is a hoax as far as
I know.
it's just to explain that it's very feasible, but there is no running
code, just a message saying "hey, this was just a joke alright" when you
click on "order"." — Read the rest
On the news that the French Assembly finally rammed through a "three strikes" rule for the French Internet (if you're accused of infringement three times, you lose the right to access the Internet), Princeton prof Ed Felten has proposed that this should be extended to other media, like print. — Read the rest
The Intellectual Property Colloquium, a podcast for lawyers, has a one-hour show up about the reasons that DRM is the most reviled consumer technology in the market today. It includes interviews with Ed Felten and Randy Picker, testimony from the FTC's DRM hearings, and is hosted by UCLA Law's Doug Lichtman. — Read the rest
Ed Felten and several colleagues have just finished a paper called "Fingerprinting Blank Paper Using Commodity Scanners" for the May, 2009 Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. It details a mechanism for authenticating documents based on known characteristics of the paper stock and individual sheets they're printed on. — Read the rest
Adam sez, "Ed Felten of Princeton University followed the news coming out of NJ during the recent (non-presidential) primaries. Some of the Sequoia machines couldn't handle a name containing a 'n' with a tilde, but more surprising of all, voting machines were left unattended overnight in schools and churches all around Princeton, NJ. — Read the rest
Further to last night's post about Sequoia, the voting machine vendor that sent a legal threat to Ed Felten, the renowned Princeton prof who was tapped by the New Jersey's Union County to audit their Sequoia machines and make sure they're secure enough to use:
— Read the restUnion County has backed off a plan to let a Princeton University computer scientist examine voting machines where errors occurred in the presidential primary tallies, after the manufacturer of the machines threatened to sue, officials said today…
On the advice of county's attorneys, however, Rajoppi said today she must forego all plans for independent analysis.
Edwin Smith, the VP for "Compliance/Quality/Certification" at voting-machine manufacturer Sequoia Voting Systems has sent a threatening legal letter to Ed Felten — the Princeton law professor who's led many security audits of voting machines in the past.
The letter warns that if Felten and his colleagues publish any kind of security audit information of Sequoia's machines ("Sequoia software, its behavior, reports regarding same") that Sequoia will "take appropriate steps" through its "retained counsel." — Read the rest
Ed Felten writes on Freedom-to-Tinker:
— Read the restToday eight colleagues and I are releasing a significant new research
result. We show that disk encryption, the standard approach to
protecting sensitive data on laptops, can be defeated by relatively
simple methods. We demonstrate our methods by using them to defeat
three popular disk encryption products: BitLocker, which comes with
Windows Vista; FileVault, which comes with MacOS X; and dm-crypt,
which is used with Linux.
Today I had a remarkable conversation with an anonymous tipster who had a fascinating story to tell about the latest AACS key leak:
— Read the restThe world became a little more magical yesterday with the publication of a new "processing key" that can be used to unlock the AACS copy protection on the latest round of HD-DVD movies.
Would you like to be the exclusive owner of a number, with the right to sue other people for knowing your number or telling other people what it is? Now you can.
Last week, the AACS consortium made history by issuing legal threats against the 1.8 million web-pages (and counting) that mentioned its secret code for preventing HD-DVD discs from being copied. — Read the rest
It is forbidden to attempt to solve ApeLad's puzzle, or write down the answer. You have been warned.
Link
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Digg users revolt over AACS key
• Secret AACS numbers, the photoshopped edition
• Ed Felten explains the AACS revolt
• EFF explains the law on AACS keys
• AACS DRM body censors Cory's class blog
• New AACS crack "can't be revoked"
• AACS vows to fight people who publish the key
Video Link to "Think before you Post." (thanks, Erwin) See also an alleged in-game WoW protest: Link. And an anonymous BB reader points to yet another YouTube video, "Die DMCA, Die!": video link. CafePress has like 50 designs and counting: Link. — Read the rest
Drew from Fark just pointed me to this ABC News web article on the Digg user revolt over the AACS numeric key (previous BB post). Drew says,
— Read the restThe article questions why Digg censors spam and porn, but not the HD-DVD key.
Ed Felten has noticed an interesting wrinkle in Viacom's suit against YouTube — Viacom says that YouTube contributes to copyright infringement by allowing users to have private videos, because those videos might infringe on copyright.
— Read the restIn addition, YouTube is deliberately interfering with copyright owners' ability to find infringing videos even after they are added to YouTube's library.
Princeton's Ed Felten has posted a fun little essay explaining why it's often impossible to know what computer programs do, and how that makes comedy out of the idea of rating a video game based on all the possible scenarios it can depict. — Read the rest
Princeton e-voting researchers bought a sooper-seekr1t voting machine at a government auction for $82, and they're now busily dissecting them to find all the ways that they can be coaxed into eating your vote. Voting machine scammers vendors say that their machines are totally secure, but also say that they can't tell anyone how they work. — Read the rest
Princeton DRM UR-scholars Alex Halderman and Ed Felten have begun an examination of the recent crack of AACS, the anti-user system in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. They promise to go into great depth on what the crack means and where it will go next:
— Read the restTypical users can't extract title keys on their own, so BackupHDDVD won't be useful to them as it currently stands – hence the claims that BackupHDDVD is a non-event.
Freedom to Tinker, the security blog maintained by the Princeton's esteemed engineering prof Ed Felten, has been blocked by a personal firewall from a company called Barracuda, which has classified the site as a "hacking" site.
Censorware and firewall companies are incapable of accurately judging and categorizing the Internet. — Read the rest
Ed Felten's Freedom to Tinker blog is being guest-edited by David Robinson, one of his students, writing about how the DRM wars may be won:
— Read the restLet's suppose, for the sake of argument, that this early report is right — that Microsoft is, in fact, going to make an offer to all iTunes users to replicate their libraries of iTunes, FairPlay-protected music on the new Zune service at no added cost to the users.
Ed Felten — the Princeton engineering prof who led the effort to crack the Secure Digital Music Initiative and did yeoman work on the Sony BMG DRM fiasco — has published a fast, ten-page white-paper on the complexities of Network Neutrality. — Read the rest
