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Censorship Your Rights Online

Felten & Co. Present SDMI Findings, Finally 87

Posted by timothy from the knocking-down-facades dept.
chill writes: "Princeton scientist Dr. Edward Felten and his colleagues presented their paper entitled 'Reading Between the Lines: Lessons From an SDMI Challenge' at the Usenix Security Symposium. CNN has an article. This is the paper that the RIAA threatened legal action (DMCA) over in the past, if he made his findings public. They have since backed off their threats." Newsforge is carrying a piece on the same thing that goes into a bit more depth, and links to coverage of yesterday's press conference, and the Standard has a decent piece on it as well.
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Felten & Co. Present SDMI Findings, Finally More

Felten & Co. Present SDMI Findings, Finally

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  • The presentation was interesting, if you are an EE studying practical applications of signal processing. By applying standard SP techniques to the sample files, Felten and crew were able to discover all kinds of hidden information buried within. These are standard computer algorithms such as Fast Fourier Transforms, echo detection, and statistical analysis. Nothing magical, mystical, patented, or even super secret. Normal curricula for 2nd year EE students, statisticians, and maybe some CS majors.

    The best part started about 40 minutes into the presentation. One of the panel members (I can't remember his name) gave an analysis of section 12.01 of the U.S.Code, broken down paragraph by paragraph. There was a good summary of the DMCA, which exposed it clearly enough for laymen to understand it is not a copyright law, but a "para-copyright law". The distinction is that it doesn't directly change existing laws, but modifies the contract between copyright holders and consumers. Very clear and well spoken, this speaker is someone who has clearly given the speech repeatedly and knows exactly how to present the information for maximum impact.

    If you download the presentation, at least take the time to watch that 10 minute section. It will give you the verbal ammo needed to start convincing people you know the basis of why the DMCA is bad.

    the AC
    [The next section is the EFF lawyer saying "ummm" about 50 times per minute, and completely losing the audience]
  • Since RIAA backed down and Felton got to present his research, we may have lost the best case we had to try and get section 1201 of the DMCA overturned. :(

  • Interesting Parallel to the Security Discolsure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16, 2001 @04:22PM (#2118280)
    I just saw an EFF [eff.org] press release [eff.org] on this. Felton is quoted as saying "Not only in computer science, but also across all scientific fields, skeptical analysis of technical claims made by others, and the presentation of detailed evidence to support such analysis, is the heart of the scientific method. To outlaw such analysis is to outlaw the scientific method itself." And the article goes on to talk about efforts taken by industry to quash publication of flaws in their security.

    The stance being taken by the industry to "protect" copyright is amazingly similar to the idea discussed earlier that publishing security flaws helps the Black Hats [slashdot.org]. If nobody is allowed to talk about it, nothing bad can happen. Of course, in this case, we (the end users) probably want something bad to happen to the corporations. But not talking isn't a solution to either problem.

  • citizens (Score:2, Interesting)

    by stu72 ( 96650 )
    "This is where the EFF lives and where many of you live -- we live on the cutting edge," she said. "We're looking at problems that actually haven't hit home to the consumer yet. That's where we always try to be ... until everyone else catches up."

    I'm astounded that even the EFF reduces all human activity to, "consumption" I did not donate money to the EFF to be called a consumer and if anything would help the debate about our rights in the electronic age (EFF's alleged mission) it would be to recognize the rights we are looking for are citizen's rights, not consumers.

    I just finished writing my email to Cindy Cohn a the EFF (cindy@eff.org), and I encourage others to follow-suit.

    Feel free to use:

    Thanks for all your work for the EFF - I recently became a member and I'm pleased with the EFF's support of the Dimitry & Felten cases.

    I'm a little non-plussed though, to see the EFF using language that, IMO, do nothing to help the world recognize the need for ciziten's rights in cyberspace. To wit:

    > "This is where the EFF lives and where many of you live -- we live on > the cutting edge," she said. "We're looking at problems that actually > haven't hit home to the consumer yet. That's where we always try to be > ... until everyone else catches up."

