I am not a laywer (but I play one on slashdot and have made a personal study of IP law), so take everything with a grain of salt. I'll offer a specific case that I believe answers your claim.
The public domain has several issues.
It means the content is not copyrighted. Either the copyright has expired, or was released.
Lack of copyright is not equivelant to a lack of liability.
There are implied warranties and liabilities for particular uses when other areas of law are applied. Liability and warranties are not limited to copyright.
Any change, even minor, creates a 'derivative work' of the PD work, allowing anyone to usurp the work you have done.
The user of PD content must be able to PROVE that the content is available as public domain.
Decoders for various image, movie, and disc formats have been released into the public domain, yet the authors have been sued or had lawsuits filed against them. This is a case that lack of copyright does not mean lack of liability. Take DeCSS for a single example of that.
On the other hand, products released under the GPL have very specific rights granted and released.
Authors maintain the copyright
Distribution of the program distributes all the GPL rights.
There is absolutly no warranty or liability for any use, as far as is allowed by law.
Patents based on content in GPL software must be licensed for everyone's free use, or not at all.
Redistribution must follow specific rules, or it is prohibited
First a case where a GPL'd program could generate an infringing program. Observe that in the case of DeCSS, it COULD NOT be released under GPL because portions of the content are patented, and the patent owners are unwilling to agree to that style of license issue. The program CAN be released to the Public Domain, because the author does not need to keep the copyright. The legality of the program is being decided by the courts.
A perfectly legal GPL'd prime number generating program could generate the DeCSS source code as a prime number which is illigal under the DMCA. The program has substantial non-infringing uses, but is also clearly punishable by the DMCA. Granted, the author of a PD prime-number generator is could probably make the same arguments as the GPLed software arguments. The GPL explicitly disclaims all liability provided the conditions are met (which a prime number generator does).
Public domain only refers to the lack of copyright protection. While copyright is very important, a work may be protected by other legal theories that survive after the copyright expires. For example, public domain artwork, particularly distinctive characters (such as Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" illustration), can achieve protection under trademark law and function as a logo or source identifier. Likewise, mere ideas, which are not protected under copyright law, may be protected under trade secret or contract law.
Public Domain has different rights and obligations. If you place work under the Public Domain you may be responsible for problems with it, where the GPL allows you to not be responsible for errors.
Think along the lines that if you placed a bomb in public domain or GPL. In the public domain, you would be in trouble, but if you put it out saying 'this is dangerous and you are responsible if you do something stupid or illigal', you have covered yourself.
There are other open source and free licenses available that don't require the re-distribution of source with modifications, along the lines of the LGPL, the Artistic license, BSD license, and QT's license system, to name a few.
As to GPL'ed software not for certain purposes, the gpl allows you the freedom to use it (see the definition of freedom). The GPL keeps you from taking free work and making it non-free. Businesses are free to take GPL'd software and use it in their programs, and say 'we use gzip -- here is where you can get it', but that doesn't mean they have to give away all their products.
Given the security track record of Passport, and how many times it has been broken, just imagine the fun Criminals could have. What a target -- It would give more potential than current identity theft, and can be stolen by a bot.
If it was parked in front of your house you simply need to call the local police and tell them there is an unwanted vehicle parked on the street in front of your property. If it has been there overnight add that it is an abandoned vehicle. While I don't know about where you live, in my area they will at least ticket unwanted vehicles and boot or impound abandoned vehicles.
Another local law forbids placing cars 'for sale' in public right-of-ways. There is a major 3-way intersection near the place I work that has a large shoulder on the fourth side of the intersection. About every month there will be three or four cars parked on that shoulder when I go to work, each with a 'for sale' sign in the window. When I go home, they usually have a big yellow boot on their wheels and a bright orange sticker on their windshield saying "IMPOUNDED". I'm glad that our city decided that car dealers need to have their own lots.
