Category Archives: Legal

Know Your Rights – Satellites Crashing Onto Your Property

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After a bit of stochastic web-enabled research (( i.e. random searching looking for the conclusion of this case triggered by catching up on a story of Rich’s. )) I found this little piece of information from the UNSW Law Journal that everyone should bookmark away just in case they need it..

There’s A Satellite In My Backyard! – Mir And The Convention On International Liability For Damage Caused By Space Objects.

But what is the legal position in relation to damage caused by the return to Earth of a space object such as Mir? Are there any rules in place to cover such an eventuality? Under what circumstances would Russia have been responsible at international law for any such damage? What would be the extent of its liability? How is damage to be measured and what procedures (if any) are in place to facilitate compensation claims and to arrive at a determination of responsibility and its consequences? Once a determination is made, is it a legally binding and enforceable decision?

Just remember where you read it when you need it.. 😎

More Scarey Australian Copyright Braindeadness..

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The Association for Progressive Communications has a really interesting summary of the possible implications of new copyright legislation in Australia. They have a set of PDF’s there that give a “risk matrix” for teens, families, small businesses and industry.

If you’ve ever wondered how a bunch of kids singing in a restaurant can turn into a criminal offence under copyright law then this is for you (especially if you own an iPod). Read ’em and weep..

(Via)

Ex post facto

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It appears that our prime minister believes it would be inappropriate to bring retrospective legislation in to charge David Hicks with offences in an Australian court, but does think it is OK for the USA to do so, even though some prominent US citizens don’t think too highly of ex post facto legislation:

“The sentiment that ex post facto laws are against natural right, is so strong in the United States, that few, if any, of the State constitutions have failed to proscribe them. The federal constitution indeed interdicts them in criminal cases only; but they are equally unjust in civil as in criminal cases, and the omission of a caution which would have been right, does not justify the doing what is wrong. Nor ought it to be presumed that the legislature meant to use a phrase in an unjustifiable sense, if by rules of construction it can be ever strained to what is just.”

(Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13th, 1813)

BBC Asking Should New Service Be Microsoft Only ?

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The BBC Trust is currently carrying out a consultation exercise into their new “On Demand” TV services over the Internet in which they ask “How important is it that the proposed seven-day catchup service be available to consumers who are not using Microsoft software ?” (see question 5).

The accompanying PDF says:

In respect of the seven-day catch-up over the internet service, the files would require DRM to ensure that they were appropriately restricted in terms of time and geographic consumption. The only system that currently provides this security is Windows Media 10 and above. Further, the only comprehensively deployed operating system that currently supports Windows Media Player 10 and above is the Windows XP operating system. As a result of these DRM requirements the proposed BBC iPlayer download manager element therefore requires Windows Media Player 10 and Windows XP. This means the service would be unavailable to a minority of consumers who either do not use Microsoft or do not have an up-to-date Microsoft operating system. However, over time, technology improvements are likely to enable even more efficient methods of delivery. Further, it is our understanding the BBC Executive are working towards the iPlayer download manager being able to function on other operating systems.

and go on to say:

We also note that the Microsoft-based strategy for rights management will limit usage. Normally, we would expect BBC services to be universally available, as universal access to BBC services is in the public interest. However, as set out above, other mainstream technology platforms do not currently provide the appropriate security.

So the BBC Trust do want greater usage, but don’t seem to understand that DRM will stop that even if people do have access to Windows.

People may want to make their feelings known on this..

(Via Alec)

Intel Development Tools on Debian & Debian Derived Linux Distributions

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If you have an interest in being able to run the Intel developer tools (( the C & Fortran compilers, Vtune, etc )) under Debian or a Debian derived distribution such as Ubuntu then please sign up and make your views known on the Intel instigated poll on their forums, please!

At the moment they only support RPM based distributions (mainly RHEL and SLES) and whilst you can get the compilers going through some documented hacks getting Vtune to install is a real pain – the only way I’ve heard so far is this hack that involves having a machine running one of those distros to hand.

Intel make these tools available to people doing development on projects for no recompense (but be sure to read their FAQ on who does and doesn’t qualify).

Microsoft OpenXML – Patent Minefield

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Microsoft still don’t get open standards – their new OpenXML office file format is patent encumbered, but not in a way that is obvious. Sam Hiser has an interesting evaluation of the license for OpenXML and it appears that whilst MS do promise not to sue you for any patents that cover anything that is explicitly in the specification they do not do so for anything that you need to implement that specification.

