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Thank you for your hard work. On the DMCA realm, I cannot wait for the Green v. DOJ case to bear fruit. If it succeeds, the DMCA anti-circumvention and anti-tr

Thank you for your hard work. On the DMCA realm, I cannot wait for the Green v. DOJ case to bear fruit. If it succeeds, the DMCA anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions will be ruled unconstitutional altogether. Last we heard about the case was the oral argument for the appeal on 9/12, but it left a sour taste in my mouth. The judges were most focused on whether Green had standing to bring the case (because the government said he would not be prosecuted for doing what he wanted to do) and on whether the appeal itself was adequate at the motion to dismiss stage. They barely even discussed the issues of fair use and constitutional balance that the 1st amendment requires for copyright law to exist (established by SCOTUS in Eldred and Golan) I don't know what to think with this new development, honestly.

echelon 4y ago
I know it's a lot to ask, but would you mind providing some additional background as to the different sides and the potential outcomes / ramifications of this case? You seem to have a lot of context in this area. Could this lead to a VCR/DVR future where we're once again able to record or download steaming content? Platforms and DRM have taken us a step back from the freedoms we once enjoyed. I would be overjoyed to be able to legally back up Netflix, HBO, and Disney+ for my private library. It seems only fair now that everything is morphing into the absurd "license for eternity" model.
- saurik 4y ago
  Frankly--as someone at the front line of all of this stuff--none of these DMCA related arguments have much "practical" importance in the medium-to-long term :/. (This is not at all to say it is a waste of time or anything: the right to examine products and discuss what you learn is really really important and is the basis of security research, so these lawsuits are extremely important and this DMCA law--which likely will only ever die due to first amendment issues because it is locked in via international treaty--is extremely harmful.) The reality is that tech companies are winning this war, technologically, because asymmetric cryptography works--so there isn't some secret key embedded in the devices that you can merely extract and use--and the industry is getting better about not causing regressions. The big battle over unlocking cellphones from 5-10 years ago? That was nothing more than a gambit (which worked, btw) to change the process rules, because no one is actually using technological techniques to supply unlock codes anyway (it is now all via, shall we say... "light corporate espionage" ;P). In a world where I am allowed to make a jailbreak that doesn't mean I can make a jailbreak, as we can see in the war with Apple: the reason there aren't jailbreaks for modern iPhones right now isn't because of DMCA fears. We live in an awkward time where bugs can be features :(. The real "practical" changes are thereby going to have to come from proactive regulation that prohibits certain forms of protection or corporate behavior, not attempts to defend the rights of users to publish what they can find and build. I would more watch Right to Repair, or the various antitrust lawsuits (including my related Apple one). (Note: I know I didn't directly tackle whether anything anyone is doing might help you backup your streaming licensed content, but I also appreciate you didn't directly ask me anyway ;P. I have not heard of such, but I don't pay as much attention to that kind of content. The issue in Green and Huang's cases, though, is about being able to publish information and tools that might help you rip such content, and the reality is you can likely already do that and to the extent to which people start only letting locked down devices with encrypted cables access content, I think you will see companies win that in the next 5-10 years and the legality of publishing a workaround won't matter as there won't be any workarounds to publish. And whether it is legal to do that backup for content no one even pretended you can "buy" seems orthogonal to the efforts I have seen or been involved with.)
  - userbinator 4y ago
    The real "practical" changes are thereby going to have to come from proactive regulation that prohibits certain forms of protection or corporate behavior Indeed. Of course, trying to regulate crypto will bring everyone against (individual) privacy and freedom out in opposition, and forcing companies to not tie functionality to their private keys / force them to make public those keys would also make you an enemy of the "security" industry. We live in an awkward time where bugs can be features As the saying goes, "insecurity is freedom". We only got into this position because of corporate interests that oppose those of the user.
    - EMIRELADERO 4y ago
      > Of course, trying to regulate crypto will bring everyone against (individual) privacy and freedom out in opposition, and forcing companies to not tie functionality to their private keys / force them to make public those keys would also make you an enemy of the "security" industry. This seems easy to solve. Just mandate that the end-user/purchaser of the hardware should have the same level of control over the code execution as the manufacturer does after the sale. Whatever the manufacturer can do to your own unit after it's in your posession, you should be able to do as well. No need to get into restricting crypto. After the aforementioned regulations are passed, it will be up to the companies to figure out how to implement them.
      - Dracophoenix 4y ago
        >Just mandate that the end-user/purchaser of the hardware should have the same level of control over the code execution as the manufacturer does after the sale. Whatever the manufacturer can do to your own unit after it's in your posession, you should be able to do as well. I don't see how this changes much except to mandate Apple or any other hardware manufacturer to leave privilege escalation bugs in their software for the lifetime of the device. Also, updates are generally user-initiated. If the unadvertised "functionality" of unauthorized code execution is patched, the user has only himself to blame, not the manufacturer.
- EMIRELADERO 4y ago
  The challenged provisions of the DMCA have nothing to do with what you do with the material that is being protected by the technological measure that it makes illegal to bypass. That's what makes it so overbroad and constitutionally troublesome. Section 1201 makes it illegal to bypass access controls regardless of what you do after. You could bypass a technological protection measure that controls access to a copyrighted work and do nothing with the work itself after and it would still be illegal.

