Geographic Screening 294
In February, after two months of operation, the Canadian Net company iCraveTV.com shut down after being sued by the Motion Picture Association of America, the same freedom-loving folks who had a Norwegian teenager thrown in jail a few months ago for distributing DVD decryption codes.
iCraveTV's business -- legal in Canada but not in the United States -- was the redistribution of live broadcast television programming over its Web site. The MPAA sued iCraveTV in federal court because U.S. copyright laws proscribe redistribution of TV programming without first obtaining permission from the programs' owners. The MPAA suit, similar to those being filed all over the country by music industry representatives, claimed that computer users in the U.S. could circumvent iCraveTV's simple access barriers to non-Canadians.
If the company hadn't halted operations instantly, it might have been liable for hundreds of millions in damages under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, passed quietly 16 months ago and signed quickly by President Clinton. The DMCA is turning out to be the most potent weapon ever against the free spread of cultural artifacts like movies and music.
What was particularly significant though, was less the MPAA's lawsuit than iCrave's response. iCrave didn't argue the legal merits of the suit, according to Denise Caruso, writing in Monday's New York Times . Instead, the company responded by filing a series of patent claims for what it says is a new technology that could significantly affect the copyright skirmishes breaking out all over the Internet. The companies and organizations claim that they are only seeking to halt the theft and piracy of cultural properties like music and movies. Whatever their intentions, their actions threaten to permanently alter the nature of the Net itself, until now the freest culture in the information spectrum.
The company says it has developed what it calls a technological protection mechanism that locates where its customers are, permitting the site to bar anyone from viewing protected programming outside Canada. The company refused to disclose any of the technical details of this program, but Icrave President and co-founder William Craig said this new "enhanced geographic screening technology" would soon be necessary to make the Net appealing and safe for copyright holders.
"Collectively, the Internet has to evolve and adapt," Craig told the Times. "So what we're trying to do is create 'country-area-networks'where you can have a computer just serve a certain territory."
If this kind of software works and spreads, it presents a laundry list of ugly implications for the Net. This intentionally fragmented model of entertainment and content distribution -- think movie theaters, video chains and cable TV -- would transform the Net into the exact business model that has made so much money for the the entertainment industry, which is estimated to have earned more than $75 billion in revenues in l999.
Ironically, government interventions have had little effect on the free-wheeling nature and growth of the Net, but it's taken global corporations just a few short months to raise more disturbing legal, copyright and patent issues about cyberspace than had been raised in the preceding generation.
The DMCA of l998, which was passed after intense lobbying by entertainment industries (Disney, AOL/Time-Warner), has as its centerpiece an anti-circumvention provision, a new kind of liability aimed directly at information software, and which clamps down even on activities previously permitted by "fair use" provisions.
In copyright terms, "fair use" describes conditions under which someone can legally use or excerpt a copyrighted work. These might include referring to a copyrighted work but not quoting from it, using a small enough portion of a copyright work that it's considered "fair," or copying work you own.
But under the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, it is now illegal to violate copyright protection technology for any reason at all. Under the law, anyone who makes, sells or uses a device -- software, hardware, or a computer -- that makes copyright circumvention possible is engaging in a criminal act. This is the reason downloading free music and sharing Napster sites had been curtailed on college campuses in recent weeks. Schools are receiving warning letters from the RIAA (the music industry association) threatening legal action under the DMCA that would hold them liable for any and all copyright infringements if they don't take steps to eliminate the transmission of copyrighted material on networks they control.
It was the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA that resulted in the arrest of 16-year-old Jon Johansen, a Norwegian teenager who had allegedly published code allowing the circumvention of the encryption found in DVDs, even though he wasn't intending to make illegal copies. He simply wanted to watch a movie which he owned legally but couldn't watch on his Linux laptop. Thus he was prosecuted not for pirating digital content, but rather for publishing and distributing the code that made it possible for him to view the film contained on a disk he already owned. That's an escalation of the culture wars, to say the least.
And it's not the last. "I think we want to nail them to the wall now," Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association, told reporters when the iCraveTV.com suit was filed.
The fact is, there is hardly a person reading this who isn't a criminal under the provisions of the DMCA, including me.
There are plenty of disturbing elements to the recent assaults by the movie and music industries on the cultural infrastructure of the Net, but the elimination of any kind of "fair use" -- any circumstance at all in which the making of a copy might be considered legal -- is a huge legal victory for the corporations seeking to dominate cyberspace by breaking the Net and Web into marketing territories.
If iCrave succeeds in developing, patenting and distributing technology that permits geographic screening, the Net could become a Balkanized culture, with access restricted by technologically and legally enforced roadblocks, and by geographical restrictions to content and access. The Net and its protocols were designed to be free, and this freedom has resulted in one of the greatest creative, technological and cultural outpourings in human history. For a handful of greedy corporations to turn the Net into a digital Wal-Mart is unthinkable. It is also, for the first time, not a completely impossible notion.
A proven technical solution to this (Score:1)
Re:Blame Canada! (Score:1)
What option does a company like iCrave have. They are allowed distribute the stuff to Canadians, they try to do so, and when some Americans start tapping in, they get flogged for breaking American laws. Well, good on 'em for trying to keep giving Canadians what they want and are legally entitled to. Katz's article kind of points at iCrave for starting this whole geographic screening thing, the best place to point is at US copyright laws and Motion Picture/Music industries.
-loderunner
"Our true north strong and free" - O'Canada
Re:A proven technical solution to this (Score:1)
Even when IPV6 comes along it will still be technically easy to use a machine within a geographic area posing as client and then turn around and serve to any other IP outside the geographic area.
What I am wondering is what they are going to do legally in order to stop the anonymizers?
Eh? (Score:1)
How does this stop me from building a VPN between my computer and a friend's machine in Canada? Then I am on a "local network" behind a Canadian firewall. There's really no way to truly detect this kind of thing, there will always be ways around it.
At least if they do this, that means I can actually watch TV over the net.
Re:Ever try dowloading high encryption software? (Score:1)
:)
Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:1)
-Peter
Not likely (Score:1)
Remeber that program that looks for traceroutes and sends back fake information? It's be easy to set up a daemon that looked for packets that would trigger an icmp time exceeded and interfere with it. Just make it look like the packet takes another 5 hops to canada - or wherever! The thing could be in the Democratic (hah!) Republic of Congo in 2 hops if you wanted it to look that way.
This idea is bunk against active deceit.
-Peter
Re:Circle Logic (ish) (Score:1)
If you visit china you can return with a suitcase full of pirated dvd's. To me this substantiates the claim that css is ineffectual as a copy protection measure, since these DVD's can be played on any player. Unless you're running linux. Then you need DeCSS or a dxr2.
-Peter
Re:Circle Logic (ish) (Score:1)
normal consumer DVD-ROM drives can not read that data without a hardware hack
Presumably you mean write; I don't understand how DeCSS would work, otherwise.
And I'm not sure you're right about the drives; I think it's the blank media which is designed to be prohibitive. Even if you are currently right, people protect CD software by reading past the 74th minute, but 80-minute CD burners are now the norm.
Hamish
Re:Circle Logic (ish) (Score:1)
CSS is a copy protection scheme
You aren't making an argument, you're making a statement.
Sure, you can copy the bytes of a DVD without a decoder, but they aren't useable in that fashion.
My understanding of it is this: the movie is encrypted with a session key, and the session key is encrypted with five hundred or so licensee keys. Therefore the player, which has the (or the other half of the, I'm not sure which) licensee key, can decrypt the movie and send it to your screen.
If I copy the bytes of a DVD onto another DVD (for this I need to obtain a truly blank DVD, not the consumer version which has the keyspace burned with zeroes), I can play the copied DVD on my DVD player. This does not strike me as 'not usable in that fashion'.
Could someone with specific knowledge please arbitrate here?
Hamish
Embedded state-ism (Score:1)
You could squawk about how it's desirable to (theoretically, at least) be able to track down software pirates, criminals, script-kiddies, and pr0n mavens, but I like to believe that an increasing majority of Net users really don't have intentions like that. They want to communicate, learn stuff, and legitimately download things like Linux and Linux applications.
And now, a word from our sponsor... (Score:1)
When he first announced that he wanted to discredit and intimidate the opposition, I nearly choked on my own stomach bile. His actions are in every respect consistent with the school of prissy thought that tends to reinforce the concept of collective guilt that is the root of all prejudice. I can't live with headlong uppity-types who increase people's stress and aggression. That proves that if Jon had done his homework, he'd know that he is a shoo-in for this year's awarding of "most dim-witted use of boosterism". What I am getting at is this: Of particular interest to me is the way that he continuously denies that he seems to have a bitter ideological conflict with my statement that the longer we delay action, the harder it will be to hammer out solutions on the anvil of discourse. It probably sounds like I'm being quasi-dirty, but Jon doesn't let a day pass without showing to the world that he is as little fitted to be trusted with liberty as thieves with keys or children with firearms.
Even so, his double standards are as incorrigible as they are an insult to human intelligence. Jon has no right to be here. How did he get so feral? I have my theories, but they're only speculation. At any rate, his canards are the direct result of a policy of abandonment and neglect.