... like the dogma project at Brigham Young University is a distributed application system currently on used on a few thousand machines. It is written in pure Java, requires no persistant storage on the local machine, can be interrupted at any time, and is OS independant, to name a few things.
The patants are for computer controlled transmissions and computer systems, not the distribution or implementation method. If a computer executes the system, they can claim IP violations. If you distribute source code (which can liberally be read as anything that a computer can translate and cause to be executed) you would be equally responsible.
They say that if you don't sign, you can't use and they can sue.
This would take a lot of the stuffing out of the 2nd-amendment lobby, unless you really buy that "home defense" stuff.
I'm ignoring the assault rifle argument -- that's already been hammered. They are used by military and police groups.
The second ammendment, in its entirety: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
You are right -- studies show a gun purchased for self defence will most likely not be used for that purpose. However, studies also that the concealed weapons permits and regular, visible weapons are deterrents to several crimes. This second argument shows how firearms can be an effective in maintaining the security of a free state.
As to hunting being a legitimate sport -- some places tried to do away with it and found that the wildlife populations would grow and the wildlife starve and die due to overpopulation -- all because the predators are gone.
People in rural areas arguably need firearms for various purposes. Any farmer who has killed livestock knows about this. Animals get sick and it is easier to shoot them than to take them to a vet so the vet can shoot them.
And something you overlook - old weapons are collectables and quite valuable. A hunting gun my dad purchased when he was young for $99 was just appraised at over $1000.
Section 2. The Congress finds:
(1) The lack of high quality digital content continues to hinder consumer adoption of broadband Internet service and digital television products.
This is an illogical argument. It can easily be seen that many consumers purchase broadband internet service and digital television with the current quality of content. Second, does Congress have clear evidence that other issues, such as cost, availability, techichal fears or lack of technical experience, or other issues might be the cause?
(2) Owners of digital programming and content are increasingly reluctant to transmit their products unless digital media devices incorporate technologies that recognize and respond to content security measures designed to prevent theft.
This is not the case. Owners of LARGE SCALE CORPORATE CONTENT PROVIDERS are reluctant. This argument won't go down well in Congress because it is the large scale corporations that are giving them the campaign finances, and they don't want to hurt those... There are many small-scale providers who do not care, including local radio and television stations, budding artists and performers, and hobbiests.
(5) Other existing digital rights management schemes represent proprietary, partial solutions that limit, rather than promote, consumers' access to the greatest variety of digital content possible
This is contrary. DRM systems are inherent limitations. The only way to promote consumer access is to remove such limitations. Citing Napster, when no RM was enforced the service flourished. When RM was required, the service went stagnant.
(9) The secure protection of digital content is a necessary precondition to facilitating and hastening the transition to high-definition television, which will benefit consumers.
DRM is not a requirement of the high-definition television standard, nor is it a technical requirement for HDTV equipment. As such, it is not a necessary precondition.
(14) When protected digital content is converted to analog for consumers, it is no longer protected and is subject to conversion into unprotected digital form that can in turn be copied or redistribute illegally.
All content must be converted into analog form for human interpretation. Although every step from creation to broadcast may be in digital format, media is light and sound when it reaches the human. To prevent the content from returning to analog form outside the human body, the industry must provide a direct transfer connection into the human brain, which is infeasable.
(12), (15) and (19) A solution to [these problems] is technologically feasible but will require government action, including a mandate to ensure its swift and ubiquitous adoption.
A solution to these issues (which are debated above) cannot be provided uniformly across all media, especially on the Internet which knows no political boundaries, nor does it respect any particular nation's laws. The culture of the Internet is inherently against regulation, the regulation that exists is primarily done by Requests For Comment, or RFCs, which suggest -- not require -- standard protocols and methodologies.
