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Sweden To Outlaw File Sharing, Crypto Breaking?
Martin Kallisti writes "The Swedish Department of Justice has today proposed a bill to be put into effect, if it passes Parliament, on the 1st of January, 2004. It is in accordance to EU directives, but will also criminalize the downloading of material from the Internet without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. Furthermore, it will become illegal to break cryptos, circumvent copy protection (mod chips et al), copy books, and as I understand it, use software that is designed to help with any of these tasks, and many other things." An anonymous reader points to an English-language article about this Swedish EUCD proposal, which also mentions a hefty $4 levy on blank digital media such as CD-ROMs.
errr excuse sp!
I work for a company selling network analysers for GSM and UMTS (3G) systems. Our product is not unlike the TCPDUMP network sniffer for IP networks.
First let me introduce the GPRS system. The GPRS core network elements (Base Station Subsystem, Serving GPRS Support Node) is normally stationed far away from each other. BSS is stationed at the site (which could be far away from metropolitan areas), whereas the SGSN resides in the area switching center. They connect to each other by means of a Frame Relay connection, which could be serviced by another vendor (a local ISP, for example).
Buying a Frame Relay connection is more affordable, but since there are privacy issues, operators are forced to turn on a cipher. For troubleshooting purposes, operators would need to look into the signalling traffic for given GPRS subscribers, but they would need to break the cipher.
Our new product line-up includes the deciphering capability for breaking the cipher code in the interface and looking at what's inside. Cracking should be the more correct word.
Are operators in Sweden (we have big customers there) free from breaking the cipher in their own network? Are we even allowed to deliver such a product in Sweden?
If not, we'd be out of business very soon. We have important clients in a big Swedish GSM vendor (guess who), and also the rest of the EU world (which, in my opinion, _is_ the GSM world at the moment).
Anyone in need for a GSM and UMTS support personnel? I need to look for a job.