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Computer underground Digest Wed May 10, 1995 Volume 7 : Issue 37
ISSN 1004-042X
Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2@MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Goddess of Judyism Editor: J. Tenuta
CONTENTS, #7.37 (Wed, May 10, 1995)
File 1--Response to "Digital Copyright Problem" (re: CuD 736)
File 2--Commentary on NPR in re the Exon Bill (EPIC fwd)
File 3--Noam Chomksy on the Internet (fwd)
File 4--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 19 Apr, 1995)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
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From: "David Gersic" <A02DAG1@NOC.NIU.EDU>
Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 13:04:03 CDT
Subject: file 1--Response to "Digital Copyright Problem" (re: CuD 736)
-=> Subject--File 2--A solution to the digital copyright problem
-=>
-=> Fixing the Digital Copyright Dilemma with Telerights:
-=> Copying is easy; decryption is not
-=>
I have several problems with this proposal, not the least of which is
that it won't work.
-=> After reading the National Information Infrastructure debate on
-=> intellectual property reform in the digital age, one could conclude that
-=> computers and copyrights have come to an impasse.
They have. At best, the current copyright code does not map well onto
the computer information it is being applied to.
-=> Some have proposed drastically curtailing electronic technology in
-=> order to protect future publishers.
I think that this would be a Very Bad Thing. We are on the verge of
being able to disseminate more information, faster, and more
directly, than ever before. It's a cliche by now, but the computer is
doing to print media what the printing press did to the monks. And
just like the monks, the print media are attempting to maintain their
monopoly on information distribution. It didn't work last time, it'd
be a shame to let it work this time.
-=> disk into RAM. They want to ban the electronic resale or renting of
-=> copyrighted material fearing that the piracy which has plagued software
-=> will plague movies and books when they enter cyberspace.
Who are "they"? Pirating movies has been around forever, as has
music. Sure, the quality may be off a little on the copy, but that
has never stopped people from enjoying their illicit copies anyway. A
local couple (Chicago) was just arrested recently for bootlegging
movies. They were sneaking a pocket cam-corder into movie theaters,
taping the movies from the audience, then selling the copies. Sure,
it was a *lousy* copy, but they were making money anyway. Rock
concert boot-legs have been around forever too.
-=> I call this a system of 'telerights.'
-=> A user would buy an encrypted copy of the document from the author
-=> or publisher. Each individual version would have a different key, so
-=> the user could make many duplicates but in essence only own the one
-=> 'copy' that was paid for. When the user wanted to use the document, it
-=> would contact its publisher for the key. If no other versions with the
-=> same key were in use, the publisher would send the key to the user's
-=> machine and the document would decrypt itself into an area of temporary
-=> memory like RAM. When the user was done, the document would delete the
-=> decrypted version.
Problems:
1) You're assuming that I'll have a network connection wherever I
might want to use this document that I've "bought". If I carry my
laptop out under a tree to sit in the sunshine, I'm screwed and have
to go back inside where the ethernet is. OTOH, if *you* want to run
the T1 to my house and provide a wireless network solution for a
five or six square mile area around my house, I'd be delighted to
talk about it...
2) You're assuming that the network connection in #1 is of no cost to
me. If I'm using an ISDN link to the 'net, I have to pay for it on a
per-call basis. So, each time I want to refer to a diagram in this
document I have to insert a quarter in the coin slot in the side of
my monitor. The phone company may love this idea, but it's going to
be expensive for the user. Plus, if that document has a link to
another document, there's another phone call to validate the new
document, and possibly a third one to get back to my original
document.
3) What if I don't *want* the publisher to follow my actions and
interests? The civil libertarians will love this idea... Given the
current interest in the "militias" and people like Tim McVeigh,
wouldn't it be nice to be able to query the publishers of all bomb-
related documents to see who has been reading them? And, going back
to the ISDN mentioned in #2, it'd be even easier to figure out where
they were reading the documents from. I'm not paranoid, but I'm sure
that the FBI would love to be able to find/trace people that they are
interested in this easily, and given the current public mood to give
the FBI the power to investigate people who have not (to their
knowledge) violated any laws, that's a scary proposition. Or, maybe I
just don't think that it's anybody's business but mine what I read,
when I read it, or *where* I read it.
