Testing Microsoft And The DMCA 395
sproketboy writes "I found a great piece about an MIT student and his XBox hacking over at news.com.
Apparently he can't get his how-to book published do to fears with DMCA. I hope he at least can get it publish in China or Russia where people have some freedoms left. ;)." The student is doctoral candidate Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, the same hacker Microsoft declined to stop last August from presenting a paper on insecurities in the Xbox hardware.
Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
You could say almost anywhere but USA! DMCA/Patriot/Patriot2 are US laws! not *world* laws!
... where people have some freedoms left (Score:1, Insightful)
What kind of "freedom" does a citizen have in a communist country?
Obviously this wouldn't apply to Russia, being a recent convert from communism.
China? (Score:4, Insightful)
China -- NO WAY
If you seriously think you're worse off than the average chinese person because you can't legally make a backup copy of your DVDs, then you seriously need to rethink your priorities. At least in the US we have the RIGHT to speak out against the DMCA while if it were enacted in China, anyone speaking out against it would be lucky ever to be able to speak again.
Yes, the DMCA is a bad law, but it is in no way comparable to the conditions the average Chinese person faces on a daily basis.
GET SOME PRIORITIES!
Russia does nowdays (Score:5, Insightful)
Implications. (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy is now pushing out a book on x-box hacking and MS is not doing anything. While his problems publishing it is speaking volumes as a concrete example of how real and present the whole "chilling effect" meme is on defeating free speech, the point remains that he is refusing to be deterred and forcing this book through come hell or high water.
And MS, realizing if they try to get a book banned because it talks about their video game system, they'll face public backlash, they'll have the EFF go "holy shit this is the big one", and they'll lose after years in the supreme court after having being hurt more by the case than the PHD student... is not taking action.
So, here's my question: in six or seven years, someone is going to write a book about Palladium, and all known ways to hack it. And either it will end any use of Palladium as a security technology (though probably preseving its use as a monopoly prolonger)... or MS will try to have this book banned.
Is there going to be any difficulty for MS, if they try to stop the book on palladium hacking then, considering that they didn't stop the book on x-box hacking now? Are they setting any kind of precedents that people can point at in the future and say "look, if XYZ is illegal, then why wasn't that x box book in 2003 illegal?"
Re:No... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:... where people have some freedoms left (Score:5, Insightful)
The same freedoms that citizens enjoy in every other country: everything, except those things forbidden by the laws made by your government. We citizens of democratic countries can choose our own governments and thus have some influence over what laws are passed, but that influence is very limited. Politicians do not necessarily always have our interests at heart, or your individual interests may be different to those of the voting mob.
The US is an excellent example of a country where laws are being passed (DMCA etc.) that seem to benefit a small special interest rather than the general public. You have the freedom to choose your own government, a freedom that the Chinese lack. But I bet that in China you are free to publish any paper on Xbox modding that you can come up with. The Chinese government could forbid it and there would be little that their citizens could do about it, but they haven't done so.
Re:China? (Score:5, Insightful)
The big difference is that China is consistent in its image and its actions, you expect them to be repressive and they are, no surprise there, its not a democracy nor any kind of representative gov so your rights mean squat.
OTOH the US has been traditionally portrayed as the world's bastion for freedom, civil liberties and rights, etc
There used to be a time where opening up an Xbox or a cell phone, or a computer was not only encouraged in the us but subsidized, the US had (still has?) the largest gov tech research grants in the world. ALL those techs grew up breaking things apart looking inside them and putting them back together, and this is now illegal. Its like LEGO selling kits where its illegal to build anything else but what its portrayed on the box (stupid).
Not only is the DMCA a bad thing but in the long run will hamper US tech developement. its these guys breaking up xboxes today that build the X2020 boxes in 20 years.
Re:... where people have some freedoms left (Score:4, Insightful)
In Soviet Russia,
anything not specifically allowed by the state is forbidden.
In the US Republic,
anything not specifically forbidden is allowed.
Publish in Europe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like Michael Moore has done with Stupid White Men, he moved to Penguin because they gave him the support against the corporate heavyweights.
And of course he could just publish it as an ebook on the internet.
