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Microsoft Says It Never Meant To Knock Cryptome Offline
CWmike writes "Microsoft withdrew on Thursday its demand that Cryptome.org yank the 'Microsoft Global Criminal Spy Guide' document from the site, and said it had never intended for the whistleblower's domain to be knocked off the Web. 'In this case, we did not ask that this site be taken down, only that Microsoft copyrighted content be removed,' said a Microsoft spokeswoman. 'We are requesting to have the site restored and are no longer seeking the document's removal.' The document, a 17-page guide to law enforcement on how to obtain information about users of Microsoft's online services, including its Windows Live Hotmail, the Xbox Live gaming network and its Windows Live SkyDrive storage service, was published by John Young, who runs Cryptome.org, on Feb. 20. Earlier this week, Microsoft demanded that Young remove the document from his site, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. When Young refused, his Internet provider shut down the site, and Network Solutions, the registrar of Young's domain, put a 'legal lock' on the domain name. The last prevented him from transferring the URL to another ISP. Computerworld blogger Preston Gralla dug into the document today in his 'Leaked Microsoft intelligence document: Here's what Microsoft will reveal to police about you' post."
While I completely agree that using DMCA to pull of the site is an asshole move, the documents also gave reassurance about privacy policies used in those services, mainly that MS isn't logging chat between people in Messenger and that when you move the email from their servers to your local computer email box, it isn't kept on MS servers. While in contrast, in my understating, for example Google keeps even deleted email somewhere in their networked file system for many many months.
I actually like to see more of these from different companies. Most interestingly, Facebook has a lot personal data. And what about Google? Yahoo?
If anything, such openness is good for MS in this case (even while they don't seem to agree to it, until now that it's leaked).
One thing thats implied is that if the police say "this X-Box, SN#ABC, was stolen on this date", Microsoft will return the subsequent connection history for that xbox!
Speaking as someone who had my house broken into and my Wii stolen (I had no xbox at the time), this would have been very cool to have, since Nintendo would do F-all when asked.
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That Network Solutions, Inc. placed a "legal lock" on his domain name strikes me as NSI appointing themselves sheriff.
We don't need totalitarian internet authorities who "enforce the law" for Microsoft's civil complaints.
I suggest we all boycott Network Solutions, Inc. over their treatment of cryptome.org. I will do so.
by the data that they can gather? Heck, the users give the data to them. All of it is data that would be gathered by any provider of similar services.
The only surprise is that they got worked up by the document getting out, and invoked the Streisand Effect.
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"'In this case, we did not ask that this site be taken down, only that Microsoft copyrighted content be removed,' said a Microsoft spokeswoman."
This is total, exquisite bullshit. The fact is, a DMCA request in this case triggers a site takedown if the owner disagrees with taking down the material.
Did MS verbally utter the request, "Will you please take down the site?" No, they didn't.
Did they press a bright green legal button labelled, "Push here to initiate site takedown process"? Yes, they did.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
About 10 years ago a colleague of mine found a reproducible way to run commands as administrator on any windows machine that enabled shares or IIS. He provided Microsoft with full details on how to do it. Then he was raided by the Feds 2 days later, as he was apparently a "dangerous hacker". He didn't even let us know how he did it though - just Microsoft. Fortunately his Dad was a senior policeman, and knew the right people (lawyers) to get some sense in the situation. Microsoft is not to be trusted in it's dealings with the law.
It's not censorship. There is a big difference between keeping one's own secrets, and preventing the publication of someone else's work.
Of course, like any word in any language, the meaning isn't completely clear-cut, but I do not believe that this is censorship. If someone else wrote what they knew about Microsoft's practice, and MS somehow got that taken down, I suppose that could be considered censorship. But in this case, it was a document that Microsoft wrote so they can do what they will. If it was the government trying to prevent the spread of that document, then it would be censorship. If you took censorship in a very broad meaning, it could mean that any copyright at all, and not telling your best friend that you slept with his sister, are forms of censorship.
And whether it was censorship or not, which could be argued, it certainly wasn't an abuse of the DMCA. One thing the DMCA does is strengthen copyright law, and seeing as MS used this aspect in "defense" of their own copyrighted material, I don't see how it is an abuse.
Besides, it's the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Not the Digital Millennium Copyright, but not when it comes to censorship, Act.
Whether it's an internal document, or a movie, makes no difference to how copyrightable it is, or whether or not the DMCA should be used.
Of course, IANAL, IANA (I am not American) and MFLINE (my first language is not English), etc.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?