"205/365" by _rockinfree on Flickr (CC-BY)

On July 30th, a rather curious posting was made on United TI, a forum devoted to discussing Texas Instruments graphing calculators. The post, made by Benjamin Moody — known as “FloppusMaximus” on the site — gave the factors of a very large number. It was quickly deduced to be the RSA modulus of a key — particularly, one needed to sign the OS on a TI calculator — which Moody confirmed:

This one is for the TI-83+.

The TI-83+, like all modern TI calculators, has its OS cryptographically signed by TI for validation purposes; if someone tries to upload an unsigned OS — like, say, an open-source OS — into the calculator, it is rejected. Thus, the discovery of the signing key is a major breakthrough, which ticalc.org, a popular TI calculator site, makes clear:

With this achievement, any operating system can be cryptographically signed in a manner identical to that of the original TI-OS. Third party operating systems can thus be loaded on any 83+ calculators without the use of any extra software…Complete programming freedom has finally been achieved on the TI-83 Plus!

A few days ago, however, the original post was removed and replaced with this:

Dear community,

I have been politely asked to remove the former contents of this post.

No further explanation was given by Moody as to who asked him to remove the key or why it had to be removed. However, Brandon Wilson, a developer who reposted the key on his website, explained:

Ben was hit by TI with a DMCA notice as was I. We of course must comply with whatever is specifically requested, but you can’t stop a group of people from factoring large integers. I will not be silenced.

Wilson has posted the DMCA notice and his reply on his website. Meanwhile, a distributed computing project has been set up to use Moody’s brute-force methods to obtain the keys for all other TI calculators.

It seems pretty clear to me that TI is abusing the DMCA to maintain a stranglehold on their hardware. The key in question does not encrypt the OS, so it’s unclear how the key counts as a device to circumvent access controls on copyrighted works. You don’t need it to obtain a copy of the OS, as copies of the latest OS are freely downloadable on TI’s website. The only thing the keys are useful for is to be able to upload another OS onto the calculator such that it can be installed. One poster on the United TI forum drew parallels between this situation and the situation with iTunesDB, and I think that’s a valid point to make.

TI is not trying to protect their copyright, but merely trying to protect their lockdown on their hardware. If TI is really interested in promoting the education of young people, they should stop trying to harrass others whose only crime was to explore what they could do with the hardware they legally purchased.

• “Fun Number Theory Facts” thread on United TI Forums
• “TI-83 Plus OS Signing Key Cracked” — ticalc.org
• Brandon Wilson’s website containing the DMCA notices

net neutrality... to the power of you - Credit: markrabo on Flickr (CC BY)

Once again Network Neutrality has been brought back to the table in Congress, this is already the third time. But since we now have  a new President and a new FCC chairman it seems more likely that there will be a different outcome this time.

The war over network neutrality has been fought in the last two Congresses, and last week’s introduction of the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009” (PDF) means that legislators will duke it out a third time. Should the bill pass, Internet service providers will not be able to “block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade” access to any lawful content from any lawful application or device.

I’m not really sure how I feel about this. I definitely support net neutrality and I think it’s extremely important but maybe a better approach to insure net neutrality is to increase ISP competition.

• ars technica
• Slashdot

The bill is sometimes referred to as “HADOPI,” after the French acronym for the new administrative authority that the bill would create; HADOPI would be responsible for overseeing warnings and Internet disconnections for those who repeatedly infringe online copyrights. The idea is so unpopular that 88 percent of the European Parliament this week voted to ban the practice unless overseen by a judge.

After Bourreau-Guggenheim expressed his opposition to the law, he thought no more about it until he was called into his boss’ office and shown… an exact copy of his e-mail to Panafieu. According to his boss, the e-mail had been provided by the Ministry of Culture, where Minister Christine Albanel is the French government’s key backer of the Création et Internet law (and also a UMP member).

But why did the Ministry of Culture have Bourreau-Guggenheim’s e-mail? Because Panafieu’s office had passed the message from its constituent on to the Ministry, which then passed it to TF1, which also supports the new bill.

I don’t know how things work in France, but it sounds like that could be considered political discrimination. I would hardly call a private e-mail message to an MP a “strategic difference,” and the fact that he did not quit suggests that he probably still supports the company in some way. It isn’t like he was publicly campaigning against his employer and everything they stand for, or even criticizing the company at all.

• Ars Technica
• Digg

Last February, a pair of artists, working with several collaborators, created a Wikipedia article and invited the general public to add to it, following Wikipedia’s standards of credibility and verifiability. The work was intended to comment on the nature of art and Wikipedia. But Wikipedia editors did not take kindly to the project, and it was shut down within fifteen hours for being insufficiently “encyclopaedic.”

Fast forward a couple of months. The artists, Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, have created a noncommercial website that documents the project, called Wikipedia Art. The domain name for the project: wikipediaart.org.

Yep, they used the term “wikipedia” in their domain name. “Wikipedia” is a trademark owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. And now the Foundation has demanded that the artists give up the domain name peaceably or it will attempt to take it by (legal) force.

I fail to see any trademark problems here. Trademark law exists to avoid confusion among customers with regard to brands, logos, and names. Based on the EFF’s article, it appears that all this site was doing was using the name to refer to the site itself, not host a faux Wikipedia or deceive Wikipedians into going to Wikipedia Art instead. The site itself even has a disclaimer at the top of the page denying any involvement with Wikipedia. I for one am grateful that the EFF has not overlooked their principles on free speech just because the site in question just happens to be Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation should retract their accusations and apologize immediately (or at the very least provide an explanation for this action).

• Electronic Frontier Foundation

Pirate Ship - Credit: earcos on Flickr (CC BY)

Facebook has decided to block all links to The Pirate Bay.

