Having vanquished the music swapping service Napster in court, the entertainment industry is facing a formidable obstacle in pursuing its major successor, KaZaA: geography.

Sharman Networks, the distributor of the program, is incorporated in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu and managed from Australia. Its computer servers are in Denmark and the source code for its software was last seen in Estonia.

[ ... ]

"What they're asking is for a court to export the strictures of U.S. copyright law worldwide," said Roderick G. Dorman, a lawyer for Sharman. "That's not permitted. These are questions of sovereignty that legislatures and diplomats need to decide."

Legal experts say the Los Angeles judge, Stephen V. Wilson of Federal District Court, may well decide his court has jurisdiction over Sharman because Americans download software from its Web site and the company makes money from showing them advertisements.

The struggle over how to apply sometimes conflicting national laws to a medium that pays little mind to geographic boundaries is likely to remain at the heart of the lawsuit, if it proceeds. While there is broad international agreement on what constitutes direct copyright infringement, the penalty for those who enable others to infringe has not yet garnered such consensus.

[ ... ]

Under the copyright law of most countries, people who use software like KaZaA to download copyrighted material from each other would almost certainly be liable for infringement. The conflict is over whether distributing software that makes it easy for people to break the law is itself a copyright violation.

[ ... ]

An appeals court in the Netherlands, however, ruled earlier this year that it was legal to distribute the KaZaA software there. "Insofar as there are acts that are relevant to copyright, such acts are performed by those who use the computer program and not by KaZaA," a translation of the court's ruling provided by Sharman's lawyers says.

[ ... ]

The difference with Sharman is that even if the entertainment companies win their lawsuit, the enforcement of any judgment may rely entirely on legal authorities in other nations, and their cooperation is not assured. Last year, for instance, a federal court in San Jose, Calif., declined to honor the judgment of a court in France that prohibited Yahoo from displaying Nazi materials to French citizens visiting its auction Web site. The court said the First Amendment principles of the United States trumped the French ruling, and it would not be enforced.

The Sharman case may well raise again the unsettled question of whether Internet companies should be forced to adhere to the laws of every country whose citizens have access to their Web sites.

Some copyright experts object to that notion, on pragmatic grounds and because they say it contradicts the Jeffersonian principle that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. But the alternative, for a company to be bound only by the laws of the country where it is headquartered, could lead to a race to incorporate in countries whose laws are the most lax.

Technology News from Wired News - Codebusters Crack Encryption Key.

It took four years, 331,000 participants and a difficult legal case, but the relentless efforts of Distributed.net and its supporters have finally broken a 64-bit encryption key developed by RSA Data Securities.

When Distributed.net set up shop in 1997 to test various forms of encryption by essentially breaking through them, organizers figured it could take 100 years to uncover the RC5-64 sequence due to limited computer power and the fact that so many people would have to participate in the effort. Still, they forged ahead.

[ ... ]

While the accomplishment of breaking the 64-bit encryption standard is noteworthy, there are even greater challenges ahead for Distribution.net.

Next up is breaking through RC5-72, RSA's next highest encryption key. RSA also has a 128-bit key, but trying to break a key that long is practically impossible because there are so many combinations of keys to consider, McNett said.

"Major advances would have to be made in keyrate processing before that would be even approachable," he said.

Political Commentary by Lauren Weinstein from Wired News - Register Air Travelers? P-shaw!.

In the wake of 9/11, it's understandable that concerns over airport security would become de rigueur for both politicians and ordinary airline passengers.

The flurry of reaction has ranged from sensible to bizarre. The poor training and pay of U.S. airport screeners finally came into the limelight, resulting in steps toward a long-needed upgrade.

[ ... ]

The holy grail for the profilers is an accurate analysis of the behavior and background of potential flyers to determine who presents the greatest risk. The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS), now in the process of being expanded, is a major effort in this direction.

These systems introduce significant privacy concerns. Any time you collect vast amounts of personal information, even from public record sources, the potential exists for an Orwellian nightmare if the databases are misused or abused.

Also, the underlying information in the databases may often be inaccurate, due to purposeful manipulation, the passage of time or human error.

Incidents of innocent persons being snared by airport blacklists have already come to light.