What Jon does in private is none of my business. But when he tries to wage a clandestine guerilla war against many basic human rights, I object. Throughout human history, misguided losers have always been wretched. So it should come as no surprise that once one begins thinking about free speech, about raucous practitioners of commercialism who use ostracism and public opinion to prevent the airing of views contrary to their own duplicitous beliefs, one realizes that of all of his exaggerations and incorrect comparisons, one in particular stands out: "Jon is a model citizen." I don't know where he came up with this, but his statement is dead wrong. Like a lion after tasting the blood of human victims, he will inflict untold misery, suffering, and distress. Never before have I encountered more bloatedly self-important prose than that which Jon produces.
I have given this issue a great deal of thought, and I now have a strong conviction that I am highly critical of those who tolerate or apologize for people who work with Jon. Is it any wonder that he appears to have a problem with common sense and logic? His assumptions are matched in their untenability only by the arrogant fervor with which they are held. It should be stressed that Jon can out-reason pompous protestors but not anyone else. I unmistakeably feel that we should announce that we may need to picket, demonstrate, march, or strike to stop Jon before he can toss quaint concepts like decency, fairness, and rational debate out the window, and I have formalized my commitment to this high ideal by ensuring that I always burn away social illness, exploitation, and human suffering. Maoism can be deadly, but Jon's mottos are much worse.
I imagine that we ignore him at our own peril. It's quite sad that Jon chooses to squander his talent on this sort of rancorous autism. He wallows in his basest behavior. Of course, it's not quite that simple. I used to think that uneducated misfits were the most belligerent people on the planet, but now I know that revanchism can not and must not be tolerated. As stated earlier, if Jon continues to deprive individuals of the right to restore the world back to its original balance, I will decidedly be obliged to do something about him. And you know me: I never neglect my obligations.
His litanies are not an isolated case of jaded paternalism, but a typical example of how childish he can be. Why does hooliganism exist? What causes it? What is it about our society that makes grotesque Philistines like Jon desire to feature simplistic answers to complex problems? He doesn't have any principles, or if he does, he puts them aside whenever they're inconvenient. More prosaically, discrediting ideas by labeling them as lewd is an old tradition among his cronies. Jon's personal attacks are just a rhetorical ploy to get away from the obvious fact that the limitation and final abolition of fascism presuppose the elimination of innumerable preconditions.
I like to think I'm a reasonable person, but you just can't reason with beer-guzzling mouthpieces for self-deceiving antidisestablishmentarianism. It's been tried. They don't understand, they can't understand, they don't want to understand, and they will die without understanding why all we want is for them not to impose tremendous hardships on tens of thousands of decent, hard-working individuals. On balance, Jon's lackeys want so much to foster fetishism at every opportunity that the concept of right vs. wrong never comes up. Still, Jon is blinded by greed.
If nothing else, his witticisms are made of the same spirit that accounts for the majority of the problems we face in this world. Many experts now believe that it's time for Jon to stop his systematic assault on religious freedom. He has made a big mistake. Mark my words: we ought to teach Jon a lesson. It is quite common today to hear people express themselves as follows: "Jon's nerdy sentiments are a shout to the world that, in the coming days, Jon will put evil thoughts in our children's minds." One thing is certain: Conventional wisdom states that his henchmen are stampeding happily and mindlessly toward the precipice of condescending prudish unilateralism.
Many people are shocked when I tell them that his uncompromising assistants seem to think they can escape the consequences of their actions. And I'm shocked that so many people are shocked. You see, I had thought everybody already knew that if I withheld my feelings on this matter, I'd be no less inhumane than Jon. Others may disagree, but I think that I'm oversimplifying things a little here. Jon's helpers, when they are taken seriously at all, are considered by most scholars to be of questionable credibility. In case you don't know, I am making a pretty serious accusation here. I am accusing Jon of planning to blame those who have no power to change the current direction of events. And I don't want anyone to think that I am basing my accusation only on the fact that it doesn't do us much good to become angry and wave our arms and shout about the evils of his wisecracks in general terms. If we want other people to agree with us and join forces with us, then we must disabuse him of the notion that it's okay for him to indulge his every whim and lust without regard for anyone else or for society as a whole. What I had wanted for this letter was to write an analysis of Jon Katz's memoirs. Not a exhortation or a shrill denunciation, but an analysis. I hope I have succeeded at that.
Re:I'm not in the US. Why does DMCA matter to me? (Score:1)
In the past I naively thought that all corporate CEOs, like myself, believed in free markets, without interference from government. However, some of them wish to use the power of the state for their own short term material gain. These are the people that commonly bribe congress to harass a competitor of theirs or to pass regulations that infringe of the basic freedoms of consumers. These people would like to legislate that everyone by law has to give them several thousand dollars a year. In effect, they want a share of the government's power and they are willing to pay for it.
I agree with you, that this is harmful to society. In the long run I believe this sort of behavior will be harmful for corporations as well. Only with the freedom to choose can our economy and society truly progress. A great article [cato.org] explaining why Silicon Valley should not normalize relations with Washington D.C. is available at Cato's [cato.org] website. I think we may have disagreements on the exact source of the evil. I don't feel that corporations, or any free associations of man, are inherently evil. It is these free associations which allow us to cooperative and progress as a species. Evil comes when individuals or groups of individuals acting in concert decide to use force to achieve their aims. At this point they infringe upon the right of others to live in a world free from violence where they can pursue their own aims. Therefore corporations, recording associations, etc. are not inherently evil. They are just free associations of man. Some individuals within these organizations are seeking to use force to gain what they desire.
If these ideas interest you you might want to check out some libertarian web sites.
Stuart Eichert
The power of the TV industry at work ... (Score:1)
Take the satellite TV for example. For those of us who want to get French TV we can either get one station with Dish for $12.95 or over a dozen on the gray market for about $10, doing what the Canadians do to get US TV.
And the station that is offered is boring as hell. I asked Dish and they said the FCC doesn't allow them to provide the service from ExpressVu.
ExpressVu is their Canadian company which is partly owned by Bell.
Now that I can't get Channel 25 I'm pissed!
Anyone know a back door to get the station?
bbcat [netonecom.net]
You're just jealous! (Score:1)
bbcat [netonecom.net]
Re:Ever try dowloading high encryption software? (Score:1)
That's not what he's doing at all. Where on earth do you get that impression? He only mentions Canada three times in the entire, and then mainly to identify the geographic location of the company involved. The one time he mentions Canadian law, he says that it's freer than American law.
The scary thing is you uttered this utter stupidity and were moderated up to a 5. What kind of stupid people moderate Slashdot. This is utterly ridiculous.
A need for this type of restriction (Score:1)
These restrictions will also make possible the application of taxes on internet sales transactions. It will also make it possible to pay for purchases in your own currency. For example, (because of the difference between the Candaian and the US dollar) it would be possible for a Canadian online store to charge Canadian consumers in Canadian funds, and US consumers in US currency.
And as always, there will be those that find ways to circumvent these restrictions. That is the way of the internet.
Re:OT: Jurisdiction (Score:1)
Imagine all the corruption there could be -- some banana republic "wins" a bunch of "judgements" against Bill Gates and then goes to the US Governemnt demanding that they enforce their US$5 billion judgement against him.
I think you just run the risk of getting nabbed when you enter foreign soil, and even this depends on how hooked in the immigration people are with the judiciary.
Re:OT: Jurisdiction (Score:1)
Expand your market by limiting your audience! (Score:1)
Sue CDR Manufacturers under the DMCA? (Score:1)
Lets say I'm a musician that has released a cd. It is fully copywrited to me and such. What is preventing me from then suing the manufactures of CDR devices, on the grounds that they make a device that has only one purpose (to make perfect digital copies of a cd so it can be played back later on a different device), and that one purpose can obviously be used to infringe on my copywrite. Or perhaps I should sue Adaptec for making the EasyCD software package, which even includes a CDCopier program! Its designed to copy cds, why does this not fall under the DMCA?
I can understand that video tape may not be included since they will degrade with copies, but CDR's do not suffer the same problem. What keeps the major cd-r manufacturers safe?
Re:A proven technical solution to this (Score:1)
Re:OT: Jurisdiction (Score:1)
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Bloody Revolution! :-) (Score:1)
Well, if I was arguing, I would argue thusly:
If everyone does it, how can it be criminal? They can't jail EVERYBODY. The net is empowering people in this way.
a) An illegal activity is widespread, easy, and most people think nothing of it.
b) You can't trace most of the illegal activity due to it's very nature, at least not without an infrastructure in place that makes "1984" and "Big Brother" look like some guy in his backyard with cheap plastic kiddy binoculars.
c) Yes, if everyone jumped off a cliff, you would too. You know it, I know it. The community as a whole determines right and wrong for that community. In this case, the community is the world. There is no universal standard of ethics, morals, or anything else. Everything is relative.
d) You can always "throw the bums out". Whether this is peaceful (as in voting them out) or not (as in bloody revolution) is immaterial. If enough people get riled up enough, change occurs. There is no stopping it. There is no holding it back. At least, not without killing the dissenting parties as they arise, which is a shocking blow to the rest to the peepul (sic)...
Conclusion: at some point, the teaming masses of humanity will not take it anymore, and throw the bums out. You cannot continually remove a man's freedoms and expect him not to react. Everyone has their breaking point. So does a society. Things balance out.
Ah well. I'm ranting again.
