San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned Texas Instruments (TI) today not to pursue its baseless legal threats against calculator hobbyists who blogged about potential modifications to the company's programmable graphing calculators....

"The DMCA should not be abused to censor online discussion by people who are behaving perfectly legally," said Tom Cross, who blogs at memestreams.net. "It's legal to engage in reverse engineering, and its legal to talk about reverse engineering."

Coverage on Slashdot, CNET, Ars, BoingBoing.

EFF Warns Texas Instruments to Stop Harassing Calculator Hobbyists | Electronic Frontier Foundation

The EFF is representing Tom against TI their DMCA takedown filed against Memestreams.

The crux of this letter from the EFF to TI was the same point many of us were discussing on Memestreams the very day the DMCA notice was served: The TI signing key that was cracked does not protect access to copyrighted material. This is not the same thing as using DeCSS to decrypt the contents of DVDs on a unauthorized and unlicensed devices. That would be circumventing an encryption method (CSS) used to protect copyright material (the film on the DVD). That *would* be a violation of the DMCA. Just go ask 2600 about that...

But that's not whats happening in this case.

The TI signing key allows software written by anyone to run on TI hardware that someone owns. The TI hardware checks the signature (created by signing key) of any software it tries to run. Now that the signing key has been published anyone can run new, non-TI software on TI hardware they have ownership of.This is not a copyright issue in anyway, shape, or form. The DCMA does not apply. This (among other things) is what the EFF is asserting.

Frankly, that's fairly obvious, cut and dry. Having been on the receiving end of a DMCA threat and the countless other cases where baseless DMCA claims are used to shut smart people up, I'm optimistic that the EFF will prevail.

But that's not what's interesting.

What *is* interesting are the legal issues around private keys. Is a private key a trade secret? A 3rd party, through no illegal act, who independently discovers the a trade secret can utilize or publish that secret. Only we aren't talking about the Coca-Cola formula here. Public and private keys are mathematically linked. You can derive a private key, given a public one. It just can be very very (infinite grains of sands on a beach) hard. Or not. As in the TI case. You can't patent a private key, that kind of makes it public. ;-) So what do we do? Does there need to be some new kind of IP protections beyond traditional ones like patents, trademarks, and trade secrets? Are massive efforts to compute a mathematical value legal? Is it based on what that value protects or unlocks? Is it based on the intent of the people who derive the value? Homebrew software developers vs. Blueray crackers?

While I hope this matter is resolved quickly for Tom's sake, I would like to see some of these other legal issues addressed.

EFF representing Memestreams again DMCA attack from TI

Recently, Comcast has added a "Domain Helper" to its DNS servers. Now, instead of implementing the DNS protocol as specified in the RFC, Comcast will redirect your query to a Comcast-branded Yahoo! search page, using the text of your DNS query as search input to Yahoo. Never mind that this breaks the Internet ... there are ads to be served!

This service is reminiscent of Verisign's SiteFinder service from ~2003, about which much hubbub is preserved in the MemeStreams archive. (See below.)

Comcast customers can opt out of Domain Helper:

When a non-existent web address is typed into a browser, a built-in error message is displayed. The Comcast's Domain Helper service is designed to help guide you to a useful search page that has a list of recommended sites that come close to matching the original web address that did not exist.

If you are a residential or commercial cable modem subscriber, and you wish to opt-out of the Comcast Domain Helper service, please complete the form below.

At the end of this process they inform you that it may take two days for the opt-out procedure to be completed. Meanwhile, enjoy the broken DNS!

From the archive, a small selection on SiteFinder:

VeriSign has dropped all its lawsuits against internet overseeing organization ICANN, agreed to hand over ownership of the root zone, and in return been awarded control of all dotcoms until 2012.

The Omniture server sets a cookie so that people can be watched over time to see what typos they are making.

The dispute over who controls key portions of the Internet's address system erupted into open conflict today when VeriSign Inc., the world's largest addressing company, sued the Internet's most visible regulatory body, charging that it has been unfairly prevented from developing new services for Internet users.

We all rely on them [DNS servers], and their management should be done in a way appropriate for their status.

Omniture is now tracking hits to every nonexistent .com/.net domain thanks to Verisign.

Comcast Domain Helper Opt-Out

LEDs, dev boards, and LED displays for electronics projects.

Evil Mad Science Shop

There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals.

When you use time that way, it's merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you're done.

But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.

When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon...

Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule

Roger Dobson:

All too often, creativity goes hand in hand with mental illness. Now we're starting to understand why.

Creative minds: the links between mental illness and creativity

The familiar .com, .net, .org and 18 other suffixes — officially "generic top-level domains" — could be joined by a seemingly endless stream of new ones next year under a landmark change approved last summer by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, the entity that oversees the Web's address system.

Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly. A rapper might apply for a Web address ending in .hiphop.

"Whatever is open to the imagination can be applied for," says Paul Levins, ICANN's vice president of corporate affairs. "It could translate into one of the largest marketing and branding opportunities in history."

ICANN needs to be stopped. They proposing and prompting concepts that will irrevocably damage the Internet with essentially no one to keep them in check.

Something seriously must be done about the pollution of the TLDs.

From RFC 1591 in 1994:

2. The Top Level Structure of the Domain Names

In the Domain Name System (DNS) naming of computers there is a
hierarchy of names. The root of system is unnamed. There are a set
of what are called "top-level domain names" (TLDs). These are the
generic TLDs (EDU, COM, NET, ORG, GOV, MIL, and INT), and the two
letter country codes from ISO-3166. It is extremely unlikely that
any other TLDs will be created.

Postel must be screaming in his grave to know ICANN rolled like a dog in heat to special interests and already created bullshit TLDs like:

*.aero
*.asia
*.biz
*.cat
*.coop
*.info
*.jobs
*.mil
*.mobi
*.museum
*.name
*.pro
*.tel
*.travel

This is insanity. ICANN's mission statement is not to facilitate "the largest marketing and branding opportunities in history." Its to manage and preserve the operational stability of the Internet's addressing systems! When the hell did it become being a stooge for the world's ISPs?

Fuck. This. Shit.

ICANN == Whores

Nothing is original

This website is intended to be an offloading point and information depot for a number of archiving projects, all related to saving websites or data that is in danger of being lost. Besides serving as a hub for team-based pulling down and mirroring of data, this site will provide advice on managing your own data and rescuing it from the brink of destruction.

Main Page - Archiveteam

Jason Scott's Protection From Online Eviction? and his follow up post make the argument that services like AOL, MySpace, flickr, or Skype should be treated like landlords.

The power landlords have over tenants is overwhelming, unless restricted by law. The argument: if they want to shut down a service, essentially evicting users, they should be required to give notice and keep things running for a year.

This would allow people to safely migrate their digital objects like photos and videos and blog posts, renew relationships with people in their contacts and agree on where to move, file change of address notices for their businesses, and otherwise minimize the logistical, economic, political, emotional, and familial havoc forcible ejection can create.

The Power to Fight Eviction