[ ... ]

Transportation Security Administration chief James Loy recently announced that the United States plans to plow ahead with the "registered traveler" program, a concept also known under monikers like "known traveler," "trusted traveler" and other similar names.

[ ... ]

[ ... ]

Registered traveler IDs could well become extremely coveted by terrorist organizations. Some of these groups would likely be willing to recruit and prepare operatives who remained law-abidingly dormant for years, in order to place terrorist sleepers in a position to obtain those nifty ID cards.

All the fancy computerized biometric systems in the world won't tell you if the person holding the card is a would-be terrorist who successfully qualified for registered status. They could be all-American, too. Oklahoma City bomber and decorated Vietnam vet Timothy McVeigh might well have qualified for a registered traveler card.

Even one screwup in handing out these IDs -- if it permits a terrorist to pass through airport security with a lesser degree of scrutiny -- could be catastrophic.

John Magaw, until recently Transportation Security Agency head, opposed a trusted/known/registered traveler program precisely due to its potential for manipulation by terrorists. That opinion, unpopular with the airlines and many in government, probably contributed to his reportedly forced resignation from that post.

Some inappropriate uses of technology are simply ill-advised. The registered traveler plan looks downright dangerous.

Slashdot | News.com links to DeCSS program.

zorglubxx writes "In less than a week News.com has published 2 articles ([Oct 3] and [Oct 7]) talking about copyright law and the DMCA where they LINK to DeCSS. Not source but compiled Windows version called DeCSS.exe. News.com know that 2600 lost their fight for linking to DeCSS so I wonder why they are doing this. Trying to make a point? Civil disobedience? An honest mistake?"

New York Times - free registration required Court to Review Copyright Law.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments this week over the constitutionality of a 1998 law that extended copyright protection by 20 years. Experts on both sides of the closely watched case say that its outcome could reshape the way cultural products are consumed and how their profits are divided.

[ ... ]

The case has attracted 38 friend-of-the-court briefs from prominent intellectuals, artists, elected officials and advocates in numerous fields -- who in some instances seem to defy traditional political lines. Fifteen economists from across the political spectrum, including the Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and Kenneth Arrow, for instance, wrote a brief in support of the challenge, arguing that it is "highly unlikely that the economic benefits from copyright extension" outweigh the additional costs.

The conservative advocate Phyllis Schlafly, who is the founder of the Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund, also submitted a brief in support of overturning the law, as did the Intel Corporation, besides more predictable partisans like the Free Software Foundation and several library associations.

[ ... ]

Lined up on the government's side are Mr. Abrams; Dr. Seuss Enterprises; Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican; several members of the House Judiciary Committee, and virtually all of the major copyright holder trade associations.

It will fall to Mr. Lessig, who is a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and who has become a kind of rock star for the digital liberties set, to convince the justices to accept the unconventional analysis.

If they do, the decision could be a turning point in redefining a balance between copyright consumers and producers -- and the technology companies that are often in the middle.

[ ... ]

Only about 2 percent of works protected by copyright produce continuing revenue for their owners, Mr. Lessig says. But no one can use the rest without hunting down the owners and negotiating licenses.

Disney faced no such restrictions, he says, when the company drew on Victor Hugo's work to produce the animated film "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" or the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm to make "Cinderella" and "Snow White."

New York Times - free registration required Report Calls for Plan of Sharing Data to PPrevent Terror.

Unless information provided by state and local officials, as well as the private sector, is shared with Washington, "we may wind up getting all of the disadvantages of invasion of privacy with none of the national security gains," conclude the task force's co-chairmen, Zoë Baird, the president of the New York-based Markle Foundation, and James L. Barksdale, a businessman and former chief executive of Netscape.

Although the Bush administration did not commission the report or formally participate on the 44-member panel that studied the issues for more than six months, senior administration officials who followed the group's work praised the effort.

[ ... ]

Treading carefully in one of the most sensitive policy areas, particularly for conservative Republicans, the task force avoids recommending the creation of a stand-alone domestic collection agency -- such as Britain's MI-5 -- or placing that responsibility under the F.B.I.

"The people running criminal investigations should not be seeking all kinds of information from businesses, state and local officials all over the country," Ms. Baird said.

The case for "fundamental separation" of criminal investigation and domestic counterintelligence "is strong," the report concludes.