    I'm a great many things in my life, but "consumer" is right near the bottom of it. I consume what I need to consume in order to do the things that are higher on the list, like be a good citizen and contribute to my community. If we allow ourselves to be called consumers, we will only be able to fight for "consumers rights". I don't want consumers rights, I want citizen's rights. I want to be recognized as a living, thinking, articulate member of society, not a consumer.

    I know it may seem like a minor point, and I know that "consumer" has become popular media slang for the common man, but I don't think it's a positive trend and I feel that it's a trend that will only hurt the causes that EFF stands for.

    I humbly suggest the EFF do justice to the people it claims to fight for and call them citizens in all public comment or releases.

    Thanks for you time.

    • Kudos to stu72 for pointing out one of the worst and most prevalent linguistic crimes going -- the reduction of (most) human behavior to "consumption."

      I like to tell people who call me a "consumer" "No, I'm a customer. A catfish is a consumer."

      Custom, customer, and customization ... they have good implications about the involvement / volition of the involved parties. Consumer and consumption sound to me like "here are the corpses to feed to these beetles. By morning, they'll be white and clean."

      Glad I'm not the only one annoyed by that word.

      timothy
    • you forgot to top your list with troll.

      humbly tell it to Ceaser Chavez.

      we are all consumers and producers, some of us are citizens. a rare few are the common man. or perhaps you are a believer in corporate homogenity, that we are, the world over, subjects of a united megacorp. in that case please amend your list with victim at the top.

      the EFF does great work. if you don't like it, don't send them money. meanwhile, don't waste my donation with your semantic hairsplitting tripe.
  • Felten and company have a lawsuit pending over the DMCA's chilling effect on free speech. But how much credibility is the judge going to give the case now that Felten has published his findings? We all know the RIAA isn't going to do anything to Felten while the lawsuit is an issue, because they don't want to give the other side any ammunition for their case.

    But now that Felten has presented his findings, it seems to me there's a reasonable chance that the judge will ask "so how exactly has the DMCA proven to be chilling, given that you've presented your work?".

    Felten may still win his case, but it seems to me that by presenting his findings he's reduced the odds of winning significantly...
    • While the RIAA and Verance may have opted to avoid litigation (for now), this does not change the fact that the verbiage of the DMCA allows them to pursue such litigation, with a reasonable probability of success. It is this suppressive capacity of the DMCA that Felten appears to be battling, and may we all hope that he is successful.

      The fact that the RIAA has backed off from a lawsuit is immaterial. Read Felten's declaration to the court [eff.org] and you will see that the mere threat of litigation has already had a "chilling effect" on his rights to freely communicate his findings. The case he builds in this declaration is really very compelling.

      • Yeah, but my point is that the judge may well say "Chilling effect? What chilling effect?" as a result of Felten's decision to present his findings.

        Some would argue that a "chilling effect" isn't even there unless it causes some people to not speak out when they otherwise would have. Since that condition doesn't apply to Felten anymore, the judge may simply dismiss his suit as being a case where someone is "crying wolf".

        Felten might still win. But as I said, I think he's managed to reduce his chances by doing this.

  • this does make sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by linuxpng ( 314861 ) on Thursday August 16, 2001 @04:22PM (#2122427)
    How much bad publicity is it for a company when they dare you to break their copy protection then threaten a university when it was accomplished and they wanted to publish their findings. This is just typical CYA because I believe that these companies that have pushed for the DMCA know that is in a dangerous state and might get repealed. They want to hold on as long as possible to it and use it for the right fight. It just saddens me that our government "for the people and by the people" has been substituted with "for the corperations and by the corperations"
    • Unfortunately under American law corperations *ARE* people in nearly every legal sense except accountability.
      • The problem is we've had too many multi-million-dollar judgments against corporations because some loon spilled coffee on her lap or because some idiot couldn't read the Surgeon General's Warning. These are cases where the individuals themselves were the ones who should have been held accountable, but the corporations ended up getting the blame.

