[TriLUG] DMCA II - Electric Boogaloo

[Jonathan Magid]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2001, rpjday wrote:

> first, we should all read carefully the text of the proposed legislation.
> try www.politechbot.com/docs/hollings.090701.html as a starting point.
>
> then, i'd be interested in knowing just how such legislation would
> be *implemented*, and who would bear the cost.  this whole bill sounds
> like a wish list by someone who has no idea of the difficulty of
> implementation.


According to this message posted on Declan, the technology is already
developed:

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The complete text of the draft SSSCA (2.5 MB PDF file) is now online:
http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/sssca-draft.pdf
http://www.nullify.org/sssca-draft.pdf
http://sites.inka.de/risctaker/sssca-draft.pdf
http://www.parrhesia.com/sssca-draft.pdf

Slashdot thread on the SSSCA:
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/09/08/0238200.shtml

Politech archive on SSSCA:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sssca

EFF alert on "Canadian DMCA" -- comments due September 15:
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010907_eff_canada_cpdci_alert.html

-Declan

********

From: Larry Blunk <lblunk at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] Text of draft Security Systems Standards and
+Certification Act
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 23:09:34 -0700 (PDT)

   This is how I believe this act will play out:

  1) This act will sail through congress thanks to the heavy lobbying of
     the copyright cartels.

  2) The "industry" will adopt the Trust Computing Platfrom Alliance's (TCPA)
     (http://www.trustedpc.org) specification for PC's, and the CPRM/CPPM
     (http://www.4centity.com/tech/cprm/) specification for hard drives,
     removable storage devices, and pre-recorded media.  The TCPA spec performs
     hardware-based signature checks on software, beginning with the
     boot-loader.  The current spec allows for boot-loaders which fail the
     signature check to still load and run (with the PC in an "insecure"
     state).  With a minor modification, the TCPA spec can require that any
     boot-loader which fails the signature check will fail to run at all.
     This can be backed up by the CPRM hard-drive which will only allow a
     secure program to modify the boot-loader on the hard-drive.

  3) I suspect that the FBI/DOJ will not go after Linux initially (even
     though the "software" provision of the act provides them with the
     power to do so) due to the possible speech ramifications.  Linux
     will effectively be outlawed because the mandated TCPA
     PC's will only run Secure Windows.

  4)  After several years, the Feds will go after Linux itself due to the
     scofflaws who continue to run Linux on their pre-TCPA computers.

     Microsoft has a wonderful PowerPoint presentation on their designs
    to monopolize the copyright protection business via the TCPA PC at
    http://www.microsoft.com/winhec/presents/Security.zip

     I bet there's alot of celebrating going on in Redmond tonight now
    that the possibility of a break-up has been dismissed in favor of
    a meaningless wrist-slap, plus they are now well on their way to getting
    Linux outlawed with this act.  They also probably find a great deal of
    irony in the fact that IBM, the supposed champion of Linux, will
    have had significant hand in developing the technology which will be
    used to destroy Linux.

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