---
JJ is/was in JAIL???? (Score:1)
Have I missed something, or is jk just forgetting to check his facts again? AFAIK, jj was arrested, but not jailed....
Re:JJ is/was in JAIL???? (Score:1)
Everyone is a criminal (Score:1)
I'm not in the US. Why does DMCA matter to me? (Score:2)
Another example, porn is illegal in Saudi Arabia, with whom the US *does* have good relations (we're not talking Iran here). If a Saudi web surfer downloads porn from my web site, will I be extradited to or tried for breaking Saudi laws? Of course not. That's just silly. Why is the Icrave TV case any different?
Icrave should've done what any good non-merkin should have done in response to the complaint. Send back a letter with three words on it: "Yankee go home".
Re:Circle Logic (ish) (Score:2)
I don't see the difference here. CD Players are designed to read the bits off of a CD and output them to some device (like headphones or a speaker). DeCSS is designed to take the stream off of the DVD (since the reader itself doesn't output a useable form like the CD Player) and output it to some useable device, like an X display or a FBCons driver. Neither were designed for the duplication of the medium (DeCSS was written for watching movies on a laptop) and both have uses other than copying.
Under the kind of logic you have above, all CD-Rs would be illegal (only used for copying) no matter if the person merely uses them for backing up important data. This obviously doesn't make sense.
Broadcasting (Score:2)
Re:well, maybe you can... (Score:2)
iCraveTV screwed up (Score:2)
It seems like setting up an operation completely in another country would be a good way to bypass the DMCA. Let the RIAA and MPAA waste their money - we can keep moving the goalposts (and I'm not suggesting doing anything illegal either).
RFC1712: DNS Encoding of Geographical Location (Score:2)
--
BeDevId 15453
Download BeOS R5 Lite [be.com] free!
Salon articles about geographic screening (Score:2)
Salon [salon.com] did a pair of articles on this topic a couple of weeks ago:
The first article is about iCraveTV's effort, and the second talks about Digital Island, who offers the service today and claims a 96% accuracy rate. Both articles are shy on technical details, but mention is made of making arrangements with big ISPs to learn about how their IP address range is distributed geographically.
I suspect that this will prove to be another reason why anonymizing proxies are useful and necessary.
the danger lies in GOVERNMENT use... (Score:2)
First, let's assume that such a technology is possible, and furthermore, possible to implement at near-perfect quality.
So iCraveTV uses this tech to restrict access to their site to Canadian users. BFD. They're a private company, they can choose to sell or not sell to whomever they choose, right? Even the normal market mechanism of "voting with your wallet" need not be employed, since iCrave has voted for you. Surely if they proved successful, another company would spring up that did not employ those regional controls, and claim some, if not the bulk of iCrave's market share. The 'net has become largely corporate since its deregulation, and to some extent revolves around commerce now, but I feel that even if such regionalization became pervasive, the "important" part of the 'net - the underground - would survive, and "we" - the underground - wouldn't care, or perhaps even notice.
However, what happens if the US gov't gets irrirated that their laws don't apply to Canadian companies, as other posters have noted? It bugs them, and the MPAA of course, that some Canadians can use the international nature of the internet to break
Oppressive governments: too many to count
Peaceful people: 0
Anyway, my point is that I could give a damn if iCraveTV allows only Canadians to use their service. At leat, compared to the damn I would be giving if my government decided that we couldn't have any of that subversive Canadian (or Chinese, or Middle-Eastern, or Dutch, or....) content on
MoNsTeR
Re:Non-legal, non-technical solution, IT'S POSSIBL (Score:2)
Of course, if it wasn't a desirable good or service, no one would buy it, and this would be a moot point.
The fact of the matter is that we WANT that carrot that dangles in front of us. Corporations demand that we pay it, and so we do. It is only to be expected that these corporations do all within their power to protect their cash flow. After all, would you not do all that you can to keep breathing?
However, the whole "country-area-network" thing is for the birds. Face it, the only way the human race is ever going to get any further than it has is to pull itself up by it's bootstraps. The Internet provides a big stepping stone in the right direction by removing barriers and allowing cultural communication (all of it, the good, the bad and the ugly). With communication comes understanding. With understanding comes cooperation. With cooperation, most anything is possible.
Isolationism has never been a prudent foreign policy.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Net like International Short Wave Radio (Score:2)
Geographic Screening = Wrong Thing, Wrong Way (Score:2)
I'm not normally this quick to shout "paradigm shift", but this is such a no brainer. Let's fool the Emperor by gagging his loyal subjects and banning mirrors thoughout the world!
I'll give Katz credit for putting the DMCA in terms that would make everyone but Fidel Castro and Scientologists want to oppose it.
--
Dave Aiello
No way! (Score:2)
1. You could implement a whois searching mechanism, which, according to the data you registered along with your domain name, would give the address and names of the registrar. However, these fields usually contain intermediary data, not the final user one. It would work for the majority of dialup-ISP users, but not for the directly connected ones.
2. You could try to determine which IPs come from which geographic location, according to initial partitioning of the IP space. It may work in the States, if at all. However, most other countries had to use a fake US business name to start using Internet, since in the beginning foreign country rules weren't totally sorted out. That way, in our little third-world-country, we have ISPs with IPs from Puerto Rico, United States, and other countries, not necessarily our own.
And finally, it really isn't too hard to spoof your own IP into a US one...
Ways to Establish Location (and get around them) (Score:2)
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The real reason to fear (Score:2)
- Personal files.
- Criminalization of anonymity or pseudonymity.
That's where this trend is leading us. It fits right in with forcing anonymous remailers to disclose the identities of their users and requiring ISPs to make private emails available to federal agents. It fits right in with all attempts at privacy invasion and censorship.
(loosely defined)
Censorship is the attempt to deny certain resources to certain individuals.
What's the easiest way to do that? What do *you* think?
Sooner or later you will only be able to legally access the internet under your own name or official identification code. (i.e. - SSN) This will quickly, forcibly, and permanently divide the internet into countries, states, ethnic backgrounds, etc. In other words, it will make all the data previously collected by various governments and organizations once again useful in dealing with the online community. It will also make the internet the single most powerful tool for gathering information about individuals that has ever existed. If we don't work against it, this will happen in our lifetime.
Neither governments nor companies like the level of individual freedom available on the internet. In the US government's case, however, efforts to reduce online freedom are in part hampered by the Bill of Rights. *Companies*, OTOH, have no such qualms nor feel themselves bound by any such restrictions. When was the last time you had to tell the insistent Radio Shack salesman to Bugger Off because he wanted your name and address? Why do we get targeted banner ads from certain web sites? What are those cookies really there for?
The more knowledge you have about your consumer base, the more efficient your marketing, sales, support - and prosecution - become.
Ever downloaded some piece of software under a fake name because you didn't want to be in a company's database? This is going away. You're going to be in every database under the sun. How long before companies simply pay the US government for access to parts or all of the citizen database?
The internet represents a vast and growing segment of population for whom national boundaries and allegiences seem less important than shared interests. The internet represents a route for information to travel, circumventing whatever official propaganda is being disseminated.
Why is this happening? Though it is true that the US government fears losing control of its citizens, the real movers in the effort to restrict online freedoms are companies who feel threatened by what the internet represents. (Easy, unmonitored distribution of digital media, free association of potential or actual customers, etc, discussion of unregulated or unsupported use of a company's products. Think Intel. Think Dual-Celeron. Think overclocking. Do you really believe that Intel wouldn't be happy to squash all such activity if they could?) These companies know how to deal with this threat. They see the government as a tool for dealing with its constituents. Which is easier, developing an encryption method that will keep people from copying your product or making the legal consequences of copying (or making copying possible. (Or even thinking about making copying possible.)) so dire as to prevent it from happening. Companies know what they want. They want a growing, mindless, locked-in consumer base that they can depend on. Personally I'm convinced that some companies would, if it were possible, push for the pass of legislation MANDATING a certain level of consumerism on our part.
But anyways, keep your eyes and ears open. And when the time comes, get your mouth open and start yelling. Go vote. It's the only way we're going to avoid the internet becoming a combination survelliance camera and network TV. It's also the only way we're going to avoid falling into the immensely stupid trap of applying mindless nationalism to the internet.
zeke
Canada's Firewall (Score:2)
A firewall, in one specific implementation, is used to prevent the spread of a fire by providing a barrier for the fire.
To extend the metaphor, then, China wants to protect it's country and its peoples. Say dangerous information, content, and people are the fire. It's implementation of blocking these people, then, is the firewall, no matter what kind of technology is used.
How about Canada?
People accessing illegal content is the fire, and with it comes litigation, lawsuits, and much angered companies. The firewall, then, would be whatever system iCrave and others implement to stop the US citizens from watching rebroadcast material.
-AS
Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:2)
Re:You really cannot do this with the current TCP/ (Score:2)
Re:Blame Canada! (Score:2)
I'm not, mind you. I understand that the DMCA wasn't something that most Americans wanted. I do kind of resent the fact that Canadians are being held liable in their own country for American laws (and stupid ones, too). Then again, we have a long history of letting ourselves get pushed around from the south. I suppose I should just get used to it... manifest destiny and all.
A little analysis (Score:2)
There are two mechanisms to which the posters on this topic seem quite oblivious, probably due to the fact that they still have hair on the topmost portions of their skulls. Must be nice.