        As a result, corporations bend over backwards to cover their own asses in these cases with all kinds of legalese. The DMCA, the Felten case, Sklyarov, and all of this nonsense are a result of this; since individuals have gotten judgments they didn't deserve, corporations have been able to get more protection than they really needed.

        It's not just "Oooh, evil corporations are taking over everything!" Individual citizens failed to be accountable for their own actions, and convinced uneducated juries that the world owed them a living. As a result, companies have gone ape-shit to try to protect themselves, and now this practice has gotten out of hand.

        There's a historical cause behind what we're seeing today. It isn't "us" against "them."

        It's also not a zero-sum game, where one group gains freedoms at the expense of others.

        • I'd agree with parts of your arguments except they don't really apply.


          Yes, I agree with the point about individual accountability, but what about CORPORATE accountability?


          Think: If you own a business and you do something illegal, what happens?


          You go to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. You lose your business. Think of it as a death penalty. You have everything to lose if you decide to join the dark side.


          Now, consider a massive, multi-national corporation, who's only goal is to, well, make money. If you can make $500 million in profits using illegal methods, knowing that the penalty will probably be around $10 million in fines, what do you think is going to happen? There is no corporate death penalty anymore. Yeah, they fire the CEO (and give him a multimillion dollar severance package and send him on his way), and maybe some other key executives (ditto), but before long, you have the same mentality producing the same problems. It's a numbers game.


          For more on this and more, check out this book [amazon.com].


        • I think you are wrong. Corporations would still be making power grabs even if people didn't file ridiculous suits, just like they'd sneak their toxic waste into the water to save a buck.

          We didn't bring it on ourselves; I think it's the natural evolution of business. Not that we shouldn't fight it.

        • The problem is we've had too many multi-million-dollar judgments against corporations because some loon spilled coffee on her lap or because some idiot couldn't read the Surgeon General's Warning. These are cases where the individuals themselves were the ones who should have been held accountable, but the corporations ended up getting the blame.

          This is a common misconception, and I think that the "Insightful" moderation needs a little reality check. Ms. Liebeck (the McDonald's coffee plaintiff) was hospitalized for eight days because of the coffee's temperature. She did not seek a multimillion dollar sentiment from the outset -- she merely wanted compensation for her medical bills. From http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/legalmyths/ coffee.html [citizen.org]:

          Before a suit was ever filed, Liebeck informed McDonald's about her injuries and asked for compensation for her medical bills, which totaled almost $11,000. McDonald's countered with a ludicrously low $800 offer...McDonald's refused all attempts to settle the case.

          Finally, the jury's punitive award of 2.7 million dollars was chosen to reflect two days' worth of coffee sales for Mcdonald's.

          The "McDonald's Coffee" suit is a particularly poor example for anyone wishing to blame "individuals" for corporate ass-covering and buyouts of government.

          • How about the following examples, then?

            1. January 2000: Kathleen Robertson of Austin Texas was
            awarded $780,000.00 by a jury of her peers after
            breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was
            running amok inside a furniture store.

            The owners of the store were understandably
            surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving
            tyke was Ms. Robertson's son.

            2. June 1998: A 19 year old Carl Truman of Los Angeles
            won $74,000.00 and medical expenses when his neighbor
            ran over his hand over with a Honda Accord.

            Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice someone was at
            the wheel of the car whose hubcap he was trying to steal.

            3. October 1998: A Terrence Dickson of Bristol
            Pennsylvania was exiting a house he finished robbing
            by way of the garage. He was not able to get the
            garage door to go up, the automatic door opener was
            malfunctioning. He couldn't reenter the house because
            the door connecting the house and garage locked when
            he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, so
            Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for
            eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found,
            and a large bag of dry dog food.
            This upset Mr. Dickson, so he sued the homeowner's
            insurance company claiming the situation caused him
            undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of
            half a million dollars and change.

            4. October 1999: Jerry Williams of Little Rock Arkansas
            was awarded $14,500.00 and medical expenses after
            being bitten on the buttocks by his next door
            neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in it's
            owner's fenced in yard, as was Mr. Williams. The
            award was less than sought after because the jury
            felt the dog may have been provoked by Mr. Williams
            who, at the time, was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.

