Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

[GreyGeek]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

When will they start shutting down sites that they find politically offensive? I think giving them such power will be extremely dangerous.

Given the inherent paranoid mentality right now, I can easily see this happening.

Are we china?

We may not physically be in China but I'm beginning to see less and less difference between their political system and ours, seeing that our two political parties are almost indistinguishable in actions, regardless of their rhetoric.

Concerning shutting down websites for political reasons: "The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010" is winding its way through Congress.

Key elements of the legislation include:
1. Creation of an Office of Cyberspace Policy in the Executive Office of the President run by a Senate-confirmed Director, who will advise the President on all cybersecurity matters.
...
for the President to authorize emergency measures to protect the nation’s most critical infrastructure if a cyber vulnerability is being exploited or is about to be exploited.
...
Any emergency measures imposed must be the least disruptive necessary to respond to the threat and will expire after 30 days unless the President extends them.
...

[GreyGeek]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

Nero, K3B, and other burning software are not "circumvention" tools, they are copying tools. Circumvention tools let the user break the DRM feature and extract the content.

Like "libdvdcss2" which probably is illegal to distribute in the US (of course the laws are not the same everywhere in the world)

I wondered when that would be brought up....

If I purchase a DVD movie (that has encryption) it is a violation of the Sherman-Clayton Antitrust Act to not be OS neutral. IF I bought it I have a Fair Use right to play it on my hardware regardless of the OS I am running.

This wouldn't stand for an instant if, for example, it were used to limit the consumer's use of their automobile or TV set. Say you bought a new LG LCD HD TV and when you plugged it in you learned that there was an encryption circuit that allowed only CNN news channels to play because of the collusion between LG and CNN and LG gave the key only to CNN. Would you stand for that?

Or, you buy an encrypted DVD and plug it into the player on your Chevy SUV. It refuses to play, stating that the DVD is licensed to play only on a Yugo SUV. You protest, stating that Yugos are too dangerous to drive on the highway, but are ignored. So, you jury rig your SUV DVD player to get it to play.

[zlow]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

Nero, K3B, and other burning software are not "circumvention" tools, they are copying tools. Circumvention tools let the user break the DRM feature and extract the content.

Like "libdvdcss2" which probably is illegal to distribute in the US (of course the laws are not the same everywhere in the world)

I wondered when that would be brought up....

If I purchase a DVD movie (that has encryption) it is a violation of the Sherman-Clayton Antitrust Act to not be OS neutral. IF I bought it I have a Fair Use right to play it on my hardware regardless of the OS I am running.

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act has nothing to do with media playing on your PC, that would be considered fair use under title 17 of US copyright law.

Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ht...1----000-.html
Source: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act relates to restraint of trade or commerce, and is considered a felony in the event that a person or company conspire to limit or eliminate competition in order to retain their position in the market (*COUGH* Microsoft). Even then, this only applies after a company gains a certain percentage of market share as defined by law.

If a single person or company took over so much marketshare that no one else could compete, and they designed a DVD that only played in their DVD player, then you could make an argument for that company being an illegal monopoly. That's not the case here, DVD CSS was created by a standards body, and while it is unfortunately still illegal in the US to decrypt, this is unrelated to the Anti-Trust law you cited.

Unfortunately, while some DVD content decryption exemptions were granted this year, consumer playback wasn't.

Source: http://www.copyright.gov/1201/

This wouldn't stand for an instant if, for example, it were used to limit the consumer's use of their automobile or TV set. Say you bought a new LG LCD HD TV and when you plugged it in you learned that there was an encryption circuit that allowed only CNN news channels to play because of the collusion between LG and CNN and LG gave the key only to CNN. Would you stand for that?

New devices unfortunately actually have this technology, it's called the broadcast flag.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag

Or, you buy an encrypted DVD and plug it into the player on your Chevy SUV. It refuses to play, stating that the DVD is licensed to play only on a Yugo SUV. You protest, stating that Yugos are too dangerous to drive on the highway, but are ignored. So, you jury rig your SUV DVD player to get it to play.

This is the case if you take a Region 1 DVD overseas and try to play it in a rental car, or order Japanese Anime and try to play it in a locked US player.

