Year: 2003
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Super-DMCA Already Passed in Michigan
Alert reader Larry Blunk reports that the state of Michigan has already passed a set of super-DMCA laws. They will take effect on March 31. Here is the text of the three new laws: 1, 2, 3. The ban on concealing the origin or destination of communications, whose drawbacks I had pointed out previously, is…
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Intent Requirements in the State Super-DMCA Bills
Several readers point out that the state super-DMCA bills contain language requiring an “intent to harm or defraud a communications service”, and they suggest that such a requirement makes the bills less harmful than I had said yesterday. I disagree, for two reasons. First, although some of the offenses created by the bills do require…
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MPAA Lobbying for State Super-DMCA Bills
The MPAA has reportedly been lobbying in favor of the overreaching state super-DMCA bills I discussed yesterday. Apparently, the MPAA has been circulating this one-pager in support of the bills. The one-pager refers to “proposed model state legislation”, which explains the similarities between the various states’ bills. But it doesn’t say who is circulating the…
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Use a Firewall, Go to Jail
The states of Massachusetts and Texas are preparing to consider bills that apparently are intended to extend the national Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (TX bill; MA bill) The bills are obviously related to each other somehow, since they are textually similar. Here is one example of the far-reaching harmful effects of these bills. Both bills…
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Finkelstein Replies on ARDG and the Press
Seth Finkelstein replies to my previous posting on companies’ press policies by suggesting that companies are rational to keep their engineers away from the press, because of concerns about being unfairly misquoted. I can see his point, by I think hatchet-job stories are pretty rare in the respectable media, and I also think that most…
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NRC Report on Authentication Technology and Privacy
The authoritative National Research Council has issued an important new report entitled “Who Goes There?: Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy.” Like all NRC reports, this is an in-depth document reflecting the consensus of an impressive panel of experts. Often people think of authorization (that is, ensuring that only authorized people get access to a…
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More on ARDG and the Press
I wrote yesterday about the ARDG’s policy, banning the press from the otherwise open ARDG meetings. Apparently the official rationale for this is that some companies refuse to allow the people who represent them at ARDG meetings to speak to the press. I have to admit that I find these companies’ policies hard to understand.…
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Leaks From CERT's "Good Guys" List
Brian McWilliams at Wired News reports on the leakage of unreleased security alerts from the government-funded CERT coordination center. Three secret alerts sent to members of CERT’s “good guys” club (known as the Information Security Alliance, or ISA) were reposted onto the open “Full Disclosure” mailing list. The person who did this may have violated…
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ARDG Bans the Press
Several groups, including the EFF, Consumers Union, DigitalConsumer, and PublicKnowledge, have sent a letter objecting to the Analog Reconversion Discussion Group (ARDG), objecting to ARDG’s policy of refusing journalists access to its “open” meetings. Despite its confusing name, ARDG is an important process, reflecting the efforts of some to promote, and perhaps eventually to mandate,…
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We're Back
We’re back on the air after roughly thirty-six hours of downtime. Apparently the server that brings you Freedom to Tinker (along with many unrelated sites hosted by the same web hosting provider) has had its hard drives impounded by the authorities as part of a cyberterrorism investigation. The last week or so of backup tapes…