MESSAGE
| DATE | 2001-10-27 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Programmer Exposes Microsoft Digital Management Flaws
|
Our Friend Amy Harmon has been busy agoinst exposing the Fair Use digital
issues of our day.
October 23, 2001 Programmer Exposes Microsoft Flaws By AMY HARMON
In the latest skirmish between code breakers and digital copyright
holders, an anonymous programmer has published software on the Internet
that disables Microsoft (news/quote) technology that is designed to
regulate what consumers do with music they purchase online.
The Microsoft technology is an important piece of the company's efforts to
profit from what is a nascent but potentially lucrative market for selling
music and video material over the Internet. But Microsoft said yesterday
that the security of the music sheathed in its software would not be
seriously jeopardized..
"We realized well before we launched it that technologies such as this are
not unbreachable," said Jonathan Usher, group manager for Microsoft's
Windows Digital Media division, adding that Microsoft plans to quickly
install a patch.
Mr. Usher said Microsoft was also considering its legal options, which
could include a civil lawsuit.
While publishing descriptions of how to exploit security flaws is common
among software engineers, a 1998 copyright law makes that activity a crime
when it involves software designed to protect copyrighted material.
The law, which is being challenged in a federal appeals court in Manhattan,
is aimed at preventing piracy of copyrighted works in digital form. Its
critics argue that it deprives programmers of the ability to discuss
security issues openly and prevents consumers from making full use of the
material that they have purchased.
The anonymous programmer described the decision to publish the software,
called FreeMe, as an "act of civil disobedience." Included with the program
was a long criticism of the law, arguing that consumers who buy music
online should be allowed to copy it to as many computers or portable
devices as they own.
Writing under the pseudonym Beale Screamer, which was described as a
reference to the anchor Howard Beale in the movie "Network," the author
urged consumers to "just yell to the publishers `I'm mad as hell, and I'm
not going to take this anymore!' "
But "Beale's" efforts may be thwarted by previous attempts of media
companies to enforce the 1998 statute, known as the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act. In the case under appeal in New York, the major movie
studios sued a hacker magazine for publishing a program that could
circumvent the copyright protection on DVD's.
A lower court judge stopped the magazine's publisher from posting the code
on its Web site, or from linking to it.
Matt Bailey, an analyst with Webnoize, a research firm specializing in
digital media, said he had found very few sites linking to the FreeMe
program. Because of the digital copyright act, "everyone's treading very
lightly on this," Mr. Bailey said. "That in itself is an important point
because it means that the spread of these hacks is going to be very slow in
the future."
John Young, the owner of the Web site cryptome.org, one of the few to
publish the FreeMe program, said he knew he might be inviting a lawsuit but
that it was "a matter of free expression." A link to the program is also
available at The Register, a Web publication focusing on the software
industry.
Microsoft has said that more than 275 companies have licensed its Windows
Media technology to create secure distribution systems for audio and video
content. The music subscription service Pressplay, for instance, plans to
offer more than 125,000 tracks of music encoded with Microsoft's software
when it is introduced later this fall.
The Pressplay software allows consumers to pay a monthly fee for a preset
number of songs. If they choose to pay again at the end of the month, they
can continue to listen to the music; if not, the software makes it
inaccessible. It can also prevent them from transferring the music to a
portable device or burning it to a CD.
The FreeMe software only works with the latest version of Microsoft's
digital rights management software, released 18 months ago, and it only
works for consumers who have legally purchased music online. It enables
them to strip away the rules that prevent copying
October 23, 2001 Programmer Exposes Microsoft Flaws By AMY HARMON
_________________
Brooklyn Linux Solutions
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
http://www.brooklynonline.com
http://www.nylxs.com
http://www.nyfairuse.org
1-718-382-5752
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/mp3/brooklyn_national_antheum.mp3 For Jim ---
____________________________
New Yorker Linux Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
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