Rockwell patch for Windows XP?

Digital Millenium Copyright Act

Makes it a federal crime to in any way attempt to circumvent a copy protection device. If there is any attempt at encryption, it is a US federal crime to try to copy the data. It is also illegal to tell someone how to do it. It is also illegal to have a link on a website that goes to a page that gives a theoretical example of how to do it. It is also illegal to have a link to a website that contains a link to a website that gives a theoretical explanation of how to do it.

The Russian software house is a reference to the federal prosecution of a Russian individual (the name escapes me at the moment) who wrote a sample of how to open adobe e-book files without buying the activation code. He sold (I think) 8 copies 2 ( I think) of which were purchased by Adobe. He was in the States for a trade show, arrested, and held without bail. I forget what the outcome was (if it has reached an outcome).

The lack of a 'fair use' clause is the disturbing part. DMCA makes it illegal to make archival backups of your software. Also, If I purchase a CD, but my car has a cassette player, it is illegal to copy the CD onto a cassette for my personal use in my car.

DMCA makes TIVO questionable, because TIVO records television programs as part of it's operation. That recording is considered a copy.

Want to buy a pay-per-view program and tape it so you can watch it when you get home from work? Not anymore!

What is even worse, Sony and other recorder producing companies who also seem to be in the media production business, are planning to make the recorders 'compliant' by having them refuse to record shows that are tagged as 'single view only'.

DMCA and UCITA are both designed to strip away *your* rights (if you are a US citizen). Keep up with this stuff! "The price of liberty is constant vigilence." has never been more true. In our world of instant gratification, and not caring about anything that cannot be resolved in a 30 minute sit-com, we are a group of lemmings being led away.

--Joe Jansen
 
M
> What does DMCA stand for ?

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

> And what is the case against the
> Russian software house ?

Dmitry Sklyarov, 27 and ElComSoft Co. Ltd. of Moscow were charged with five counts of copyright violations for writing a program that lets users of Adobe Systems' eBook Reader get around copyright protections imposed by electronic-book publishers.

> Just curious.

You obviously Don't read Slashdot. For more information go to slashdot.org and enter a search on Sklyarov and a search on DMCA.

Mark Blunier
Any opinions expressed in this message are not necessarily those of the
company.
 
C
DMCA = Digital Millenium Copyright Act And the russian software house's Mr Skylerov (sp?) described in a talk the encryption used in ebooks. Simply talking about this is apparently illegal.

Regards

cww
 
R

Ralph Mackiewicz

> What does DMCA stand for ? And what is the case against the
> Russian software house ? Just curious.

DMCA = Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

The Russian programmer developed software that broke the copy protection used in e-Books. He did this in an academic way to prove that ebooks were not secure and is not accused of stealing anything. His crime was that he developed a piece of software. He was arrested when he came to the US to present a paper on his findings at a technical conference. They have since let him go because his company agreed to accept legal liability on his behalf.

The DMCA is bad law. It is a typical knee-jerk no-nothing reaction by the political class responding to pressure from big political donors (in this case the big media companies scared of Napster). It makes all kinds of things illegal that we used to take for granted, like fair use of copyrighted material, that enabled programs like Ghost and DiskClone to be sold legally. Just because they haven't gone after these guys yet, don't count on that never changing.

For more analysis of this visit:

"http://reason.com/0107/cr.mg.copywrong.shtml":http://reason.com/0107/cr.mg.copywrong.shtml

Regards,

Ralph Mackiewicz
SISCO, Inc.
 
Jay Kirsch:
> What does DMCA stand for ?

Digital Millenium Copyright Act

> And what is the case against the Russian software house ? Just curious.

It would seem to have nothing to do with the software house, as its principals have entered and left the US unmolested (before and since). However, one of its products is a reader for encrypted Adobe files, for the blind and for backup.

One of their employees, Dmitri Sklyarov, attended a security conference in the US where he revealed how to crack several encryption schemes such as rot13 and xoring all bytes with a (fixed) constant. Adobe had him arrested, nominally for writing software in Russia for his employer.


There's rumours that the DMCA doesn't require mens rea, so that one could be prosecuted for catching the Sircam worm - can anyone confirm or deny?

Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]> http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jirib
MAT LinuxPLC project --- http://mat.sf.net --- Machine Automation Tools
 
On the case of Dmitry Sklyarov

"http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/can/press/html/2001_12_13_sklyarov.html":http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/can/press/html/2001_12_13_sklyarov.html


On the law in general I found a lot of opinions/analysis but little information, e.g., the text of the law. No one seems to be too sure about how to interpret it or when to enforce it. One article did quote a fair use clause in the law's text, but I don't know the context of that excerpt.

There's also another law in works to make it illegal NOT to encrypt copywritten electronic material. I hope that control.com posts don't fall under copywrite laws. We'd have to encrypt each of our posts and would not be allowed to unencrypt them.

eRagdr,s

Jay Kirsch
 
M
Ahh! But not just if you are a US citizen. The scuttle but is that the individual in question has turned states evidence and the company that employs him is being prosecuted (even though they are Russian, the software was produced in Russia and even though they have broken no Russian laws).