            5. May 2000: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to
            pay Amber Carson of Lancaster Pennsylvania
            $113,500.00 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink
            and broke her coccyx. The beverage was on the floor
            because Ms. Carson threw it at her boyfriend 30
            seconds earlier during an argument.

            6. December 1997: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware
            successfully sued the owner of a night club in a
            neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom
            window to the floor and knocked out her two front
            teeth. This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to
            sneak through the window in the lady's room to avoid
            paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded
            $12,000.00 and dental expenses.

            • While your descriptions sound like the ridiculous rewards some have come to expect from our legal system I wonder if the juries had all the information you listed. Judges are routinely asked to exclude evidence on the grounds that it would unreasonably prejudice the jury. For example, the jury may never have known how the man locked in the garage found his way there.
            • some of those sound pretty ridiculous. Got any references? My doubts are raised because I live near Claymont Delaware and follow the paper and local news carefully. I never heard of such a case....
            • Even a quick search on the names and locations cited indicate, that those examples are pure fiction. While doing a quick check on Google, there seem just to be one lone reference for all of them.

              You're just trolling. At least you could have had the decency to add a reference to Natalie Portman and hot grits.
            • All your examples are meaningless. An insane award by a jury has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the DMCA. I do agree with you about this kind of award being a bad thing for consumers in the long run, but DMCA was not created because of these lawsuits.

              The DMCA has ALL to do with big business bribing government into writting any legislation they want. The fact that most people are sheep, and are totally disinterested in ANYTHING going on outside their own pathetic little lives has Everything to do with the fact that these corrupt congressmen are in office.

          • This is sub-thread is a bit off-topic, but I can't help but respond...

            This is a common misconception, and I think that the "Insightful" moderation needs a little reality check. Ms. Liebeck (the McDonald's coffee plaintiff) was hospitalized for eight days because of the coffee's temperature.

            Uhh, not quite, it all depends on your perspective. Personally, I prefer my coffee HOT, hot enough to burn flesh. In my opinion, she was hospitalized not "because of the coffee's temperature", but because she didn't take enough care to properly handle a beverage that is supposed to be freaking hot and then asked Micky-Ds to cover expenses which were due only to her own lack of common sense. In that particular case, I have to agree with with the corporation. If Ms. Liebeck's a victim of coffee that is too hot, then I'll sue Henckels the next time I cut myself using one of their knives (they shouldn't be that sharp!). Failing to take responsibility for your own idiotic (or accidental) behavior is a disease in this country. The "Insightful" moderation is perfectly reasonable here.
          • The "coffee was unreasonably hot" argument is a good argument on the surface, and is probably what resulted in the ruling. I was aware of the degree of damage the coffee did to her when I posted that. I still think it's debatable, but I'm willing to drop that example.

            The potential failure of that one example, however, does NOT invalidate the general principle. Finding a four-leaf clover doesn't mean that there aren't a whole lot of three-leaf clovers out there.

            You and I both know that even today there are plenty of lawsuits filed against corporations simply because people can do so, and have good enough odds of walking away with a huge amount of someone else's money with very little risk. People don't like admitting their own fault, and corporations look like they're made of money, so it's easy to file a lawsuit.

            It's just that in this case, the opposite extreme has occurred -- the DMCA has made a low-risk opportunity for corporations to muscle around scientists and engineers.

            Fortunately, the EFF is not letting this attempt stand.
        • Your analogy has no relevance whatsoever to SDMI's threatened lawsuit against Felton and the unreasonable protection Congress likes to extend to corporations (especially in the form of the DMCA). For one thing, the DMCA does not protect corporations from lawsuits, as you implied with your analogy. It gives them the right to file frivolous lawsuits and receive unreasonable damages from normal people. It doesn't cut down on lawsuits, it increases them. Secondly, corporations are not asking for these kinds of protections because people are suing them. They might also be asking for additional protections from liability lawsuits, but that's a completely different matter, not the one we are discussing. Corporations are getting favorable laws passed because they bribe the politicians. It has nothing to do with Congress attempting to solve a problem with excessive judgements against corporations. After all, no one has ever won a suit against a record company based on the claim that they were physically injured while downloading or copying music.

