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Sony v. Hotz: Sony Sends a Dangerous Message to Researchers -- and Its Customers

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Deozaan:
For years, EFF has been warning that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can be used to chill speech, particularly security research, because legitimate researchers will be afraid to publish their results lest they be accused of circumventing a technological protection measure. We've also been concerned that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could be abused to try to make alleged contract violations into crimes.

We've never been sorrier to be right. These two things are precisely what's happening in Sony v. Hotz. If you have missed this one, Sony has sued several security researchers for publishing information about security holes in Sony’s PlayStation 3. At first glance, it's hard to see why Sony is bothering — after all, the research was presented three weeks ago at the Chaos Communication Congress and promptly circulated around the world. The security flaws discovered by the researchers allow users to run Linux on their machines again — something Sony used to support but recently started trying to prevent. Paying lawyers to try to put the cat back in the bag is just throwing good money after bad. And even if they won — we'll save the legal analysis for another post — the defendants seem unlikely to be able to pay significant damages. So what's the point?

The real point, it appears, is to send a message to security researchers around the world: publish the details of our security flaws and we'll come after youwith both barrels blazing. For example, Sony has asked the court to immediately impound all "circumvention devices" — which it defines to include not only the defendants' computers, but also all "instructions," i.e., their research and findings. Given that the research results Sony presumably cares about are available online, granting the order would mean that everyone except the researchers themselves would have access to their work.-https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/sony-v-hotz-sony-sends-dangerous-message
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Click to read entire article.

[EDIT]That article is pretty popular right now so the site may be slow or non-responsive.[/EDIT]

I was following the news as it unfolded over the past couple weeks, and was very delighted to see this Carnegie Mellon professor not only fearlessly mirror geohot's site after Sony issued the takedown, but almost dare Sony to try to get him to take it down as well.

f0dder:
Hint: when linking to a to-be-slashdotted URL, use the Coral Cache :)

Deozaan:
Like this? http://www.eff.org.nyud.net/deeplinks/2011/01/sony-v-hotz-sony-sends-dangerous-message

Problem is that https doesn't seem to work with it, but I guess that makes sense...

f0dder:
Like this? http://www.eff.org.nyud.net/deeplinks/2011/01/sony-v-hotz-sony-sends-dangerous-message-Deozaan (January 20, 2011, 08:17 AM)
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Yup :)

Problem is that https doesn't seem to work with it, but I guess that makes sense...-Deozaan (January 20, 2011, 08:17 AM)
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It's definitely not perfect, but it helps a lot wrt. avoiding DDoS'ing sites :)

rjbull:
New Scientist online article 18:10 14 January 2011 by Duncan Graham-Rowe: Sony sues over PS3 encryption hack

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