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Testing Microsoft And The DMCA
sproketboy writes "I found a great piece about an MIT student and his XBox hacking over at news.com.
Apparently he can't get his how-to book published do to fears with DMCA. I hope he at least can get it publish in China or Russia where people have some freedoms left. ;)." The student is doctoral candidate Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, the same hacker Microsoft declined to stop last August from presenting a paper on insecurities in the Xbox hardware.
You know, you shouldn't get your works published DUE TO horrible and confusing spelling mistakes.
I hope he at least can get it publish in China or Russia where people have some freedoms left.
You could say almost anywhere but USA! DMCA/Patriot/Patriot2 are US laws! not *world* laws!
I'm appalled. Since when have PhD students had the luxury of "taking a break"?
When I was working on my thesis, PhD students would work 6 days a week without vacation for 4 years straight and, as far as I can see, at least the physics PhD candidates are still working like this. Is "taking a break" something that computer science people can afford?
The owls are not what they seem
...to help understand some of the legal mess the DMCA has created around reverse engineering:
Chilling Effects Clearinghouse's Reverse Engineering FAQ
Russia -- MAYBE
China -- NO WAY
If you seriously think you're worse off than the average chinese person because you can't legally make a backup copy of your DVDs, then you seriously need to rethink your priorities. At least in the US we have the RIGHT to speak out against the DMCA while if it were enacted in China, anyone speaking out against it would be lucky ever to be able to speak again.
Yes, the DMCA is a bad law, but it is in no way comparable to the conditions the average Chinese person faces on a daily basis.
GET SOME PRIORITIES!
less spying on ther citizens than USA do. Look on the development since 9/11... I just say: Developing brainscans on Airports... great idea.
man the guy certainly has a lot of time to meddle with the XBOX...
/.
Talk about a great school...
* Diploma that will get you LARGE amount of cash later
* Research topic is to fiddle around with game console
* Appear to be victim and popularized as sort of a martyr on
Now if you add a dash of sex (point one - mass quantity of money, can usually bring this to realization), it would be the perfect life.
Well, if he move to china, where there's still some freedom left. heh.
(note to self: why does my sarcastic jokes always come out like troll posts? Maybe a MIT education would help?)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
The X-box has been accused by many of being a test run for DRM technologies; i.e., it's a completely locked-down, intellectually hermetically sealed box on which Microsoft has Power Absolute.
This guy is now pushing out a book on x-box hacking and MS is not doing anything. While his problems publishing it is speaking volumes as a concrete example of how real and present the whole "chilling effect" meme is on defeating free speech, the point remains that he is refusing to be deterred and forcing this book through come hell or high water.
And MS, realizing if they try to get a book banned because it talks about their video game system, they'll face public backlash, they'll have the EFF go "holy shit this is the big one", and they'll lose after years in the supreme court after having being hurt more by the case than the PHD student... is not taking action.
So, here's my question: in six or seven years, someone is going to write a book about Palladium, and all known ways to hack it. And either it will end any use of Palladium as a security technology (though probably preseving its use as a monopoly prolonger)... or MS will try to have this book banned.
Is there going to be any difficulty for MS, if they try to stop the book on palladium hacking then, considering that they didn't stop the book on x-box hacking now? Are they setting any kind of precedents that people can point at in the future and say "look, if XYZ is illegal, then why wasn't that x box book in 2003 illegal?"
It's called censorship. There's also Freedom of speech in other countries even though americans don't seem to think so. Come on, you have to realize that you live in a country where the companies and the government run you, not the other way around. And there's not much freedom in that. The government just makes you focus on your Freedom of speech when your freedom gets restricted more and more every. And what about a law. An unethical law doesn't make it more correct. Does it?
This whole affair about XBox, Security, DMCA, Linux-on-the-XBox and stories about how MS is losing money n the XBox.... is this all a big ploy by MS to somehow generate interest on the XBox? I mean, is the XBox not selling well as a gaming platform, which is what it's supposed to be anyway?
/. crowd think that anything done against the DMCA is a worthy pursuit? Sharing files maybe, reverse engineering maybe, but Linux on the XBox - certainly not for me.
Why fiddle around with a $200 XBox and load Linux on it after circumventing a 100 security holes, when a Linux PC can be had for the same price on Walmart?
How many of us can afford an XBox but not a separate PC? Even if somehow it's possible to load Linux on an XBox and attach a CD writer, USB mouse, kbd etc., is it still worth the trouble?
The more I read such articles, the more I get the feeling MS is DESPARATE to sell these XBoxen. Does the
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
"What kind of "freedom" does a citizen have in a communist country?"