          Now, as an OT side-note (since you mentioned it): Yes, the people who sued the tobacco companies should have known (and probably did know) that they would get cancer from the practice. But that wasn't the tobacco companies' defense. Their defense was that tobacco is completely safe, has no known ill-effects, and the plaintiffs must have come down with lung cancer in some other way. This was despite the mountains of evidence (some of it provided by their own documents) to the contrary. They have never argued that people should know better and should take responsiblity for their own actions. What do you expect a jury to do when they are presented with such an idiotic defense? They can only consider the defense presented, they can't provide a defense for the tobacco companies, so they had to find for the plaintiffs. The most disturbing thing about the whole tobacco fiasco is that the executives blatantly commited perjury in front of Congress and got away with it. If anyone else pulled that kind of stunt they would end up in prison.

  • Webcast (Score:3, Informative)

    by stillwaxin ( 182487 ) on Thursday August 16, 2001 @04:23PM (#2122538)
    here [ddj.com]
    • The video you linked is of a certain MadDog being interviewed, not anything that has to do with SDMI.

      Seems like somebody screwed up the video files.
  • They shot a warning and the scientific community, threatening people to discuss their findings. We had a nice story [slashdot.org] here yesterday about Niels Ferguson (formerly at Digicash, his homepage, btw, can be found here [macfergus.com]). So for them it was a step in the right direction. The problem is way more fundamental, going hand in hand with the full disclosure discussion [slashdot.org] that goes on today. People will find security flaws and, if you do not publish them, "Blackhats", people doing this for BUSINESS, will exploit them. If you disclose your findings and help the organizations (because, no matter what you say, somebody who owns the rights for content should have the right to protect it) to find a reasonable level of security enabling them to maintain their business, you help the companies. And this is a good thing. Alternative models might work in some places (Shareware, donations, voluntary work) but not in all cases. And people want to pay their bills, raise their kids and send them to school. If you think that is wrong, then we might want to start a new discussion on capitalism vs. communism vs. marxism and other models.

  • Prof. Felten's Version... (Score:5, Informative)

    by daoine ( 123140 ) <moruadh1013@yahoo . c om> on Thursday August 16, 2001 @04:58PM (#2127013)
    If anyone is interested, Prof. Felten has kept a log of what's going on at http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/sdmi/ [princeton.edu]

    He's got the RIAA letter, the statement contradicting the RIAA letter, the agreement to the competition, and other such nifty info.

  • Prime Number Theory (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adam613 ( 449819 ) on Thursday August 16, 2001 @04:57PM (#2127836)
    I'm waiting for someone to use RSA or something similar for copy protection purposes. Then, it will be illegal to do research on prime number theory, because discussing efficient algorithms to factor large numbers will be a violation of the DMCA. Last I heard, this was a semi-hot topic in math research. I for one hope the DMCA makes research illegal, because the media and the public will be MUCH more upset at that than a few hackers who can't get free music anymore. Also, scientists have a much better record of making their voices heard than Russian political prisoners^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h computer programmers.

    • RSA and Eliptic Curve Cryptography is used for "copy protection" in a number of products. HIEW [serje.net] uses RSA for it's keyfile IIRC, and ECC is used by CloneCD [www.elby.de], just to name two examples.

      Or were you thinking of something else?

    • Re:Prime Number Theory (Score:5, Funny)

      by AntiNorm ( 155641 ) on Thursday August 16, 2001 @05:03PM (#2154185)
      I'm waiting for someone to use RSA or something similar for copy protection purposes. Then, it will be illegal to do research on prime number theory, because discussing efficient algorithms to factor large numbers will be a violation of the DMCA. Last I heard, this was a semi-hot topic in math research.

      Illegal prime numbers do exist [theregister.co.uk] already.

