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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.
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
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...
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.
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...
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...