New York Times - free registration required Protesting the Big Brother Lens, Little Brother Turns an Eye Blind.

A national debate over the ethics of surveillance continues to grow as video cameras proliferate.

[ ... ]

In recent weeks there have been a growing number of incidents involving video-surveillance cameras, ranging from the mother who recently surrendered after she was recorded hitting her 4-year-old daughter in an Indiana parking lot to a man who filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against the Marriott hotel chain last month after discovering a video camera hidden in a bathroom light fixture.

The growing reliance on surveillance is giving some of the pioneers of the video camera industry second thoughts.

"I have lots of worries about how this technology is being used," said John Graham, who is the founder of BroadWare Technologies, a Cupertino, Calif., maker of software for video-camera networks, and who was one of the first researchers to send audio and video over the Internet.

"I've become Big Brother, but I didn't mean to be," Mr. Graham said. "It's just that there's no money in education or scientific collaboration."

[ ... ]

The value of video cameras to improve safety and detect terrorists has been greatly overrated, according to Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington.

Like the Surveillance Camera Players, Mr. Rotenberg said he worries that while Internet-viewable cameras might offer entertainment, there are other networks of private and law enforcement cameras that collect information secretly on behalf of the government.

"There has been a reduction in privacy and there has been an expansion in government secrecy," he said. "We give up our privacy, but we don't gain openness in exchange."

Newsweek via MS-NBC - Glitterati vs. Geeks. Two heavyweights, Hollywood and Silicon Valley, take the fight over content to the Supremes

Oct. 14 issue --  Larry Lessig admits it: he's nervous. Who wouldn't be? This week the brainy Stanford law professor makes his first appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court--barely a decade after clerking for Justice Antonin Scalia--to argue a case that could redirect millions of dollars, rejigger the entertainment menu of the entire nation and liberate Mickey Mouse.

[ ... ]

To Lessig and his legal team, this perverts the original intent of America's Founding Fathers. The Constitution specifies that "to promote the progress of science and useful arts," Congress should secure "for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The payoff for creating something isn't permanent possession of the words or images, but temporary control of what will eventually enter the public domain. Lessig charges that by making the term extensions retroactive, the Bono Act grants an unnecessary windfall to copyright holders of songs and films made long ago. And he fears that subsequent bills--probably keyed to the next times Disney would lose its grip on Mickey--will keep extending the terms so that copyright is perpetual.

[ ... ]

The backdrop of the Eldred case is a concentrated effort by Hollywood to blunt the impact of the Internet. There's a sense of deja vu to this. Television was supposed to be the death of movies. And in 1982, the film industry's silver-tongued lobbyist Jack Valenti testified that "the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." (Video sales are now the studios' biggest moneymaker.) Naturally, Hollywood regards the computer/Internet combo as scarier than "Nightmare on Elm Street."

[ ... ]

Techies particularly loathe certain provisions of 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It outlaws attempts to break any form of copy protection on electronic media. But copy-protection schemes not only stop illegal copying, but legal uses of a product, like making a backup, playing a song or movie on your computer or grabbing a single frame of a movie and putting it on a Web site. Critics call the DMCA a tool that denies the public those forms of fair use.

For instance, as Lessig likes to point out, commercial e-books come with a checklist of permissions that were unheard of in the creaky days of pulp and ink. Depending on the book, you may not be able to lend it to a friend, print out a page, copy and paste a passage into a term paper or even read the book aloud. None of these would violate the copyright, but anyone who hacks the e-book's software to perform these legal acts violates the law.

[ ... ]

This week, though, the action is in the Supreme Court. Since the issues in the case don't break down into liberal or conservative, legal handicappers are at a loss to predict the outcome. But everyone expects a vivid session as the justices grill Lessig and, representing Congress and its Hollywood backers, Solicitor General Ted Olsen. Outside, there will be wireheads wearing T shirts emblazoned with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which contains the copyright clause.

Lessig worries about letting his supporters down. "If I thought that this was a case where it's hard to know what the right answer was, I'd feel less pressure," he says. Lessig knows that Eldred v. Ashcroft is the best chance to turn the tide in Silicon Valley's war against Hollywood--a conflict where Hollywood has won every round so far. If he fails in court, the fight "would have to shift to the political arena," he says. "And there, we're outgunned."