The first mechanism, is how to block content. Granted iCraveTV did so in an idiotic fashion, but it doesn't have to be done that way. In fact, restricting content to Canada would be quite easy for the following reasons.
Almost all Internet traffic between the U.S. and Canada goes out via terrestrial links. These links cross a 100-foot section of land at the Canadian boarder that is owned by the government. This land must be leased from the government and is subject to their limitations, controls and restrictions. It is an ideal point for censorship.
It is admittedly difficult to discern the geographical location of a randomly generated Internet address. It is quite easy, however, to check a list of all B.C.Tel and CanTel internet ranges and see if you have a match.
It is quite easy to encrypt a video data stream. It is also easy to implant rolling tags that look like random data, but in fact have a pattern that border-planted filtration devices can pickup. It is also quite easy to set up a Windows-Only client to interact with this system.
It's a snap to tell the Canadian border routers not pass any packets from the iCrave site directly to the U.S. or to allow a U.S. site to so much as ping the iCrave site.
These measures alone would stop every full time Windows user (with few exceptions) from accessing iCrave (95% of the populace?).
A hacker trying to pull this off would at the very least need a box in Canada to reencrypt the data coming from iCrave. He/she could then pass that data down to his own intranet which would use a masquerading firewall to conceal his own internal (pseudo-Canadian) IP addresses. (do
This would buy him/her one stream to each of his Windows boxes (ugh). If he wanted to rebroadcast this stream he/she would have to decrypt the actual video data, probably by hacking the Windows code. (.0001%?) Perhaps our hacker goes that extra ugly painful step, and voila, the mechanism is broken, and the streams fly about the net. Weeeee!
Sadly, the victory will be short lived, because unlike the Satellite Video industry or the DVD folks, iCrave's software can be replaced on the fly. To people with the bandwidth for streaming video, extra couple seconds downloading this week's encryption plug-in would go unnoticed.
Lastly, if someone were redirecting video streams to the public in this fashion it would be a straightforward exercise to leave extra data in the streams that could be recovered at the remote end and used to narrow down the list of feeds used. It could be done as a binary-chop fairly quickly where half of the streaming servers would use sig1 and half sig2. As soon as the remote sense device fed back which stream it was on, half of the old sig1 group would get sig2 etc. etc. In 32 times your feedback delay you will have the exact address of the stream in question. Of course you won't tell anyone. You'll simply monitor it and others like it for months while you arrange for search warrants.
Essentially, this hacker's first sign of detection will be when jack-booted thugs kick down his door and throw him in the cell next to Kevin Mitnick.
The other mechanism to understand is that this is precisely the process by which our freedoms disappear. Once the security company hired by iCrave to secure Canada has done it's job it will be hired by their government to prevent any unwanted content from entering Canada. The unfair barring of non-pornographic material by CyberWatch and NetNanny was due to the impracticality of distinguishing one site from another. This will happen on a country wide scale when CanaNanny is born.
Registration of mean-looking rifles, in California, was touted as precaution to keep them out of the hands of psychos. Once the names and addresses of the owners were safely on file, the confiscation began.
At the outset it was specifically forbidden for Social Security Numbers to become a national ID number. In the interest of catching "Dead-Beat Dads" laws were enacted that allowed states to tie them to your driver's license and registration. All of your assets can now be tracked and seized upon the discovery of a single seed of cannabis found on any property linked to your ID, and it's already happened to some.
The machine of socialism is quite simple, and has been running in this repetitious fashion for a long time. I don't use cannabis or own a firearm, or watch any television but StarTrek and A&E.
It is not my liberties they are curtailing, today, but it won't be long.
Re:On green grass and dark clouds (Score:2)
Ahhhhh, god bless The Onion....... without it there would be so much less to laugh about. Anyway...
Something we all seem to appear guilty of here is pigeonholing. I'm not, and I believe you're not, saying that "all corporations are inherently evil." There are some damn fine companies that actually listen to the opinions of their employees, and take care not to sully the environment (Ben & Jerry's for example), and do nice things like same-sex partner benefits. But there are also companies where most of the employees are temps so they can justify not paying them as much. There are companies that (still!) dump toxic waste into duck ponds in parks at 3AM. There are companies that will fire you for sending a coworker a "Happy Birthday!" e-mail (IBM actually did this, by the way, a few years ago). So, like humans, SCSI cables, and witches in Oz, there are Good Ones and Bad Ones.
Now. Take a look back at early corporations, and tell me if you still feel the same way.
Yes. I do. Back then, yes, working conditions were hideous and your life expectancy was about 30 years, thanks to corporations. Nowadays, working conditions are not that bad, and your life expectancy is about 70-80 years, give or take, more or less, depending on how much internal combustion emissions, pesticides, and chicken infested with quick-growth hormones you ingest in your lifetime (why do you think "organically grown" vegetables and meat cost twice as much as that swill you get at your local Mega Grocery Concern?). It took massive protesting and strikes and whatnot to get them to listen the last few times; if it hadn't been for those brave downtrodden souls, conditions would still be just as bad because businesses just aren't set up to change themselves in a manner which will benefit others at its own cost. They have to be forced into respecting rights and things like clean water because they aren't people. A corporation is a great big pile of machinery and regulations and ownership deeds and a hive of employees, most of whom have no control over that to which they belong, in the same way that your alveoli have no control over whether you smoke or not... someone Way Up There In Charge decides "We will do this" and everyone below that level has no choice but to obey or... find another body to belong to. We just recently had to switch all our email from sendmail to Exchange (tm) just because the Chief Something-or-other Officer of the company got a wild hair up his ass about sharing calendars. Calendars! Isn't that the stupidest thing?? Here we are, with working sendmail and unix servers we can put any of a dozen calendar sharing packages on (or write our own), and what happens? We have to trash it all and replace it with garbage. But I digress. The point is, the companies do not get better on their own; they must be forced into it. It's war, ladies and gentlemen, and we (and our children) are the spoils.
Over 100 years ago, Nicola Tesla invented something that should have revolutionized the entire world. Well, he invented hundreds of things that did and didn't revolutionize the world, but this thing in particular sticks out very prominently. He invented an electrical generator that, for "fuel," used.... yes.... perpetual motion. You just give it a whirl, and it runs forever without fuel. So in other words, there never should have been any pollution. Never. No internal combustion. No coal-burning power plants. No refineries. No OPEC, for the love of god. Iraq should be just a bunch of sand, camels and religious fanatics. (I'm just being realistic.) And why, you ask, didn't this transpire? Standard Oil. Westinghouse. Edison. The Powers That Were. They systematically destroyed Tesla... and no, I don't mean George Westinghouse personally; he was dead by the time this happened. Tesla had given up most of his patents to George Westinghouse, who actually thought highly of Tesla and thought these patents would be profitable. They were, of course; the polyphase AC generator patent alone turned out to be worth trillions of dollars. Every generator today uses its basic design. But that's only because the other generator, the one that didn't use fuel, got buried after George died. Without his guidance, Tesla was forgotten. This utterly, completely brilliant man was swept under the rug of history, most of his inventions attributed to someone else. He died penniless and with a heart full of bitter resentment. To this DAY, even the Smithsonian Museum puts up exhibits of Tesla's inventions next to busts of Edison's head; revisionist history. To hear them talk, Edison invented AC power instead of being its bitterest enemy. Oh, my point, you ask? Sorry. If corporate greed in the form of Westinghouse Inc. hadn't sucked up Tesla and, through collusion with Standard Oil, buried the "free energy" patent so people would keep having to buy fuel instead of buying one generator and then never having to pay for fuel again, there would be no smog over Los Angeles. There would be no oil spills fouling the coast of Alaska. There would have been no Persian Gulf War. And you wouldn't right now be paying $1.65 per gallon for gas.
Westinghouse did everything it could to destroy Tesla... and the MPAA/RIAA/etc are doing everything they can do right now to destroy MP3s, free DVDs, and the free dissemination of information, entertainment, and educational materials. The clouds over the world today may not be darker than they were in the 1910's...... but they are most definitely still there, and they will never go away until we shoo them away ourselves. Everything changes, yes.... eventually.... but there is always a catalyst for that change, and the businesses themselves for damn sure ain't gonna be it.
And speaking of labor unions..... isn't it about time there was an Information Workers' Union to protect us from working 60-hour weeks and getting paid for 40 because we're "salaried"? Or something? Hey, if garment workers can have one...
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Stool Consistancy Database and Draconian Copyright (Score:2)
Seriously though, i do feel strongly about the issue of overly strong protections for corporate owned copyrights, trademarks, and patents. I think that after a limited amout of time everything should be in the public domain. I don't think it's right for the disney company to have a multi-billion dollar monopoly based mainly on characters created by one guy (long dead) many years ago.
I also think that fair use is worth protecting (imagine going to the library and having to put money on your little card for the amout of time you spend browsing through books from the shelf... When i was a kid my family had no money (for a while we were on food stamps), but i learned computer programming on an old Franklin Ace 1000 my grandfather retired from his business, and i did this by sitting in the library for hours every day reading over every programming book i could get my hands on (even forth for christs sake)). My point is that if giving the chance, big corporations will make us pay to breathe, walk, talk, and think. Anything that it's possibly to meter and measure, they will. If we want to keep thoughs free, we have to resist. Now my example of shooting cops is extreme, but not far-fetched at the rate things are changing. In a world where staying competitive and connected requires constant access to information, that's the most important freedom to protect. My previous post was more a vent of frustration, thus the "rant" tags.