Ironic... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Building unlicensed automatic weapons and explosive devices [firequest.com]
- Converting post-ban assault rifles for fully-automatic operation [firequest.com]
- Breaking and entering [paladin-press.com]
- Creating a counterfeit identity [paladin-press.com]
I guess it's like the view that violence in a film is more appropriate for a wide audience than sexual content.
Re:... where people have some freedoms left (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:... where people have some freedoms left (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of "freedom" does a citizen have in a communist country?
China is a very oppressive country and Russia is still very oppressive as well. I think the idea behind the "where people still have some freedoms left" comment was to point out that the people in two much more oppressive countries than the US have a freedom that we do not. Even worse, it's an intellectual freedom governing knowledge and free speech, which is something that countries like China are usually much more restrictive about than the United States.
In other words, it's like pointing out something that some black power/racial pride/anti-defamation group does and saying, "Wow! Even the Klan doesn't do that!"
Profiting from cracking. (Score:2, Insightful)
If this was about the information getting out there, it could (for instance) be put up on GNUtella or somesuch anonymously.
No, this is about profiting from the adventure. Even pre-DMCA, this was a no-no.
Re:You forget. We ARE the world. (Score:2, Insightful)
Not trying to troll (at least not much), but as a non-US-citizen I would like to point out an interesting fact;
I can name two nations in the world today that has weapons of mass desctruction, that frequently ignores the UN and supports / has supported / commits acts that are easily defined as terrorism (well, I know of more than two nations, but keep with me). Those two nations are Israel and the United States of America.
Did anyone mention double standards?
Re:I'm wondering... (Score:3, Insightful)
Apart from the fact that people who already own xboxes don't have to fork out for a new computer, the big thing is third-party software, as far as I can see. If there was an easy, fully functioning Linux port to the xbox, you could write a game, or any other kind of application, and have it run on an xbox without any kind of licensing from Microsoft. You wouldn't need to use directx or any of their other non-portable libraries either.
Re:Publish in Europe... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd imagine that Andrew Huang would rather not leave the US never to return. He seems to have a pretty sweet deal with MIT atm, which I'm sure he doesnt want to give up and he also seems to be a pretty clued in guy. I can't see him pushing it if MS come down heavy.
Re:Free Speech? WTF?? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I own the damn hardware, I should get to do what I want with it. Including hacking it. It shouldn't be illegal - that's rather the point...
Re:China? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. This is the country that's starting to allow *gasp* capitalists into its government, and has been allowing more and more limited free enterprise within its borders (particularly within Hong Kong) and whose economic health depends to a great degree on the continued relationship with the evil bourgeoise imperialists over in the USA. There's a great deal of hypocrisy there - I doubt more than a few of the leaders still believe in Communism; they're just trying to stay in power as long as possible.
I asked a Chinese friend of mine why they didn't dump their government, since they knew it was corrupt and oppressive. He told me, "As long as things keep improving, we deal with it. Nobody wants to dump the Communists when the economy keeps getting better."
Re:Free Speech? WTF?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doing what you want with your purchase is a long established practice under the doctrine of first sale.
It should only be a problem if you use your purchased item in the commission of a crime against another person or their property.
Posessing knowledge, or the dissemination of knowledge should never be a crime. If the information is that important, safeguard the information in the first place.
Re:... where people have some freedoms left (Score:5, Insightful)
But anyway, both communism and capiltalism are simply alternatives, industry in communist countries is owned and controlled by the government, in capitalist countries it is controlled by the corperations. In communist countries the laws are tightly controlled to benifit the governement, and, not suprisingly, the laws in capitalist countries are beginning to be tightly controled to benifit the corperations.
It is true that capitalism had allways been seen as connected tightly with freedom, but we must remember that during the early USSR, the people had unprecedented freedom, it just seems that capitalism takes a little longer to degenerate into a dictatorship.
Re:... where people have some freedoms left (Score:1, Insightful)
It must have been a different Communist Manifesto to the one I read. Clue: Marxist communism is not the same thing as what's labelled communism in the former Soviet Union, China or elsewhere. The fact that people think of those countries as communist demonstrates how well the Stalinist newspeak worked.
