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Federal Judge Rules Against Reverse-engineering
zurab writes "A federal judge in Boston threw out a challenge to the DMCA brought by the ACLU for a Harvard Law School student. Ben Edelman decided to ask court's permission to reverse-engineer the Internet filtering software made by N2H2 in fears of being sued by the company. Of interest is a quote from the ruling: "there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an invasive and destructive trespass." Full story on Yahoo."
If a product is really doing what it says it's doing? If it has an accurate method for filtering out what is pornography from what isn't? If the people writing the program used proper definitions of pornography when deciding what should be filtered? What the court has done is grant this company impermeability to review or criticism.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
There is a serious problem, maybe it's not with n2h2, but the fact that governement is using software to protect it's citizens completly blind. Sure it sounds all peachy, but cmon, if you're gonna block people off, make sure you know what is being blocked, don't give a company like n2h2 the playground.
There are plenty of open source alternatives anyway, where you can manually control the blocked list, who is doing for the "consulting" for the governement, most likely someone who wants to keep his job. (prolonging the problem brings in more money)
This is bad both ways, gov wants to use proprietary over open source, and gov dosen't care that they can't control which sites are blocked and which aren't.
To be honest, that list should be public to the community, and sites should be debated by a community coucil for their library, to decide which should be allowed by standards in the area, no main entity is the know it all genie of what is right for everyone.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
yeah. my old highschool uses bess... it was a pain in the ass. it banned the homepage of the comp sci department (hosted off campus on one of the teacher's personal servers) for being "a hate webpage" that also had kiddy porn and hacking tools. it would've been a pain, if i hadn't known the admin's username, and figured out that his passwords changed monthly, but were just the president's last names, starting from washington... last i checked, incidentally, Bess/N2H2 is under litigation for selling user browsing information in breach of their own privacy policy and contract.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
My school employs N2H2's filtering software. I find it to be rather intrusive and annoying when I'm researching (or simply surfing the internet). In N2H2's defense, writing an intelligent filter that will not make any mistakes is close to impossible. I mean - think of what you're asking! A filter that will make near-human decisions based on a site's content/url... I'd like to see you write one. It would be impossible to manually screen each and every page on the internet each and every time they were updated, which would be the only sure-fire way to keep good pages from getting blocked. However, I am of the opinion that N2H2's filtering software Bess could be a little more effective. It does block rediculous pages at times...
Oh well. Until the software gets better, I'll just continue to write scripts to get past the filters =P
find / -name "*.sig" | xargs rm
Why aren't we attacking the organizations that use this filtering software instead of attacking the program itself? Wouldn't finding ONE site that shouldn't be filtered be good enough to prove that illegal censorship is in effect?
They way I see it there are only two ways about it. Either the organization can filter whatever they want because it's their own service and they aren't bound by law to make that service public, or they can only filter what's legal to filter... find one thing that's not, and you've got a pretty strong argument to force the organization to abandon the filter.
You're wrong. The actual problem is that democracy is often the tyranny of the majority.
The problem with this is clearly that companies are now using the DMCA to protect trade secrets. This sort of strengthening of the ability of companies to keep technology secret has the potential to have very dire consequences to innovation. Why wouldn't the next step be for Microsoft to use DMCA to squash reverse engineering of a file format or network protocol?
/. readers dislike patents, at least with this as the primary mechanism to protect IP you have time limits, disclosure of the technology and some sort of review to determine if the technology is worthy of a protected status. Patents have to be greatly preferred over the DMCA.
While many
The judge ruled that he had no standing. This is not saying that reverse engineering is bad.
/. thinks its reporting is "fair and balanced" ala Fox News.
This is saying that the plaintiff did not meet the test for standing.
What does this mean? It means that Slashdot is not actually "News for nerds." It's propaganda for a hostile community. I'm sure that
In reality these inflammatory headlines actually dilute the true story and really don't help our community. It makes us look reactionary. Maybe we should be proposing workable solutions instead of posting stories that reduce the credibility of this website, and nerds all over the world. Stop serving as a mouthpiece for a select few and start working towards something positive!