[Detonate]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

OK.we've covered that pretty well. Can we have some more thoughts on the dangers of giving the government the power to selectively block web sites? That concerns me a lot more.

[dibl]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

I'm not an expert on telecommunications law, but I believe the Telecommunications Act of 1934, as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, gives the federal government regulatory authority over ... telecommunications devices, frequency allocations, cable services, etc. It covers most over-the-air (radio frequency), cable TV, and similar communications methods: http://www.fcc.gov/telecom.html

So, it's not a radical notion that the government has regulatory authority over what flies through the air, in the USA.

The ability to either inspect communications for content, or take action against sources of content, i.e. "selectively block" content, is a disturbing proposition. Historically, we (the people) have permitted the government to control the content of speech and written communications in some very tightly defined categories. Advocating overthrow of the government by violence, for example, has long been prohibited, along with inciting panic in assemblies of citizens (yelling "FIRE" in a full theater, for example). I would personally oppose any proposition to authorize expansion of these limited categories of "content control". In other words, only web sites that violate these reasonable restrictions could be blocked, if I were king.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

. . . if I were king.

You're welcome to put in your resume, but I should tell you that we've had a lot of applications already.

cnet news: A group of senators want to hand the U.S. Department of Justice the power to shut down Web . . .

How do you shut down a website? I'd vote for dibl as king, but I wouldn't vote for the U.S. Department of Justice as God. Where do these senators think that the DOJ is going to get the power to do this?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

.....
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act has nothing to do with media playing on your PC, that would be considered fair use under title 17 of US copyright law.

Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ht...1----000-.html
Source: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

I keep you busy, don't I

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act relates to restraint of trade or commerce, and is considered a felony in the event that a person or company conspire to limit or eliminate competition in order to retain their position in the market (*COUGH* Microsoft). Even then, this only applies after a company gains a certain percentage of market share as defined by law.

My point exactly, zlow. Thanks for the citation. It's been awhile since I read that Cornell URL. But, my contention still stands. The DVD encryption key serves only to keep some consumers out of the market UNLESS they use *certain* OSs. There is NO reason why, with the same hardware, I can run an encrypted DVD using Windows but on the SAME hardware using Linux I cannot, unless I use the encryption key hack. Playing a DVD has nothing intrinsic to do with the OS. And, I am certain that Microsoft is OVER that required market share percentage.

If a single person or company took over so much marketshare that no one else could compete, and they designed a DVD that only played in their DVD player, then you could make an argument for that company being an illegal monopoly. That's not the case here, DVD CSS was created by a standards body, and while it is unfortunately still illegal in the US to decrypt, this is unrelated to the Anti-Trust law you cited.

The "standards body" is not a neutral organization, as witnessed by the OSI debacle when Microsoft stuffed the various national ISO committees to get their OOXML "standardized". The ISO chairman responsible for the critical vote now works for Microsoft. The ISO rules required a quorum of committee members before they could work on other standards, but so many MS lawn jockeys signed up as P3 (IIRC) members but never attended a meeting after the vote it resulted in the work of the committees grinding to a halt. So, what's fair generally doesn't correspond with what money wants. And, as our Congressmen demonstrate everyday, money talks.

Unfortunately, while some DVD content decryption exemptions were granted this year, consumer playback wasn't.

Source: http://www.copyright.gov/1201/

Nice to know. Thanks.

[ScottyK]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

A couple of things come to mind. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't quote any caselaw or US laws, I'm just "joe consumer" that prefers Kubuntu over Microsoft.

1. I understand the MPAA and RIAA freaking out that everybody is illegally copying files. How has it been defined as legal or not for downloading old shows that no longer exist?

Case in point, the two Denver Bronco Super Bowl Highlight shows of 1997 and 1998 were released on VHS, with no plans (as far as I know) of every putting them on DVD. So I took them to my friendly video copying store and had them transferred to DVD. What if I wanted to save the step of just downloading them from BitTorrent? Since I already own the videos (in an obsolete format), would they consider that "legal"?

2. One reason for my preference to Kubuntu and Linux in general is that it's not "owned" by anybody. My gut tells me at some point that Microsoft, to avoid another anti-trust lawsuit, will begin to install various back doors in the OS to allow the "powers that be" to check in on the citizens.