Section 3. (d) SECURITY SYSTEM STANDARDS. -- In achieving the goals of setting open security standards that
will provide effective security for copyrighted works, the security system standards shall ensure, to the extent practicable, that --
(1) the standard security technologies are --
(A) reliable;
(B) renewable;
(C) resistant to attack; A good lesson in crypto would be appropriate here
(D) readily implemented; This is contrary to (c) above.
(E) modular;
(F) applicable in multiple technology platforms; This would be difficult
(G) extensible; What prevents manufacturer-specific extensions?
(H) upgradable;
(I) not cost prohibitive; and To whom? RIAA and MPIA, private businesses, startups, universities, AND hobbiests alike?
(2) any software portion of such standards is based on open source code. HUZZAH!
(c) ENCODING RULES. --
(1) LIMITATION ON THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS. -- In achieving the goal of promoting as many lawful uses of copyrighted works as possible, while preventing as much infringement as possible, the encoding rules shall take into account the limitations on the exclusive rights of copyright owners, including the fair use doctrine.
(2) PERSONAL USE COPIES. -- No person may apply a security measure that uses a standard security technology to prevent a lawful recipient from making a personal copy for lawful use in the home of programming at the time it is lawfully performed, on an over-the-air broadcast, premium or non-premium cable channel, or premium or non-premium satellite channel, by a television broadcast station (as defined in section 122 (j)(5)(A) of title 17, United States Code), a cables system (as defined in section 111(f) of such title), or a satellite carrier (as defined in section 119(d)(6) of such title).
I am probably mistaken, but doesn't fair use allow me to make multiple copies for personal use, for classroom/education use, or other uses, not just a single copy?
Section 3-(h)-(1) IN GENERAL. -- After security system standards have been established [...], representatives of digital device manufacturers, consumer groups, and copyright owners [...] may modify the standard security technology that adheres to the security system standards rules established under this section if those representatives determine that a change in the technology is necessary because --
(A) the technology in use has been compromised; or
(B) technological improvements warrant upgrading the technology in use.
So basically even though the claim is this is government regulation, the industry determines when it needs changing as well as what changes need to be made. That sounds suspiciously like industrial regulation, not congressional regulation.
Section 4 -- An interactive computer service shall store and transmit with integrity any security measure associated with standard security technologies that is used in connection with copyrighted material such service transmits or stores.
No exceptions for bad transfers, bad media, or software errors? (If my transfer is interrupted, does FTP need to delete the half-transfer, or can I resume?)
SEC. 5. PROHIBITION ON SHIPMENT IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE OF NONCONFORMING DIGITAL MEDIA DEVICES.
In reading of the constitution, congress has many powers, but I am fairly sure this kind of restriction on interstate commerce is not one of them... The Constitution grants this right to the STATES, not CONGRESS..
Sec 6.(b) COMPLIANCE WITH ENCODING RULES. -- No person may knowingly apply to a copyrighted work, that has been distributed to the public, a security measure that uses a standard security technology in violation of the encoding rules adopted under section 3. ... Sec. 8. The Federal Advisory Committee ACt (5 U.S.C. App.) does not apply to any committee, board, commission, council, conference, panel, task force, or other similar group of representatives of digital media devices and representatives of copyright owners convened for the purpose of developing the security system standards and encoding rules described in section
This is a deterrent to research. How can people (those not appointed by the Government or big industry be expected to develop better encoding rules without testing the rules on other, copyrighted content? Presuming that content must be previously encoded, researchers must either break this section or illigally decode the works. Researches will then have two options -- Either obtain licenses from Big Industry, or perform research illigally.
In summary, the bill meets most of the goals stated in the purpose, provide the private sector (big business) with protection measures (anti-competition, anti-consumer, and anti-piracy) enforced by Federal Regulation to protect content. But it does not promote broadband, (that would be along the lines of a price cap on broadband services) nor does it promote the transition to digital television (which is required by 2006 anyway).
Of course, there are the standard/. disclaimers that I am not anything and I don't represent anybody, but you are asking for help in logical arguments against specific points.
