"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

Wired.com reports that RealDVD, the DVD ripping software that launched a few months ago, lost its case against the Hollywood studios. The judge ruled that RealNetworks violated the DMCA by distributing the software, regardless of its intended use.

[Judge] Patel said the RealDVD software violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 that prohibits the circumvention of encryption technology. DVDs are encrypted with what is known as the Content Scramble System, and DVD players must secure a license to play discs. RealDVD, she ruled, circumvents technology designed to prevent copying.

But the decision, although mixed, left open the door that copying DVD’s for personal use “may well be” lawful under the fair use doctrine of the Copyright Act, although trafficking in such goods was illegal.

“Because RealDVD makes a permanent copy of copyrighted DVD content, there is no exemption from DMCA liability, statutory or otherwise, that applies here. Whatever application the fair use doctrine may have for individual consumers making backup copies of their own DVDs, it does not portend to save Real from liability under the DMCA in this action,” Patel wrote (.pdf) in a lawsuit brought by Hollywood.

Glickman praises this decision in the article, as if RealDVD would be of any use to those who wish to violate copyright on DVDs by making copies for others to use, or its prohibition will stop others from ripping movies with other software instead, without seeming to consider that such actions may be causing the very infringement the MPAA claims to be fighting against. No doubt many people get their DVD-purchased films from sources unsanctioned by Hollywood because they are unaware of or don’t know how to use DVD ripping software with their own discs (or because they might consider a $150,000 civil fine a lighter sentence than 5 years in prison). The long-established process of CD ripping gives them the belief that their acts are not in violation of copyright (or that their violation is justified) due to their purchase of the DVD. Removing the DRM on DVDs could very well reduce this behavior, as the awareness of rippers would increase and the lack of legal concern could lead to easier and more efficient ripping technologies. It could also make Hollywood stop looking like they believe we are still in a world where CSS is a barrier to DVD access.

• Wired.com
• Slashdot

Serial Console - Credit: jmcar on Flickr (CC BY)

Matthew Crippen, a 27 year old student from California, was arrested for hacking video game consoles in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

“Matthew Crippen was arrested yesterday for hacking game consoles (for profit) in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He was released on a $5,000 bond, but faces up to 10 years in prison. This is terribly disturbing to me; a man could lose 10 years of his freedom for providing the service of altering hardware. He could well lose much of his freedom for providing a modicum of it to others. There is no piracy going on, necessarily — the games a modified console could run may simply not be signed by the vendor. It’s much like jailbreaking an iPhone. But it seems because he is disabling a ‘circumvention device’ it is a criminal issue. Guess it’s time to kick a few dollars over to the EFF.”

We are now one step closer of turning our world into the dystopian future found in Richard Stallman’s The Right to Read.

• Slashdot

Aiptek 720p Video Cameras - Credit: Gordon McDowell on Flickr (CC BY-SA)

When deciding whether or not a DMCA exemption should be provided for teachers and students, so that they could copy DVDs for education, the MPAA instead suggested that they record a video with a video camera.

At the DMCA 1201 hearings at the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress, representatives from the MPAA showed a video demonstrating how users can videorecord a TV set. They argue this is an acceptable analog alternative to breaking copy protection on a DVD.

The hearings occur every three years to determine whether the Librarian at the Library of Congress (through direction of the Copyright Office) should create exemptions to the anti-circumvention provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

In 2006, film and media professors were granted an exemption in order to break copy protection on DVDs so that they could utilize high quality video clips in classroom teaching. Up for consideration during the 2009 exemption hearings is whether this exemption should be extended to apply to faculty teaching in all disciplines, and whether the exemption should apply to students.

Absurd.

• Vimeo
• Boing Boing

Larry Lessig. Source: Robert Scoble on Flickr. License: CC-BY 2.0.

Techdirt reports that Larry Lessig has been sent a DMCA takedown notice for one of his presentations on YouTube by Warner Music.

Lessig has announced that Warner Music issued a DMCA takedown on one of Lessig’s own presentations, in which his use is almost certainly fair use. Lessig, of course, is a lawyer, and a big supporter of fair use, so it’s no surprise that he’s also said he’s going to be fighting this.

The thing that I can’t understand is who at Warner Music would decide this was a good idea? We’ve seen Warner make a number of highly questionable moves over the past six months, but this may be the most incomprehensible. Warner Music may claim it was an accident or that it didn’t mean to send the takedown, but that’s hard to fathom as well. The DMCA rules are pretty clear, that the filer needs to clearly own the content, and previously lawsuits have said they need to take fair use into account. I’m guessing we haven’t heard the end of this yet…

Can we say “epic fail”?

• Techdirt
• Official announcement on Twitter
• Slashdot

The MobileRead forums have been sent a DMCA takedown notice for linking to a Python script that allows Kindle owners to purchase e-books on their Kindles from stores other than Amazon’s own store.