I think it is important that we realize that if there is no consumer support for squeezing more money out of the same copyrights (failure of divex, failure of online pay as you play encyclopedias, etc...), the next step will be to go around the consumer directly to the legislature (neatly stepping around the principles of capilism we all fought so hard to preserve during that stupid cold war). We will be forced by law to bend over and take it, unless we refuse. That refusal may eventually come to force. I know that if it comes down to it, i am prepared to kill (and possibly die) for my freedom.
funny again...
Actually, my father's second wife was a nutritionist that worked in various rest homes and a looney bin. In any case, one of the things she had to deal with (and i'm not making this up) was a database of stool properties (amount, consistancy, etc...) which was corrilated to what the patients were fed and stuff like that to try to tune the diets of pateints to what they digested best.
I say, F*ck 'em (Score:2)
Even if the internet gets split into itty bitty pieces, people will construct little islands of restricted access servers linked by scattered VPN's and piracy will go on, just like it did back in the days of BBS's. I remember the board i used to run with my friend EK got fairly well connected. There were actually hierarchical distribution chairs for warez and porn, feedback and request networks, and the whole system was self-healing. Also there was a fairly quick response system if one board got busted, the others would take their areas offline, etc...
In any case, the first time the gestapo comes knocking on my door for DeCSS, game cracks, etc... I'll come out shooting. How many pigs are gonna wanna die for some rich bastard's copyright?
I figure they'll prolly shoot me down, but if i've gotta go, i'd rather go like that than shit myself to death at 85 in a goddamn resthome
</rant>
Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:2)
I would seem to my silly young head that if someone sets up a protection and I circumvent that protection, it would be me breaking the law. My action, my responsibility. Heck I want to break that law, peaceful civil disobedience and all that. In this case in particular I don't have that choice. Why? Because the MPAA can skip me and go straight to the source. And given the pervasive nature of U.S. foreign policy, they can go after that source anywhere in the world. Does this bother anyone else? Instead of industries having to deal with consumer, they can bypass consumers and go straight to the courts and congress (foreign policy) and take away my ability to protest restrictive legislation. Or, and this is the big one, keep the market from evolving. Dammit, I want TV on the 'Net, on demand, that's innovation. Where we are headed now is oppression.
If everyone can break a law, continually, and no one's the wiser, and enforcement is impossible, and there's no detrimental consequences, then IT'S A STUPID LAW!
This is why I will continue to use Napster, Gnutella, and whatever the hell else I want to. Peaceful civil disobedience against unjust laws, with the stated intent to prove just how unjust they just might be. Justice will be served, to anybody who wants to log on and fight for whats right.
--
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
Re:what i dont understand, please enlighten me (Score:2)
No, it didn't.
Whats happened here is these people, US residents or US registered businesses or not did NOT perform these actions in the US, period. That's like smoking a joint in the netherlands where it's legal and being busted for narcotics use when you get back to the US.
The US here is effectively trying to extend its jurisdiciton, when infact it holds no water either way. The actions were in Toronto, Canadian soil, a US court has no authority there.
-- iCEBaLM
Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:2)
And since when does US law cover the world?
Man, American arrogance really gets me sometimes, it was a Canadian company operating in Canada under Canadian law, no law was being broken, hell they didn't even have to put ANY screening system on there and they STILL wouldn't be breaking any laws, because they were doing it in... Canada.
Why they didn't contest this is beyond me, why they even bothered to show up in that PA courtroom is also beyond me. The US has no jurisdiction over Canadian businesses, period.
-- iCEBaLM
Re:what i dont understand, please enlighten me (Score:2)
Where did you learn logic? You seem to have it flawed.
Better start suing a bunch of Canadian cable companies, its quite standard practice to do this over regular airwaves, which, no doubt can be recieved in the US.
The fact that it was accessable in the US, as it was in many other countries, is of little relevance, they were doing this in Canada, under Canadian law, had a crude screening system, but still it was there. Even if they had no screening system, its still none of the US's business to interfere with Canadian businesses.
It was a Canadian company, operating in Canada, under Canadian jurisdiction. None of the US's business.
-- iCEBaLM
Re:Circle Logic (ish): Sloppy SCMS and DMCA (Score:2)
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:2)
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:Circle Logic (ish) (Score:2)
Of course CSS is about controlling DVD players - that's the whole idea behind almost all copy protection schemes: to control the media. That doesn't change the nature of the DMCA though.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:Circle Logic (ish) (Score:2)
No, using a CDR would not be illegal in this sense. There are plenty of uses for a CDR that would not violate the DMCA's copy-protection laws. DMCA doesn't make copying data illegal, it makes copying protected data illegal. Get it?
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
"Free Jon" on the cover of 2600? (Score:2)
Well, you don't have to read any of his stories, anyhow, of course
Gandhi, MLK, and Hitler wrote some of their most effective political thought while in prison. Imagine if Jon were to write "Mein Cyberletter From Sing-Sing, or, Why Many Prisons Are *Really* Banning Napster."
timothy
(smile! smile! smile! repeat.)
Re:well, maybe you can... (Score:2)
Why wouldn't that work?
If that's what they are doing, let me state for the (patent office) record that it is at least obvious to me.
Re:what i dont understand, please enlighten me (Score:2)
Bollocks.. ICrave, as I understand it, were doing absolutely nothing at all in US jurisdiction. None of their equipment was in US jurisdiction. They had a server in Canada which responded to requests, but only to requests from people who said they too were in Canada. If someone from the US requested material which was copyright in the US, then that was midly naughty. If in order to do so they dishonestly pretended not to be in the US, then that was naughty too. But in neither case was ICrave in the wrong.
It's been pointed out before in this thread that US jurisdiction does not and cannot cover things people do outside the United States borders. The inability of some American contributers to this thread to understand this very simple fact merely confirms for those of us who live outwith the United States our already low opinion of the average intellectual capacity of those who don't.
In other words, we're not surprised you don't understand. We would like to be surprised, but we aren't holding our breath.
Oh, and: Moderation -1, Flamebait
Re:Circle Logic (ish) (Score:2)
Re:Circle Logic (ish) (Score:2)
Re:OT: Jurisdiction (Score:2)
Did I just defend Katz?
Hey, it's even more complicated (Score:2)
Much of French-derived law (some dating from before the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1886, often still a benchmark for decisions about copyright) mitigates against violation of an "author's" - ie artist's or creator's - "moral" rights. Those are groups of legal rights meant to protect creators from having their fine works "diminished" by caricature, moustaches, partial reproduction, distortions, mockery etc etc.
American law offers a contrast. As recently as a couple of years ago, Supreme Court decisions in the US favoured "transformative" use as consistent with their federal copyright policies...the overriding incentive here being economic
and commercial interests. Also a nod towards a US history supposedly weighted towards the "free flow" of information.
Copyright law in cyberspace or electronic copyright is a contradictory and complicated field in which the law is being made (precedents are being set) case-by-case...With plenty of lawyers into its potential for big bucks. But it may also happen inch by inch, country by country and each "foreign" claimant to a right will find assertion of his/her claims depends on the environment in which that claim ends up being assessed.
Re: How wrong can one man be? (Score:2)
What a horrible little troll. Perhaps you should look up firewall in a dictionary. Jon had used the term correctly thereby making your statement look incredibly uninformed, and eliminating all credibility of the rest of what you said. What baffles me is how you can make a statement as wreckless and idiotic as that, and still have made well recevied posts like this [slashdot.org].
So you may be better informed next time:
Courtesy of dictionary.com [dictionary.com]
firewall n.
1.A fireproof wall used as a barrier to prevent the spread of fire.
2.Computer Science. Any of a number of security schemes that prevent unauthorized users from gaining access to a computer network or that monitor transfers of information to and from the network.
Courtesy of Merriam-Webster [m-w.com] /'fIr-"wol/ : a computer or computer software that prevents unauthorized access to private data (as on a company's local area network or intranet) by outside computer users (as of the Internet)
Main Entry: fire wall
Function: noun
Date: 1759
1 : a wall constructed to prevent the spread of fire
2 usually firewall
What Icrave.com was talking about would most likely be software. That seems to fit the definition perfectly.
Re:Circle Logic (ish): Sloppy SCMS and DMCA (Score:2)
Wrong, it does. It is part of SCMS (Serial Copy Management System), used also in DAT machines.
However, it is almost trivial and therefore easily neglected (and circumvented): it uses only 1 control bit per track and no encryption.
Which, interestingly, brings me to a new statement of the circle logic:
Many recent CD-ROM drives are capable of digitally extracting audio data from audio CD's, from non-copyrighted tracks (which is perfectly legal), from copyrighted original tracks (which would be legal if they included a means for enforcing SCMS restrictions, highly impractical), and from copyrighted copies (which circumvents SCMS and therefore is illegal)
All (as far as I know) CD recorders operated from a computer (as opposed to stand-alone models) are able to write digital audio CD's containing tracks with arbitrary settings of the SCMS control bit (which may circumvent the protection of SCMS if the source data came from a copyrighted copy)
3. So, even though some may have lobbied for the DMCA many CD-ROM drive manufacturers and all computer operated CD recorder manufacturers, when used for copying audio CD's would violate the DMCA!