The same freedoms that citizens enjoy in every other country: everything, except those things forbidden by the laws made by your government. We citizens of democratic countries can choose our own governments and thus have some influence over what laws are passed, but that influence is very limited. Politicians do not necessarily always have our interests at heart, or your individual interests may be different to those of the voting mob.
The US is an excellent example of a country where laws are being passed (DMCA etc.) that seem to benefit a small special interest rather than the general public. You have the freedom to choose your own government, a freedom that the Chinese lack. But I bet that in China you are free to publish any paper on Xbox modding that you can come up with. The Chinese government could forbid it and there would be little that their citizens could do about it, but they haven't done so.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I hope this doesn't sound like one of those In Soviet Russia jokes.
In Soviet Russia,
anything not specifically allowed by the state is forbidden.
In the US Republic,
anything not specifically forbidden is allowed.
Someone hates these cans.
Just like Michael Moore has done with Stupid White Men, he moved to Penguin because they gave him the support against the corporate heavyweights.
And of course he could just publish it as an ebook on the internet.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The xbox is slightly changed around a bit from version to version. Not really sophisticated stuff but they do shuffle the pcb layout a little to keep chippers guessing for a couple of minutes. Mostly to cut costs I would suspect.
The reality is, that if they closed up the D0 line on the bios chips they would be quite a large step closer to removing the ability for modchips to be used. Most of the chips implicitly rely on pulling D0 to ground.
Even though this MIT guy is cool and talks about some decent things you can hardly blame microsoft for trying to shut the guy up. At the end of the day every person that has ever wanted a modchip from me has wanted it for piracy - not so he can have a fabulous webserver etc.
...that US publishers now feel like they can't distribute books on hacking hardware, despite the array of them on other topics like:
- Building unlicensed automatic weapons and explosive devices
- Converting post-ban assault rifles for fully-automatic operation
- Breaking and entering
- Creating a counterfeit identity
I guess it's like the view that violence in a film is more appropriate for a wide audience than sexual content.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
>What kind of "freedom" does a citizen have in a communist country?
I have lived in communist country (unwillingly) for 20 years. You could be arrested for no reason, but laws presented a lot of freedom (which was not guranteed and people were arrested).
To get back to Your question - it looks like communist countries have the same kind of "freedom" as U. S. citizens:
* neither can tell the world what they want
* neither of them could go wherever they want - try to go for a trip to Syria and we'll see how long You will stay at customs when You will return.
* noth of them are forced to conform to a ton of stupid laws like alcohol in paperbags and right to work (this meant You have to be employee, kind of commie law).
That's from theoretical point of view. Practically citizens in any country have the amount of freedom granted by their leaders/government. These leaders and governments are as stupid, as the majority of citizens in given country.
Contrevening our laws would be terrorism, which would force us to invade, take control and install DCMA/Patriot/Patriot2 for their own protection and ours.
..this reminds me - for no clear reason - on the controversy surrounding PGP when it was first written. While it was illegal to export the code in binary form (ie as a file) as it was considered a mution, it was quite allright to print out a stack of paper and send it abroad, letting some poor sod punch it all back in.
No, I know this isn't like that, but I'm reminded of it, that's all. Possible because the information already is 'out in the wild', but can't be 'officialy' published.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I'm not neccesarily the paragon of legal knowledge. That being said, the last time that I checked China was a communist country.
What kind of "freedom" does a citizen have in a communist country?
China is a very oppressive country and Russia is still very oppressive as well. I think the idea behind the "where people still have some freedoms left" comment was to point out that the people in two much more oppressive countries than the US have a freedom that we do not. Even worse, it's an intellectual freedom governing knowledge and free speech, which is something that countries like China are usually much more restrictive about than the United States.
In other words, it's like pointing out something that some black power/racial pride/anti-defamation group does and saying, "Wow! Even the Klan doesn't do that!"
HOW THE FUCK IS HACKING AN X-BOX A RIGHT PROTECTED BY THE FIRST AMENDMENT??? Why do people who do something illegal always try to defend their act by claiming their actions are protected SPEECH!
If I own the damn hardware, I should get to do what I want with it. Including hacking it. It shouldn't be illegal - that's rather the point...
A quick googling reveals that even though Wiley has refused to publish the book, you can still pre order it at Bunnie's website[http://www.xenatera.com/hackingthexbox/ind ex.html]. You can even see a sample of the chapters on the site. Whats more, he is even using the rejection by Wiley as a plank to sell the book. :-) )
To quote from his site:
"A book so controversial that publishers are afraid to print it!"
"Hurry and get "Hacking the Xbox" before Microsoft does!"
According to the site, the book is shipping in May ( year not specified though
What's under yellowstone?