I do see a Borg parallel however, with the continuing Globalisation movement (capitalist imperialism by any other name).
Re:... where people have some freedoms left (Score:5, Insightful)
Whereas in a democracy, individual interests may be subjugated to the interests of the mob, the interests of elected representatives (or their pals), or the fad of the day ("protection against terrorists"). Democracy does not equal freedom; one can imagine a democracy where everything is decided by majority vote: laws, policies, but also what clothes will appear in the stores this summer, and what will be for dinner this evening. I exxagerate, but the point is that freedom does not follow automatically from democracy, but is derived only from limitations placed on what the government can and cannot do. Look at Afghanistan where an oppressive government of religious fanatics was voted in, by a majority who knew full well what they were voting for. If you happened to be a woman in that country who did not wish to have to cover her head in public, you'd be shit out of luck despite the fact you'd be living in a democracy.
Democracies tend to place the emphasis on individualism, as opposed to communism favouring collectivism. But democracies can and do go overboard sometimes on regulations and laws that severly limit our personal freedom in favour of a (sometimes very tenuously) alledged Greater Good.
Russia was not, and China isn't (Score:4, Insightful)
Russian wasn't communist, and China isn't. Both are totalitarian governments in much the same way as Hitler's Germany or Pinochet's Chile.
Just because they said/say they are communist doesn't make it so.
Why all this obsession with XBox hacking? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Free Speech? WTF?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Damn wrong!
At least 50% of the people modding their X-Boxes do so to be able to watch their downloaded DivX-movies on it.
But that's besides the point. Even if it's true that most people mod it to run illegal copies, just modding it shouldn't be illegal. Actually playing the pirated games on it should be (and is already) illegal, but not just modding the hardware, because there are fair reasons to do so!!!
Re:Spelling (Score:4, Insightful)
The US have the highest crime rates in the privileged world, and the highest number of people in prison in the entire world, more so than even China (by absolute numbers -- and China is much larger). The US are a police state ruled by the military-industrial complex. You have a president whose daddy was president, for fuck's sake, the only difference with China is that you pretend to be a democracy -- I won't even comment on your last "democratic" presidential election. Grow up and get a backbone, and stop repeating the same propaganda that you have been indoctrinated with since elementary school, otherwise things will never change. People like you are responsible for the situation the US are in. Ignorant sheep who will defend every idiocy and who will happily believe that their country is "the free world" and the rest are unwashed barbarians ruled by oppressive leaders. Fucking moron.
Re:You forget. We ARE the world. (Score:2, Insightful)
For instance, flying two airliners into the World Trade Center was not a "mistake". Bombing The USS Cole was not a "mistake". Walking into a marketplace and pushing a button to blow yourself up along with 20 people around you is not a "mistake".
Re:You forget. We ARE the world. (Score:2, Insightful)
You might want to read up on how many civilians the US has killed since
(ps: You know the Iraqi citizens are protesting _against_ the US occupation - right?)
Re:Free Speech? WTF?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Before we start, a few points:
O.K. The guy is a cryptography and reverse engineering expert, who did a lot of work reverse engineering the XBox while he was a student at MIT. He has now graduated, and runs a business which specialises in reverse engineering. He wants to publish a book which details how he and others went about reverse engineering the XBox. Just to make that clear:
Doesn't it strike you as odd that a guy is having difficulty getting a book about his profession published? Surely this is all covered under the first amendment? Aparently not; the DMCA would appear to trump an Amendment to the constitution. Think about that for a moment. Do you know what the constitution is supposed to do? Can you think why this is a bad situation?
To take it to an extreme; if an expert in his field cannot publish a book about his profession, then how can these professionals share information and knowledge? If they cannot effectivly share information and knowledge, how can they operate? If they cannot operate, how can we have cryptographic experts? If we have no cryptographic experts, how can we have crytography? This is an intentionally extreme, rhetorical set of questions, but think about it for a little while. Doesn't it strike you as a little odd?
This is bordering on prior restraint (Score:5, Insightful)
Judges do not take kindly to the words "prior restraint" or "chilling effect" as there is ample Supreme Court precedent firmly against both. An event such as this could help turn the tide of a future DMCA challenge.