You have a technical solution to a jail cell? (Score:2)
This is the same thing with the software. While you may have an absolute moral right to view your DVD with whatever player you see fit, the law doesn't see it that way. (The law is an ass.) All your technical solutions won't save you from having your computers confiscated, losing a lot of time and money and getting a criminal record. This is why the "I've got a hammer" school of thought needs a reality check; you're not going to solve this problem without fixing the legal system, meaning "ya gotta use the right tool for the job".
And if the geeks can make this DMCA idiocy cost a few politicians their careers, I'll be cheering.
--
Download from Finland/UK/NL; New Laws Help (Score:2)
Yeah, it's tacky. Blame Washington (either one, if you want)
For crypto, you've always been able to download the stuff from Finland or the Netherlands or wherever, since imports to the US aren't restricted, so you can avoid the Prove-you're-North-American routine.
The new crypto rules aren't perfect, and aren't very clearly defined, but they're clear enough that NAI is exporting PGP with the only restrictions being "Not on the US Enemies List".
Don't forget about satellite access (Score:2)
You really cannot do this with the current TCP/IP (Score:2)
Re:Hey Jon--find a flippin' dictionary! (Score:2)
I think Mr. Katz was employing a literary device called a methphor like the following example:
Microsoft has as of late created a stronghold against competition in the desktop computing sector.
Now this little sentence uses the word stronghold. Now does that literally mean that microsoft has captured desktop computing and put it in some kind of castle to languish? No it's just refering to an idea.
NASA JPL blocking Brazil Sites (Score:2)
Blame Canada! (Score:2)
Re:You really cannot do this with the current TCP/ (Score:2)
They will never be able to do that unless they try controlling everything.
One other thing: I would not be illegal for another German to mirror that chuck of code, or the television show.. It may be possible for the government to block icravetv.com, but they could never find, and block joesbox.dhs.org/icravemirror
Think about it!
Hey Jon--find a flippin' dictionary! (Score:2)
However...
"This time the firewalls aren't coming from the People's Republic of China, but out of Canada."
Don't you even know what a firewall is Jon? You have a lot of gall to post articles on
Re:what i dont understand, please enlighten me (Score:2)
Well, on the one hand, there's an extradition treaty between the US and Canada. I don't think that would take effect in this case, though.
Regardless, there are several 'reciprocal' agreements across the borders, and general international agreements that limit what a company can or can't do. In this particular case, iCrave was violating US laws in US jurisdiction, because their (re)broadcasts were accessable in the US. In other words, they were breaking US laws in the US.
Aside from that, the 'regional access' that iCrave is talking about seems to be mostly hot air.
Is geographic screening practical? (Score:2)
How on earth do you screen connections by geography? Okay, so you could do a DNS lookup on the IP address you are looking at and compare it against a database to see where it came from, and allow it if it has a '.ca' on the end, but that it worse than useless - a vast number of people will be connecting through ISPs with .com addresses or will have IP numbers which are not available in the DNS database. And most large multinationals have blocks of IP numbers to work from, which I suspect are not necessarily strictly partitioned across country borders?
So is this more a marketing gimick from ICrave? - after all, under Canadian law, rebroadcasting of a signal is an allowable act - the question raised in the US courts (because the ICraveTV name is registered in the States) was how to limit the propagation of the signal, and ICraveTV was criticised for not having the technology to do this.
If they have a method of blocking connections, I suspect it is much like the normal blocking of people connecting from outside a domain as used on some of the UK academic sites to limit connections to academic servers during work hours - but there all the academic machines allowed to connect are neatly inside the .ac.uk tree and can easily be selected.
In other words, it's probable that any blocking software based on geography is going to be as reliable as the censorware used in some libraries. Go figure.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:Response, Rant, Armchair Philopophy... (Score:2)
It's about time.
I just wish that they would bite the bullet and develop their own network in stead of trying to adapt the internet.
The internet was not developed for security or identifiability or even really high speed, high bandwidth applications. We are seeing a move away from the telephone networks to cable and high fibre optics for data transmissions. So too should we be seeing other networks and protocols developed for things like e commerce and protected streaming media.
I guess I'm talking about a larger network with different tiers for different purposes.
-A tier for e commerce with protocol oriented towards better security and encryption/decryption of credit card numbers and personnal information. No need for amazing download/upload speeds if all you're doing is loading a sales page.
-A tier for digital streaming media with encryption. Higher upload/download speeds needed here.
-A tier for the financial sector, banks and brokers and what not. No need for amazing connection speeds here, but very strong encryption and security measures.
-And finally, a tier for the internet as it was only 3 or 4 years ago: a free and accessible medium for individuals and groups to share ideas, art, gaming... a network where individuals can form communities.
Much of the animosity between us geeks who have had the net to ourselves and the companies who are adapting technology to suit their needs is because the net is not suited to business applications, and the measures being introduced to protect business are changing the use of the net for all users, not just those involved in business.
A more effective solution for business would be to meet their needs through the use of new technology and protocols in stead of using restrictive laws to limit the potential for legal as well as illegal activities.
On behalf of people in Washington State. (Score:2)
- Get an education in the subject matter.
- Think about what you're saying instead of how you're saying it.
Ok. We're not talking firewall in any sense, but instead we're talking about the ability to gather information about a customer easily. In this case, we're talking about the ability to locate a person geographically through unknown means. I don't know if they're tracking people by their physical location, their server's physical location, or one of the locations on record. I really could have used some more links (even one might have been useful) to verify your statements. Unfortunately, you've proven that you don't like to have your assumptions questioned.But let's put this into perspective. If iCrave can determine that you live in Washington State then spammers need to use that tool in order to identify people in Washington State. How many people wished they could have been presented in court recently?
Determining region has it's uses. I want my Congressman to know that I am from his state and I expect him to react to my requests because of that fact.
Every increase in technology can be misused. I won't argue that. But I swear Jon, you're becoming a luddite, and I really have to question the need for a luddite on a board that advertises itself as "News for Nerds".
-----
hermeneutics (Score:2)
This actually brings up an interesting point about responses to Jon's articles in general. People have a disturbing tendency to nit-pick the details of his articles without listening to the general idea of what he's saying. Instead of talking about his word choice, how about saying something about his argument? Does this event have any implications about net freedom? If so, are they good or bad? Are big corporations trying to control the internet, and if so, what do you think about it?
What concerns me most about this article is the growing trend of prosecuting people in other countries for violating US laws on the internet. How do you think Americans would feel if the People's Republic of China were to start arresting American citizens for violating Chinese censorship laws on the net? After all, dispite all their efforts to the contrary, Chinese citizens can get around the barriers and access content from the states which is illegal in China. Furthermore, unlike this Canadian site, many sites with such content don't even make a token attempt to restrict access to the US only. The question is, if someone sitting here in America posts to an American-hosted site material which is illegal in China, can this reasonably be considered a violation of Chinese law just because some Chinese people may be able to access it? Likewise, if someone in Canada posts to a Canadian site material which is illegal in the US, is this a violation of US law? The international nature of the net makes the question of where a crime is committed and whose juristiction it falls under very difficult. I think the whole issue needs to be reexamined, and recent cases have set a dangerous precedent of the US acting as international policeman for the net.
Re:Bloody Revolution! :-) (Score:2)
They can't jail everybody. What they can try to do (and they certainly try!) is brow beat the masses into submission through fear and intimidation. Find a few people that are prominent enough (DVD CSS, anyone?), prosecute them, and threaten legal action against anyone and everyone (suiting over links to DeCSS, anyone?). Most individuals buckle, because they just don't have the resources (i.e., money) to fight.
d) You can always "throw the bums out". Whether this is peaceful (as in voting them out) or not (as in bloody revolution) is immaterial. If enough people get riled up enough, change occurs. There is no stopping it. There is no holding it back. At least, not without killing the dissenting parties as they arise, which is a shocking blow to the rest to the peepul (sic)...
Conclusion: at some point, the teaming masses of humanity will not take it anymore, and throw the bums out. You cannot continually remove a man's freedoms and expect him not to react. Everyone has their breaking point. So does a society. Things balance out.
What we need to do is make a concerted effort to inform the general public. I would think most people realize the system sucks. What they don't realize (and they're not going to learn this through any traditional mass media) is why it sucks and that they *CAN* effect change upon it. One the problems with changing it is voter apathy. I lot of people have such a severe distaste for the politics of the two big parties, they just don't vote. The media in general doesn't cover anything else but the two big parties. That we need to do is thrust knowledge of and about the alternative parties and their philosophies.
Yes, everyone will reach a breaking point somewhere along the line. Usually, when that happens, nothing short of bloody revolution will make a difference. I think that time is coming, thought not very soon. In revolution, the fat cats very well get what's coming to them; but war is a big shit sandwich and generally everyone gets a taste.
Non-legal, non-technical solution, IT'S POSSIBLE! (Score:2)
Don't try to circumvent their copyright technology.
Don't try to force them to change their ways by consuming their content in a manner which they don't want you to. If you do that, you're STILL PLAYING THEIR GAME.