Talking or writing about what you chose to do with your X-Box is the right that's supposed to be protected by the First Amendment.
Doing what you want with your purchase is a long established practice under the doctrine of first sale.
It should only be a problem if you use your purchased item in the commission of a crime against another person or their property.
Posessing knowledge, or the dissemination of knowledge should never be a crime. If the information is that important, safeguard the information in the first place.
But anyway, both communism and capiltalism are simply alternatives, industry in communist countries is owned and controlled by the government, in capitalist countries it is controlled by the corperations. In communist countries the laws are tightly controlled to benifit the governement, and, not suprisingly, the laws in capitalist countries are beginning to be tightly controled to benifit the corperations.
It is true that capitalism had allways been seen as connected tightly with freedom, but we must remember that during the early USSR, the people had unprecedented freedom, it just seems that capitalism takes a little longer to degenerate into a dictatorship.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
"A communist country explicitly subordinates the economic interests of an individual to the economic interests of the people as a whole."
Whereas in a democracy, individual interests may be subjugated to the interests of the mob, the interests of elected representatives (or their pals), or the fad of the day ("protection against terrorists"). Democracy does not equal freedom; one can imagine a democracy where everything is decided by majority vote: laws, policies, but also what clothes will appear in the stores this summer, and what will be for dinner this evening. I exxagerate, but the point is that freedom does not follow automatically from democracy, but is derived only from limitations placed on what the government can and cannot do. Look at Afghanistan where an oppressive government of religious fanatics was voted in, by a majority who knew full well what they were voting for. If you happened to be a woman in that country who did not wish to have to cover her head in public, you'd be shit out of luck despite the fact you'd be living in a democracy.
Democracies tend to place the emphasis on individualism, as opposed to communism favouring collectivism. But democracies can and do go overboard sometimes on regulations and laws that severly limit our personal freedom in favour of a (sometimes very tenuously) alledged Greater Good.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
> Obviously this wouldn't apply to Russia, being a recent convert from communism.
Russian wasn't communist, and China isn't. Both are totalitarian governments in much the same way as Hitler's Germany or Pinochet's Chile.
Just because they said/say they are communist doesn't make it so.
Before we start, a few points:
O.K. The guy is a cryptography and reverse engineering expert, who did a lot of work reverse engineering the XBox while he was a student at MIT. He has now graduated, and runs a business which specialises in reverse engineering. He wants to publish a book which details how he and others went about reverse engineering the XBox. Just to make that clear:
Doesn't it strike you as odd that a guy is having difficulty getting a book about his profession published? Surely this is all covered under the first amendment? Aparently not; the DMCA would appear to trump an Amendment to the constitution. Think about that for a moment. Do you know what the constitution is supposed to do? Can you think why this is a bad situation?
To take it to an extreme; if an expert in his field cannot publish a book about his profession, then how can these professionals share information and knowledge? If they cannot effectivly share information and knowledge, how can they operate? If they cannot operate, how can we have cryptographic experts? If we have no cryptographic experts, how can we have crytography? This is an intentionally extreme, rhetorical set of questions, but think about it for a little while. Doesn't it strike you as a little odd?
This man can't publish a book for fear of some type of prosecution. In another lawsuit against the DMCA, this could be cited as an example of how the DMCA is effectively exercising prior restraint to publishing, and in actuality creating a chilling effect.
Judges do not take kindly to the words "prior restraint" or "chilling effect" as there is ample Supreme Court precedent firmly against both. An event such as this could help turn the tide of a future DMCA challenge.
And this isn't internet, it's the publishing of good old dead-tree books that judges can understand.
In the article, there is reference to that poor soul recently nabbed for selling mod chips. Now his domain name is the property of the US Gov't. Check it out.
The article also lists four other sites (drug paraphenalia sites 1 2 3 4) which are blocked by the DEA. Interesting part, click them, now the DEA, FBI whoever knows you checked them out. Disturbing.
So, I made sure I connected to all these links. It would be nice if other people did this too because a high volume of random connects, will essentially make data collection worthless. Anyone know more of these?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I am a xbox hacker and would like to say that the xbox is amazeing, for $200 i can 1. play divx movies on my TV 2. play/sort my ogg/mp3 collection 3. emulate mame/snes/nes and play my huge rom collections 4. rent/copy/warez monger all the games i can (got 5 on hard drive right now) 5. make backup copies of games so if they got damaged/lost i'm not SOL 6. have yet another FTP server on my home network for exchange of files between outdated OS's (only 1 is windows) 7.play DVD's without paying the 30$ mpaa tax and the list goes on..... i might consider running mandrake or debian (only 2 flavors i know that are compiled for xbox yet) but will probebly put a 80 gig drive in it first.. my advice is buy a refurbished one and pray that you get a good philips/samsung drive that will play CD-r's (the thomsons suck, and will only play dvd-r,cd-rw-s) and above all the satisfaction that i'm screwing M$!
come comment on the madness at http://slashdot.org/~phreak03/journal/
There are valid arguments against the US and its actions, but you did not come close to them with your ignorant, lie filled, slanted screed.
