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UCITA By the Back Door
InfoWorld's Gripelog airs a subject that should interest this community — involved as we were with efforts against UCITA back in the day. One main aim of the derailed UCITA initiative was to give software manufacturers and content owners a degree of control over users' computers. Gripelog's Ed Foster informs us that UCITA is sneaking back in, under the cover of an anti-spyware bill, S. 1625, now making its way through the US Senate. One clause in this draft bill would legalize what the BSA calls "electronic self help" — i.e., the ability for commercial entities to cripple or disable software or networks on your computer if they believe you are violating their property rights.
"(10) detection or prevention of the unauthorized use of software fraudulent or other illegal activities."
When I hear of something like this, the first thing that occurs to me is how valuable the keys or mechanism or whatever that actually does the "preventing", how badly the criminal element would want to get hold of that information, and the inevitability that this will happen when the right price is found for whomever holds the keys.
In other words, this kind of thing will eventually, inevitably, be used for nefarious purposes.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
That's the best euphemism I've ever heard for legitimized corporate spyware and DRM. Big software companies will finally be able help themselves to my electronic devices.
steampunk web design
So if an entity (any virus writer, for example), incorporates, then it's legal for them to mess with your computer? All they need to do is claim that they have evidence that you are infringing some property rights of theirs?
Is Congress insane?
The real answer is that they don't tend to think of consequences. Rather they are more interested in rewarding their friends and financiers.
You know what, give the lousy ba$tards what they want! They more than anyone else deserve it, and once they start disabling computers willy-nilly it will only beat a path to the OSS door. Why would any company in their right mind turn their entire company over to the trust of a greedy software vendor? They might as well hand over their bank-account numbers and power-of-attorney to BSA while their at it.
It will frankly create a situation ripe for software-license blackmail and extortion.
If they're so intent on shooting themselves in the foot, all the better for the rest of the world. Enough is enough.
cat sig >
GPL Violations is allowed (with author's permission) to break into the boxes of all GPL violators. *That* could be interesting.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
consider provisions of this bill "do not apply to any monitoring of, or interaction with, a subscriber's Internet or other network connection or service, or a protected computer, by or at the direction of a telecommunications carrier, cable operator, computer hardware or software provider, financial institution or provider of information services or interactive computer service..."
and "(10) detection or prevention of the unauthorized use of software fraudulent or other illegal activities."
Well clearly, as per the article they are slipping in "any enforcement we choose" actions regarding the ability of the BSA (etc) to pry into your computer with spyware like tools...
But worse, the spyware perpetrators themselves gain free immunity to all their spyware actions if they can proved they are "a provider of an information service" which, in fact, they are. They provide my information to their paying customers.
Now not only is spyware made penalty free (by accident) but Auditing Trojans that "accidentally" destroy all your data while "trying to detect" whether you have stolen Barbie's Big Adventure
The corporations, both legal and illegal, now own your computer in every way that matters.
Ta Da!
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
By writing themselves into the law as "above the law", I no longer feel particularly feel any moral obligation to obey the law. The only principle that guides my behavior now when it comes to dealing with the RIAA/MPAA is "don't get caught".
Congratulations, you people just created another pirate.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
...'Member the "This is your brain on drugs" TV spots, with an egg sizzling in a frying pan? No, no, I don't think you do.
But being GPL'd it would be just as easy to go into the source and take out the back doors and recompile it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Point the first: If they think this won't get hacked, they're out of their freaking minds. You think spyware is bad now, just leave a huge hole in your OS where other people can come in and change stuff. This proposal will make the problem worse, day one. Or should I say 0-day.
Point the second: Accountability. Assuming this could get implemented and be magically unhackable, what all are they actually allowed to do, and who will oversee this?
Put another way, let's say I release an email client that is legal to use for non-commercial purposes. May I read all of your email to see that you're sticking to the EULA? May I delete the ones that are commercial?
How far can this go, and what checks and balances do they propose?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"Self-help" is kind of a legal term of the art for any extra-legal means that people use to resolve a dispute without the aid or sanction of the courts, usually with the implication of violent means of depriving people of property in dispute.
For quite enlightened reasons (and the more cynical would say selfish ones too), courts tend not to favor resolutions that encourage self-help. Courts are not going to interpret the phrase "detection or prevention of the unauthorized use of software fraudulent or other illegal activities" to allow for deprivations of or interference with the enjoyment of personal property without due process. This law can't be interpreted in any manner to set up a due process satisfying procedure, so it's pretty much unconstitutional if interpreted to allow remote disabling or (suspected) pirated property.
Assuming that the above language even means to imply the "software fraudulent" is a meaningful term, given that it appears nowhere else in the US Code, and there's no definitions section for the bill. The sentence makes a lot more sense if "...software for fraudulent..." was their intended language.
In that context, it seems less like a backdoor attempt to insert remote disabling into law and more like a phrase in line with preventing malware. UCITA was dangerous because it allowed people to contract away their protection against this sort of thing, which is less constitutionally suspect than just writing into law at large.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
There is something deeply ironic about a lot of the hyperagressive IP enforcement stuff going around. Orrin Hatch's self-destructing computers, Fritz chips, and now "electronic self help". All of these things are deeply antithetical to the notion of private property; but advanced under the banner of protecting private property.
I'm surprised(but not too surprised) that this sort of thing doesn't get more attention from the free enterprise and private property crowd; it is, after all, a much greater threat than any of the pitiful remnants of Communism that still survive. If this sort of stuff persists, it will, in effect, be illegal to own almost any computerized device(sure, you'll own the actual hardware; but the software and firmware will be licenced-revocable-at-will from dozens of different firms, all with the authority to poke at your device whenever they want). I'm sure that some of the true believers will comfort themselves with the fact that it isn't the State that is to blame; but private property will be just as dead as if it were.