About keeping algorithms secret, that is a source of open debate. An algorithm could be very secure and carefully tested and analyzed, but never publically disclosed.
The biggest benefit is that it should be more difficult to break because crackers don't know enough about the algorithm. The biggest drawback (assuming the algorithm really is secure) is that scientific trust would be difficult to gain.
Regarding offering many locked 'boxes', many cryptographers are working on security with 'unlocked boxes'. There have been algorithms based on 'chaff', or garbage infomration included with legitimate information, that are relativly secure. Proposals have included combining multiple message sources and segmenting all the messages into similar (very small) pieces and attaching a public-key-signed signature to each of them. The messages are never actually encrypted, but they cannot be recovered in order without being able to open the signatures to re-assemble them.
Getting back on the topic of their routine, it is a bad algorithm (a bogus OTP), and they have already taken a beating on/. about it.
I don't even watch movies on TV anymore. Why should I put up with all that, when I can just rent the DVD for a few bucks instead?
How long will it be before we all just throw out our tvs and use the PC for DVD playback in our home theates? Get a SB Live! or other 5.1 sound card and hook up a digital projector. You could replace your home theater. Just imageine games on that...
Of course, that assumes that the restrictions on PCs don't make all of that illegal.
I find it literally incredible that anyone capable of getting him/her self elected into the legislative branch can possibly not realize what's going on. Is it just me? Is this issue tougher to understand than I think? Do I just think the injustice is so obvious because most people on/. agree with me?
I don't think it is that hard to understand. The entertainment industry offers bribes\b\b\b\b\b\b donations to US Legislators of about $40M USD in 2000. That works out to an average donation of about $70,000 USD, or more than I make in a year.
Taking that into consideration, I wouldn't blame it on stupidity or evil, but greed.
Obscurity is one facet to security.
Obscurity on it's own is NOT security.
Given their method is proprietary and secret, you have no way of judging whether it is secure or not.
I'm glad at least one/. poster understands. Citing the famous example of giving you a locked box to open versus telling you I have hidden the box somewhere...
I can hide it AND lock it, so you have to do much more work.
Anyone who can pull their weight in crypto can hear problems with the press release versus reality. For example...
"This technology allows people to implement end-to-end security, and do it transparently with nothing installed on the client side," Karim Kassam, Prescient International Inc.'s president and chief executive officer, told globetechnology.com. "It works with any kind of device - from computers to cellphones to handheld devices - and from anywhere in the world. You could access a server from any public computer in an airport terminal or a coffee shop, and the connection would be secure."
Now that is easy to trash. Anyone could be looking over your shoulder. At a public computer you have no idea if another program is recording yoru keystrokes. And (obvously) if nothing is installed on the client side, how can the information be transmitted in any format other than cleartext?
Getting a copy of the [keys] into the hands of the people at each end of the communication can be difficult...
But Prescient says it has figured all this out.
"We've found an electronic way of handling those complex keys, and of regenerating them dynamically so that lists of keys don't have to be stored anywhere," Mr. Kassam said.
If they can be regenerated by a valid user, they can just as easliy be regenerated by an evesdropper.
The client generates a series of random numbers to use as an encryption key. This is number is exchanged with the server through a secure process known only to Prescient, the server uses it to encrypt any information it sends back to the client, and then the key is destroyed and a new one is created.
What about vulnerabilities to 'random' number generators, this is a one-time-pad, no encryption key is needed, there is quite a bit of 'security through obscurity', and the whole thing sounds very vulnerable to man-in-the-middle....
"We're 100-per-cent confident in our technology," Mr. Kassam said. "To give an idea of how difficult this is to crack, many organizations consider 128-bit encryption, which has a complexity of two to the power of 128, to be very secure. With e2Sec, we're talking about encryption in excess of 5,000 bits, and as much as two to the power of 10,000."