-=> The old problem of piracy would be turned on its head. The user
-=> instead of the publisher would have to worry about theft. When someone
-=> stole his copy, they would steal his use of it as well. There would be
-=> no assurance the person you buy used information from would delete their
-=> old copies.
This is the biggest falacy in the whole proposition. You've missed
the basic method of software piracy; remove the copy protection. What
is proposed here is not really that much different from a "key-disk"
protection that comes with many games. And, it will be no harder to
bypass. You've substituted high-tech for the simpler key-disk, but
basically it comes down to:
1) start the program
2) query something to see if this is valid to run
3) if ok, jump to real start of program
4) else exit
All you have to do to bypass this scheme is to find step #3 in the
code and change it to remove the "if ok" part. People have been doing
this since the Apple ][ was popular, and have gotten quite good at
it over the last decade. As long as the program is running on *my*
CPU, in *my* machine, you have no real way to keep me from changing
it to run the way *I* want it to. Unless all program execution will
be done on the other end of a network link with only display data
being shipped to me (see objection #1 and #2 above), the whole scheme
will be bypassed within the first *hour* of somebody trying it.
-=> The government does not need to alter existing copyright laws;
Actually, I don't think that modification of the existing laws will
work; I think that they're going to have to write an entire new set
to handle what the computer industry is doing to information and
information technology.
-=> On the consumer end, there is the privacy issue. Any company that
-=> both maintains other people's teleright accounts and publishes its own
-=> documents will be tempted to use for financial gain private information
-=> about other companies' customers.
Tempted? I get enough junk mail, cold-callers on my phone, and other
unsolicited sales contacts for stuff that I'm *not* interested in
now. Given this sort of data collection ability, I'm sure that I'd
get a *lot* more.
-=> The issue of encryption itself is sticky because there are already
-=> two established and ideologically opposed groups fighting about it. The
-=> government must be coaxed into relaxing its objections to strong
-=> encryption and Clipper opponents must learn to accept a key escrow
-=> standard to which the government has warranted access.
There's also the "export" problem. What if I take my laptop to Iraq
with me? Can I still read my encrypted copy of Time magazine, or do I
have to wait until I get back to the US?
-=> The government must also encourage software and computer companies
-=> to accept some level of professionalization. With the proper tools and
-=> knowledge it will be possible to trap keys or decrypted documents stored
-=> in temporary memory. These tools and skills must be tightly regulated
-=> and those sections of the operating system must be shut off from amateur
-=> tampering.
Can't be done. As long as there is a book on programming available,
some people will mis-use their knowledge to pirate stuff. Just like
as long as there is a book on basic high school chemistry available,
people will be able to build bombs. That's the problem with
information; it's neither 'good', nor 'bad', it just is. It's the
people who *use* the information that make it helpful, or dangerous.
-=> This may cause angst among some programmers but for most of
-=> us this should not be a burden. It does, after all, take a license (and
-=> the proper employer) to tamper with phone boxes and electric meters.
It does? Since when? Sure, *legally* it takes that, but I can go to
the hardware store and purchase everything I need to actually do it.
Blowing up buildings is illegal too, and we can see how well *that*
set of laws protects us from having our building blown up.
-=> One would have to vastly restrict low level media access to make
-=> unencrypted telerights work because it would be easy to pull raw
-=> information off the disk with a sector editor. With encryption, the
-=> restrictions are narrower and easier to enforce because the data is
-=> coded wherever it is stored in permanent form. Only certain sections of
-=> the runtime environment need to be restricted.
As long as the decryption is done on the local machine, it's never
going to be secure. If you modify the operating systems in use (even
assuming that MSDOS finally goes away) to make it more secure, it's
no more difficult to remove the security from *my* copy of the
operating system, or to write my own O/S without your security
measures. Look at Linux. Sure, it's been a lot of work, but it's not
impossible to write an O/S that works.
