A security researcher asked a federal judge Wednesday to let a challenge to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act continue.
Attorneys for Ben Edelman, who specializes in investigating flaws in blocking software, filed a 26-page document arguing that his work is imperiled by legal threats from N2H2, a filtering company based in Seattle.
N2H2 has asked a Massachusetts judge to dismiss the case, which the American Civil Liberties Union brought in July to let Edelman create and distribute a utility that decrypts N2H2's secret list of forbidden Web sites. The ACLU wants a court to declare that Edelman's research is not barred by the DMCA, by N2H2's shrinkwrap license, trade secret laws or other copyright laws.
"We're confident that the court will deny the defendants' motion to dismiss since they clearly intend to pursue their legal rights against Edelman if he goes forward with his research," said Ann Beeson, an ACLU staff attorney.
By suing on behalf of Edelman, who is a researcher at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center and a first-year law student there, the civil liberties group hopes to prompt the first ruling that would curtail the DMCA's wide reach.
After the DMCA was used to pressure Princeton professor Ed Felten and his colleagues into abandoning a presentation last year, the law became an instant magnet for criticism. But so far, every judge has upheld the DMCA's broad restrictions on the "circumvention of copyright protection systems."
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News source: C|net
Attorneys for Ben Edelman, who specializes in investigating flaws in blocking software, filed a 26-page document arguing that his work is imperiled by legal threats from N2H2, a filtering company based in Seattle.
N2H2 has asked a Massachusetts judge to dismiss the case, which the American Civil Liberties Union brought in July to let Edelman create and distribute a utility that decrypts N2H2's secret list of forbidden Web sites. The ACLU wants a court to declare that Edelman's research is not barred by the DMCA, by N2H2's shrinkwrap license, trade secret laws or other copyright laws.
"We're confident that the court will deny the defendants' motion to dismiss since they clearly intend to pursue their legal rights against Edelman if he goes forward with his research," said Ann Beeson, an ACLU staff attorney.
By suing on behalf of Edelman, who is a researcher at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center and a first-year law student there, the civil liberties group hopes to prompt the first ruling that would curtail the DMCA's wide reach.
After the DMCA was used to pressure Princeton professor Ed Felten and his colleagues into abandoning a presentation last year, the law became an instant magnet for criticism. But so far, every judge has upheld the DMCA's broad restrictions on the "circumvention of copyright protection systems."
View: The full story News source: C|netAsked if Microsoft was concerned that the move will drive those Windows users not on 2000 or XP to consider Linux or StarOffice/OpenOffice, the spokesman said the company is not worried as "customers have told us they want security and reliability, and we are giving them that. We are confident the products continue to offer compelling value and will do so going forward."
This latest move by Microsoft follows a recent outcry over its latest licensing scheme, which many customers refused to adopt, saying it would cost them more.
Some beta testers had asked for Office 11 on the Windows 9x code base, which powers all the Windows releases before 2000, but had not received their beta copies of the software. This prompted Microsoft to announce on the beta newsgroups on Monday night that it was removing support for Windows 9x.
In a posting to the Office beta newsgroups, Sloan Crayton, of Microsoft Office Beta Support, said there are a number of reasons for removing support for Windows 9x. "As a number of you have noted, Windows 98 and 98 SE are getting a bit old now. It also relates heavily to the push to improve security in our products.
"Windows 9x is inherently insecure. It also takes quite a bit of development time to make our products work well on Windows 9x. We determined that it would be more effective to spend that time making our products work better on the more advanced platforms," he said.
Microsoft chose SP3 on Windows 2000 because that service pack includess Windows Installer 2.0, which shipped in Windows XP. "Installer 2.0 is much better about limiting reboots at install time and when applying patches. It also has features that allow us to minimize the need for the user to insert the CD.
"Lastly, Installer 2.0 allows us to optimize the patches so that the size of the patch is much smaller. We did that with Office XP SP2 when downloaded from the Products Update page (SP2 is only 6MB when Installer 2.0 is installed versus 15MB for Installer 1.x)," he said.
While Microsoft realized that the decision "won't be popular among all of our customers, it allows us to create a better and more stable product," Crayton said.
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