EFFector Vol. 20, No. 5 January 30, 2007 editor@eff.org
A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
ISSN 1062-9424
In the 411th Issue of EFFector:
- EFF Warns ABC to Back Off Blogger
- Sen. Rockefeller Promises Scrutiny of NSA Spying Program
- Worst Practices for Online Service Providers
- The Right Way to Respond to Parody
- Record Labels: Licensing File Sharing Isn't So Crazy After All
- HDCP, Screwing Fans in More Ways Than Ever
- The Broadcasting Treaty Creeps Forward Despite Disagreement
- Roll Call Op-Ed: E-Voting Transparency Needed Now
- Maine Rejects Real ID
- Andy Griffith for Attorney General!
- DMCA Reformist to Speak at Stanford This Friday
- miniLinks (10): DMCA for China?
- Administrivia
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effector: n, Computer Sci. A device for producing a desired
change.
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* EFF Warns ABC to Back Off Blogger
Bogus Copyright Infringement Claims Violate Law
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
warned ABC, Inc., last week not to pursue its bogus
copyright infringement claims against 'Spocko' -- a blogger
who sparked nationwide debate over a San Francisco radio
station -- and asked the media giant to retract its
baseless threats.
The free speech battle began when Spocko posted audio clips
of what he deemed to be offensive talk-radio rhetoric from
ABC-owned and San Francisco-based KSFO-AM on his blog at
www.spockosbrain.com. In response, ABC, Inc., sent a
threatening letter to the blogger's hosting company,
claiming that copyright law prevented Spocko from posting
the clips. The hosting company responded by shutting
Spocko's website down, forcing him to move to a different
provider. In a letter sent to ABC, Inc., last Thursday, EFF
warned that further false copyright claims could compel
Spocko to take action to protect his free speech rights.
"Copyright law is not designed to silence speech that you
dislike," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "ABC and
KSFO know that their legal threats were absolutely
groundless. Their time and efforts are better spent
explaining why they think Spocko is wrong, and letting the
public decide, instead of resorting to thuggish legal
tactics."
EFF's letter to ABC is the latest development in its
ongoing campaign to protect online free speech from the
chilling effects of bogus copyright claims. In November,
EFF reached an agreement with the corporate owners of the
popular children's television character Barney the Purple
Dinosaur to withdraw meritless legal threats against a
website publisher who parodied the character.
For the full letter to ABC:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/spocko/spockolettertoabc.pdf
For more on Spocko:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/spocko/
For this release:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2007_01.php#005093
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* Sen. Rockefeller Promises Scrutiny of NSA Spying Program
Over five years since it first began, the NSA's massive
domestic spying program remains shrouded in secrecy.
Despite the President's determination to dodge meaningful
oversight, key members of the newly elected Congress may
soon take steps to rein in this illegal activity.
In an interview with the LA Times, Senator John
Rockefeller, the new Chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, "rejected the Bush administration's claim that
it had brought a controversial domestic spying program into
compliance with the law, saying he wanted strict new rules
requiring the government to obtain a separate warrant every
time it places a wiretap on a U.S. resident."
The article also notes that "the committee recently
designated eight members of its staff to examine the NSA
program and to begin drafting new requests for documents
that the Bush administration had refused to turn over to
the panel -- including the initial presidential order
authorizing the domestic surveillance program."
Take action now to support immediate and thorough
investigations into the NSA spying program:
http://action.eff.org/fisa
For this post and related links:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005095.php
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* Worst Practices for Online Service Providers
In an instant, Seclists.org, including thousands of pages,
vanished from the Internet this week. And if your online
service providers have as weak a backbone as GoDaddy, the
same thing could happen to your site.
Here's the story (as recounted by News.com): A list of
MySpace user names and passwords began floating around
online weeks ago, including in a Seclists.org post. Rather
than ask Seclists.org's owner, Fyodor Vaskovich, to remove
a single offending page, MySpace wrote to his domain name
registrar GoDaddy, which shut down all 250,000 Seclists.org
pages.
Did GoDaddy demand to receive a court order first? Was it
at any legal risk? No. Apparently all it took was a single
informal request from MySpace, and Seclists.org was gone, a
mere 52 seconds after GoDaddy notified Vaskovich.
"I think the fact that we gave him notice at all was pretty
generous," said GoDaddy's general counsel Christine Jones,
in what has to be in the running for most ironic comment of
the week.
All too often, that's what passes for customer service when
your free speech is at stake. Internet intermediaries owe
their customers more than that. GoDaddy should have given
Vaskovich meaningful notice, time, and information to
respond, and it should have been willing to stand up for
his rights.
Read the News.com article for more:
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6153607.html
Check out EFF's Best Practices for Online Service Providers
for more on how companies like GoDaddy ought to behave:
http://www.eff.org/osp/
For this post and related links:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005096.php
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* The Right Way to Respond to Parody
Recently, Darren Barefoot posted Get a First Life, a
hysterical parody of virtual world Second Life's website.
Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life, responded with a
letter that is so right-thinking and clever that it would
horrify the over-reaching copyright and trademark holders
whose missives litter the archives of ChillingEffects.org
Instead of a cease-and-desist letter, Linden Labs sent a
proceed-and-permit letter:
http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2007/01/my-project-du-jour-getafirstlifecom.html#comment-75509
This letter is exactly what we would hope companies might
do when faced with a parody. Not only does it acknowledge
that the site is a fair use, it also provides an explicit
license for trademark use. Kudos to Linden Labs, and shame
on the rights holders who claim that they have to go after
anyone who makes any use of their copyrights or trademarks.
For this post and related links:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005085.php
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* Record Labels: Licensing File Sharing Isn't So Crazy
After All
Nearly three years ago, EFF published a paper advocating
voluntary collective licensing for P2P, a system that would
get artists paid and allow fans to keep sharing music
however they like for a flat fee. According to this
International Herald Tribune article, it seems the major
record labels may finally be coming around to this sensible
solution:
http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2007/01/25/technology/IHT-25ptend25.html
Along with the labels' considering an end to digital rights
management (DRM) restrictions for downloads, this is a good
sign, and we hope it's more than just talk. While the
labels could already be adopting this business model and
getting artists paid, they have instead continued to drag
their feet, filing futile lawsuits against ordinary fans
and seeking restrictive DRM mandates in Congress. Their DRM
strategy is failing, yet the harm done by the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) remains.
It was high time for a better way forward when we published
our paper three years ago -- let's hope it's not another
three years before the labels actually head down that path,
and we can start to undo the damage of this wasted time.
For this post and related links:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005092.php
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* HDCP, Screwing Fans in More Ways Than Ever
In a recent article, Ars Technica explains some of the many
ways that HDCP DRM restrictions will break compatibility
with your digital video devices. HDCP restricts connections
to video displays through DVI (including HDMI) digital
outputs, so that video content can only be outputted to
hobbled, DRM-restricted systems. You may have invested
thousands of dollars in HD displays and receivers, but HDCP
could force you to throw them out and buy new ones.
Along with intentionally limiting the devices you can use,
HDCP also produces arbitrary and unpredictable
incompatibilities. Ars provides a few examples:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070121-8665.html
For this post and related links:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005087.php
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* The Broadcasting Treaty Creeps Forward Despite
Disagreement
It's been just over a week since the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on
Copyright and Related Rights met in Geneva with the
intention of finalizing a new draft Broadcasting Treaty.
This draft is supposed to be the basis of negotiations at
an inter-governmental Diplomatic Conference scheduled for
November. However, after three days of intense meetings,
it's impossible to say with any certainty what a new
version of the treaty would say.
The proposed Broadcasting Treaty could take one of two
approaches (or perhaps fall somewhere unsatisfyingly in-
between). At one end of the spectrum, there's the current
draft's dangerous "rights-based" approach that would lock-
down devices like TiVos and curtail consumers' rights to
make use of recorded video and audio. At the other end of
the spectrum is a signal theft approach that would provide
for narrower, tailored remedies against intentional
unauthorized interception and redistribution of a broadcast
signal.
As we've previously reported, there is widespread support
for moving towards a signal-based treaty that should differ
considerably from the current draft. That, of course,
requires agreement on a new treaty text. If WIPO Member
States can't reach agreement, two things are possible.
First, there might not be a Diplomatic Conference later
this year. That was the understanding of WIPO Deputy
Director General Michael Keplinger at the meeting, and
would seem entirely appropriate if there is no agreement
after nine years of negotiations. Alternatively, and
perhaps more likely, there might still be a Diplomatic
Conference to negotiate on the current anti-innovation,
anti-consumer rights-based draft. That would be the worst
possible outcome for the Internet community.
So where to from here? Read the rest of the post for more:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005100.php
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* Roll Call Op-Ed: E-Voting Transparency Needed Now
The Election Assistance Commission is charged with ensuring
that our voting systems are reliable and secure. Each
machine is supposed to be subjected to rigorous tests
before being certified, and the EAC was recently empowered
to oversee that process.
At least that's the theory. As Aaron Burstein and Joseph
Lorenzo Hall show in their recent opinion piece in Roll
Call, however, the revelation that the EAC de-certified a
major testing company (Ciber) in the summer of 2006 but did
not notify election officials until long after the election
demonstrates that EAC suffers from a culture of secrecy.
The EAC recently announced a new policy that not only fails
to ensure transparency in the future, but also
affirmatively allows it to shield from the public important
information about how and why voting systems are tested and
certified. Manufacturers are allowed to deal with test labs
privately, keeping communications secret. While the EAC is
publishing test lab reports, it is refusing to publish the
test plans it used to certify a voting system -- and
without that knowledge, the public cannot know whether the
tests were in fact rigorous or accurate enough.
