Is it possible that RealPlayer connects to real.com to display it's web portal? I don't use it myself, but I seem to remember RealPlayer displaying the web portal by default.
Equally, I'd be prepared to bet that msn.com and aol.com have such high rankings based mostly on their use as the default start page for two popular internet browsers, as opposed to explicit user desire to either surf there or use them as a home page based on anything other than lazyness.
When warez groups begin to realise the effects of publicity, maybe we'll start seeing scene releases without file.names.that.are.redundantly.long.and.tagged.wi th.the.Gr0uP_N4ME.rar and juvenile NFOs filled with ASCII art that looked outdated ten years ago.
In groups that are dedicated to the free distribution of other people's content, why are they so keen to show that a release is "theirs"?
Although it's not exactly self-evident that a greater focus purely on stock price, ignoring all other business, financial, social, moral and environmental consequences is the direction we want to see higher-ups going in.
Your argument only applies in cases of the music being ripped from cd or downloaded illegally (i.e a copy) - that would be a case of the vendor making personal backups, then selling them assuming the customer owns the original cd - but a far more complicated legal area is where the music has been purchased as legal downloads, then put onto the ipod. In that case, it is the original product being resold, unaltered. I would assume that since the customer bought the right to playback the music, they can also sell it - but it would be very hard to establish whether or not the music had been purchased legally, and also whether or not it had been copied.
Anything placed on a website is published. Anything published is public, therefore access is de facto authorised.
You're making spurious claims entirely unsupported by the law in question. Again, to quote from the law in question;
(2) The intent a person has to have to commit an offence under this section need not be directed at--
(a) any particular program or data;
(b) a program or data of any particular kind; or
(c) a program or data held in any particular computer.
Data that isn't accesible by the internet is clearly a "particular kind of data". Saying that storing something on a webserver is publishing it because it can be accessed over the internet is like saying that posting something to someone by mistake gives them the right to read it, or that leaving your company door unlocked gives your competitors the right to examine all your company documents. Making access possible is not the same as authorising access.
Now obviously you can put access controls on a website. But then you've taken a step to define authorised access. If you give someone a username and password, you've granted access. If someone obtains a username or password without permission, that's unauthorised. If someone bypasses this access control (and this bypass would probably have to be non-trivial; so if for example someone could cut and paste a URL which went directly to the material without being prompted, this would not apply) then it is unauthorised.
From where did you get this assertion that unless it's secured, it's freely accesible by all? If I leave my bike unlocked, am I "publishing" it? Do I have to keep a lock on it all the time to "define authorised access"?
And from where did you get this assertion that some security controls count and some don't? Limewire Pro used to be protected by just a hidden url. The content streams of many porn sites are simply hidden urls. Is this copyrighted content available to all with no legal ramifications? What kind of rational legal basis are you using to construct these bizarre claims? If you think that typing in a url can't be a crime, take a gander at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/11/tsunami_ha cker_followup/ (old news I know, but it appears some people didn't get the message.
You are essentially creating an entirely new legal standard, that property needs to be protected to be owned. I call bullshit on that, especially if you're going to then differentiate between different levels of protection.
If my reading is correct it means a court gets to decide what is or is not authorised based on the circumstances
There is nothing in the law to suggest that. The law states that securing anauthorised access intentionally is a criminal offence. I'm not saying that's right, I'm saying it's stupid. Leaving it up to a court to decide when it should be illegal is a total misunderstanding of what laws are for. I'm not saying that a court would find someone guilty for accessing a website, only that this law gives them the technical power to, and that makes an ass of the law.
No it would not. If the owner of the priveleged data put it on an unsecured website that is their problem
Can you explain to me how the law in question in any way suggests that claim?
just as if they printed it and left it in public view on their front desk.
Yeah, I agree, if it was print it would be ridiculous... that's why I think this is an entirely stupid law.
The offence was committed when the website owner obtained the data without authorisation from the data owner (and assumes they used a computer to do so).
...and what part of the that makes it necessary for the website to have some kind of security feauture? A website is not "public domain" in legal terms, if I publish something on my website, I still hold copyright for it, I'm still liable for it, I still own it. If someone comes onto my webserver and accesses data, I'm not "authorising" them to do it simply by not securing it. That's like saying I'm "authorising" someone to come into my house by leaving the door unlocked. The law makes absolutely no mention of the data having to be secured. Not password-protecting something does not give implicit authorisation to view it. Where does your arbitrary distinction come in?