In an official statement from Facebook to Ars Technica, the company says that “given the controversy surrounding The Pirate Bay and the pending lawsuit against them, we reached out to The Pirate Bay and asked them to remove the ‘Share on Facebook’ links from their site.” Since no one from TPB replied to the request, “we have blocked their torrents from being shared on Facebook.”

The block appears to be comprehensive, including torrents for illegal copyrighted content, Creative-Commons-licensed content, and even Linux distributions.

Not all torrents, or even all TPB domains, are blocked from Facebook, however. Torrents from other directories like isoHunt and even thepiratebay.se can still be found on the popular site. Facebook would not comment on this particular aspect of the situation, but with the most popular illegal torrent directory out of the way, it is probably working on blocking the rest of these as well.

Hmm…just link to thepiratebay.se then?

• Ars Technica

As some of you may already know, this week we received a DMCA take-down notice from Amazon requesting the removal of the tool kindlepid.py and instructions associated with it. Although we never hosted this tool (contrary to their claim), nor believe that this tool is used to remove technological measures (contrary to their claim), we decided, due to the vagueness of the DMCA law and our intention to remain in good relation with Amazon, to voluntarily follow their request and remove links and detailed instructions related to it.

A quick backgrounder: kindlepid.py is a small Python script allowing you to derive a Mobipocket-compatible personal identifier (PID) for your Kindle reader. This PID in itself has nothing at all to do with reading any copyrighted content. It is only used to make legitimate e-book purchases at stores other than Amazon’s.

We believe in the freedom of speech and we encourage you to continue expressing your views and thoughts on tools like kindlepid.py. We only ask you not to provide any how-to instructions, source codes and/or links for obtaining kindlepid.py.

I have to wonder if Amazon suffers from being so big that its departments don’t talk with each other. How can their music division get the concept correctly while the e-book division can mess it up so badly? Make no mistake, Amazon’s Kindle Store is the iTunes Store of e-books, and Amazon is just as overzealous and controlling as Apple when it comes to their products, even after the point of purchase. Indeed, Amazon is worse: at least you can play MP3s on an iPod. Try reading a PDF on your Kindle without paying your “reading right” to Amazon first.

• MobileRead forums
• Slashdot

“NRAs shall promote the interests of the citizens of the European Union by inter alia:
(g) applying the principle that end-users should be able there should be transparency of conditions under which services are provided, including information on the conditions of to access to and/or use of and distribute information or run applications and services, and of any traffic management policies of their choice

The wording “conditions under which services are provided” and “conditions of use” also allude to the principle of conditional access which applies to satellite and cable television. In EU law, it is established in the Conditional Access Directive (Directive 98/84/EC) which concerns protection of copyright on satellite and cable television systems. The subscription television model is alluded to
in the ‘Rationale’ for the amendments:”We are already familiar with this in the broadcasting world, where certain cable or satellite operators may enter into exclusive agreements with content providers (like Sky and Premier League football). Similar arrangements may also exist in the electronic communications world”

I’m not surprised. The UK has a long history of treating its own people with suspicion. I can’t understand how their citizens put up with such blatant violations of their freedom.

• IpTegrity.com
• Slashdot

By way of a concrete reverse-engineering contribution, I have successfully circumvented Adobe’s ADEPT DRM scheme for EPUB files. The same circumvention probably also allows decryption of ADEPT-encrypted PDF files, although I haven’t looked into it yet.

I have never heard of ADEPT, but like i♥cabbages I find it interesting that Adobe specifically targeted the PDF post and not both posts. Hopefully i♥cabbages isn’t planning on visiting DEFCON anytime soon, or things could get much worse.

• i♥cabbages – Circumventing Adobe ADEPT DRM for EPUB
• i♥cabbages – No Free Speech For You
• Slashdot

Google executives - Credit: Joi Ito (CC BY)

The Google executives have been summoned to court in Italy.

The prosecutor, Francesco Cajani, ordered the defendants to appear in a Milan court on February 3 to face charges of defamation and failure to exercise control over personal data, the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The order comes after an investigation into a complaint filed by an Italian advocacy group for people with Down syndrome, Vividown, and the boy’s father.

The video was filmed from a mobile phone and posted on the site in 2006. It shows four male high school students in the Italian city of Turin humiliating the youth.

Although official notice of the decision had yet to be received, a Google spokesman said in a statement the case risked setting a worrisome precedent. Google did not believe it should be punished for the way its site was used by third parties, he said.

Imagine if Google lost and web 2.0 just died.  This is ridiculous, there’s no way they can be found guilty.  While this isn’t directly tied to copyright, I think this is important to FC because a precedent like this where an entity is found guilty for the actions of a 3rd party is not good for the peer to peer (using the term loosely) world.

• Reuters
• PCWorld
• Gizmodo

YouTube may be rethinking their process for handling DMCA takedown notices this week, after receiving thousands of bogus notices alleging illegal content on the site. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), over a period of 12 hours, from Thursday night to Friday morning, YouTube received over 4000 notices, all for content critical of the Church of Scientology.

The notices were sent from an organization by the name of American Rights Counsel, LLC. However, Scientology detractors associated with the group Anonymous noted that no such limited liability corporation exists in the U.S. and that the text of the takedown notices is virtually identical to previous efforts from Wikipedia contributor oschaper, thought to be someone named Oliver Schaper (oschaper on Wikipedia and message boards). It’s possible that this individual was behind the notices, also filed by another apparently non-existent entity called ContentFactory America.

I feel that the detractors were well-prepared for this because of Scientology’s well-known efforts to abuse copyright law to censor material. Sadly, I don’t see many others being to prepared to deal with such abuses by other institutions.

• The Industry Standard
• Slashdot