  • What's really scary... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by r_j_prahad ( 309298 ) <r_j_prahad@@@hotmail...com> on Thursday August 16, 2001 @05:02PM (#2128682)
    Some of the headlines the wire services are running for this story are downright frightening... "Professor presents research paper in U.S. and DOESN'T get arrested".

    I would've expected news like that out of the communist bloc just a few years ago, but not here and not now.

  • If y'all remember [slashdot.org] the lawsuit [slashdot.org] the EFF [eff.org] and Felten were pursuing challenged the DMCA on US constitutional grounds, specifically on the grounds that it posed a "chilling effect" [everything2.com] on free speech, grounds that are a traditional test in 1st amendment cases.

    I take it as a given that the good Dr. Felten withdrew the initial paper because he could then show clear evidence of a chilling effect. Now, of course, the lawsuit proceeds apace, but Felten can of course present his paper without interference from the RIAA because it would further Felten's claims and provide even more clear evidence that the DMCA was, in fact, unconstitutional (not that any thinking person who doesn't accept big media's spin on things needs more clarification on the matter).

    To continue to go after Felten would strengthen the case against the DMCA and, speed the day, the eventual dismantlement of this egregiously rotten piece of legislation.

    Yay Felten et al. Thank goodness he's on our side.

  • gotta love the twisted logic... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16, 2001 @04:46PM (#2131725)
    From the CNN article:

    "Shortly before the group was due to present its paper at an April conference in Pittsburgh, a lawyer for SDMI and the RIAA sent Felten a letter telling him he could face legal action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law that bars efforts to defeat copyright-protection technologies.

    The lawyer, Matthew Oppenheim, has since backed away from the letter, saying the SDMI had an obligation to protect the trade secrets of the companies that developed the anti-piracy technology but never intended to sue."

    So if they "never intended to sue", what the hell did they mean by "could face legal action under the [DMCA]?" Oh wait - maybe they thought they'd just drop a dime on him - give the FBI a call and have him arrested at the conference!

  • Let's see: a bunch of manufacturers are getting together over a technology that largely eliminates fair use. That means consumers get less for their money when they buy CDs. That's the equivalent to raising prices. When a bunch of manufacturers get together and agree to raise prices, that's an antitrust violation. So.... Given the Bush Administration's frosty relations with Hollywood, this might even work.

  • But that's not all... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Monthenor ( 42511 ) <monthenor@NOSPam.gogeek.org> on Thursday August 16, 2001 @04:19PM (#2132816) Homepage
    The DMCA is far from dead. In fact, it appears to be working overtime [gogeek.org]. We're all doomed!

  • what was the RIAA's real intent? Did they simply retract their threat to sue for the sake of PR, or what it something deeper?

    The bluff smells of censorship, IMO. It is a warning to every other research group who will walk the fine line that is the DMCA that they are being watched. The scrutiny serves the role of censorship, and the threat of legal action will remain until the researchers ask if they can publish.

    I seriously don't know what is worse. Not being able to publish at all, or having to pander to the legally privileged (thanks to the DMCA) and beg "Please, please, can I publish my paper?". In either case, Big Brother wins.

    If you circumvent the DMCA to read a document about how to reverse engineer something (circumventing the DMCA yet again), do you get thrown in jail twice?

    • "what was the RIAA's real intent? Did they simply retract their threat to sue for the sake of PR, or what it something deeper?"

      The RIAA has NO real power, other than the (considerable) power to coerce through the use of "Legal Intimidation", i.e.(NOT IE!) "We can afford to spend millions of dollars sueing you and we will continue to sue you until you have; no job, no house, no car, no food, no porn..."

      In Felten's case, as with Adobe and KIllustrator and Dr. Kai-Uwe, the Public Relations and Legal downside of the attack was starting to overwhelm any potential upside.

      The RIAA, just like Adobe, cannot afford to piss off mainstream academics, who hold tremendous clout, as expert witnesses in both legislatures and courts, in quasi-democratic systems like the US and Germany.

      Post-MS Trial, Felten is a "celebrity" academic and Adobe has just made Dr. Kai-Uwe one, while Dmitri Sklyarov is rapidly becoming the "New Mitnick"...