It's computers systems, not computer material. I assume you're reading this as meaning any digital data, e.g. so by making a copy of something or bypassing software security on your own machine you're breaking the law...that isn't the case (well it may be under copyright law, but not the CMA)...By putting up a public website or posting on a public bulletin board you're authorising everyone to access your content, but as said the CMA is about the system hosting the content, not the content itself.
1.--(1) A person is guilty of an offence if--
(a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer;
(b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and
(c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case.
No mention of circumventing any kind of security protection. The act simply states that causing a computer to access data you aren't authorised to access is an offence.
In what way does putting up a website authorise the public to access it? There's loads of stuff kept in websites (credit card records, etc) that I'm not allowed to access. There's a common sense distinction between a public website (i.e. one with no security measures blocking access) and a private, protected website, but there's no distinction under this law. Under this act, starting an unsecured website containing priviledged data would allow you to prosecute anyone who viewed it.
I'm not saying that any judge would accept such a prosecution, I'm simply pointing to it to show that this law is complete bollocks. Anything as vague as "unauthorised access" without specific mention of the process of authorisation of the necessery presence of mechanisms to prevent unauthorised access has no place in a law.
The Computer Misuse Act is a rare example of a really *good* law which is (1) broad enough to capture most offenders (2) easily tested for applicabilty i.e. not complicated with exceptions, extensions, etc and (3) not so vague that it is open to abuse.
From TFA: The CMA, which was introduced in 1990, does not specifically include a denial-of-service attack as a criminal offense, something some members of the U.K. parliament want changed. However, it does explicitly outlaw the "unauthorized access" and "unauthorized modification" of computer material. Section 3 of the act, under which the defendant was charged, concerns unauthorized data modification and tampering with systems.
You think that a law that outlaws "unauthorized [sic] access" of computer material is a good law? Authorised by whom? Some arbitrary publisher of material? Why not set up www.you're-not-allowed-to-look-at-this.com and launch a criminal suit against anyone who has a peek? In fact, you are officially NOT AUTHORISED to read this message. Please give post your e-mail address so I can send details of the criminal suit against you 5 million times.
Your viewing habits are minor compared to what you search for.
you can leave a tv screen on while you go out and not be actively watching, but google knows every click you already make.
Keeping your searches private is pretty easy; disabling cookies, using proxies, using TOR, using a scraped version of google, etc.
Keeping yourself private from a recording service that requires registration/logging in is a great deal more difficult.
But it's more or less inconsequential anyways seeing as this article is a fantasy and Google won't enter the DVR market anytime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it possible that RealPlayer connects to real.com to display it's web portal? I don't use it myself, but I seem to remember RealPlayer displaying the web portal by default.
Equally, I'd be prepared to bet that msn.com and aol.com have such high rankings based mostly on their use as the default start page for two popular internet browsers, as opposed to explicit user desire to either surf there or use them as a home page based on anything other than lazyness.
Google cached the site http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:cQX3U8xCBCgJ:w ww.johnhowardpm.org/+&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=1
When warez groups begin to realise the effects of publicity, maybe we'll start seeing scene releases without file.names.that.are.redundantly.long.and.tagged.wi th.the.Gr0uP_N4ME.rar and juvenile NFOs filled with ASCII art that looked outdated ten years ago.
In groups that are dedicated to the free distribution of other people's content, why are they so keen to show that a release is "theirs"?
Although it's not exactly self-evident that a greater focus purely on stock price, ignoring all other business, financial, social, moral and environmental consequences is the direction we want to see higher-ups going in.
Your argument only applies in cases of the music being ripped from cd or downloaded illegally (i.e a copy) - that would be a case of the vendor making personal backups, then selling them assuming the customer owns the original cd - but a far more complicated legal area is where the music has been purchased as legal downloads, then put onto the ipod. In that case, it is the original product being resold, unaltered. I would assume that since the customer bought the right to playback the music, they can also sell it - but it would be very hard to establish whether or not the music had been purchased legally, and also whether or not it had been copied.