-Tom the Angry Nerd.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
No, you're wrong. The actual problem is that democracy is often the tyranny of the VOCAL MINORITY. Thats part of the reason that lobbying works...that and the bribes
Wait, wait, WTF? Since when are/should "message boards" be banned from schools?! Isn't the whole point of school (supposedly) to facilitate intellectual conversations.. DISCUSSIONS, which of course is what said "message boards" are for?
So these schools using Bess/etc. are basically saying "Go to msnbc.com / aol.com / cnn.com all you want, since they're nice big corporations, but don't discuss things amongst yourselves?" What is the justification given? Or is none at all given (as is typical nowadays)?
I am confused.
My good friend works at an office using WebSense (which both of us now call WebSenseless). It has, in the past, blocked her from accessing many perfectly legitimate sites, including my own site-- when I was trying to use my site to send her a technical document. It was very annoying.
All these years, and censorware still hasn't gotten better? This is pathetic...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Funny.. every copyright extension in the past 30 years had been retroactive, placing existing works in the umbrella of a new law. Even that is gone.
jello.
aka aron.
This post should probably be in an Ask Slashot forum but the topic IS relevent to this story.
My company (which must go unnamed) is bringing legal action against another company who (we believe) has reverse engineered our product (must go unnamed, sorry) and incorporated our technology into his. We are claiming this reverse engineering violates the DMCA.
Before the DMCA, this case would not hold up in court, and our lawyers no this, but under the auspices of the DMCA, they think they can win.
My question: I hate the DMCA, and I despise what my company is doing. Should I quit on moral grounds, or should I try other forms of protest?
I wrote a letter a couple weeks ago. Let me paste it here.
----
Dear Representative Walden,
This afternoon after I got home from school, I read an article in the news about a complete injustice that had happened as a result of the signing of the PATRIOT act. A resident of Oregon, Mike Hawash, was "detained" as a "material witness" and put into jail without even being charged with crime. The premise under which this was done, was that he donated to a charity known as the Global Relief Fund. While recently it has come under some attack due to the fact that members of Al-Qaeda donated to this charity, his donations took place a long time ago and I think it is unlikely that an Intel employee is a terrorist.
A material witness is typically someone that may have testimony relevant to a criminal investigation before a grand jury. It is legal for them to be detained if they are likely to leave the country or if they are a threat to the community at large. This man has been living in the United States for 19 years and has been a citizen for 15 years. Before then, he lived in Palestine. He's not a recent immigrant from a third-world Arab country. He's not a convicted felon. He is a computer engineer, working in the same profession I am currently studying for, that donated to a charity. The provisions that make sense on paper to protect people's lives are too vague and too easily abused as is clearly evident in this case.
The powers needed to track down and prosecute known terrorists already exist. We have enough terrorists already in jail for crimes that they have been tried and convicted for that can provide the probable cause needed to get remaining terrorists in our country. Looking for so-called "deviant" behavior to find terrorists is no different than looking for disgruntled teenagers likely to shoot up a high school based on their clothing style. The people likely to commit crimes are generally mentally unstable people that could be of any race, gender, religion, etc.
Another issue about the situation of Mike Hawash that bothers me, is that all of the associated documentation has been sealed and kept private. In fact, the only reason that this was made public was through the efforts of a friend of his who put up a website (www.freemikehawash.org) for his behalf. Generally, the due process of law is not sealed and kept hidden from the public.
In conclusion, the PATRIOT II act is coming up for consideration and vote in the near future. It is my personal view that it is too extreme, but I also may not know all the facts. Thus, I urge you to think carefully before deciding for or against it.
Respectfully,
----
Yeah. I woudl advise anyone around here to do something similar.
Never discount the possibility that whoever set up the filtering is clueless or incompetent. For that matter, the person who set up the filtering system may well have had to do so for legal reasons. Or they may be opposed to such filtering in principle, but not enough to put their job on the line. In which case they may well have conciously not blocked Anonymizer-type sites.
The reason why the supermarket puts locks on their sliding glass doors is not because it's impossible for someone to get in by smashing the glass, but rather because the insurance company needs to be shown that "reasonable effort" was made in deterring crime.
Part of the Second American Revolution!
No, primary and secondary schools are designed to shift responsibilities for children off of the parents' backs, so they have someone else to blame when their child doesn't turn out to be Superman and/or Wonderwoman.
