'Battling Censorware'

Lawrence Lessig has written a short and sweet essay, Battling Censorware , explaining why the DMCA allows Mattel to claim the rights to CPHack. He hits the nail on the head. I found myself reading this sentence over and over: "code that cracks a protection device is criminal under the DMCA even if the use of the copyrighted material that the code enables would be fair use."

A Small Bit On Freedom

This may be one the more highly rated AC posts of all time.

Andy Walton wrote this, many years back.

======

> Right. Freedom without responsibility is no freedom at all.

And responsibility without freedom is not responsibility at all.
Totalitarian control of human beings means the death of responsibility,
as everyone is "just following orders."

<engage rant mode>

I would rather be a brain-dead junkie in a gutter with a sticky copy of
Hustler as a result of my OWN stupidity than a clean and well-fed
automaton in a tiki-taki house with my actions dictated by you or
another self-anointed earthly representative of God's Will ((C), All
Rights Reserved). I want to run through parking lots like a lunatic,
fall and scrape my knees. I want to color outside the lines. I want to
cover myself with lime Jello and run down the street shouting random
lines from Finnegan's Wake (are there any non-random lines in Finnegan's
Wake?). If I want to smack my skull against the wall, damn it, it's my
skull and my wall. If I want to sing the Leave it to Beaver theme in
Esperanto while whacking off with topless pictures of Sandra Bernhart
and standing ankle-deep in a galvanized steel tub full of Kraft Honey
Dijon salad dressing, that's none of your business.

And if this means that I'll be shot as an anarchist when the revolution
comes, so be it; I'd rather have the worm-eaten stench of a private tomb
than the prim, sterile, chrome-lined common tomb which people like you
want to make of the Earth. And when they decide that you're not quite
orthodox enough, I'll save you the next spot over up against the wall.

<rant mode off>

Clear enough?

Re:You Own What You Buy

> If you help or facilitate the breaking of
> copyright protection, you have violated the DCMA.

This ain't nothing new, actually. Copier manufacturers, cable stealers, etc. have been getting this for years. But cable is an ongoing service; DVD's are a product you buy. The idea that you're only allowed to use a product you buy in ways that the manufacturer has deemed profitable to them--and that you're not allowed to give the manufacturer the finger--yeah, that's new.

--Dan

AI

Censorware is a natural application for artificial intelligence if ever there was one. In fact you cannot have effective Censorware without employing a reasonably mature AI.

All the censorware really has to do is read through each page and look at each picture before putting it on screen to figure out whether it is porn or not. It takes some skill to know the difference between an artistic nude and a XXX pix.

Personally I like the whole human supervision thing. Let your kids know that mom or dad or the made or big sis could just walk in and see what he is viewing before s/he has a chance to react. More importantly provide that strong moral base that lets a child not really care about porn.

This reminds me of the situation with Alcohol. In the west liqueur is restricted from the kids. Mom and pop drink but they don't dare let the child near the stuff. The result is that he sneaks off to sip a little while nobody is looking and grows up into a drunk lying across the barroom door. Jewish kids on the other hand get wine at major feasts ( Passover, Wedding etc... ). The result is that they get to see this as something they can have if they want to but which has a foul taste. The result is fewer drunks.

Anybody want to take bets as to the relationship between censorship and the higher rates of all sexual dysfunction in the US? If not for America, it wouldn't have occurred to me that there is a link between sex and chains.

Re:really?

It is a US law but that doesn't stop countries like the UK (where I live) to follow suit (pun intended :)

We have our own bill of weirdness here, the RIP bill which is designed to allow aceess by the authorities of encrypted data - it's supposed to help catch rapists and child molesters etc. The out come of it is such that they can force you to hand over your keys etc or they will chuck you in gaol for a coupel of years - if you've lost or forgotten the key, you have to prove it (how does one prove they've forgotten a key?).

Problem here is that 2 years is less that a sentence for child molesting etc.......

For more information, go here [stand.org.uk]

Erm, my point was that this bill will hopefully be ruled against the EU human rights acts :)

So there you go - it's not just the States that puts out stupid, short sighted bills!!

Troc

Re:"Effective" access control

I think a more plausable attack on these lines would be "It doesn't effectively control access, because the access control is utterly undiscriminating in the case of fair use - it blocks fair use as well as unauthorised access, therefore it is not effective within the parameters that it must operate. It violates the First Sale principle."

Re:The problem of not caring...

This in an excellent analogy. What if it had been illegal to critically examine the Corvair in Unsafe at Any Speed?

-jwb

Mattel

Back when the CyberPatrol thing was going on, I sent a very polite letter to Mattel telling them that I would no longer by any of their products because they were using their product to effectively censor criticism of their product etc. Finally, 2 days ago, I recieved a formletter from Mattel basically saying "for questions on our products, call this number"....