No proof, just a hunch. But I like to have options, and Linux gives me that option.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

....
2. One reason for my preference to Kubuntu and Linux in general is that it's not "owned" by anybody. My gut tells me at some point that Microsoft, to avoid another anti-trust lawsuit, will begin to install various back doors in the OS to allow the "powers that be" to check in on the citizens.

No proof, just a hunch. But I like to have options, and Linux gives me that option.

Those "back doors" already exist. They have since NT 3.5, IIRC. They were called "NSAKeys", or some such name. MS claimed they weren't back doors. They are, IMO, one reason why foreign govs and military are/have dropped Windows. They can examine the Linux source and compile their own kernel and apps, knowing that there are no back doors in them.

But, there is microcode in the CPU of computers and various peripherals (if they have cpu's) and, one can create a compiler that can compile back doors into kernels and apps EVEN IF the source code doesn't have the back doors in them. We used microcode in TI printers used in Iraq during the first Gulf War to infect the computers they were attached to, in order to shut them down. Now, consider that China is making almost all of the digital equipment for sale in America and around the world. Buy a Lenovo with Linux and get a back door anyway, even if it is not in Linux. We were smug in thinking that China exposed themselves when they used Windows. Now, our military uses made in China computers, and our government and military and businesses run Windows on them. And, Britain has launched warships with Windows controlling everything.

[zlow]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

....
2. One reason for my preference to Kubuntu and Linux in general is that it's not "owned" by anybody. My gut tells me at some point that Microsoft, to avoid another anti-trust lawsuit, will begin to install various back doors in the OS to allow the "powers that be" to check in on the citizens.

No proof, just a hunch. But I like to have options, and Linux gives me that option.

Those "back doors" already exist. They have since NT 3.5, IIRC. They were called "NSAKeys", or some such name. MS claimed they weren't back doors. They are, IMO, one reason why foreign govs and military are/have dropped Windows. They can examine the Linux source and compile their own kernel and apps, knowing that there are no back doors in them.

But, there is microcode in the CPU of computers and various peripherals (if they have cpu's) and, one can create a compiler that can compile back doors into kernels and apps EVEN IF the source code doesn't have the back doors in them. We used microcode in TI printers used in Iraq during the first Gulf War to infect the computers they were attached to, in order to shut them down. Now, consider that China is making almost all of the digital equipment for sale in America and around the world. Buy a Lenovo with Linux and get a back door anyway, even if it is not in Linux. We were smug in thinking that China exposed themselves when they used Windows. Now, our military uses made in China computers, and our government and military and businesses run Windows on them. And, Britain has launched warships with Windows controlling everything.

The NSAKeys variable was first found in NT4 Service Pack 5, and I agree that it may be a contributing factor to governments utilizing Open Source, but I believe the single largest deciding factor is money. I don't recall seeing any news of these countries being anything but consumers of OSS (though I could be wrong about that).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

[zlow]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

.....
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act has nothing to do with media playing on your PC, that would be considered fair use under title 17 of US copyright law.

Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ht...1----000-.html
Source: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

I keep you busy, don't I

No, not really. I was already familiar with both the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and US Copyright law. Including the time that it took to Google the relevant laws that I quoted, I spent less than 10 minutes on the comment. I quite literally had nothing better to do at the time, and found the topic interesting.

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act relates to restraint of trade or commerce, and is considered a felony in the event that a person or company conspire to limit or eliminate competition in order to retain their position in the market (*COUGH* Microsoft). Even then, this only applies after a company gains a certain percentage of market share as defined by law.

My point exactly, zlow. Thanks for the citation. It's been awhile since I read that Cornell URL. But, my contention still stands. The DVD encryption key serves only to keep some consumers out of the market UNLESS they use *certain* OSs. There is NO reason why, with the same hardware, I can run an encrypted DVD using Windows but on the SAME hardware using Linux I cannot, unless I use the encryption key hack. Playing a DVD has nothing intrinsic to do with the OS. And, I am certain that Microsoft is OVER that required market share percentage.

I agree that DVD encryption only serves to keep consumers out of the market, but really it doesn't have anything to do with "OSs", and everything to do with licensing. The encryption key was designed to ensure that proper royalties were payed by companies that developed DVD playback devices.