What is more the European Parliment is working on similar anti-freedom, anti-consumer rights laws as we speak.

Some Sony music CDs are already processed in a way that is supposed to stop them being copied. Unfortunately, it also means that they cannot be played on some CD players (I would suggest that these CD's are unfit for purpose as the advertised purpose of a CD is to be played on a CD player).
 
M
It is also the prelude to a much more malignant injustice which aims to stamp out the practice of reverse engineering. (They were obviously
embarrassed that although they managed to have him arrested, they had to let our Norwegian friend go because he hadn't actually broken any laws). Of course just as the DMCA stunts learning, creativity and freedom of expression, this new law will all but kill it off.
 
B
> DMCA = Digital Millenium Copyright Act And the russian software
> house's Mr Skylerov (sp?) described in a talk the encryption used
> in ebooks. Simply talking about this is apparently illegal.

A very similar situation existed with DVD copy protection. A "hacker" (for want of a better word) beat the protection and posted his code.
Apparrently the lunatics that came up with this law included even giving details of the encryption scheme out as a punishable offense.

As I understand it, its potentially illegal to use certain diskcopy programs that copy the whole diskette (diskrw comes to mind) since this
could also be used to copy key disks. What I have heard is even having such software installed on your machine is illegal, even if you do not use it for copying software. Just the fact that it has this capability makes it illegal.

OTOH, the same people who think this is a really bad idea, think that the DOJ vendetta against MS is a good thing. Its really the same issue.
Does an American have a right to do as he pleases as long as he does not directly harm someone else?

Bob Peterson
 
This must make it interesting to use operating systems which have whole disk access arranged through files, because then file-copying programs can be used to copy disks...

dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/fd1


Someone claimed somewhere that the law doesn't require mens rea, so being infected by Sircam is illegal - is that true? I know it isn't in Australia, but the US law is somewhat different.

Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]> http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jirib
MAT LinuxPLC project --- http://mat.sf.net --- Machine Automation Tools
 
C
Hi Bob,

Unix has had dd for many years to make direct copies of things. It would interesting if that's now illegal. This is idiocy, this prohibition of tools. I have a rock, now I could hurt someone with it. If I did, that should probably be illegal. But to make rocks illegal is just plain stupid. This is the same concept as gun control.

> OTOH, the same people who think this is a really bad idea, think that the
> DOJ vendetta against MS is a good thing. Its really the same issue.
> Does an American have a right to do as he pleases as long as he does not
> directly harm someone else?

Aye, and there's the rub. There's a very, very, long line of folks directly harmed. The ones who managed to survive are lining up to sue now. If the courts find all thes cases groundless, then I'd be inclined to agree with you.

The two aren't comparable at all. One is simply common sense, the other is a denial of _how_ Microsoft came out on top and a debasement of ethics. By that standard, the management of Enron should be applauded, they made _their_ millions and they didn't directly shaft all those workers.

Regards

cww
 
B
Actually, as I understand it, the offending issue with some diskcopy programs is that they copy track by track, rather then file by file. Apparrently the secured information is stored on a track somewhere, but is not in a file, so
"normal" diskcopy methods that copy files only are not an issue. But the faster method of copying track by track is.


Bob Peterson
 
R

Ralph Mackiewicz

The individual involved did not "turn states evidence". There is nothing to turn. There is no dispute that he personally wrote the software that cracked the e-book encoding scheme. He was allowed to return home because his company signed an agreement with the US justice department to accept the legal liability.

What makes this prosecution so absurd is that the publishers now have a legal ban against anyone performing a technical critique of any half-brained copy protection scheme they cook up. After all, how can you critique a security mechanism without trying to crack it? Does this make anyone feel safer?

The guy whose wife tried to copy the fashion magazine page can be thrown in jail for putting masking tape over the encoded graphics that prevent color copiers from copying. And this is in the "Land of the Free"? The USA will be a little less free until DMCA is repealed.

Regards,

Ralph Mackiewicz
SISCO, Inc.
 
Actually, it's not dd but Unix itself that's the problem, because there's a magic ``file'' which corresponds to the whole disk, track by track. So any program that works with files can work with whole disks instead.

You can open a disk in a word processor, or in anything. (Obviously, this is only useful if the word processor has a hex-edit mode, or if you only want one document on the disk.)


Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]> http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jirib
MAT LinuxPLC project --- http://mat.sf.net --- Machine Automation Tools
 
C
I really, really doubt that the law discriminates between bit copiers, sector copiers and file copiers. And I'll bet they'll take the word of the plaintiff on what circumvention means. And as always with this sort of law, it'll only affect people who weren't trying to break the law and be ignored by those who know exactly what they're doing.

Regards

cww
 
R

Ralphsnyder, Grayg

Ha, I bet that now since you mentioned it, some copyright lawyer will take that idea to task - bit vs byte vs sector, etc copiers !!! That should prove interesting. Logic vs money - the money always wins.

good luck,

grayg
 
you can run any program in compatibalty mode
by creating a shortcut to it then right click on the shortcut, select properties,compatibilty.
you then can set it to emulate different os
 
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