Great public relations, ignore the problem and it'l go away....

-=Bob

Is the government also restricted by DMCA?

OK, let me see if I understand this. A child pornographer has collected a gigabyte worth of disgusting pictures. He took the pictures himself and copyrighted them. He encrypts the pictures with a weak encryption scheme and sells them to other perverts. The FBI wants to catch this sicko. Does the FBI violate DMCA if they decrypt the pictures?

Re:Try this sentence

In other words, Lessig was wrong, the DMCA does not prohibit fair use.

Lessig is right. DMCA does not prohibit fair use. But (and this is a really big BUT) DMCA does prohibit unauthorized access for whatever purpose, be it fair use or not.

Think about some beer in a fridge. You can drink the beer -- no problem, it's legal. However, opening the fridge happens to be illegal. No, nobody is trying to keep you from drinking that beer, no, no, you have full rights to this beer, it's all yours -- you just can't open the fridge.

Kaa

Non Americans: The DMCA comes soon to your door!

Here is the preamble of the DMCA:

To amend title 17, United States Code, to implement the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty and Performances and Phonograms Treaty, and for other purposes.

As you can see, the DMCA is the result of a World treaty on intellectual property. It is not an only-American thing. It's just that America implemented it first, but soon everybody in the World will be hit by it.

Be prepared, and don't laugh at Americans.

Same old, same old

<i>It's this attitude that you have a right to pirate stuff and crack other people's programs that has led to laws like the DMCA and UCITA. They were created in response to the illegal activities of computer hackers to provide a measure of security for other people's works. </i>

This argument suffers from the same problem that every other pro-DMCA argument I've seen has.

If these activities were <i>illegal</i>, then why why were <i>new</i> laws necessary?

This is like the argument that without DMCA, it was legal to do the equivalent of breaking into a bookstore to steal the books. It fundamentally misrepresents what DMCA is about. DMCA is not about making piracy illegal. Piracy was illegal before DMCA, and it is no <i>more</i> illegal after. DMCA is about giving the copyright holders' lawyers more powerful tools to combat piracy.

So far so good, but there's an old Chinese proverb: many laws make many criminals. When you hand somebody a powerful legal weapon, you have to ask how purpose specific is it? The problem with DMCA is that the tools it gives the copyright holders aren't particularly beneficial to preventing piracy, but are very powerful in restricting the normal, non-infringing and heretofore legal use by consumers. Of course, this is economically beneficial to the producers of copyrighted materials. Otherwise they would not want it so badly. However, just because it increases the profits of copyright holders is not sufficient to make it a good law.

Re:The problem of not caring...

the public at large is totally unaware that their rights are being taken away. In the censoreware example, people for the most part actually think that it is beneficial for their children to have censoreware installed in public places. And like much of the everyday technology they use (toasters, cars, TVs) they expect that it will just work. It never occurs to them that it could be blocking something legitimate!

However what is actually being taken away is the right of people to examine such products and tell people if they actually work. As I have said before I'm sure the US motor industry is wishing they had though of lobbying for the same kind of laws in the 1960's.
Maybe in needs explaining that an absolute right to examine and critque any product is an essential part of any free society. With the only people who benefit from silencing of critical examination of any product, be it a car, a piece of software or a pen are those who produce shoddy products and falsely advertise them.

Try this sentence

From the DMCA [eff.org], section 1201, B:

The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) [anti-circumvention] shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title...

In other words, Lessig was wrong, the DMCA does not prohibit fair use.

Of course, it goes on to say that it's up to the Librarian of Congress (?!) to decide, in advance, what constitutes circumvention for the purpose of fair use. That hasn't happened yet. But then again, as others have pointed out, the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA haven't taken effect yet anyway -- not until October.

Glad I don't live in the states

This kind of article scares me.

American law has always bent the way of the corparation and ensures that they make as much money as possible, at the expense of the rights of the individual.

The only real case hear has nothing to do with "protecting the morals of our youth"... It was a huge embaressment that a couple of programmers made a tool to render the software useless. Would you as a parent or an institution buy software that was easy to circumvent?

I offer my congrats to the authors of CPHack on GLPing it and then seeling your "rights" to the program to Mattel, that has to be the funnyest legal hack I have ever heard of.

Frankly what we need to protect the morals of our children are parents that actually spend time with their kids, not plop them down infront of a TV or computer as an e-babysitter. If we take the time to teach our children right from wrong in the first place, such big-brother-esque software as CyberPatrol would not be neccessary.