Just STOP CONSUMING THEIR CONTENT.
Vote not only with your dollars, but with your time as well. If you don't like the way record companies treat their artists, don't buy records, and certainly don't warez mp3z. Listen to the FREE Mp3s you can get on mp3.com.
If you feel that pollution from gas powered cars is out of control, and blame the petroleum companies, you don't try to change things by stealing gasoline or suing the companies, you RIDE A BIKE!
You don't have some inherent *right* to watch your Star Trek IV movie, it's a priviledge you get when you buy the movie. If someone tells you that to watch their movie you have to stab yourself in the leg with a fork, you don't have to watch it.
My ideas are my own, noone has the right to invade my brain and take them away from me. I don't have the inherent right to listen to a peice of music that someone composed. If they want to share it with me for free, GREAT! If they want to sell it to me, that's great too. But if they don't want to sell it to me, I don't think there's some sort of part of my soul that will die. If they impose stupid restrictions on their content, they can. It's THEIR work.
If a screenwriter, director, actor, musician or artist didn't want restrictions placed on their work by giant corporations, they shouldn't sell out to them by using their distribution channels.
None of this is to say that I don't watch DVDs or buy CDs, just that if someone denied me a certain type of access to a work, I wouldn't feel righteous indignation about it, I'd just get my entertainment elsewhere.
If you hate DVD zoning restrictions, don't buy a DVD player.
If you dislike the fact that 18 of those 19 bucks you spent on a CD go towards lawyers and record company executives, listen to the radio, or take up the guitar.
You don't have the god given right to CONSUME someone else's product in whatever way you want.
Where I think the freedom of information dissemination becomes CRUCIAL is in education and current events. I think access to education is a lot more important than Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Greg
IPv6 (Score:2)
Re:well, maybe you can... (Score:2)
They can block access to all the countries they want, but all the people in blocked countries would ahve to do is go through a proxy server in an allowed country! It is futile to censor the internet.
Global Views.. (Score:3)
For some reason the US and US companies seem to believe that the US runs the internet, and this is quite simply not the case.
How is this situation handled in the realm of broadcasting, or telephony? If I setup a TV station in Montreal, which broadcasts into the US something that is legal in Canada, but not in the US, where was a crime commited?
Does Canadian law state that such rebroadcasts must enforce geagraphic locationing of end consumers? I doubt it. Was this company targetting, aka, selling directly to, US citizens? I doubt it.
Geographic based laws are as outdated as laws governing where one can ride their horse and buggy. It's simular to a law that mandates one must provide feed for their given modes of transportation being applied to a truck.
Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:3)
Circle Logic (ish) (Score:3)
OK its silly but so is this law.
-cpd
Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:3)
Re:Circle Logic (ish) (Score:3)
To the effect of DeCSS, it is a program that has only one use: To circumvent the DVD copy-protection scheme. It's irrelevent what the purpose of doing so was (to watch it under Linux or to pirate it over the internet), because the crime here is the actual act of circumvention
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
The DMCA itself is the problem... (Score:3)
The DMCA was very poorly written, in the first place. The wording itself, I'm not talking about the ideas... yet... And any time you take something like this, history has shown that people will take very different views on it, depending on which side of the matter they're on. Look at the US Constitution if you want another example. How many people say it has "implied" powers, has this, that, and the other thing? Anybody who runs the government. And who says it doesn't, that you can't do what isn't explicitly written? Anybody who WANTS to run the government... And of course, they switch views once elected... That way, they have more power...
The same thing's going on with the DMCA... It's a paranoia measure, passed by a bunch of congressmen who have no idea what life is really like on the net, signed by a president who I won't even get into the problems with, and supported by a bunch of people who are out to make money.
You could really think of the RIAA and the MPAA as Microsoft... trying to control everything, causing problems, and eliminating choices... The only difference that I can really see is that Microsoft at least knows the industry, and TRIES to provide for it...
That being said, why is the government allowing this to happen? You have a monopoly on this, that, and the other thing, and yet all they seem to care about is Microsoft. Not that I dont' think it's important, but there ARE other issues going on here. I personally liked watching iCrave once in a while, and, I most definatly support MP3 files because I've lost so many CDs that I bought when "friends" borrowed 'em for a day or 2 to see if they liked them, or that I accidentally rolled over with my computer chair or spilled iced tea on.... Movies are another thing, yet one and the same... I won't buy a DVD unless I can watch it where I want to, be it on my laptop, home PC, where ever I feel like it... with out buying some $200 player that hooks up to my TV only... I'm sorry, but as a consumer, I disagree... If big name companies are allowed to make software to view those things, and SELL it, why can't I (or anybody else) do the world a favor and write it for free? Last time I checked, it's called "competition" to companies like that, and "community service" to everybody else who uses it...
We should tell the companies what WE want to buy, they shouldn't tell us what they WANT us to buy...
Re:Circle Logic (ish) (Score:3)
No.
Can we please get this straight? DeCSS is not a copy protection scheme. CSS no more protects against copying than writing a message in code prevents it from being photocopied. CSS is about monopoly control of DVD players.
(This is disregarding the fact that the DMCA hasn't got an ethical or constitutional leg to stand on.)
Re:You really cannot do this with the current TCP/ (Score:3)
Not in the case of Canada. Most routes go north-south rather than east-west, with the result that if I am in Toronto and I want to connect to a server in Winnipeg, my route could easily go (for instance - likely in practice a bit different) Toronto ISP - Toronto telco hub - Chicago telco hub - Minneapolis - Winnipeg. Geographically, the best route would be east-west (e.g. Toronto - Sault Ste Marie - Winnipeg), but the north-south routes prevail in Canada, with actual east-west being handled on US networks.
The internet "border" between the US and Canada is so permeable that it really can't be said to exist in any meaningful way.
Another thing that complicates detemining geographic origin in Canada is that customers of Canadian branch offices of large ISPs appear to be originating from the large ISP's US location. Many, many people looking at Webtrends reports from their Canadian commercial sites have puzzled over why so many of their users appear to be from Virginia.
Re:Circle Logic (ish) (Score:3)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't every single DVD player need to circumvent the copy protection in order for the video to be viewable? I suppose it depends on your interpretation of the word 'circumvent.' (to manage to get around especially by ingenuity or stratagem.) DVD's are unviewable without a means to circumvent the encryption. All DVD players do this--using keys that they've paid a lot of money for. JJ obviously didn't pay for a key to make DeCSS, but there's no legal requirement for him to do so.
In order to create an open source DVD player the first step absolutely has to be decrypting the data. From that point many open source DVD players can be written. DeCSS is essential for this to work. And this, quite obviously in my opinion, is the intent of DeCSS--to make it possible for people to write software to play DVD's. Not to pirate it, or even to view it. Just to give people and open-source choice in DVD players.
If the MPAA can prosecute people for DeCSS, then anyone can be prosecuted for writing any software that allows the use of copy protected media. Open source will be selectively targeted because it's so modular.
Let's look at an MPAA endorsed DVD player for Windows as an example. It decrypts the data on a DVD and produces an MPEG2 stream. It probably contains it's on codec to decode the stream and display it on the screen. DeCSS on the other hand lets the user/software developer decide which codec to use. Tying it to a specific codec and display mechanism would seriously degrade it's value to the open source community.
Summing things up, DeCSS circumvents copy protection just like any other DVD player. This is not the only purpose of DeCSS or any other DVD player/software. In the case of a DVD player the primary use is viewing. With DeCSS there are nearly infinite potential uses. Viewing, analysis, archiving, and most importantly (IMHO) the development of other software that does these things. All of these things are covered by fair use.
I know most of you guys already know this, but I figured I should point it out for those who don't--All software DVD players produce decrypted output that can be intercepted and used for the purpose of piracy. Not just DeCSS.
I realize I probably said more than I had to to point out that circumventing copy protection is not the only use of DeCSS. But I was on a rant. Sorry. (With all respect due Foogle.)
numb
US law IS enforceable outside of the USA (Score:3)
Two things you should know:
(a) the Internet is everywhere (as if you didn't know that one) and therefore copying (and copyright violations) occur EVERYWHERE. Every time someone accesses the internet there are copies made all over the place (think of your average traceroute) and therefore potential copyright violations. So it's quite easy to argue that iCrave is copying programming in the United States even if its servers aren't located in the U.S.
(b) In Canadian law (I'm Canadian) and I believe in the rest of the western world, foreign (e.g. U.S.A.) judgements (court orders) are enforceable in Canadian courts. Recently in Canada there was a front-page story about someone who had lost a Texas libel case by not defending it, and the multi-million dollar judgement (unthinkably large in Canadian terms - the maximum libel damages usually awarded are about $100,000 tops) was UPHELD by the Supreme Court of Canada and declared enforceable against the Canadian doctor. This means that the Canadian Courts will enforce U.S. judgments.
As a rule, albeit with certain exceptions, foreign judgements will be enforced in Canadian courts.
The upshot of this is, of course, that had the U.S. companies succeeded in their suit in the U.S.A., their judgement would have been enforceable (and enforced no doubt) in Canada.
It used to be the case that it was impossible to enforce U.S. judgements in Canada, but in the late-eighties/early-nineties (I think) the Supreme Court of Canada changed its mind, joining the rest of the western world, and ruled that foreign judgements would be enforceable as long as they were done in a fair manner.