-=> We are, to use the old Chinese pejorative, living in interesting
-=> times. Why the Chinese have historically found this undesirable I do
-=> not know. Their word for 'crisis' means both 'danger' and 'opportunity'
I think that they got the balance just about perfect with that
thought. There is a lot of opportunity right now, and there is also
quite a bit of danger. I include well-meaning proposals like this in
the "danger" category, because they involve a loss of privacy that
I'm not sure is balanced by any tangible gain for me, the user.
-=> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
-=>
-=> Wade Riddick is a graduate student and National Science Foundation
-=> Fellow in the Government Department at the University of Texas at
-=> Austin. His email address is riddick@jeeves.la.utexas.edu.
-=>
-=> ------------------------------
Hmm. Ok. I'm just another net.admin/programmer out here in the world.
Maybe I don't know any better, but I worry when the government
(or, in this case, somebody majoring in government) wants to help me.
Interesting times indeed...
------------------------------
Date: 6 May 1995 21:34:29 -0400
From: Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg@epic.org>
Subject: file 2--Commentary on NPR in re the Exon Bill (EPIC fwd)
The transcript of yesterday morning's NPR program on the Exon bill
follows. Yours truly and EPIC Advisory Board member Eli Noam went at
it with Senator Exon. The program went very well. The bill is
obviously in trouble.
- - -
On another civil liberties front, we could really use your help with
the $500,000,000 for the FBI wiretap program. With the folks in
Washington falling over one another to see who can put together the
most draconian terrorism legislation, the money for the national
surveillance plan remains the key to the bills. The Clinton
administration just proposed raising all civil fines by 40% (!) to
fund the payoff to telephone companies so the FBI can wiretap more
phones.
Also, Dave Banisar just finished going through the wiretap reports for
1994. Here are the key numbers (Some of this will be in a Newsweek
story on the stands later this week):
-- wiretapping reached an all-time high in 1994, 1,154 taps authorized
for federal and state combined up from 976 in 1993.
-- 75% of all taps were authorized for narcotics investigations, 8%
for gambling, and 8% for racketeering
-- Not a single tap was authorized for investigations involving
"arson, explosives, or weapons" in 1994. In fact, such an order
hasn't been approved since the late 1980s. Keep that in mind when
people say wiretapping is necessary to prevent tragedies like Oklahoma
City.
-- Only 17% of all conversations intercepted were deemed
"incriminating" by prosecutors. That figure is at an all-time low (in
the early '70s it was closer to 50%), and it means that the FBI is
gathering far more information through electronic surveillance
unrelated to a criminal investigation than ever before.
-- Also, the duration of the taps is way up, now around 40 days on
average. Twenty years ago, it was closer to 18.
We really need the help of civil liberties and free expression groups
with this campaign. For those who are sympathetic but think
wiretapping is not a First Amendment issue, take a look at Herbert
Mitgang, _Dangerous Dossiers: Exposing the Secret War Against
America's Greatest Authors_ or recall the FBI's "Library Awareness
Program" of the 1980s.
The FBI's claim that new technologies are frustrating wiretap is
completely without support. But if the $500,000,000 to make the
network wiretap ready is appropriated, the current trends will be
amplified: more surveillance, longer duration, less well targeted -->
less privacy for all Americans.
Check out our web page http://epic.org/terrorism/ or send a message to
wiretap@epic.org. We even set up an 800 number for folks who want to
send mailgrams.
And send comments to me if you have suggestions.
Thanks,
Marc.
====================
Copyright 1995 National Public Radio
NPR
SHOW: Morning Edition (NPR 6:00 am ET)
May 5, 1995
Transcript # 1600-3
TYPE: Package
SECTION: News; Domestic
LENGTH: 788 words
HEADLINE: Senator Wants to Police Internet Porno
GUESTS: Sen. J. JAMES EXON (D NB); ELI NOAM, Tele-Information
Institute, Columbia University; MARC ROTENBERG, Electronic Privacy
Information Center
BYLINE: JOHN NIELSEN
HIGHLIGHT:
The Senate telecommunications reform bill will now include an
amendment to ban materials considered lewd and lascivious on the
Internet. Some critics fear the government would become Internet
police.
BODY:
BOB EDWARDS, Host: Some senators are concerned about sexually
oriented communication on the Internet, the global network of
computers. An amendment to the Senate's telecommunications reform
bill would ban materials considered indecent, lewd, or lascivious.