      IFF the RIAA took Felten to court and lost, and with most of the academic compsci crowd supporting Dr. Felten, the RIAA could easily lose, the damage to the DMCA's ability to restrict research could be FATAL

      much easier to pick on H4X0R-types like Fanning/Napster than peeps like Felten with "juice" (gotta have it).

      COMPLETE THE SENTENCE: it ain't what you know, it who you....
      • COMPLETE THE SENTENCE: it ain't what you know, it who you....

        • Sleep With
        • Perform sexual favors for [I wouldn't want to say exactly what kind of favors I perform]
        • Pay money to
        • Pass special interest legislation for
        • Screw
        • Stab in the back
        • Steal from
  • As far as fair use goes, these have been interesting times. It's nice to see something go about as well as it could. Maybe there's hope after all, (Dimitri who?)

    Another thing; don't think this is a finished issue. Students who attended the conference may be in violation of the law if they describe its proceedings to their advisors, and people who write software which implements Professor Felton's methods would almost certainly be in violation of the law.

    On a lighter note; isn't it funny how little understanding some people have of security? Verance relied on the secrecy of their algorithm to protect the data, but the algorithm was patented. Which means you could look it up, which means they willingly betrayed their own security methods.

  • I wonder what RIAA's motivation was. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pop n' Fresh ( 411094 ) on Thursday August 16, 2001 @04:18PM (#2134401)
    Was it that SDMI is dead as a doornail and they therefore know Felten's study can't do any damage to their cash flow, or that the publicity was so bad? I think we can rule out altruism as their motivation...
  • Someone thumbed his nose at copyright protection Wednesday without getting arrested, indicted or sued.

    Finally, someone sees cracking encryption as something other than a hacker threat. There are more uses for such activity, such as education, to see how the encryption works.

    Let's hope that this is a precedent, since that government is unlikely to repeal this law.
  • Go on, read the story [thestandard.com], and you'll notice that the headline is "Princeton Professor Bares All."

    Silly guys. Don't they realize that on the internet, the headline is only as tantalizing as what the referring link says, so this kind of thing doesn't increase readership?

    • Hm. Given the success of the Naked News [nakednews.com], I wonder if a "Naked SDMI Report" is the way to go to attract attention for The Cause!

      Come to think of it, it would certainly spice up a lot of scientific/tech presentations.

      Then again, since most of the presenters are male and not necessarily prime physical specimens, perhaps it's not so good an idea after all...
  • They basically said that they never threatened anyone with anything. I've been trying to find the actual letter that was sent to Prof. Felton, so I could read it for myself.

    Does anyone have a copy of the original letter that the RIAA (or whoever) sent to Prof. Felton?

  • You call this victory?! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They actually let him publish his findings.

    This means that his attempt to sink DMCA is ruined.

  • We have no idea what he might write (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GemFire ( 192853 ) on Thursday August 16, 2001 @04:51PM (#2140609) Homepage
    "These are hypotheticals. We have no idea what he may or may not write," said RIAA spokesman Jano Cabrera.

    That sentence says everything that is wrong with the attitudes of those wielding the DMCA as a weapon. It should not matter what Professor Felton or any other person (academic or not) should write - so long as it is not covered under the dangerous restrictions (i.e. national secrets, "Fire" in a crowded theater, etc.) Freedom of Speech is at issue here and someone's ENTERTAINMENT copyright does not deserve as much protection as an intellectual discourse. It appalls me that apparently, entertainment profits are more important than scientific knowledge.
  • The corporations are looking out for their own interests, not the interests of the artists. The artists would be better off if fans could directly contribute to what they enjoy, instead of the the blatant theivery of the corporate world. I love to see the DMCA supporters try to argue that their thievery is supported by law- they wouldn't need laws if people agreed with the issues they bring up.

    Laws should be there to protect us from groups taking our freedoms, not for groups to take our freedoms away. Don't sell your soul to the DMCA.