If mattel wanted to "protect the morals of our children" They should pull their entire barbie line of products, for those give young girls a wrong idea of beauty, that will eventually lead to problems such as Anorexia and Bulemia. Mattel and it's group of companies sell many toys that espouse violence... Mattel has never cared about morals in the first place, only the bottom line.

Re:The Problem is

If I buy a car, I can replace whatever part I want by an aftermarket equivalent. Suppose the original lightbulbs in the car cost $15 a pop and have an average lifetime of 100 hours. There's an aftermarket bulb that costs $2 a pop and have a lifetime of 10000 hours.

Now the car manufacturer puts a little lock on the lightbulb compartment, and gives keys only to authorized shops. You say "Screw them" -- and rightly so! -- and break the lock.

Now the car manufacturer puts a little digital lock on the lightbulb compartment. You say "Screw them"...but it's you who gets screwed. Why? Because they wrote a little haiku inside the lightbulb compartment. And you've circumvented a technological measure in order to gain access to the copyrighted work.

Ok maybe you can prove in the court that you didn't really want to access their copyrighted work. All you wanted is to change a lightbulb. Maybe. But the lawyer will cost you much more than the lifetime supply of original lightbulbs.
--

Re:Mattel

Actually, now it seems to be "sell the problem and it'll go away". See this article [fool.com]. Mattel is trying to sell The Learning Company, producer of CyberPatrol.

Let's hope that whoever buys The Learning Company has a better understanding of the value of opening the blocked sites list than Mattel did. Anybody know if the CPHack settlement was with Mattel or The Learning Company (or both)? I wonder if the terms of the settlement will pass to the company buying The Learning Company.

Re:Slightly Offtopic . . .

This reminds me of one of those weird little
moments that I had last summer.

I was walking through Harvard Square (Cambridge
MA). I saw a man dressed up vageuly like "Uncle
Sam" with a big pot and a sign about legalizing
marijuana.

I went over and threw a dollar in his pot to
show my support, then he turned to me and said
"good but thats not going to help much. If
you really want to help, save up and buy us
a Senator or two, thats how you get
things done"

Re:THIS IS STUPID!!!!

> For christ's sake, i thought this was america.
> this shit pisses me off.

You thought this was america? Well thats what
you are suposed to think. Big money buys legal
force. Thats the way things have worked for
several centuries, all over the globe. Where
have you been?

There are basically 2 ways anything gets done in
a republic like ours.

1) Someone throws a shitload of money at congress
and gets themselves what they want (common)
or
2) Enough people get together that the people in
congress realise that if they do not ignore #1 and
do what these people want, they will not be
re-elected. (very rare)

Barring those two, its a crapshoot of mostly
doubletalk and bullshit to make people think
they are making a difference.

As RMS said in his recent interview (no I am not
a blind RMS follower, I just happen to think he
hit the nail right on the head) there is a big
tendancy of people in power to ignore "individual
rights" unless its the "right to do something
profitable"

(if you don't believe this...look at the absolute
beating that Free Speech has taken in congress the
past 5 years or so... CDA I, CDAII, Methamphetamin
Anti-proliferation act, DMCA. The people in power
are very willing to disregard individual
freedom if it meets their political agenda.)

Re:Your analogy is false

No no no.

If a consumer decides, based on information that
you give them, not to buy a product. Then you have
not "stolen" from the company.

The company did not "lose money" they simply did
not "make more". No company has a right to any
money that they do not already have.

Under you rlogic any sort of consumer protection
advisories should be outlawed.

I am sorry, but a consumer has a RIGHT to know
about a product before they buy it. They have a
RIGHT to be able to make sure that it doesn't do
nasty things. Furthermore, they have a RIGHT to
NOT buy it, if they find that it does something
other than what it is advertised as doing.

If the company loses money because people find
out what it REALLY does, then it is their own
fault for making a bad product. Consumers have
a right to know about these things.

There is no such thing as a "Right to make a
profit". If they want profit, they should have
to work for it, and make something worth buying,
not just make a bad product and supress any
dissenting opionions.

Just like the movies.

Anybody remember what movies were like in the 50's? A few easily offended people decided they didn't want anybody to see anything naughty at the picture show, and so the movie industry had to put up with a couple of decades of official censorship by people whose self-appointed duty was protecting the morals of our innocent children.

Let's hope it takes them a little less than 20 years to realize they're making the same mistake ..

I think there's a simple technical solution

to the DMCA problem.

What is needed is a programming language that closely resembles English (or other natural language). Not like COBOL, much closer. So closely that programs in that language would be (mostly) correct English texts. It is not necessary that this language will be easy to program in. OTOH it should be very easy to read what is written in it, even for non-programmers.