Hope that clears up a few things.
Ken
Response, Rant, Armchair Philopophy... (Score:3)
However, more and more people who circumvent this "damage" are no longer damamge control experts, but criminals.
The way our present society and present government treats corporations is ass backwards. Individual rights should come before the rights of corporations, not vice-versa. Collectively, groups of individuals should dictate the terms of what is allowable for corporations to do. Unfortunatly, the situation has been as such for so long that it's simply accepted.
I think one of the tools that we actually have now that is far, far under-exercised is the power to revoke a corporations charter. See this adbusters [adbusters.org] article for more information about the revokation of corporate charters.
However, as time goes on, more and more power is being shifted away from individuals and their elected representatives, and more towards corporations. Remember, though, that as much money as corporations can put into a politician's war chest, corporations can't vote. If inform voters, and get more of the elgiable public to vote, we can "throw the bums out" and get the law working back in the favor of the individual.
Thanks go out to Time-Warner/AOL/Whore of Babylon, the RIAA, the MPAA, the DVD Consortioum, and the politicians who have sold our best interests to the highest bidder and best funded lobbyist by passing the DMCA.
Re:I'm not in the US. Why does DMCA matter to me? (Score:4)
I have to agree... and I live in the US.
This used to be such a great country, up until about 1930. Then, THEY took over. I'm not sure if it had anything to do with the great depression or the "big crash" of 1929 or not, but that's about when everything started going to hell. Giant mega-corporations were in control of everything in the form of monopolies; US Steel, Standard Oil; Carnegie and Westinghouse and Rockefeller and a very few others. William Randolph Hearst managed to rile up so many people about marijuana that he got it illegalized rather easily. This is pretty common knowledge, but what isn't common knowledge is why. Hemp had been very very prized up to that point for its incredibly useful nature; there are World War I posters that proclaim "Hemp for victory!" to encourage people to grow hemp for fibers (rope, clothing, paper) and biomass to make fuel out of. Then Hearst came along and decided hemp was threatening his timber industry, so it had to go. THE single most useful plant on earth, and one asshole manages to destroy it in the minds of the idiot sheep of America just by spreading lies about it that nobody ever bothered to verify. It had nothing to do with its drug properties as he claimed; it had everything to do with his greed. It all goes to show that he who controls the media (Hearst was the newspaper baron at that time, controlling almost all media outlets) controls what is perceived by the sheep out there as "reality." And that's exactly what 99.999% of the population of the US is..... sheep who never do any research for themselves, preferring to let "someone else" do it so they have more time to sit on their asses watching TV and eating microwaved meals that are about as nutritious as molten wax. We as a country have lost our way and our sovreignty and our very souls to Big Business.
And this is just another prime example of the pure evil that are corporations these days. In fact, it's about the third one I've seen just this week... and it's only Wednesday. We average about one major violation of ethics, morality, law, or just plain old common courtesy per day in this country, and every time who's doing it? The RIAA. The MPAA. The CIA. The NSA. The WTO. The World Bank. The UN. One arm of the government or another. China (both in mainland China and Tibet). Everywhere you look, it's the same; mayhem and chaos propagated by the Elite Few against people without any possibility of being able to defend themselves physically, financially, spiritually, or emotionally. It's always the easy targets that get hit too; 16 year olds in Europe, small start-ups in Canada, some guy named Coolio who may or may not have been the Coolio, etc. As far as all these gluttonous companies are concerned, they take priority over us, our property, our money, our lives, our very existence... and it's just a matter of time before there's an upwelling, a rebellion, against them and their totalitarian crap.
Picture the US before it was the US. Mid-1700's. England still ruled the land with harsh, unjust taxes and imperial apathy; as long as the raw materials and other goods kept flowing from the west side of the Atlantic to the east side, England didn't care what it had to do to maintain the status quo. And what happened? People got tired of it. Sick to death of it. Back then, people weren't sheep; they were hardened veterans of life, bruised by years of labor to benefit someone they'd never even met. Bitter, resentful people. Even the landowners, the businessmen, hated England as much as the laborers. And they, being the hardened capable people that they were, did something about it, didn't they? The American Revolution was the result, and this country was wrested from England's greedy claws bit by bit until finally they couldn't hold on anymore. And here we are, 200+ years later, in exactly the same position, but under a slightly different bootheel.
What to do, what to do... Are we hardened enough to do whatever it takes to rid ourselves of the blight of corporatism in this country? Are we capable of a long protracted fight against all that is evil? After all, We the People outnumber Them, the Leashholders by about, ohhh, a million to one... the only way we can lose is by never bothering to fight. Admittedly, the way the system is set up now means that just about the only means at our disposal that would be effective are illegal by one definition or another, but... but dammit, I'm sick of being a part of a country.. nay, a species... that screws its own over just for a little more cash. I'm sick of human suffering being ignored (or even caused) by the governments of this planet. I'm sick of Big Money being the driving force behind the perpetuation of damn near everything that is wrong with the human race (organized religions being the other half of that particular equation), and I'm especially sick of feeling powerless to do anything about it. Because I, the individual, am powerless. You, the individual, whoever you are, are equally powerless. But in a more global, unified sense, just who are we?
Think about it. This is the Information Age. The entire WORLD runs on the machines that we invent, set up, operate, maintain, repair, and control. Do you think there are any chairmen of the board, or vice presidents of marketing, or deputy directors in the FBI, who know *anything* about computers, networking, the net, etc? Could your boss, even, go into a PIX firewall and re-enable port 80 so that The Roads Can Roll? Who here remembers Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience"?
The more laws there are, especially laws that protect big business at the expense of the workers that (after all) support these businesses with the sweat of their brows and their proverbial strong backs, the less free we are as a people... not just America, but everywhere. And the longer we allow it to go on, the longer we're going to keep getting screwed by people like Jack Valenti (who is just a man, after all). I mean, why shouldn't we just go on letting the government put plutonium in us just to see what it does (read about it! [myriad.net])? Why shouldn't we let them do things like using human subjects as unwitting guinea pigs (read about it! [pbs.org])? Why shouldn't we.
Something has to be done... and fast, before they have obedience microchips implanted in our brains or something and we all become Financial Borg, helpless to do anything but service the collective... err, I mean, the powerholders of the world, our masters but for a little disobedience. It would be worth it just to get rid of all these insipid little animated banner ads on Slashdot and elsewhere, just sitting there sucking up my CPU and bandwidth for no reason (since I never look at them and probably nobody else on earth does now, either)...
I'll just sit here quietly now and wait for the Trilateral Commission's Black Ops Squad to come and pick me up.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Blah Blah Blah (Score:4)
Sorry, but I think this Loss-of-Freedom spiel is getting old. Yeah, this sort of thing could "balkanize" the Internet; I admit the possibility. However, in cases such as the iCraveTV suit, some sort of geographical restrictions are necessary.
The "Enter your Canadian Area Code:" prompt at iCraveTV's website was a joke. Any US retard with 5 minutes on his hands could get around this protection, and while a lot of us may like it that way, it's breaking laws. Canada may allow rebroadcasting, but the US does not.
Clearly this is going to be an issue that comes up more and more frequently in the future: How do national laws apply to an international network? There are already some precedents made, but it's obvious that we're not finished by a long shot. Until we see an international set of laws regarding internet content and liabilities, I think geographical restrictions may be the way to go.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
OT: Jurisdiction (Score:5)
iCraveTV was sued in both Canadian and US courts, however it is debateable as to whether the US court has jurisdition. It could be argued that the breach of copyright occurred in the US. If iCraveTV has no exposure in the US market (no offices, US arm of the business), the courts decisions are pretty much unenforceable.
This is an aspect of US courts I have never understood - they are willing to award court decisions against foreign companies that have no chance of ever being enforced. I know of a British outdoor activities organisation that was sued in a Californian court for negligence (they 'damaged' an American tourist.) They didn't bother defending the case and the plaintiff was awarded damages of several million dollars which she has no hope of ever collecting. Why didn't the judge just say 'hey if you want to collect, sue them in an English court.'? This mentality extend even to Congress, I have a friend who was 'summoned' to testify before Congress (the German bank he works for is doing something that upsets the US government.) He told them to piss off. Still, he gets a bit nervous everytime his passport gets swiped when he lands at JFK...
Nick
Re:You really cannot do this with the current TCP/ (Score:5)
Incorrect. Think of it this way...
The main routers and backbones and pipes that connect one country to another are very controlled (like China's incoming connections). This allows them to block/filter net access at its weakest point -- the few incoming connections. But anyway, all one would have to do to figure out what country you're in is do a traceroute from you to them. If it gets routed through one of these well-known and well-controlled (sprint, mci, bbn, uunet, etc) routers, then you know what country the other end is in. Some of these main routers even have LOC records in their DNS, meaning the exact latitude and longitude of the machine is available to anyone. But remember; it isn't the geographic location of the client machine that concerns them; it's what country it's in... and while an exact location would be almost impossible to determine, a route to that machine is always available. Unless it was spoofed, of course. :-)
So TCP/IP isn't really the issue; DNS is.
Hey; maybe I could patent this method of... nah. I'd sooner die than become One Of THEM...
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
Ever try dowloading high encryption software? (Score:5)