...the right of the people peaceably to assemble... And the ones that were not peaceably assembling were removed and arrested for breaking the law. Its called civil disobedience becuase you deliberately break the law, thus no longer "peacably" assemble (look for the legal context - peacable means "law abiding" in the case law)
Give me a break. Just because you RANT it does not mean it is fact.
Here's just a couple of errors you make.
Freedom to assemble? No - try reading the source code: 1st Amendment:
Grandmothers hauled away by SWAT teams? Citation please. Were they breaking the law? And also, show me the SAWT teams - they are sledom if ever called out for demonstrations. So this is yet another one of your "points" that is just another hyperbolic lie from an obvious US Basher.
"Highest crime rates in the priveledged world" Wrong again. UK leads the world in occupied home burglaries, among other things. And just what is the "priveledged" world? Another transparent lie of yours despatched.
The US is a "Police State"? Pull the other one! Do you realize how stupid that is, prima facia - and deep down too? Were that so, Slashdot would not exist, nor would the ACLU or EFF, or the gun-nuts at the NRA (Police states hate armed populaces) or the loony "John Birch Society" for that matter. So, more non-factual hot air - just inflammatory language to try to draw peopel away fromthe fact that you have no real case here other than just venting a lot of anti-US emotion.
You want a future police state to worry about - one in which the people have already sheep-like comitted to giving their rights to unelected non-representative political masters, go look up what the EU are doing in Brussels. The powers the people of EU are givig the police and EU government there, socially and economically, are incredible, and enough to shackle them in chains within a generation. Even the Communist Party of the UK claims to to be a budding police state.
http://www.communist-party.org.uk/site/Archives/ Fe bruary_2003/European_Union_and_the_Police_/europea n_union_and_the_police_.html
Bashing the last election? Give me a break - thats old news and it proves the system works AS DESIGNED (Electoral votes). The local electors screwed up - even after all the recounts Bush was still ahead, and even after the FLa Supreme Court partisanly thwarted the election code, Bush was still ahead - and the Supreme Court overruled the bad decision from the FL court, just as it should have. Bad decision? Maybe - but the real mistake was by the locals in screwing up the ballots in a Democrat run district to the point where the vote counts were unreliable and obviously partisanly biased in favor of the Democrat. Furthermore, on a national basis, the election borke down to Gore winning the urban and coastal areas, and Bush won all the rest - even Gore's home state of Tennesse. Bush won 4:1 in terms of counties, and in terms of win a county = support, the population of the counties that voted pro-Bush was 143 million to Gore's 120 million. Similary, land area goes 6:1 for Bush excluding the Bush victory in Alaska.
So it was a close race, but to say Bush is not properly president is to perpatuate a bitter lie by those disappointed with Gore's poor candidacy.
For the Electoral Colleg - if we dont like it, we need to change it, just like we did with the Senatorial elections (and some of us are working on that instead of whining about it). And unlike the Chinese, with whom you speciously compare us, we DO have the option of changing our government without a Tienamen Square style massacre.
As for "growing up" - why don't you try to learn a few things and stop reciting things straight out of the Euro-marxist US Basher handbook, and start looking at results, overall free
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You know...when you started your answer I was going to mod you up because I thought you had a few good points. However when you started your Euro-soandso crap I realised your attitude was just as stupid as the one you claim to be condemning. I am not worried for you, you will reach the +5, but not with my mod.
Of course I am European (even French as a matter of fact) I think your vision of Europe is as far from truth (and please do not take the UK communist party as a reference, or I shall start looking in US'es non representative groups) as my vision of US is.
Maybe understanding freedom as the set of what we can or cannot do rather than the ability that we have of changing the course of events is the cause for all these childish (still!!) comparisons.
I believe that 9/11 (sorry 11/9) has led all western countries in a legal state that should worry every one of us, not only for our own country, but also for the countries with which we do business and share goals. From that point of view I am as concerned by the road US is taking than by the way Europe is catching on.
As for why reasons why US helped Europe during all these wars we could also argue for a while. Still I am grateful you were there, this does NOT make me, or my country, your slave.
Anyway, I preferred answering than modding down.
May I use your sig please?