echelon 4y ago

I know it's a lot to ask, but would you mind providing some additional background as to the different sides and the potential outcomes / ramifications of this case? You seem to have a lot of context in this area. Could this lead to a VCR/DVR future where we're once again able to record or download steaming content? Platforms and DRM have taken us a step back from the freedoms we once enjoyed. I would be overjoyed to be able to legally back up Netflix, HBO, and Disney+ for my private library. It seems only fair now that everything is morphing into the absurd "license for eternity" model.

saurik 4y ago
Frankly--as someone at the front line of all of this stuff--none of these DMCA related arguments have much "practical" importance in the medium-to-long term :/. (This is not at all to say it is a waste of time or anything: the right to examine products and discuss what you learn is really really important and is the basis of security research, so these lawsuits are extremely important and this DMCA law--which likely will only ever die due to first amendment issues because it is locked in via international treaty--is extremely harmful.) The reality is that tech companies are winning this war, technologically, because asymmetric cryptography works--so there isn't some secret key embedded in the devices that you can merely extract and use--and the industry is getting better about not causing regressions. The big battle over unlocking cellphones from 5-10 years ago? That was nothing more than a gambit (which worked, btw) to change the process rules, because no one is actually using technological techniques to supply unlock codes anyway (it is now all via, shall we say... "light corporate espionage" ;P). In a world where I am allowed to make a jailbreak that doesn't mean I can make a jailbreak, as we can see in the war with Apple: the reason there aren't jailbreaks for modern iPhones right now isn't because of DMCA fears. We live in an awkward time where bugs can be features :(. The real "practical" changes are thereby going to have to come from proactive regulation that prohibits certain forms of protection or corporate behavior, not attempts to defend the rights of users to publish what they can find and build. I would more watch Right to Repair, or the various antitrust lawsuits (including my related Apple one). (Note: I know I didn't directly tackle whether anything anyone is doing might help you backup your streaming licensed content, but I also appreciate you didn't directly ask me anyway ;P. I have not heard of such, but I don't pay as much attention to that kind of content. The issue in Green and Huang's cases, though, is about being able to publish information and tools that might help you rip such content, and the reality is you can likely already do that and to the extent to which people start only letting locked down devices with encrypted cables access content, I think you will see companies win that in the next 5-10 years and the legality of publishing a workaround won't matter as there won't be any workarounds to publish. And whether it is legal to do that backup for content no one even pretended you can "buy" seems orthogonal to the efforts I have seen or been involved with.)
- userbinator 4y ago
  The real "practical" changes are thereby going to have to come from proactive regulation that prohibits certain forms of protection or corporate behavior Indeed. Of course, trying to regulate crypto will bring everyone against (individual) privacy and freedom out in opposition, and forcing companies to not tie functionality to their private keys / force them to make public those keys would also make you an enemy of the "security" industry. We live in an awkward time where bugs can be features As the saying goes, "insecurity is freedom". We only got into this position because of corporate interests that oppose those of the user.
  - EMIRELADERO 4y ago
    > Of course, trying to regulate crypto will bring everyone against (individual) privacy and freedom out in opposition, and forcing companies to not tie functionality to their private keys / force them to make public those keys would also make you an enemy of the "security" industry. This seems easy to solve. Just mandate that the end-user/purchaser of the hardware should have the same level of control over the code execution as the manufacturer does after the sale. Whatever the manufacturer can do to your own unit after it's in your posession, you should be able to do as well. No need to get into restricting crypto. After the aforementioned regulations are passed, it will be up to the companies to figure out how to implement them.
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      >Just mandate that the end-user/purchaser of the hardware should have the same level of control over the code execution as the manufacturer does after the sale. Whatever the manufacturer can do to your own unit after it's in your posession, you should be able to do as well. I don't see how this changes much except to mandate Apple or any other hardware manufacturer to leave privilege escalation bugs in their software for the lifetime of the device. Also, updates are generally user-initiated. If the unadvertised "functionality" of unauthorized code execution is patched, the user has only himself to blame, not the manufacturer.
EMIRELADERO 4y ago
The challenged provisions of the DMCA have nothing to do with what you do with the material that is being protected by the technological measure that it makes illegal to bypass. That's what makes it so overbroad and constitutionally troublesome. Section 1201 makes it illegal to bypass access controls regardless of what you do after. You could bypass a technological protection measure that controls access to a copyrighted work and do nothing with the work itself after and it would still be illegal.