We know of a great deal of Microsoft technology which does in fact contain patents and which lies outside the specification which would need to be implemented by such a 3rd-party for the formats to work. The Microsoft Office Open XML formats are therefore dependent upon a host of patented Microsoft technology.

In effect, this license means that if you are making a well-functioning, complete implementation of the Microsoft Office Open XML specification, then you are not covered by the “promise” in the License. In other words, Microsoft effectively prohibits you legally from making a complete and working implementation of its new formats in your software. If you do, you run the risk of being sued.

In other words, here is an open specification that you can only implement if you either (a) are willing to get sued, or (b) lucky enough not to live in a country that has stupid software patent laws..

Microsoft Details on Vista Protections

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For those who would like to see some corroboration of Peter Gutmann’s A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection which I posted about previously you can access a document from Microsofts own website called Output Content Protection and Windows Vista which goes into some detail about what you can expect.

In the future, some types of premium content— through its content policy—will specify that a full-resolution analog VGA output is not allowed and that the resolution must be reduced. It is not practical to change the actual scanning rate of the display, particularly because some displays are fixed resolution. But what is important is that the information content of the signal is reduced to the resolution specified by the content owner. Basically, a high-resolution picture needs to be degraded to make it soft and fuzzy.

You may find that if you connect your LCD flat screen via a digital DVI cable it might just stop working.

In contrast, DVI without HDCP is definitely not liked by content owners, because it provides a pristine digital interface that can be captured cleanly. When playing premium content such as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD, PVP-OPM will be required to turn off or constrict the quality of unprotected DVI. As a result, a regular DVI monitor will either get slightly fuzzy or go black, with a polite message explaining that it doesn’t meet security requirements.

Even your analog VGA monitor may get turned off in future.

There have been some successes in getting content owners to make some allowances for this ubiquitous interface. Consumers would certainly be unhappy if it were immediately outlawed; so instead, many content owners are requiring that its resolution be constricted when certain types of premium content are being played. Eventually they may require that analog VGA outputs be turned off completely; but for the moment, it is possible to provide the necessary level of protection by constricting the information content.

It’s not just users who are going to be worse off under this scheme – would you like to be a graphics card manufacturer when Microsoft tell you things like this ?

Content Industry Agreement hardware robustness rules must be interpreted by the graphics hardware manufacturer. Vendors should work to ensure that their implementations will not be revoked for playback of high-level premium content, as the result of a valid complaint from the content owners.

and

It is the responsibility of the graphics chip manufacturer to ensure that their chips are not used to manufacture “hacker friendly” graphics cards or motherboards. If someone does try to manufacture such a card, then the graphics manufacturer should refuse to sell chips to that board manufacturer.

So those are some random restrictions, if you read the whole document you’ll find plenty more to get your blood boiling quite nicely..

Found via a useful comment by Sergio on Bruce Schneier’s blog post about PG’s analysis.

Microsoft Vista Content Protection – Inflating the Price of a Computer Near You

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Peter Gutmann, crypto geek and author of “Everything you never wanted to know about PKI but have been forced to find out“, has written an analysis of the long-delayed Microsoft’s “Vista Content Protection” specification (( Warning, plain text document, may cause culture shock to the Flash Generation due to high signal to noise ratio and lack of pretty pictures )).

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.

Peter has drawn on a heap of sources (both public and private) to work out the implications of Microsoft wanting to make the content providers dreams come true and going to extreme lengths to try and stop a few people tampering with “premium content”. The results are going to be more unreliable systems with large processing overheads and less functionality.

Since S/PDIF doesn’t provide any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing protected content. In other words if you’ve invested a pile of money into a high-end audio setup fed from a digital output, you won’t be able to use it with protected content. Similarly, component (YPbPr) video will be disabled by Vista’s content protection, so the same applies to a high-end video setup fed from component video.

Echo cancellation will be another victim of Vista as the required feedback system will not be permitted, instead it’ll degrade the quality to stop the potential for capturing “premium content” and the legitimate users will just have to cope. This sort of audio and video degradation will occur whenever the system believes it is playing “premium content”, even if you’re doing something else important:

What makes this particularly entertaining is the fact that the downgrading/disabling is dynamic, so if the premium-content signal is intermittent or varies (for example music that fades out), various outputs and output quality will fade in and out, or turn on and off, in sync. Normally this behaviour would be a trigger for reinstalling device drivers or even a warranty return of the affected hardware, but in this case it’s just a signal that everything is functioning as intended.

