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In addition, SunnComm believes that Halderman has violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by disclosing unpublished MediaMax management files placed on a user’s computer after user approval is granted.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.
Today’s Dilbert is making the rounds of the law school, because we start the retreat tomorrow.
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.
The second most interesting thing I learned—and certainly the most disturbing—came up before the official start of the event: my host, the very gracious Master of Hecht (what a great title! but it does make me think of Phil from Dilbert), is that the University’s General Counsel has forbidden the Masters of residential colleges from renting films and showing them to students AND also from buying films and making them available in a lending library.
I can understand why a prudent General Counsel might impose the first rule—in a 900-person dorm, it’s arguably a public display of a video under 17 USC § 101 even in a small room, in which case it would require a license—but the second rule mystifies me. I’m not a copyright scholar, but the statute seems pretty clear.
Here’s the statute, 17 USC § 109 (b)(1)(A):
Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a), unless authorized by the owners of copyright in the sound recording or the owner of copyright in a computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program), and in the case of a sound recording in the musical works embodied therein, neither the owner of a particular phonorecord nor any person in possession of a particular copy of a computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program), may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the possession of that phonorecord or computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program) by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending. Nothing in the preceding sentence shall apply to the rental, lease, or lending of a phonorecord for nonprofit purposes by a nonprofit library or nonprofit educational institution. The transfer of possession of a lawfully made copy of a computer program by a nonprofit educational institution to another nonprofit educational institution or to faculty, staff, and students does not constitute rental, lease, or lending for direct or indirect commercial purposes under this subsection.
If it’s true that the General Counsel’s office is advising otherwise, I’d like to know why. Is it out of some overblown fear of contributory copyright infringement based on the belief that our students all have DVD burners? Or is it just plain wrong?
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.
Answer key:
Plato - obvious from the cast
Marx - obvious from the text
Pirandello - well, it’s only two characters in search of an author, but it’s short
Stoppard - Think ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’
D-Squared - look here for more twisted economic theory edginess; alas there’s less of it here
Leo Strauss: If I explained that one I’d have to kill you. But look very very carefully at the last few lines of Brad’s essay.
