Programmer Exposes Microsoft Flaws

From: Tom _-at-_ Abacurial.com
To: No DMCA in Canada <canada-dmca-opponents (at) flora.org>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 09:15:04 -0400

(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/23/technology/23PIRA.html?todaysheadlines=
&pagewanted=print) 


October 23, 2001
Programmer Exposes Microsoft Flaws
By AMY HARMON

In the latest skirmish between code breakers and digital copyright holders, an 
anonymous programmer has published software on the Internet that disables 
Microsoft (news/quote) technology that is designed to regulate what consumers 
do with music they purchase online.

The Microsoft technology is an important piece of the company's efforts to profit 
from what is a nascent but potentially lucrative market for selling music and video 
material over the Internet. But Microsoft said yesterday that the security of the 
music sheathed in its software would not be seriously jeopardized..

"We realized well before we launched it that technologies such as this are not 
unbreachable," said Jonathan Usher, group manager for Microsoft's Windows 
Digital Media division, adding that Microsoft plans to quickly install a patch.

Mr. Usher said Microsoft was also considering its legal options, which could 
include a civil lawsuit.

While publishing descriptions of how to exploit security flaws is common among 
software engineers, a 1998 copyright law makes that activity a crime when it 
involves software designed to protect copyrighted material.

The law, which is being challenged in a federal appeals court in Manhattan, is 
aimed at preventing piracy of copyrighted works in digital form. Its critics argue 
that it deprives programmers of the ability to discuss security issues openly and 
prevents consumers from making full use of the material that they have 
purchased.

The anonymous programmer described the decision to publish the software, 
called FreeMe, as an "act of civil disobedience." Included with the program was a 
long criticism of the law, arguing that consumers who buy music online should be 
allowed to copy it to as many computers or portable devices as they own.

Writing under the pseudonym Beale Screamer, which was described as a 
reference to the anchor Howard Beale in the movie "Network," the author urged 
consumers to "just yell to the publishers `I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to 
take this anymore!' "

But "Beale's" efforts may be thwarted by previous attempts of media companies 
to enforce the 1998 statute, known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In the 
case under appeal in New York, the major movie studios sued a hacker 
magazine for publishing a program that could circumvent the copyright protection 
on DVD's. 

A lower court judge stopped the magazine's publisher from posting the code on 
its Web site, or from linking to it.

Matt Bailey, an analyst with Webnoize, a research firm specializing in digital 
media, said he had found very few sites linking to the FreeMe program. Because 
of the digital copyright act, "everyone's treading very lightly on this," Mr. Bailey 
said. "That in itself is an important point because it means that the spread of 
these hacks is going to be very slow in the future."

John Young, the owner of the Web site cryptome.org, one of the few to publish 
the FreeMe program, said he knew he might be inviting a lawsuit but that it was 
"a matter of free expression." A link to the program is also available at The 
Register, a Web publication focusing on the software industry. 

Microsoft has said that more than 275 companies have licensed its Windows 
Media technology to create secure distribution systems for audio and video 
content. The music subscription service Pressplay, for instance, plans to offer 
more than 125,000 tracks of music encoded with Microsoft's software when it is 
introduced later this fall. 

The Pressplay software allows consumers to pay a monthly fee for a preset 
number of songs. If they choose to pay again at the end of the month, they can 
continue to listen to the music; if not, the software makes it inaccessible. It can 
also prevent them from transferring the music to a portable device or burning it to 
a CD. 

The FreeMe software only works with the latest version of Microsoft's digital 
rights management software, released 18 months ago, and it only works for 
consumers who have legally purchased music online. It enables them to strip 
away the rules that prevent copying — whether to a personal MP3 player or over 
the Internet to their friends.

Still, Mike Bebel, Pressplay's chief operating officer, said he was confident in 
Microsoft's ability to update and preserve the security of the software.

"We recognize that all security is tested from time to time," Mr. Bebel said in a 
statement. "We believe Microsoft has a unique ability to remedy the situation and 
ensure that their technology and our service remain secure."



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Laws are the spider's webs which, if anything small falls into them 
they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape.
	--Solon, statesman (c.638-c558 BCE)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
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	-- Benjamin Franklin

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