It appears the user will have no control over this, if someone manages to introduce something that Vista believes is “premium content” (and we all know how bad Microsoft are at getting things right) then the constrictors will kick in, downgrading the signal and then upgrading it to the required spec but with loss in quality. This pretty much rules Vista out for use in hospital imaging systems, astronomy or anywhere else where lossy compression is verboten. This is going to be a nightmare for the hardware vendors:

Amusingly, the Vista content protection docs say that it’ll be left to graphics chip manufacturers to differentiate their product based on (deliberately degraded) video quality. This seems a bit like breaking the legs of Olympic athletes and then rating them based on how fast they can hobble on crutches.

This is also going to have serious ramifications for developers of drivers for open source operating systems like Linux, FreeBSD, etc as Vista will introduce a requirement called Hardware Functionality Scan (HFS for short) where the driver interrogates a device and gets it to attest it is legitimate (and not a software phantom). This, of course, is being done through security through obscurity and, as Peter says:

In order for this to work, the spec requires that the operational details of the device be kept confidential. Obviously anyone who knows enough about the workings of a device to operate it and to write a third-party driver for it (for example one for an open-source OS, or in general just any non-Windows OS) will also know enough to fake the HFS process. The only way to protect the HFS process therefore is to not release any technical details on the device beyond a minimum required for web site reviews and comparison with other products.

In return the hardware will be monitored for odd things happening (unexpected voltage changes, etc) and the drive can set so called “tilt switches” to let the O/S know that something bad might be happening, which will be real fun for Vista users when the virus writers figure out how to trip these from software. The hardware is also going to have to support video decompression as the CPU won’t be allowed to do that due to its vulnerable nature, which is going to constrain the codecs that “premium content” will use. This is already an issue:

This is particularly troubling for the high-quality digital cinema (D-Cinema) specification, which uses Motion JPEG2000 (MJ2K) because standard MPEG and equivalents don’t provide sufficient image quality. Since JPEG2000 uses wavelet-based compression rather than MPEG’s DCT-based compression, and wavelet-based compression isn’t on the hardware codec list, it’s not possible to play back D-Cinema premium content (the moribund Ogg Tarkin codec also used wavelet-based compression). Because *all* D-Cinema content will (presumably) be premium content, the result is no playback at all until the hardware support appears in PCs at some indeterminate point in the future.

So this will stifle the innovation in video codecs, no hardware support then no undegraded playback. This will probably rule out the use of Vista for high-def Access Grid videoconferencing. Add in on top of all this the requirements to support hardware encryption between components and all the patent licenses that are needed for this and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

For those of us lucky enough to not be under the thumb of the Redmond monopoly this will either mean a ramp up in hardware costs across the board, or (less likely) the hardware vendors will start to sell two streams of hardware, one “Vista Certified” and costing more and another which isn’t and costs less (possibly being older hardware predating these crazy requirements).

(Via)

Australian Government Upsets Google

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The ABC is reporting that there is draft Australian copyright legislation (( legislation here thanks to KatteKrab )) that could make it a requirement for all commercial search engines to contact the copyright holder of every web page/site in Australia and obtain permission for their site to be spidered for indexing.

This is because apparently the proposed legislation will only

protect libraries, archives and research institutions but leave commercial entities like Google out in the cold.

Google’s submission is quoted as saying:

“Given the vast size of the Internet it is impossible for a search engine to contact personally each owner of a web page to determine whether the owner desires its web page to be searched, indexed or cached,” Google submitted.

“If such advanced permission was required, the Internet would promptly grind to a halt.”

I disagree, the Internet wouldn’t grind to a halt, but we might find that Australian based sites would drop off the larger worlds radar as they were expunged from search engines. I don’t know how the legislation would impact sites like mine which whilst being written by someone in Australia (( OK, I’m in LA at the moment, but I’ll be back soon )) are hosted overseas ?

Microsoft Promised to Guarantee BayStars Investment in SCO ?

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The thlot pickens! Groklaw has “IBM’s Memo in Support of its Motion for SJ on SCO’s Interference Claims” (SJ is summary judgement I believe) and has the interesting quote from Lawrence Goldfarb, a BayStar Capital’s managing partner, about what happened when BayStar invested in SCO after Microsoft introduced them:

“Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would ‘backstop,’ or guarantee in some way, BayStar’s investment…. Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar’s investment in SCO.”

Apparently Mr Emerson was Microsoft’s “senior VP of corporate development and strategy“, but when BayStar invested things changed:

“Microsoft stopped returning my phone calls and emails, and to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Emerson was fired from Microsoft.”

Richard P. Emerson is on the MSFT’s 2002 list of directors, but is absent from the 2003 list..