Supporters say the idea is to protect children. NPR's John Nielsen
reports.
JOHN NIELSEN, Reporter: Democratic Senator James Exon of Nebraska
says he marvels at the Internet. With it, people all over the
world can now meet and interact, they can talk privately, they can
talk in groups, they can look at pictures, and they can sell each
other information. Exon considers it the biggest advance in
communications technology since the invention of the printing
press. But Exon also thinks the Internet has one gigantic
failing. He says there's an awful lot of pornography on this
system and it's almost all accessible to everyone who goes online.
A child with basic computer skills easily can stumble into the
equivalent of a pornographic bookstore, Exon says, and he doesn't
think that should be legal.
Sen. J. JAMES EXON (D-NB): I cannot imagine that the framers of
the Constitution intended that pornography, in and of itself,
would be protected under the First Amendment. Certainly not for
kids.
JOHN NIELSEN: That's why Exon and Washington Republican Slade
Gorton recently attached an anti-smut amendment to the Senate's
telecommunications reform bill. It would punish people who
transmit 'obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent
materials' with fines of up to $100,000, or jail terms of up to
two years. Anti-smut organizations have applauded the broadly
worded amendment; so has South Dakota Republican Larry Pressler,
author of the telecommunications reform bill.
But critics say these anti-smut rules are dangerously vague. Eli
Noam, of Columbia University's Tele-Information Institute, says
they're tougher in some ways than telephone smut laws, which allow
consenting adults to say or hear anything they want to each other.
ELI NOAM, Tele-Information Institute, Columbia University: What
the Exon-Gorton amendment would do, in effect, would make such
conversations potentially illegal and, furthermore, would apply a
very vague standard to it.
JOHN NIELSEN: Marc Rotenberg, of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, has a different concern. He fears the new law
will turn prosecutors in conservative parts of the country into a
kind of Internet police. For instance, these prosecutors might
argue that paintings and books from out-of-town libraries and
museums violate community norms. Rotenberg says that could keep
those libraries and museums off the Internet completely.
MARC ROTENBERG, Electronic Privacy Information Center: You may
have to stop and think for a moment. I mean, in your art
collection you got to wonder about some of those Impressionists.
Can we put everything that we've got currently hanging on the
walls, can we put that stuff online?
JOHN NIELSEN: Now, Senator Exon's staff has tried hard to answer
criticisms of the anti-porn bill. They've dropped language that
would have held online carriers like CompuServe and America Online
responsible for the actions of their customers, and they've added
language restricting the government's right to monitor Internet
conversations. But that last change may have created as many
problems as it solved. In a letter released this week, the
Justice Department said restrictions on digital wire-tapping could
cripple government efforts to catch computer hackers and to track
suspected terrorists.
Spokesmen for Senator Exon say they don't think that's true, but
the senator says he's perfectly willing to hear his critics out.
He'll also consider more revisions.
Sen. J. JAMES EXON: And I don't mind taking the hits from some
people that accuse me of wanting to be a censor because all of
that has fed interest in the story and millions of people know
about it now that had no idea of the magnitude of the problem
before I first introduced the bill.
JOHN NIELSEN: Right now the bill's future is uncertain. When the
Senate telecommunications bill comes up for a final vote this
month, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont will try to
push the anti-smut debate aside for at least six more months.
That would give the Justice Department time to develop an
alternative to Exon's anti-smut plan. I'm John Nielsen in
Washington.
The preceding text has been professionally transcribed.
However, although the text has been checked against an audio
track, in order to meet rigid distribution and transmission
deadlines, it may not have been proofread against tape.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 00:33:30 -0500 (CDT)
From: David Smith <bladex@BGA.COM>
Subject: file 3--Noam Chomksy on the Internet (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
[Noam Chomksy - interview in "GeekGirl" magazine]
Noam Chomsky interviewed by RosieX and Chris Mountford
Chris Mountford: Professor Chomsky what do you see as the present influence
of technology - primarily low cost small powerful computers and global
public information networks - the technology of the so-called information
revolution, on the mass media power in the future?