See, and I always thought that they were designed to produce a labor force to catapult your 19th-century backwater kingdom into an early 20th-century industrial power. That, and keep teenagers out of the labor forse.
No, schools are expensive day-care centres so parents can work. By keeping children occupied with mindless tedium (aka homework) schools also reduce the juvenille crime rate.
Mod me funny, I dare you. I'm not being funny goddamnit.
While I certainly agree that the last presidential election had problems, your analysis of the problems could use a little help.
Our popular vote is deliberately irrelevant for the presidential election; this is to prevent a few populous states from running off with the election. Hypothetical situation: the electoral college is thrown out, and two candidates are running for the popular vote in an election. Candidate A has run a very tightly targetted (read: lots of gifts and pork to specific locations) campaign of promises to key population centers, and has almost 100% of the vote in California, Texas and New York, but has only about 40% of the vote in every other state. Even though 47 out of 50 states prefer B, A has a significant chance of winning. This is why we use the electoral college rather than popular vote. If you don't like it, changing the rule requires a constitutional amendment, by all means work towards getting it, many people agree with you.
The Governor of Florida has no obligation to pay attention to the popular vote of the nation, or even Florida (except during his own election, of course). The Governor of Florida is responsible for executing the laws passed by the Florida State Legislature to regulate operation of the election. There are those who allege that he did not do this, that he bent (or allowed his staff and allies to bend) these laws to benefit his brother at the expense of the Gore campaign. Any evidence along these lines is sparse, and it is doubtful that it will ever be proven one way or the other.
The "confusion of the divits" was tragic, and underscored the need of Florida (and most other states for that matter) to reevaluate the systems they use for voting. Many countries do fine just marking an X on a piece of paper and hand counting the pieces of paper. Some countries have interesting higher tech ideas that may be worth considering. Regardless of what gets chosen, it's clear that using a stylus to punch holes in a piece of paper leaves a lot of room for confusion, for not having a clear understanding of the intent of the voter. Minimizing this confusion in the future is very important.
The amount of time they spent investigating was not wasted time IMHO. The amount of time they spent bickering about how to investigate was, and I considered both candidates responsible for that.
Incidentally, are you aware that, in 2001, a group of news agencies carefully examined all the "rejected" ballots in Florida and determined that: A) if Gore had successfully received the partial recount he had requested, he still would have lost; and B) if Bush received the statewide recount that he halfheartedly countersuggested, Gore probably would have won.
So, yes, I consider Bush to be an illegitimate president, simply because a thorough recount indicates that Gore won Florida, and therefore won the election. I don't blame any "ignoring" of the popular vote for the wrong person being in the White House, or any alleged corruption by Bush's brother or campaign manager. I blame simply the sorry state of our voting systems in this country, and the inadequate set of laws governing recounts in the state of Florida.
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Open mind, insert foot.
The reason my school gives for blocking Discussion sites is the idea that when we surf the internet from school, we are representing the school. By allowing us to talk on forums and boards, they are afraid we may offend someone, and that would reflect poorly on the school.
/. and
Penny Arcade, both of which I need to live.
*Tongue in Cheek*
The reality of Bess is is that it is unquestionable. Most of my teachers aren't willing to walk over to my computer and type in a password every minutes so that I can actually see the pictures of Mussolini's dead body. (We are covering WWI). The problem lies with Bess and other such filtering software in that its database is inaccurate and beyond reproach. Bess used to allow you to submit webpages that it blocked for reviews, it would even email me telling whether or not the site was allowed. I would usually get a response within 4 days, and they would usually agree with me, that the site shouldn't be blocked. Now, when you try to submit the page, there is no option to allow you to give them your email addy (I didn't use my private one of course), and they don't even allow you submit freepages. They are blocked by default. Without notification, they could never get around to checking the site, and you would never know which way it went unless the site was magically unblocked one day.
I don't even get the point of having a filter at a High School. Very few people are stupid enough to be surfing Pr0n in the middle of library, so what are they afraid of? I dont't knw, maybe I'm just angry because they block
Just my two bits..
P.S. This is my first post! Yay!