You're making spurious claims entirely unsupported by the law in question. Again, to quote from the law in question;
(2) The intent a person has to have to commit an offence under this section need not be directed at-- (a) any particular program or data; (b) a program or data of any particular kind; or (c) a program or data held in any particular computer.
Data that isn't accesible by the internet is clearly a "particular kind of data". Saying that storing something on a webserver is publishing it because it can be accessed over the internet is like saying that posting something to someone by mistake gives them the right to read it, or that leaving your company door unlocked gives your competitors the right to examine all your company documents. Making access possible is not the same as authorising access.
Now obviously you can put access controls on a website. But then you've taken a step to define authorised access. If you give someone a username and password, you've granted access. If someone obtains a username or password without permission, that's unauthorised. If someone bypasses this access control (and this bypass would probably have to be non-trivial; so if for example someone could cut and paste a URL which went directly to the material without being prompted, this would not apply) then it is unauthorised.
From where did you get this assertion that unless it's secured, it's freely accesible by all? If I leave my bike unlocked, am I "publishing" it? Do I have to keep a lock on it all the time to "define authorised access"?
And from where did you get this assertion that some security controls count and some don't? Limewire Pro used to be protected by just a hidden url. The content streams of many porn sites are simply hidden urls. Is this copyrighted content available to all with no legal ramifications? What kind of rational legal basis are you using to construct these bizarre claims? If you think that typing in a url can't be a crime, take a gander at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/11/tsunami_ha cker_followup/ (old news I know, but it appears some people didn't get the message.
You are essentially creating an entirely new legal standard, that property needs to be protected to be owned. I call bullshit on that, especially if you're going to then differentiate between different levels of protection.
If my reading is correct it means a court gets to decide what is or is not authorised based on the circumstances
There is nothing in the law to suggest that. The law states that securing anauthorised access intentionally is a criminal offence. I'm not saying that's right, I'm saying it's stupid. Leaving it up to a court to decide when it should be illegal is a total misunderstanding of what laws are for. I'm not saying that a court would find someone guilty for accessing a website, only that this law gives them the technical power to, and that makes an ass of the law.
Can you explain to me how the law in question in any way suggests that claim?
just as if they printed it and left it in public view on their front desk.
Yeah, I agree, if it was print it would be ridiculous... that's why I think this is an entirely stupid law.
The offence was committed when the website owner obtained the data without authorisation from the data owner (and assumes they used a computer to do so).
From the Computer Misuse Act http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1990/Ukpga_1990001 8_en_2.htm#mdiv1
1.--(1) A person is guilty of an offence if-- (a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer; (b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and (c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case.
No mention of circumventing any kind of security protection. The act simply states that causing a computer to access data you aren't authorised to access is an offence.
In what way does putting up a website authorise the public to access it? There's loads of stuff kept in websites (credit card records, etc) that I'm not allowed to access. There's a common sense distinction between a public website (i.e. one with no security measures blocking access) and a private, protected website, but there's no distinction under this law. Under this act, starting an unsecured website containing priviledged data would allow you to prosecute anyone who viewed it.
I'm not saying that any judge would accept such a prosecution, I'm simply pointing to it to show that this law is complete bollocks. Anything as vague as "unauthorised access" without specific mention of the process of authorisation of the necessery presence of mechanisms to prevent unauthorised access has no place in a law.
From TFA:
The CMA, which was introduced in 1990, does not specifically include a denial-of-service attack as a criminal offense, something some members of the U.K. parliament want changed. However, it does explicitly outlaw the "unauthorized access" and "unauthorized modification" of computer material. Section 3 of the act, under which the defendant was charged, concerns unauthorized data modification and tampering with systems.
You think that a law that outlaws "unauthorized [sic] access" of computer material is a good law? Authorised by whom? Some arbitrary publisher of material? Why not set up www.you're-not-allowed-to-look-at-this.com and launch a criminal suit against anyone who has a peek? In fact, you are officially NOT AUTHORISED to read this message. Please give post your e-mail address so I can send details of the criminal suit against you 5 million times.
Keeping your searches private is pretty easy; disabling cookies, using proxies, using TOR, using a scraped version of google, etc.
Keeping yourself private from a recording service that requires registration/logging in is a great deal more difficult.
But it's more or less inconsequential anyways seeing as this article is a fantasy and Google won't enter the DVR market anytime soon.