  • My prediction - RIAA sues Felten and co.
    • >My prediction - RIAA sues Felten and co

      It doesn't matter: as the DOJ said when Adobe "dropped out" of the Sklyrov case: it's a criminal offence.

      Why isn't the FBI arresting this guy?

      I'd much rather see an american professor in jail for breaking US laws than a russian student.

      Do US laws only pertain to foreigners?

      • Are you kidding? It's SOOO much easier to abuse a forigner than a US citizen... After all, most US citizens don't give a rats ass if a russian is imprisoned for speaking and thinking.

        Jailing a prof would cause an outcry that would actually cause the law to be tossed out. We can't have that...
      • If the FBI *doesn't* arrest him, doesn't it help Sklyarov's case? I don't think the FBI can pick & choose who they prosecute.

  • SummerCon SDMI lecture (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Julien Stern lectured at SummerCon this year about compromising the SMDI watermarking scheme. SummerCon said they would post the talk at some time in the future at www.summercon.org. It was interesting to hear the further they got into the challenge, the more restrictions that were put up to prevent them from publishing the work.

  • I would encourage everyone to read Dr. Felten's original paper, not just because you can now, but because it provides a lot of insight into the techniques that were used to watermark the SDMI audio files.

    One thing that really struck me was how simplistic the watermarking was. Not to take anything away from the team's accomplishment, but I have no doubt these technologies would have been defeated by someone within days of release.

    If this was the current state of the art in watermarking technologies (and you have to assume it was), it makes me wonder if digital watermarking is really a viable technology.


    -Sommelier

  • "Digital" Piracy? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Notice that the CNN article refers to 'Digital' piracy. How is this different from normal 'piracy' (for want of a better word)?

    Sounds like someone is trying to get most of the population on side ('normal' piracy isn't so bad), while leaving the way open to single out an individual. "Ohh. He's (he = computer programmer who just wrote a CSS clone) a digital pirate. He must be really bad. Let's put him in gaol."

    Meanwhile the bulk of the population feels secure and does nothing, as they are 'normal pirates'.

    Probably the journalist isn't even conscious of using this term, as they read it in an RIAA press release.

  • What many folk appear to be missing is that record company copyright enforcement is not exactly the fast lane of the legal profession. There are certainly some high fliers, but the average Joe who sends out nasty-grams to people infringing trademarks and the like is in the main only doing it until they can graduate to chasing ambulances.

    The SDMI nastygram that started this was a pretty vanila knee-jerk threat. It is the type of threat that in most cases can be made without fear of the consequences since the chances are that the target will simply roll over at the first hint of a threat.

    What the SDMI lawyers certainly did not expect was that making threats would land them as defendants in a lawsuit that would be diffciult for them to either defend or disengage from. Essentially the only way to avoid a costly fight is to tell the court to vacate the anti-trafficing provisions in the DMCA that the RIAA paid so much to Senatorial campaign coffers to buy.

    What the SDMI and RIAA failed to grasp is that Felten and co are much less interested in the ability to publish one paper than the larger principle. There is no real incentive for Felten and co to accept an out of court settlement.

    In the process the suit is likely to issue the coup de gras to SDMI. The group has been spectacularly unsuccessful in meeting a goal to agree on a standard by Christmas 1999. Only one of the vendors has released an SDMI compliant player and they modified it to play unrestricted MP3s pretty quickly when nobody would buy it.

    The only reason SDMI is continuing is sheer inertia and the fact that the manufacturers who could not give a monkey's for the interests of the labels would rather participate in an obvious failure of a group than withdraw and risk it being replaced.

    I attended only one SDMI meeting and told my company to steer well clear of the loosers. The work was chaotic with deadlines set to fit unrealistic schedules that would inevitably fall apart leading to delay. Worse however was the fact that while 150 engineers were working on one set of specs in open meetings a closed group of 8 people were hacking out a private deal in a back room that entirely negated the rest of the groups work.

  • did i miss something?

    riaa holds a contest to see if anyone can break their standard
    (part boast, part free-beta-testing)

    someone does

    they get mad at the winner?
    who put these clowns in charge?

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