Ask Ed Felten About Watermarking Analysis And More

Dr. Edward Felten is in a funny position -- or perhaps not so funny. He's the Princeton researcher who took up the challenge posed by the music industry to find flaws in the SMDI watermarking scheme, but didn't enter into the 'no-telling' bargain (here's the click-through agreement [pdf]) which would have made him eligible for a reward, so wasn't bound by non-disclosure terms. When a scheduled academic presentation on the weaknesses [pdf] that he and his colleages found in SDMI became the object of lawsuit threats from the RIAA, and caused him to cancel the planned presentation, Felten decided to turn the tables, and in cooperation with the EFF, sue them instead, for interfering with his scholarly research. Though he did eventually get to present his research, the legal action is still going. Dr. Felten is at a hearing today in Trenton, NJ, but he's agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers. Please confine your questions carefully (one per post), and we'll pass the highest-moderated ones on for his answers.

Lessons to Learn

[eAndroid]

Groups such as the MPAA and RIAA are making it a scary time for people invovled with technology. Obviously many decisions made now will have great effects on the future, very possibly in bad ways. From your experiences what do you think is the best way to stop the threat from these organizations?

Academic Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Felten, do you believe the big corporations are going to destroy academic freedom within the American education system? I'm currently enrolled in a major university and many big corporations openly participate and fund some of the class projects we do, as part of our education. One major concern of mine whenever we have these projects has always been whether my or my groups work will conflict with the interests of the participating corporation and will summarily result in the cancelation of my/our initial designs.

Public research

[Chatterton]

Research has started as a public research for the good of everybody, everything public researcher discovered was made public. Now, we can see a trend that some public founded researchs get screwed because of some ridiculous patents or laws. Did you try to make some clear ruling about that with your case against the SDMI? What are your hopes about the results?

Effects of American "IP" laws on a global scale

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Dr. Felton,
I admire you and your colleagues and consider you part of my group of personal heroes. My questions is this, with technology (namely the internet) serving as a the most accelerated vehicle for globalization, and with America leading the world in many technologies, and especially those concerning entertainment industries -- where IP is king -- how do you see the interests of Private parties such as corporations extending the reach of American law to the entire global market. For example, if it was a Russian, Chinese, Isreali professor who cracked the SDMI would the RIAA still have credible threats. I think they would, but I don't think they should. Can you talk a little about the domain of (US) IP law and the negative effect of IP laws in academic research, which has always benefitted from global networks.
Thanks, Patrick

Reverse Engineering

[Coniine]

Personally I feel very strongly that legislation banning or regulating reverse engineering is wrong in the moral sense. Scientists, mathemeticians and students of literature reverse engineer nature and the human mind. Reverse engineering a few man-made items seems to me to be part of the same pursuit of curiosity. Would you care to comment?

Re:Academic Integrity

[Stiletto]

It is not inconceivable that in the future, the academia may come under the control of rich corporations manipulating research for their own selfish ends.

It already has! In fact, I graduated from Pepsi University several years ago. Sure, it wasn't actually called "Pepsi University" but I challenge anyone to find a Coke vending machine anywhere on campus.

Why do professors use different books for each semester of classes? Does the field of calculus really go through revolutionary changes every six months, enough to warrant selecting a whole new book to teach from? Of course not, but if you used the same book year after year, the publishers (who apparently own the professors) wouldn't be able to continuously rake students over the coals for new $100 textbooks.