Even PGP was named "Pretty Good" not "100% confident". What does the number of bits in one-time-pad generation have to do with anything? Only an algorithm with cycles would need that, and any algorithm with cycles is insecure.
They say they are doing a one-time pad, not crpytography.
The bitsize on a one-time pad should be irrelevent, like the crummy computer ads listing the on-die cache for CPUs.
Obvously they either forgot to run the conversation through their crypto team, or their crypto team needs quite a bit more schooling.
I'm in that situation right now. It was fairly simple.
First, at work I had already insisted that certain clauses be taken out of the 'standard contract' [ownership of all work plus discluse of work for one year after termination], and replaced them with better terms [ownership of all work related to the core business at that time, except the open source projects and academic work in detail].
Further, I added comments that incidental use of company time and property may occur, and such use would be excused.
Next, I contacted the University's Technology Transfer office (the office that wants money from everybody) and told them I was working in the same field as my degree. They said I just need to work out an agreement between my advisor and the department. So instead of the University's clause that all ideas developed beloged to them, we made an agreement that works developed for the courses and dissertation belong to them, with a similar incidental use statement.
I had an IP laywer discuss the importance of the 'incedental use' clause. Without it, the employer could claim that a single phone call would entitle them to your work, since you used their resources. Same with posting to slashdot -- it is an incedental use.
Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?
on
EFF Takes Bnetd Case
·
· Score: 2, Informative
To suggest that Bnetd is illegal due to copyright is insane. The product is not a duplicate of the original, it is a service provided by a second company developed from their own source code.
Whether it violates the DMCA is another issue. The courts ruled recently against Sony where developers reverse engineered portions of the Playstation to get access to underlying protocols so that developers could create an emulator for the PC. Even though the reverse engineering violated some terms of the DMCA, there were two important facts facts: (1) the new product was legal, and (2) they attempted to obtain the information from Sony, but they refused to offer it.
It appears that this case is the same. The defendant was unsatisfied with a product. The producer was unable or unwilling to provide the desired product. The defendant was forced to reverse engineer that product in order to offer the desired services. The only remaining question is whether Blizzard applied for a patant for their network protocols. (unlikely.) If they did not, they do not own the IP of the protocol (since the protocol is a method and must be patented, not copyrighted) and therefore Bnetd is fully within their rights to publish it.
Slashdot Mirror
The public domain has several issues.
Decoders for various image, movie, and disc formats have been released into the public domain, yet the authors have been sued or had lawsuits filed against them. This is a case that lack of copyright does not mean lack of liability. Take DeCSS for a single example of that.
On the other hand, products released under the GPL have very specific rights granted and released.
First a case where a GPL'd program could generate an infringing program. Observe that in the case of DeCSS, it COULD NOT be released under GPL because portions of the content are patented, and the patent owners are unwilling to agree to that style of license issue. The program CAN be released to the Public Domain, because the author does not need to keep the copyright. The legality of the program is being decided by the courts.
A perfectly legal GPL'd prime number generating program could generate the DeCSS source code as a prime number which is illigal under the DMCA. The program has substantial non-infringing uses, but is also clearly punishable by the DMCA. Granted, the author of a PD prime-number generator is could probably make the same arguments as the GPLed software arguments. The GPL explicitly disclaims all liability provided the conditions are met (which a prime number generator does).
Gigalaw's copyright permission myths page states:
As for the effects of a limitation of liability, look at what a real lawyer says about that.For more information on the GPL's philosophy, check out the Gnu/FSF philosophy page.
---
The ideas expressed are not necessarily those of anyone, including myself.
Public Domain has different rights and obligations. If you place work under the Public Domain you may be responsible for problems with it, where the GPL allows you to not be responsible for errors.
Think along the lines that if you placed a bomb in public domain or GPL. In the public domain, you would be in trouble, but if you put it out saying 'this is dangerous and you are responsible if you do something stupid or illigal', you have covered yourself.