And this isn't internet, it's the publishing of good old dead-tree books that judges can understand.
Re:Free Speech? WTF?? (Score:1, Insightful)
In that case, the intent was the litmus for deciding on whether or not to make it illegal. In this case, as I believe with mod chips, the intent is very clear.
Re:You forget. We ARE the world. (Score:2, Insightful)
The justification for the war was the potential use of WMD against the US, which is turning out to be BS. And further to that, There was no iminent threat from Iraq (i.e. they had no possible way to bring direct harm to the US).
Sure they don't target the civilians, but who gave them permission to start accidentially bombing them?
Who gave them the authority to decide who dies? No one.
The Bush administration has an almost blank cheque to use what ever force it deems neccesary to "thwart terrorists" around the world.
They now publicly do what what they did secretly in the past (Overthrow regiemes that are hostile to the US/US interests).
Fine they got rid of a very bad man, but where's the rest of the list? How can they now justify not deposing other leaders/regiemes. How about stopping genocide, should they not be doing that??
Oh wait, right. Iraq's has the second largest oil deposits in the world (next to Saudi Arabia). Other countries that don't have the oil, don't get "liberated"???
Re:You forget. We ARE the world. (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? Because the people held in Guantanamo Bay were not captured as uniformed soldiers, so the Geneva convention does not apply to them.
So they are civil prisoners, who deserve a lawyer and have the right to a fair trial, neither of which is given to them. The Geneva convention might not apply, but that doesn't prevent it from being illegal imprisonment.
Very little was done by any other nation following the Revolutionary War to provide the U.S. with economic aide to rebuild the nation following war.
The Revolutionary War was a civil war, between two parts of the same country. That is a different thing than WWII.
What I said about the USA being built by European countries referred to that the pre-Revolutionary-war America was built up from scratch by European colonists. OK, that was a very long time ago and might not be completely relevant, but it stresses the point the Europe throughout the history has built and rebuilt economies and nations.
Nothing. However, what WILL they do? What can they possibly do? Why are we restricted to stick around and wait for someone to drop some sarin gas into a subway system? Both Iraq and Syria are known to aide terrorists. Syria was the #1 supporter of terrorists groups in the 1980s and continues to be so today. What happens when chemical weapons mix with terrorists? A whole lotta shit! That's why we take the initiative. The goal of the country is to protect it's people, and that is what we are doing.
The problem I have with that statement is that recently, having chemical or other weapons of mas destruction isn't necessary to provoke actions from the USA. Being accused of having the weapons seems to be enough (it happened with Iraq and is happening with Syria). When you start attacking people because thay might possibly become hostile in the not-so-near future if they would get some dangerous weapons, then where will it end? Anyone is a potential threat. It's as if you would emprison all potential murderers, without them having even threatened (or even planned) to kill someone.
Re:I'm wondering... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think this is all a big ploy by MS, but it's possible, and I'm sure they're certainly taking all these factors into consideration. I tend to be very skeptical about the stories of MS losing money on the XBox. Even if it were true, you could compare it to them not making money on Windows. People pirate the hell out of Windows, but this only benefits Microsoft by creating a larger user base. If a bunch of people start buying XBox's, thinking Microsoft is losing money on them, I only see MS benefiting from this.
With an installed userbase, MS can release some killer app or hardware that is so tempting, that even the Linux zealots buy it up. Maybe something along the lines of PVR functionality, who knows. If you bought an XBox for just Linux, wouldn't you be tempted to buy Halo? Let's say people start pirating games so MSFT no longer makes money on games in these cases. Well, this just helps the word-of-mouth factor. Someone comes over and plays your pirated games, and says "hey this is really cool" and then goes and buys an XBox and a bunch of games.
Or maybe MSFT has refined their manuafacturing process to the point where they are pulling a profit on consoles. If we have Walmart PC's as cheap as they are, why can't MSFT cheaply produce the XBox? If they are pulling a profit (which I think they are), they are probably laughing their asses off at all these people buying XBox's just to run Linux, thinking they are somehow hurting MSFT.