As Burstein and Hall note, in the case of Ciber, the
results of EAC's secrecy were that approximately 70% of
voters in the November 2006 election used equipment that
had been "certified" by a company that the EAC de-certified
months before the election. Who knows what the next problem
will be? As Burstein and Hall put it: "Secrecy isn't
working for the EAC or democracy -- and there is no reason
to think it will in the future."
For the editorial:
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/52_66/guest/16640-1.html
For this post and related links:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005086.php
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* Maine Rejects Real ID
The Real ID Act took a blow last week, when Maine became
the first state to formally declare its opposition. The
Maine legislature voted overwhelmingly to refuse to comply
with the act's mandates, and requested that Congress repeal
the law.
The Real ID Act essentially forces states to create a
national ID. Under the law, state drivers licenses will
only be accepted for "federal purposes" -- like accessing
planes, trains, national parks, and court houses -- if they
conform to certain uniform standards. The law also requires
a vast national database linking all of the ID records
together. Estimated costs of $12 billion or more will be
passed on to the states and, ultimately, average citizens
in the form of increased DMV fees or taxes.
"It's not only a huge federal mandate, but it's a huge
mandate from the federal government asking us to do
something we don't have any interest in doing," said
Maine's House Majority Leader Hanna Pingree.
Meanwhile, opposition in other states is growing. Similar
measures rejecting the Real ID Act are under consideration
in 11 states, including Montana, Georgia, Massachusetts and
Washington state.
For information about the dangers of Real ID:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/ID/RealID/
For this post and related links:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005098.php
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* Andy Griffith for Attorney General!
This YouTube clip from the Andy Griffith Show is the sort
of civics lesson that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
would do well to study:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CvoC551i2E
Guilherme Roschke from the Electronic Privacy Information
Center (EPIC) has some background (via BoingBoing.net):
"I shared the video with my colleagues here at the
Electronic Privacy Information Center. With some digging,
one of my colleagues figured out that this show aired on
October 30, 1967. That's two weeks after the Supreme Court
heard the oral arguments in Katz vs. United States. The FBI
had tapped a phone booth without a warrant, and convicted a
gambler based on that. The Katz court overturned the
conviction, stating that the 4th amendment prohibits this
sort of a wiretap without a warrant."
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* DMCA Reformist to Speak at Stanford This Friday
Rep. Rick Boucher, who has long proposed legislation to
reform the DMCA, will deliver a speech at Stanford Law
School on Friday entitled, "Congress Must Balance its
Copyright Agenda." More information is available here:
http://www.law.stanford.edu/calendar/details/299/Congress%20Must%20Balance%20its%20Copyright%20Agenda/
Take action to support DMCA reform now:
http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=115
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* miniLinks
The week's noteworthy news, compressed.
~ DMCA for China?
A new copyright law would make it an offense in China to
"break encryption set by copyright owners."
http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=1299
~ Los Angeles AACS to Pursue DRM Circumventors
Says it will use "both technical and legal measures." So,
will they be suing their own members for leaving the title
keys in the clear?
http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/01/29/aacsla_hd/
~ Vista's New DRM Crumbles
Alex Ionescu bypasses the driver-signing requirement for
playing Vista premium content. This would mean that you
could play HD movies using open source hardware, except
that Alex is cagey about publishing with the DMCA hanging
over his head.
http://www.alex-ionescu.com/?p=24
~ Vista's Fine Print
Michael Geist on the legal agreements buried in Microsoft
Vista's EULA.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1641&Itemid=135
~ We've Got a Warrant Now, Can You Leave Us Alone?
The government seeks to dismiss the ACLU's NSA spying
program lawsuit after obtaining a secret order from a
secret court.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/01/gov_seeks_spy_s.html
~ Gonzalez Claims Constitution Has Fine Print
It doesn't grant habeas corpus, he says, in defiance of the
text.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/24/MNGDONO11O1.DTL
~ Hillary Clinton on Privacy
Wants to introduce an EU-style data protection bill and
suggests that dragnet surveillance might be conducted in an
"anonymized" way.
http://www.senate.gov/~clinton/news/statements/details.cfm?id=257288
~ Pontiac Donates to EFF?
Detroit's local newspaper covers a strange twist to a
Pontiac Second Life experiment.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070126/AUTO01/701260392
~ Diebold Shows How to Make Your Own Voting Machine Key
Diebold's pictures of replacement e-voting keys are
sufficient to construct them yourself.
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1113
~ Publishers Plan Dirty Tactics Against Open Science
PR's "pit bull" gives his ideas for fighting the free
dissemination of scientific works.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070122/full/445347a.html
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* Administrivia
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Editor:
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derek@eff.org
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