There are other open source and free licenses available that don't require the re-distribution of source with modifications, along the lines of the LGPL, the Artistic license, BSD license, and QT's license system, to name a few.
As to GPL'ed software not for certain purposes, the gpl allows you the freedom to use it (see the definition of freedom). The GPL keeps you from taking free work and making it non-free. Businesses are free to take GPL'd software and use it in their programs, and say 'we use gzip -- here is where you can get it', but that doesn't mean they have to give away all their products.
What a sad, sad idea.
If the consumer can collect the penalty, might be worth it to get an account at an ISP in Japan and make sure that the email address gets harvested.
Another local law forbids placing cars 'for sale' in public right-of-ways. There is a major 3-way intersection near the place I work that has a large shoulder on the fourth side of the intersection. About every month there will be three or four cars parked on that shoulder when I go to work, each with a 'for sale' sign in the window. When I go home, they usually have a big yellow boot on their wheels and a bright orange sticker on their windshield saying "IMPOUNDED". I'm glad that our city decided that car dealers need to have their own lots.
... like the dogma project at Brigham Young University is a distributed application system currently on used on a few thousand machines. It is written in pure Java, requires no persistant storage on the local machine, can be interrupted at any time, and is OS independant, to name a few things.
They say that if you don't sign, you can't use and they can sue.
This is why they pay their lawyers... :(
I'm ignoring the assault rifle argument -- that's already been hammered. They are used by military and police groups.
The second ammendment, in its entirety: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
You are right -- studies show a gun purchased for self defence will most likely not be used for that purpose. However, studies also that the concealed weapons permits and regular, visible weapons are deterrents to several crimes. This second argument shows how firearms can be an effective in maintaining the security of a free state.
As to hunting being a legitimate sport -- some places tried to do away with it and found that the wildlife populations would grow and the wildlife starve and die due to overpopulation -- all because the predators are gone.
People in rural areas arguably need firearms for various purposes. Any farmer who has killed livestock knows about this. Animals get sick and it is easier to shoot them than to take them to a vet so the vet can shoot them.
And something you overlook - old weapons are collectables and quite valuable. A hunting gun my dad purchased when he was young for $99 was just appraised at over $1000.
Section 2. The Congress finds:
(1) The lack of high quality digital content continues to hinder consumer adoption of broadband Internet service and digital television products.
This is an illogical argument. It can easily be seen that many consumers purchase broadband internet service and digital television with the current quality of content. Second, does Congress have clear evidence that other issues, such as cost, availability, techichal fears or lack of technical experience, or other issues might be the cause?
(2) Owners of digital programming and content are increasingly reluctant to transmit their products unless digital media devices incorporate technologies that recognize and respond to content security measures designed to prevent theft.
This is not the case. Owners of LARGE SCALE CORPORATE CONTENT PROVIDERS are reluctant. This argument won't go down well in Congress because it is the large scale corporations that are giving them the campaign finances, and they don't want to hurt those... There are many small-scale providers who do not care, including local radio and television stations, budding artists and performers, and hobbiests.
(5) Other existing digital rights management schemes represent proprietary, partial solutions that limit, rather than promote, consumers' access to the greatest variety of digital content possible
This is contrary. DRM systems are inherent limitations. The only way to promote consumer access is to remove such limitations. Citing Napster, when no RM was enforced the service flourished. When RM was required, the service went stagnant.
(9) The secure protection of digital content is a necessary precondition to facilitating and hastening the transition to high-definition television, which will benefit consumers.
DRM is not a requirement of the high-definition television standard, nor is it a technical requirement for HDTV equipment. As such, it is not a necessary precondition.
(14) When protected digital content is converted to analog for consumers, it is no longer protected and is subject to conversion into unprotected digital form that can in turn be copied or redistribute illegally.