Here's how it should look like:

1. Let X be content of file "censorware.exe"
2. Let Y be byte number 2745 of X
3. Let Z be Y added with 73091
4. Let T be byte number Z of X

Publish that in an (hypothetical) Online Journal of Applied Cryptology (a refined version of sci.crypt [sci.crypt]).

Now that's speech, isn't it?

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. I'm not even an American.
--

You Own What You Buy

[Damnit. Two really bitter Slashdot posts in a row. This doesn't bode well.]

You know, the more I think about this, the more I'm beginning to realize this is really the argument we need to start making.

There are lots of complicated arguments I could make, but I think I'd rather just leave it at--

If I bought it, it's mine. If I want to sell it, it's mine to sell. If I want break it into little tiny pieces, if I want to put it in the microwave, if I want to worship it as a proclaimation that God himself is going to touch down in a UFO on Main Street at 2:48PM, damnit, I don't need whoever sold it to me's permission to believe in whatever the heck I want to in their product!

See, that's the nice thing about capitalism. There's no central planner to say that you have to sit here, or go there, or be nice. There's no excessive transmission of executable context, to speak in geek terms. You pay the cash, you get the product.

Without passing judgement on the rightness or wrongness of communism, there's some delicious irony in that while Open Sourcers are supposedly the biggest backers of communism, we're the ones screaming our brains out over software freedom while the biggest companies in the world lick their chops on the concept of being The Central Planner.

After all, what are these newfangled "circumvention-resistent" devices but a yoke against which our core freedoms as consumers are jerked away? Imagine, for a moment, that Master(a fine purveyor of padlocks) was powerful enough to extract a licensing fee from any makers of lockers, safes, and doors. Imagine you needed to prove, *to the lock*, that the object it was being placed on was licensed before you'd get your key.

Lemme tell you what'd happen, real quick: People would figure out how to bust the key--which they bought, when they bought that lock--out, so they could go about their business of doing whatever they damn well pleased with *their* *property*.

The only reason these laws are getting passed is because people seem to think this is limited to just tech stuff.

We're talking about *basic* *freedoms*, here. We're talking about *the right to private property*. When I buy a master lock, I buy the lock, and I buy the key.

When I buy a DVD, I buy the lock, and I buy the key. They're right there on the disc. Sure, they're made difficult to get to, but I've got 80 head screwdrivers for the reasons of custom screw designs *BUILT* to make it difficult for me to get to things. But ya know what?

If I wanna break my car, it's my car to break. If I wanna throw my DVDs in the Microwave, it's my aluminum to fry. If I wanna use the keys on that disc for something The Manufacturer Just Wouldn't Approve of, damnit, it's my disc, they sold it to me, they took my money, they can go away. If I steal the keys off of some DVD I haven't bought, then I'm a thief. If I use the keys on some DVD I bought...

THOSE.
WERE.
MY.
KEYS.

I'm going to sleep. Maybe when I wake up this nightmare of idiocy will be over.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

DeCSS & CPHack aren't illegal until October!

"code that cracks a protection device is criminal under the DMCA even if the use of the copyrighted material that the code enables would be fair use."

`Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems

`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.

(emphasis added)

Full text:

http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/DMCA/ hr2281_dmca_law_19981020_pl105-30 4.html [eff.org]

The problem of not caring...

The largest problem facing those of us who are aware of issues like this (Censoreware, DVDs, the DMCA in general, etc...) is that the public at large is totally unaware that their rights are being taken away. In the censoreware example, people for the most part actually think that it is beneficial for their children to have censoreware installed in public places. And like much of the everyday technology they use (toasters, cars, TVs) they expect that it will just work. It never occurs to them that it could be blocking something legitimate! In the case of the DVD issues, very few americans have any need to play a DVD from another region. After all-- our region sees *almost* all of the movies (there are quite a few Japanese imports I would love to get my hands on, but the average American isn't interested) they would want to see. And how many non-geek friends who want to play DVDs do you know that have ONLY an unusual OS and a DVD-ROM? Not many.

I'd really like to know how we can get a clear, concise, understandable explanation out to the public that will motivate them! I've tried explaining the DVD issue to people, and mostly they don't care one way or the other. When it comes to censoreware, they are a little more concerned, but it always comes back to "I'm not affected, and it's probably good for my kids."

Ideas are welcome! If you've had success getting these points across, let me know!

Don't just complain

Now that we've done all the complaining about the law and the DCMA, next step is to get involved.Here's how, Constructive communication to the folks who can make a difference beats whining every time.

Electronic Frontier Foundation [eff.org]
US House of Representatives [house.gov]
US Senate [senate.gov]
Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC) [gilc.org]
Internet Free Expression Alliance (IFEA) [ifea.net]
Digital Future Coalition (DFC) [dfc.org]
TRUSTe Privacy Policy Certification Program [truste.org]