It is so important in these uncertain times that we focus our vitreol on case where there is actual legislative or judicial overreaching.
Read the judge's opinion before leaping to conclusions. This is NOT a case that was decided on the merits of an underying DMCA claim.
The plaintiff in this case was not N2H2, but rather the fellow who wanted to do his reverse engineering. He sued under a theory of equity, seeking what is called a declaratory judgment. Before even reaching the question about whether the plaintiff is entitled to act, the Court must first address whether or not it has jurisdiction.
This isn't a light issue -- the Federal Courts only have jurisdiction over ACTUAL "cases and controversies." This is a constitutional limitation. The federal judiciary does not offer what is called "advisory" opinions -- ever.
Here, without touching on the DMCA issue at any level, the Court simply ruled that our erstwhile declaratory judgment plaintiff didn't have the standing to drag D2H2 to court. I agree with others here that the reasoning for no standing was not the Court's strongest argument, but in view of the Copyright Office excemption, this case just doesn't hold water on the standing question.
Aah, reminds me of my living in the dorms at college. A couple of years ago I attended the University of Oregon. Back then it was ranked one of the most wired campuses in the nation...
Dual T-3 connections for the entire campus and dorms, each student had his own 10 Mbit ethernet jack in his dorm room, and you could actually utilize the full bandwidth! I loved serving up my IRC fserver full of anime on a nice fat pipe - uploaded approx. 150 GB/week of anime.
I will never forget the day my internet connection was shut off when they blocked my MAC address. Quick trip down to the "appropriate use" offices of the network admins office that day.
They asked me about my running a server in my room - since school policy didn't forbid it, I readily admitted I was hosting video files. The guy I was talking to then mentioned they had several calls from SONY and the MPAA about "someone running a server with video files," but I quickly added that they were not distributed in the US, and I hoped they weren't copyrighted here.
At that point the guy got really interested, and asked me what anime I had up on it and if I wanted to trade...school policy pretty much went out the window there.
But I got the "7th highest bandwidth user on campus award," nearly beating out the mail server! Aaah, I love the 500kBytes/sec days!
(you guys with your own personal T-3's and such can just stop laughing in the background)
Guess that blows many recipe sites, I guess the 'Beef' producers lobbied for that one, cant have terrorist chicken breast recipes floating out there in cyberspace now can we..
But in all seriousness, it shows how bad of an idea these sort of 'filters' are.. they are flawed by design, and prone to 'political' abuse.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This ruling does not even reach the merits of the DMCA or reverse engineering. It is concerned with a legal doctrine called standing. The law of standing in Federal Courts means that you must be a proper person to bring a claim. Article III of the US Constitution requires that there be an ACTUAL "case or controversy" for a court to hear. The US federal courts decide cases. The courts do NOT give advisory opinions - e.g., if you do this you will (not) be breaking the law.
The plaintiff here was a Harvard Law Student who asked the court to declare that IF he reverse-engineered the software THEN he would not be breaking the law - essentially asking for advice that the federal courts will not give.
The federal Declaratory Judgment Act allows federal courts to "declare" the rights of the parties, but that is different from giving advice. There still must be an actual case or controversy. To show that, the plaintiff must show that he has a "reasonable apprehension" of being sued. Usually that is done by showing the court some communication between the parties in which one party has either explicitly threatened a lawsuit or because of the relationship between the parties it is obvious that a suit is coming. Here, the law student could not show that, so he lacks standing to bring this suit.
If you doubt the correctness of my statements, look to the key part of Judge Stearns's quote: "there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman [the plaintiff law student] can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material...." He can't assert the rights he is trying to assert. In other words, you aren't the right person to bring this claim, you have no reasonable apprehension of actually being sued by these guys, you are merely asking for advice, we don't do that here, get out of my court but feel free to come back if you actually go ahead and reverse-engineer and you are threatened with a lawsuit.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
The judge mentioned reverse engineering only to mention that it did not meet a very high standard for them to take the case. Normally, on declaratory judgement cases, the judge will only allow it to proceed if there is a substantial likelyhood that the petitioner will actually be sued. However, there is an exception for more extreme cases, and the judge was just mentioning that this case does not meet that high standard.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.