All content must be converted into analog form for human interpretation. Although every step from creation to broadcast may be in digital format, media is light and sound when it reaches the human. To prevent the content from returning to analog form outside the human body, the industry must provide a direct transfer connection into the human brain, which is infeasable.
(12), (15) and (19) A solution to [these problems] is technologically feasible but will require government action, including a mandate to ensure its swift and ubiquitous adoption.
A solution to these issues (which are debated above) cannot be provided uniformly across all media, especially on the Internet which knows no political boundaries, nor does it respect any particular nation's laws. The culture of the Internet is inherently against regulation, the regulation that exists is primarily done by Requests For Comment, or RFCs, which suggest -- not require -- standard protocols and methodologies.
Section 3. (d) SECURITY SYSTEM STANDARDS. -- In achieving the goals of setting open security standards that will provide effective security for copyrighted works, the security system standards shall ensure, to the extent practicable, that --
(1) the standard security technologies are --
(A) reliable;
(B) renewable;
(C) resistant to attack; A good lesson in crypto would be appropriate here
(D) readily implemented; This is contrary to (c) above.
(E) modular;
(F) applicable in multiple technology platforms; This would be difficult
(G) extensible; What prevents manufacturer-specific extensions?
(H) upgradable;
(I) not cost prohibitive; and To whom? RIAA and MPIA, private businesses, startups, universities, AND hobbiests alike?
(2) any software portion of such standards is based on open source code. HUZZAH!
(c) ENCODING RULES. --
(1) LIMITATION ON THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS. -- In achieving the goal of promoting as many lawful uses of copyrighted works as possible, while preventing as much infringement as possible, the encoding rules shall take into account the limitations on the exclusive rights of copyright owners, including the fair use doctrine.
(2) PERSONAL USE COPIES. -- No person may apply a security measure that uses a standard security technology to prevent a lawful recipient from making a personal copy for lawful use in the home of programming at the time it is lawfully performed, on an over-the-air broadcast, premium or non-premium cable channel, or premium or non-premium satellite channel, by a television broadcast station (as defined in section 122 (j)(5)(A) of title 17, United States Code), a cables system (as defined in section 111(f) of such title), or a satellite carrier (as defined in section 119(d)(6) of such title).
I am probably mistaken, but doesn't fair use allow me to make multiple copies for personal use, for classroom/education use, or other uses, not just a single copy?
Section 3-(h)-(1) IN GENERAL. -- After security system standards have been established [...], representatives of digital device manufacturers, consumer groups, and copyright owners [...] may modify the standard security technology that adheres to the security system standards rules established under this section if those representatives determine that a change in the technology is necessary because -- (A) the technology in use has been compromised; or (B) technological improvements warrant upgrading the technology in use.
So basically even though the claim is this is government regulation, the industry determines when it needs changing as well as what changes need to be made. That sounds suspiciously like industrial regulation, not congressional regulation.
Section 4 -- An interactive computer service shall store and transmit with integrity any security measure associated with standard security technologies that is used in connection with copyrighted material such service transmits or stores.
No exceptions for bad transfers, bad media, or software errors? (If my transfer is interrupted, does FTP need to delete the half-transfer, or can I resume?)
SEC. 5. PROHIBITION ON SHIPMENT IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE OF NONCONFORMING DIGITAL MEDIA DEVICES.
In reading of the constitution, congress has many powers, but I am fairly sure this kind of restriction on interstate commerce is not one of them... The Constitution grants this right to the STATES, not CONGRESS..
Sec 6.(b) COMPLIANCE WITH ENCODING RULES. -- No person may knowingly apply to a copyrighted work, that has been distributed to the public, a security measure that uses a standard security technology in violation of the encoding rules adopted under section 3.
...
