[Nettime-bold] From Sea to Shining Sea

[Bruce Sterling <bruces@well.com>]

(((You lot probably thought I was all embittered, alarmist
and upset when I made that earlier post.  Well, think again.)))


From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com

The complete text of the draft SSSCA (2.5 MB PDF file) is now online:
http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/sssca-draft.pdf
http://www.nullify.org/sssca-draft.pdf
http://sites.inka.de/risctaker/sssca-draft.pdf
http://www.parrhesia.com/sssca-draft.pdf

Slashdot thread on the SSSCA:
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/09/08/0238200.shtml

Politech archive on SSSCA:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sssca

EFF alert on "Canadian DMCA" -- comments due September 15:
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010907_eff_canada_cpdci_alert.html

-Declan

********

From: Larry Blunk <lblunk@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] Text of draft Security Systems Standards and
+Certification Act
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 23:09:34 -0700 (PDT)

   This is how I believe this act will play out:

  1) This act will sail through congress thanks to the heavy lobbying of
     the copyright cartels.

  2) The "industry" will adopt the Trust Computing Platfrom Alliance's
(TCPA)
     (http://www.trustedpc.org) specification for PC's, and the CPRM/CPPM
     (http://www.4centity.com/tech/cprm/) specification for hard drives,
     removable storage devices, and pre-recorded media.  The TCPA spec
 performs
     hardware-based signature checks on software, beginning with the
     boot-loader.  The current spec allows for boot-loaders which fail the
     signature check to still load and run (with the PC in an "insecure"
     state).  With a minor modification, the TCPA spec can require that any
     boot-loader which fails the signature check will fail to run at all.
     This can be backed up by the CPRM hard-drive which will only allow a
     secure program to modify the boot-loader on the hard-drive.

  3) I suspect that the FBI/DOJ will not go after Linux initially (even
     though the "software" provision of the act provides them with the
     power to do so) due to the possible speech ramifications.  Linux
     will effectively be outlawed because the mandated TCPA
     PC's will only run Secure Windows.

  4)  After several years, the Feds will go after Linux itself due to the
     scofflaws who continue to run Linux on their pre-TCPA computers.

     Microsoft has a wonderful PowerPoint presentation on their designs
    to monopolize the copyright protection business via the TCPA PC at
    http://www.microsoft.com/winhec/presents/Security.zip

     I bet there's alot of celebrating going on in Redmond tonight now
    that the possibility of a break-up has been dismissed in favor of
    a meaningless wrist-slap, plus they are now well on their way to getting
    Linux outlawed with this act.  They also probably find a great deal of
    irony in the fact that IBM, the supposed champion of Linux, will
    have had significant hand in developing the technology which will be
    used to destroy Linux.

********

From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavitt@hotmail.com
To: declan@well.com
Subject: Re: FC: Sen. Hollings plans to introduce DMCA sequel: The SSSCA
Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2001 10:50:29 -0700
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
Message-ID: <F138UkuxBhjOo1iCCEG0000f1ee@hotmail.com

Goddamn those sons of bitches. They rewrite copyright law to fuck the
creators, their every effort to impose copy-protection fails in the market
or is widely circumvented, so now they're going to use their financial
muscle to abuse the power of government to make copyright violation a
crime with greater penalties than outright highway robbery!

If your average citizen truly had a voice in government, if they truly
mattered, this shit would be DOA. I dare the folk in Congress to go back
to their constituents, and explain to them face to face why they don't
have the right to be able to listen to the music they've paid for at both
work and home, without hauling CDs everywhere... why they can't record
their favorite tracks off their CDs onto their computer and make MP3 play
lists... why the can't burn a few tracks onto a CD or MP3 player and play
them back at a party, or in the car. That when they pay $16.99 for a CD,
it buy's them nothing but the hunk of plastic the music comes on, and the
"right" to play that CD on a industry/government approved device.

The only response legislation like this deserves is massive, public civil
disobedience. Stand out in front of the White House, with old Intel boxes
running Linux and an open source MP3 ripper/player, and offer to sell them
to passerby. Have 500,000 individuals be formal members of a general
partnership (no liability shield) - force the government to throw us all
in jail and take everything we own. We'll see what happens then!

Thomas
--
Thomas Leavitt -- thomasleavitt@hotmail.com; ICQ #16455919




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Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2001 15:59:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: DMCA, SSSCA, and the Copy Machine Control Act


Dave,

I'm not being factitious with the Subject line above.  A couple of
years ago in the PRIVACY Forum, in the issue located within the archive at:

    http://www.vortex.com/privacy/priv.08.18

I reported on "invisible" IDs that are imprinted on a wide variety of
xerographic copier output, unknown to most users.  The ID is encoded using
digital watermarking techniques (more broadly an application of
"steganography").  Many modern digital copiers also contain systems to
detect attempts at copying currency and taking appropriate preventative
action.

When I originally reported all of this (even though I had it all straight
from the mouth of a Xerox spokesman) many people simply refused to
believe it -- it seemed so far beyond the pale.

Let's look a few years ahead and extrapolate from the current trend of
criminalizing any activity that attempts to "subvert" any "rights control"
systems, however defined.  If the "copyright lobby" continues to hit home
runs in the political system, there's no good reason why they won't move
onward to copiers and scanners in due course.  The technologies I described
above could easily be used to define a system that would refuse to copy any
document, book page, photo, or whatever that included hidden watermarking
information.  Hell, you could go all the way and even report the attempt to
a central authority in the case of Internet-connected equipment.  About a
thousand dollars for "research" and a few million for lobbying and you're
all set!

Of course, this really is largely our own fault.  We technologists have had
a
dandy time building our equipment, software, and systems, then handing them
over to the powers-that-be -- the folks who in the copyright arena are on
their way towards owning everything in the store, the store itself, and the
ground the store is sitting on.  We moan and complain to each other in
mailing lists, while the organized big boys chuckle all the way to the bank.

Unless enough of us change our ways of approaching these issues and come
down from the ivory towers, we'll continue to be squashed like bugs.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@pfir.org or lauren@vortex.com or lauren@privacyforum.org
Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, Fact Squad - http://www.factsquad.org
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy





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