Daily Archives: October 9, 2003

In Solidarity With Alex Halderman

Posted on October 9, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

Did you notice the item about the guy who showed you could bypass a copy protection scheme with trivial effort? Well, the makers of the system are out for blood:

In addition, SunnComm believes that Halderman has violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by disclosing unpublished MediaMax management files placed on a user's computer after user approval is granted. Once the file is found and deleted according to the instructions given in the Princeton grad student's report, the MediaMax copy management system can be bypassed resulting in the copyright protected music being converted or misappropriated for potentially unauthorized and/or illegal use. SunnComm intends to refer this possible felony to authorities having jurisdiction over these matters because: 1. The author admits that he disabled the driver in order to make an unprotected copy of the disc's contents, and 2. SunnComm believes that the author's report was “disseminated in a manner which facilitates infringement” in violation of the DMCA or other applicable law. [emphasis added]

The headline on the press release is SunnComm CEO Says Princeton Report Critical of its MediaMax CD Copy Management Technology Contains Erroneous Assumptions and Conclusions but what they are really concerned about is that he is right, not that he is wrong.

I find the idea that academics might be prosecuted under the DMCA for telling the truth to be hateful and scary.

No socially benefical outcome is prodcued by attempts to suppress the truth. And if Halderman's report wiped some value off SunnComm's stock, well odds are that's an efficient market in action as it didn't deserve to be there.

Posted in Law: Copyright and DMCA | 2 Comments

Today’s Dilbert Is Too Timely

Posted on October 9, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

Today's Dilbert is making the rounds of the law school, because we start the retreat tomorrow.

Posted in Completely Different | Leave a comment

Undergraduates Are Promiscuous File-Sharers

Posted on October 9, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

Last night I was part of a panel that spoke to undergraduates in Hecht Residential College on “Online File Sharing”. The audience was largely divided between the defiant and the possessors of guilty consciences. My suggestion that the RIAA attempts to stamp out file sharing by suing everyone in sight was likely to be as pleasant and as successful as the War on Drugs produced surprisingly little reaction.

I enjoyed meeting fellow panelist Sam Terilli, who told me he had accepted a full-time teaching job at the School of Communications, a school which just gets better and better ever year. It will be fun to have him just across the street.

But perhaps the most interesting thing I learned was this statistic, offered by a speaker from the University's IT department. Two years ago, network traffic was 80% incoming, 20% outgoing. Last year it was 20% incoming and 80% outgoing—and the difference was due to people making files available for P2P file sharing. As a result the university closed down the ports most commonly used by Kazaa and other popular file-sharing tools, and the balance is almost back to normal.

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Posted in Internet | Leave a comment

Brad DeLong Channels Plato, Marx, Pirandello, Stoppard, D-Squared and Leo Strauss All At Once

Posted on October 9, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

It probably helps to have a little background in microeconomics, literary theory and political philosophy to appreciate the full playfulserious subversive brilliance of Brad DeLong’s A Non-Socratic Dialogue on Social Welfare Functions, but even if you don’t have that background you will enjoy it. If you do have such a background, don’t read it while drinking coffee or there’s a serious risk to your keyboard.

What makes this entry particularly brilliant is not just the self-deprecating manner in which it clubs you over the head with its intelligence, but the hidden subversive message aimed at great philosophers of past, present, and future ages.

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Posted in Econ & Money | 1 Comment