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.

Comments

business opportunity

[roc97007]

"(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.

Screw 'em I say!

[zifferent]

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.

Re:Screw 'em I say!

[JPLemme]

I used to perform disaster recovery testing for a very big company. There was one particular test where a critical application wouldn't run because it was registered to the CPU's serial number and the software was refusing to run on the hardware at the DR facility. I'm pretty sure that the majority of proprietary mainframe apps work this way.

The data restoration couldn't begin until the vendor fixed the license issue, which took ~45 minutes. Since we had a 12 hour recovery limit that was a long time. We worked with the vendor to make sure that our DR process wouldn't be affected by this issue, and it never happened again.

Ergo, many companies in their right minds trust their vendors, just like they trust their banks not to steal their money. The difference between Very Big Companies and you is that each VBC is worth millions of dollars to the vendor, and screwing one VBC can cause many other VBCs to defect to vendors they can trust. You, OTOH, are worth about $59.99 and if they screw you most of their other customers will never know about it.

According to this bill

[IBitOBear]

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!

contempt

[nuzak]

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.

Re:contempt

[TheGratefulNet]

Congratulations, you people just created another pirate.

I keep saying that - its a self-fulfilling prophecy.

the more unjust laws that lobbyists create, the more anger and disillusionment the customer (!) base will become.

they have created more pissed-off customers than they realize. so any laws just become ignored by those in the current generation.

I wonder where this will end? where will it extrapolate to? will the media industry ever 'get it'? this is an arms race and its not heading toward any kind of stability and in fact its heading quite out of control.

our politicians are creating favorable laws for themselves and their lobbyist contributors. big business is having a cream-fest with all the new laws that have been passed in the last several years, to their benefit and to the detriment of the consumer.

I encourage people to decide for themselves if they should follow UNJUST LAWS or not. for a long time, slavery was allowed and perfectly legal and laws supported it. it was bad to follow such laws back then and similarly, when you find bad laws its your patriotic duty to ignore them.

we can't seem to change the laws - the power base is not ours. so, what we have left is to nullify the laws by challenging them and refusing to follow them.

LONG LIVE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.

Dumbasses, twice

[Weaselmancer]

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?