decided against carrying?
Been in a library much? All the ones around here, it's fairly easy to tell what they do and don't have. It's either listed in a card catalog or listed in a computer index (or both). If it's not listed, I go ask a librarian, and they can tell me whether they can get a copy through library-sharing programs. If they can't get a copy, guess what, they also tell me that. Therefore, a list can be generated, by brute force methods, if nothing else. Hell(tm), most libraries would probably be willing to provide lists of materials they never plan on acquiring, just to make things simpler for the people who would routinely ask. Your arguement lacks wang.
Fact of the matter is this. The filtering software promises to filter out "offensive" sites. However, because most filtering software does not easily allow the easy access to the criteria judging whether any given site is filtered, we have no idea whether it's doing a proper job, under-performing, or over-reacting.
While I don't like the idea of Johnny 4th-grader seeing pr0n from his school's computers, I also don't like the idea of those same children being "protected" falsely from sites that should not be filtered out because the designers of the software set the program up to filter out too much.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Umm...
It seems to me that the Librarian of Congress reported a couple years back (as required by the DMCA) on specific exemptions to the DMCA that should be allowed. I believe two exemptions were recomended...
One of them was specifcally to allow decryption of the list of blocked sites in censorware packages. Has this researcher or the ACLU considered this before mounting their "challenge" to the DMCA?
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
We were using N2H2's filtering software in school. One day I had to do a report on the Cold War, but most sites that delt with "the other side" where blocked from being "Tasteless". Same with democraticunderground.com and other anti-goverment poltical sites.
And with that, they extracted from the CyberPatrol program a full and complete list of all the Web pages blocked by CyberPatrol. And they published it on the Internet ... The fact is, this has happened before, and I'm sure it's unpleasant for the filtering company. They'd rather not have this happen. But to say we're going to go out of business -- well, I don't know.
Well, it seems to me that although the companies can survive a "blip" such as the cited incident where a snapshot of their blocking list is published, I doubt they would survive if their lists were all forced permanently into the open.
It seems to me that these companies are selling the effort that's gone into compiling their lists, and compiling these lists is no doubt the bulk of their ongoing development costs. Any competent system administrator can block a list of sites at their proxy without purchasing this additional software, provided they have a list of URLs. Obviously then, it's this list of URLs and the organization/accuracy of said list that's really of value, not the blocking software itself.
Why should I spend money on them if I already have a list of sites I want blocked? I'll concede that I have never used third party blocking software, so I may be missing something here-- perhaps they also have real time filtration by context-filters rather than just "evil" URL lists.
So, yes, the companies have a lot to worry about--they could easily get pushed out of the market if their lists are forced public, but to me, this doesn't seem to me to be such a bad price to pay in the grand scheme. So what if a handful of people lose their jobs or get pushed into other areas. That's a small price to pay when you think about all the problems that open-source lists can solve. Errata or questionable blockages could be challenged and removed or re-categorized. A broader selection of blockage categories could be maintained (and selected from by parents/schoolboards/sys-admins who want to use a subset of the list). A vast army of concerned parents could be enlisted to help keep the list current by contributing new block candidates if there was a universal list.
Let the existing companies change their focus to develop more accurate context-filtration for when naughty bits get past the list, and leave the list to the global community, because the blockage list itself is an ideal case for open-source.
You forgot:
...
- Only the Slashdot Reader has the ability, mental stamina and strong stomach to discuss the finer points of how great Slashsdot Readers think they are (with the exception of the Slashdot Reader that's actually doing the discussion which is naturally the exception)
Not that i disagree with you
This kinda reminds me of a survey of car drivers:
- 90% thought they were good drivers and that most other drivers were bad drivers.
If it were me, I would say over-protect rather than under. What would be nice is a admin kept list of non-banned. Similar to unix users.allow and deny.deny for printers. If it's in the allow file, it is allowed. If it's not in the deny file it is also allowed.
This would allow the slow process of unfiltering sites that the user should be able to access.
EFGearman
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
Ah, yes, in the scenic Amish area of Pennsylvania. How pleasant it is to ride along Lititz road, overlooking Peach Bottom, seeking out the little back-country cart-roads leading from Blueball road to the picturesque communities of Bird-in-Hand, Gap, and ultimately Intercourse.
Lots of people seem to be missing the point of publishing the list. You don't know until you try to go. The librarian, the clueless parent, the kids with the fr33POrn password won't know what they are missing until they try to look at it and get blocked, inhouse or upstream. The damage filters, especially in public libraries, can do is NOT to block porn and other prolefeed. The damage is to block real news and thought. The BSA counts free software as "pirate" software, you can bet your bottom dollar they would like to block the fsf website. A published list would give you a way to test out your ISP, library, or kid brother. If nothing else, the website with the list would be a good test.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Mr. Edelmen has responded to me via email. He's travelling abroad right now and is fighting with limited email access through an accoustic couple (!) dial up connection that is very unreliable. He's going to look for a Cybercafe or the like in order to get better access.
He included the following, and requested that I forward it on to everyone:
- - - BEGIN Ben Edelman's Comment - - -
My apologies not to post this myself -- I have bad 'net access at the moment, effectively email only, as I connect with an acoustic coupler at a pay phone.
It seems to me that the core question here is why we might hope that this case succeeds even where others have failed. Now, as I recall, there has only been one appellate case that has upheld the DMCA, so in fact the DMCA is still new & untested in important respects.
In addition, the Librarian of Congress already recognized the problem here and provided an exemption that goes part of the way (though, as the complaint and FAQ try to describe, not all the way!) towards addressing the needs of those who seek to study filtering software. The problem the Librarian saw here is, it seems to me, a real one -- that the public has quite a substantial interest in knowing what filtering programs block, whether they work as advertised, etc. These public interests in disclosure of the block list are made all the stronger by the government's role as purchaser of such software (in libraries, public schools, etc.).
So notwithstanding the failures of multiple DMCA challenges to date, I'm cautiously optimistic here.
Ben Edelman
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/edelman
- - - END Ben Edelman's Comment - - -