I personally can care less about the XBox. It's cool that Linux runs on it, but only for those people who already own one. Buy a console for only one reason: to play the games.
Re:I'm wondering... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You forget. We ARE the world. (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not think those marines did the wrong thing, I think it was the politicians that put them in a situation where they would have to do that thing, that are wrong.
Re:Spelling (Score:3, Insightful)
I love my country, but I'm frustrated enough to move to Canada. It's just that if I don't fight for my country, who will?
Re:Flaming (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me a break. Just because you RANT it does not mean it is fact.
Here's just a couple of errors you make.
Freedom to assemble? No - try reading the source code: 1st Amendment:
Grandmothers hauled away by SWAT teams? Citation please. Were they breaking the law? And also, show me the SAWT teams - they are sledom if ever called out for demonstrations. So this is yet another one of your "points" that is just another hyperbolic lie from an obvious US Basher.
"Highest crime rates in the priveledged world" Wrong again. UK leads the world in occupied home burglaries, among other things. And just what is the "priveledged" world? Another transparent lie of yours despatched.
The US is a "Police State"? Pull the other one! Do you realize how stupid that is, prima facia - and deep down too? Were that so, Slashdot would not exist, nor would the ACLU or EFF, or the gun-nuts at the NRA (Police states hate armed populaces) or the loony "John Birch Society" for that matter. So, more non-factual hot air - just inflammatory language to try to draw peopel away fromthe fact that you have no real case here other than just venting a lot of anti-US emotion.
You want a future police state to worry about - one in which the people have already sheep-like comitted to giving their rights to unelected non-representative political masters, go look up what the EU are doing in Brussels. The powers the people of EU are givig the police and EU government there, socially and economically, are incredible, and enough to shackle them in chains within a generation. Even the Communist Party of the UK claims to to be a budding police state.
http://www.communist-party.org.uk/site/Archives/ Fe bruary_2003/European_Union_and_the_Police_/europea n_union_and_the_police_.html
Bashing the last election? Give me a break - thats old news and it proves the system works AS DESIGNED (Electoral votes). The local electors screwed up - even after all the recounts Bush was still ahead, and even after the FLa Supreme Court partisanly thwarted the election code, Bush was still ahead - and the Supreme Court overruled the bad decision from the FL court, just as it should have. Bad decision? Maybe - but the real mistake was by the locals in screwing up the ballots in a Democrat run district to the point where the vote counts were unreliable and obviously partisanly biased in favor of the Democrat. Furthermore, on a national basis, the election borke down to Gore winning the urban and coastal areas, and Bush won all the rest - even Gore's home state of Tennesse. Bush won 4:1 in terms of counties, and in terms of win a county = support, the population of the counties that voted pro-Bush was 143 million to Gore's 120 million. Similary, land area goes 6:1 for Bush excluding the Bush victory in Alaska.
So it was a close race, but to say Bush is not properly president is to perpatuate a bitter lie by those disappointed with Gore's poor candidacy.
For the Electoral Colleg - if we dont like it, we need to change it, just like we did with the Senatorial elections (and some of us are working on that instead of whining about it). And unlike the Chinese, with whom you speciously compare us, we DO have the option of changing our government without a Tienamen Square style massacre.
As for "growing up" - why don't you try to learn a few things and stop reciting things straight out of the Euro-marxist US Basher handbook, and start looking at results, overall free
Re:Flaming (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course I am European (even French as a matter of fact) I think your vision of Europe is as far from truth (and please do not take the UK communist party as a reference, or I shall start looking in US'es non representative groups) as my vision of US is.
Maybe understanding freedom as the set of what we can or cannot do rather than the ability that we have of changing the course of events is the cause for all these childish (still!!) comparisons.
I believe that 9/11 (sorry 11/9) has led all western countries in a legal state that should worry every one of us, not only for our own country, but also for the countries with which we do business and share goals. From that point of view I am as concerned by the road US is taking than by the way Europe is catching on.
As for why reasons why US helped Europe during all these wars we could also argue for a while. Still I am grateful you were there, this does NOT make me, or my country, your slave.
Anyway, I preferred answering than modding down.