Source: http://www.dvdcca.org/css/

In fact, you are welcome to purchase DVD playback software for Linux that is completely legal.

Source: http://shop.canonical.com/product_in...roducts_id=243

If a single person or company took over so much marketshare that no one else could compete, and they designed a DVD that only played in their DVD player, then you could make an argument for that company being an illegal monopoly. That's not the case here, DVD CSS was created by a standards body, and while it is unfortunately still illegal in the US to decrypt, this is unrelated to the Anti-Trust law you cited.

The "standards body" is not a neutral organization, as witnessed by the OSI debacle when Microsoft stuffed the various national ISO committees to get their OOXML "standardized". The ISO chairman responsible for the critical vote now works for Microsoft. The ISO rules required a quorum of committee members before they could work on other standards, but so many MS lawn jockeys signed up as P3 (IIRC) members but never attended a meeting after the vote it resulted in the work of the committees grinding to a halt. So, what's fair generally doesn't correspond with what money wants. And, as our Congressmen demonstrate everyday, money talks.

I don't disagree that standards bodies aren't always neutral, and I didn't imply that they were. As for the OSI chairman being hired by Microsoft, I really would like to see a source on that as I haven't read anything like that. As for ECMA 334, and 335; Microsoft was forced into an irrevocable "community promise" over .NET before the ECMA would approve their technology so I don't really see any issue here.

Source: http://www.ecma-international.org/pu...s/Ecma-335.htm
Source: http://www.ecma-international.org/pu...s/Ecma-334.htm

Remember, Microsoft lost the OOXML battle and is adopting ODF, even though they are complaining about how poorly it was designed in the process. Hopefully they contribute to improving the ODF design, but I won't hold my breath on that.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer...xml-battle-559

[GreyGeek]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

.....
The NSAKeys variable was first found in NT4 Service Pack 5, and I agree that it may be a contributing factor to governments utilizing Open Source, but I believe the single largest deciding factor is money. I don't recall seeing any news of these countries being anything but consumers of OSS (though I could be wrong about that).
....

Keeping state secrets secret? Saving money?

Probably both. Which is more important? Depends on the secrets. If they are industrial secrets related to economic competitiveness, which could make or bankrupt the country, or plans for a pre-emptive nuclear strike, secrets outweigh money. But, if wanting to be a member in standing of the World Community is important, and paying license fees is part of that, then saving money becomes very important because large governments would have LARGE license fees. To avoid such fees, and keep their secrets, Linux or BSD would be their logical choice.

[zlow]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

Keeping state secrets secret? Saving money?

Probably both. Which is more important? Depends on the secrets. If they are industrial secrets related to economic competitiveness, which could make or bankrupt the country, or plans for a pre-emptive nuclear strike, secrets outweigh money. But, if wanting to be a member in standing of the World Community is important, and paying license fees is part of that, then saving money becomes very important because large governments would have LARGE license fees. To avoid such fees, and keep their secrets, Linux or BSD would be their logical choice.

I agree, probably both. As for keeping secrets, the platform can be an important choice however there are lots of procedures that are of greater importance including separation or "air gap", physical access controls, cell phone, thumb drive, BIOS configuration, and general awareness (as it relates to personnel). Linux or BSD in a default state doesn't in itself prevent secrets from being stolen any better than Windows (nor is it any worse). Policy, procedure, and process are more important than the platform choice. To prove this theory, go to grub and add a "1" to the end of any default Linux installation and you will boot to a root shell that can be used for nefarious purposes. The same is true using a bootable thumb drive to bypass sysinit. A simple chroot, and you completely control the system. When all of the other components are appropriately designed, built, and applied; then the platform (whichever chosen) can be safe (once hardened). That is, until it isn't.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

Ya, if you don't/can't control the physical access to a machine it doesn't matter which OS it is running, it's owned. Not controlling physical access is what gives Local exploits their threat level.

Wasn't it just a month or two ago that the US Military admitted that their network, which was physically isolated from the Internet, was still compromised by a thumb drive?

[Detonate]

Re: Talk about fighting the symptoms.....

It hasn't been many years since almost all malware was transmitted by infected floppy disks.