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

Blogger Logo

Ars Technica reports that Google’s policy of notifying Blogger users about DMCA takedown notices and giving them the option to remove the material themselves had changed. Now Google takes down the content themselves and notifies the blogger afterwards.

Google—which owns Blogger—has pretty steadfastly refused to discuss its policy for handling DMCA takedown notices, referring all inquiries to a posted policy and asserting that the company removes content only when “legally appropriate.” Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that in recent months it has switched from a policy of notifying users of takedown notices, giving them a opportunity to remove content themselves, to one of automatically pulling flagged posts. (Sources at the company say that—unlike Google’s YouTube, which makes use of automatic copyright “fingerprinting” and filtering software—Blogger removes content only in response to formal C&D notices.)

That grates on writers like Spaulding, who complain that the new policy ends up deleting their own intellectual property: the reviews or commentary that may accompany an MP3 track marked for removal. Worse, it means readers who follow links to old posts and find nothing but an error page may conclude the blog is defunct.

As the article points out, not only does this violate Google’s own policies for DMCA takedown notices, but now Blogger users will need to keep backups if their posts are taken down by Google due to a false claim of infringement. Thankfully, Blogger is not the only platform on the Internet for free expression, so Blogger users can always migrate to other platforms or use their own servers.

• Ars Technica
• Digg

A blogger known only by the name “i♥cabbages” has successfully cracked Adobe’s ADEPT DRM for EPUB and PDF files. The post about EPUB is still up, but the PDF post has been taken down after Adobe filed a DMCA notice.

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

Federal Judge David G. Campbell issued his final ruling Wednesday in a case brought by Blizzard Entertainment last March, stating that the popular WoW bot Glider can be classified as a circumvention device and thus violates the DMCA:

Judge Campbell has distinguished between the actual bits stored on the World of Warcraft disk (which he called the “literal elements” of the game) and the interface elements the user encounters as he’s actually playing the game (which he dubbed “non-literal elements”). In his ruling last summer, Judge Campbell ruled that Glider did not violate the DMCA with respect to the “literal elements” because Warden did not “effectively control” access to those elements: they are stored, unencrypted, on the World of Warcraft disk. But he deferred until this month’s trial the question of whether Glider violated the DMCA with respect to the “non-literal elements.”

In Wednesday’s ruling, Judge Campbell found that [Blizzard's anti-bot program] Warden did effectively control access to the “non-literal elements.” That is, while Warden does not prevent users from accessing the individual elements of the game separately, it does effectively bar users from accessing all of the elements together while playing the game. Therefore, Judge Campbell concluded, [Glider creator] MDY violated the DMCA when it evaded warden’s checks.

In addition, Judge Campbell affirmed Blizzard’s theory that violating an EULA is indeed copyright infringement:

Blizzard argued, and Judge Campbell agreed, that when users violated the World of Warcraft EULA, they no longer had a license to play the game and were therefore guilty of copyright infringement. As Siy noted in a blog post last year, Blizzard’s theory, if taken literally, would mean that violating any of the rules in the EULA and Terms of Service, such as choosing a screen name that didn’t meet Blizzard’s guidelines, would be an act of copyright infringement. And distributing software that helps users infringe copyright itself constitutes secondary copyright infringement, which could expose MDY to copyright law’s draconian “statutory damages” of $150,000 per act of infringement. The law gives aggrieved parties to contract disputes much less potent powers.

This is horrible. True, Glider is a big way for people to cheat, and some would argue that’s against the spirit of the game, but hauling every EULA violator into court for copyright infringement is nuts. Not only would it clog the courts, but it gives large corporations another big stick to use against people who might do something innovative with their products outside the sphere of approved uses.

• Ars Technica

Sorry! - Credit: myguitarzz on Flickr (CC BY)

Toyota has apologized to DesktopNexus, and has claimed that the ordeal was a result of internal miscommunication.

From: Scott DeYager
Date: Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:52 AM
Subject: Desktopnexus Toyota Wallpapers
To: tips@torrentfreak.com

Dear Torrentfreak.com,

The recent request Toyota made to have certain photos of Toyota vehicles removed from the public wallpaper site, DesktopNexus, was the result of an internal miscommunication.

To protect the legal rights and agreements we have with the photographers we hire, we ask that the photographs not be used for direct consumer advertising, sales brochures and the like.

If people wish to post their own photos of one of their own vehicles, that’s their right. In fact, we’re pleased that people would want to show their Toyota vehicles to the world. So have at it. Consider the wallpapers on DesktopNexus to be fair game for personal use.

Please let your readers know that we offer a sincere apology to the DesktopNexus site and its users for any inconvenience or disruption this miscommunication may have caused.

Thanks for your understanding,

Scott DeYager
Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.
Corporate Communications

Yay!  I’m glad I was able to help out with this.  Here’s a post on the DesktopNexus blog that talks about the internet responce.

• TorrentFreak