The blog of content protection

End of July, the US Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress have announced six new exemptions that authorize circumventing protection measures as defined by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

• It is possible to extract from a DVD (protected by CSS) small video sequences to create a new work, for criticism or education purpose. In other words, DVD is treated like book. Fair use allowed citing extracts of books.
• Making mobile phone applications interoperable with other handsets. This was in theory already covered by fair use.
• Jail breaking phones in order to be used on other carrier networks.
• Circumventing video games for the purpose of good faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities; this is good news for security researchers.
• Circumventing computer programs protected by dongles if they are bugged or obsolete.
• eBooks if no edition allow access to speak aloud function or special formats displaying (in clear for impaired people)

I don’t know enough about the US regulatory system to assess that it is equivalent to an evolution of the DMCA or just a recommendation. IN any case, it is always the judge who has the final words. Any US lawyer who may answer this question?

I regularly report news on the litigation between Viacom and YouTube. Wednesday, 23rd June was the latest event.
Judge Louis Stanton, in an extensive 30-page report, ruled in favor of Google. Judge Stanton selected a law that protects ISPs from copyright infringements if they quickly banish the infringing pieces of content. For instance, he explained that YouTube removed in one day the 100,000 videos that were cited in a Viacom takedown notice. It took Viacom several months to collect these infringing samples.
The lawsuit highlighted some embarrassing behaviours when analyzing the email exchanges. For instance, two founders of YouTube pleaded the third founder to stop posting infringing content on YouTube (at the birth of YouTube). Some documents showed that Viacom expected to acquire YouTube before Google. And many other stories…

As usual, the two opponents sides are orthogonal. I would suggest reading both point of views. For instance:

• Viacom’s site dedicated to this litigation.
• EFF’s legal analysis of the judgment.

Is it the end of the story? No, Viacom goes on appeal.

In my old times (end 70s), the first programmable calculators appeared: HP34 with inverted Polish notation (A twisted mindset needed!), and the TI57, TI 58 and overall the mythic TI59. It was the first programmable calculator with 1K RAM! And recordable magnetic strip, printer… The competitor was HP41C.

But one of the most funny part of these calculators was to discover their secrets, i.e., find ways to do things that they were not suppose to do or find hidden features. We exchanged and searched feverishly these tips.

The recent episode of Texas Instruments (TI) reminded me these glory days. (sniff). Hobbyists succeeded to install different OS on TI’s latest graphical calculators. The applications are normally signed. Hobbyists succeeded to reverse engineer the signing keys and published them on blogs. Thus, TI issued letters demanding the bloggers to remove the information due to DMCA violation.

Mid October 2009, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represented three persons who received such notifications. EFF claimed that DMCA allowed reverse engineering to create interoperable custom software like the program.

End of October, TI has dropped the threats against these persons. Nevertheless, it seems that TI continues to issue such letters to other bloggers.

I believe that some people have the compulsory need to “hack” in the Noble sense a system that they own. It is a intellectual challenge. It is usual in the game console domain and even in the mobile phone. Sometimes they have the blessing of the manufacturer (Sony and the PS3). More often, they do not have it (XBOX, Wii, DS, iPhone, …) The hobbyists are not driven by greed, they are driven by intellectual challenge. Unfortunately, sometimes their work is reused by pirates who are money driven.

Should a manufacturer fight back hobbyists? If their work endangers the business model of the manufacturer, then the answer is yes. Else, the answer is not Manichean. Many other parameters may be analyzed: safety, liability,…