Sec. 8. The Federal Advisory Committee ACt (5 U.S.C. App.) does not apply to any committee, board, commission, council, conference, panel, task force, or other similar group of representatives of digital media devices and representatives of copyright owners convened for the purpose of developing the security system standards and encoding rules described in section
This is a deterrent to research. How can people (those not appointed by the Government or big industry be expected to develop better encoding rules without testing the rules on other, copyrighted content? Presuming that content must be previously encoded, researchers must either break this section or illigally decode the works. Researches will then have two options -- Either obtain licenses from Big Industry, or perform research illigally.
In summary, the bill meets most of the goals stated in the purpose, provide the private sector (big business) with protection measures (anti-competition, anti-consumer, and anti-piracy) enforced by Federal Regulation to protect content. But it does not promote broadband, (that would be along the lines of a price cap on broadband services) nor does it promote the transition to digital television (which is required by 2006 anyway).
Of course, there are the standard /. disclaimers that I am not anything and I don't represent anybody, but you are asking for help in logical arguments against specific points.
Enjoy!
The biggest benefit is that it should be more difficult to break because crackers don't know enough about the algorithm. The biggest drawback (assuming the algorithm really is secure) is that scientific trust would be difficult to gain.
Regarding offering many locked 'boxes', many cryptographers are working on security with 'unlocked boxes'. There have been algorithms based on 'chaff', or garbage infomration included with legitimate information, that are relativly secure. Proposals have included combining multiple message sources and segmenting all the messages into similar (very small) pieces and attaching a public-key-signed signature to each of them. The messages are never actually encrypted, but they cannot be recovered in order without being able to open the signatures to re-assemble them.
Getting back on the topic of their routine, it is a bad algorithm (a bogus OTP), and they have already taken a beating on /. about it.
How long will it be before we all just throw out our tvs and use the PC for DVD playback in our home theates? Get a SB Live! or other 5.1 sound card and hook up a digital projector. You could replace your home theater. Just imageine games on that...
Of course, that assumes that the restrictions on PCs don't make all of that illegal.
I don't think it is that hard to understand. The entertainment industry offers bribes\b\b\b\b\b\b donations to US Legislators of about $40M USD in 2000. That works out to an average donation of about $70,000 USD, or more than I make in a year.
Taking that into consideration, I wouldn't blame it on stupidity or evil, but greed.
I can hide it AND lock it, so you have to do much more work.
Obvously they either forgot to run the conversation through their crypto team, or their crypto team needs quite a bit more schooling.
I'm in that situation right now. It was fairly simple.
First, at work I had already insisted that certain clauses be taken out of the 'standard contract' [ownership of all work plus discluse of work for one year after termination], and replaced them with better terms [ownership of all work related to the core business at that time, except the open source projects and academic work in detail].
Further, I added comments that incidental use of company time and property may occur, and such use would be excused.
Next, I contacted the University's Technology Transfer office (the office that wants money from everybody) and told them I was working in the same field as my degree. They said I just need to work out an agreement between my advisor and the department. So instead of the University's clause that all ideas developed beloged to them, we made an agreement that works developed for the courses and dissertation belong to them, with a similar incidental use statement.
I had an IP laywer discuss the importance of the 'incedental use' clause. Without it, the employer could claim that a single phone call would entitle them to your work, since you used their resources. Same with posting to slashdot -- it is an incedental use.
Whether it violates the DMCA is another issue. The courts ruled recently against Sony where developers reverse engineered portions of the Playstation to get access to underlying protocols so that developers could create an emulator for the PC. Even though the reverse engineering violated some terms of the DMCA, there were two important facts facts: (1) the new product was legal, and (2) they attempted to obtain the information from Sony, but they refused to offer it.
It appears that this case is the same. The defendant was unsatisfied with a product. The producer was unable or unwilling to provide the desired product. The defendant was forced to reverse engineer that product in order to offer the desired services. The only remaining question is whether Blizzard applied for a patant for their network protocols. (unlikely.) If they did not, they do not own the IP of the protocol (since the protocol is a method and must be patented, not copyrighted) and therefore Bnetd is fully within their rights to publish it.