Gregarius » BetaNews.Com

BetaNews.Com (9 non lus)

LimeWire CEO responds to congressional inquiry

Publié: mai 1, 2009, 11:59pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews
Thanks to the slow-moving United States legal process and the glut of copyright litigation, the names of P2P services often live on long after their actual services die in popularity. Limewire is one of those, thanks to the high profile cases it found itself wrapped up in.
One of those cases was a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in 2007 that focused on security holes opened by LimeWire, and showed that over 200 classified government documents were available for download via the service. General Wesley Clark said, "It's just totally unacceptable. The American people would be outraged if they were aware of what's inadvertently shared by government agencies on P2P networks."
The Lime Group's Chairman Mark Gorton had to testify before the committee, explaining that a new interface for "neophyte users" was being developed to safeguard them against making private files available.
Last week, Representatives Darrell Issa (R - Calif.) and Edolphus Towns (D - N.Y.) took Gorton to task yet again, this time over recent security breaches allegedly related to P2P software. The two Congressmen sent a letter to Gorton expressing "deep concern regarding the apparent continued privacy and security risks associated with the use of LimeWire."
Gorton today outlined the software's upgrades in a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, "LimeWire 5, released last December, by default does not share documents even if a user purposely attempts to do so. It even un-shares documents that a user may have shared using an earlier version of LimeWire."
By default, he says, LimeWire will share nothing, and nothing a user does will make anything available unless the software is expressly told to do so. "In short, there is absolutely no way to access a LimeWire 5 user's documents unless that user affirmatively elects to make them available," Gorton's letter noted.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Lawsuit against Sprint-Clearwire joint venture stands

Publié: mai 1, 2009, 10:34pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews
One year ago, Sprint affiliate iPCS sued Sprint over its WiMAX venture with Clearwire, claiming that Sprint violated exclusivity agreements and willfully withheld the 4G technology from affiliates like iPCS.
The Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois denied Sprint's motion to dismiss the claims by iPCS, which seek to block Sprint from "obtaining directly or indirectly the benefits of advanced technology without providing that technology and sharing its benefits with its affiliates."
Based in Illinois, iPCS has about 691,000 subscribers, and has battled against Sprint's mergers since 2005. The company deals in 81 United States markets mostly located within the Midwest (Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania) with a licensed territory containing 15.1 million residents.
When the $35 billion merger of Sprint and Nextel took place nearly four years ago, iPCS sued on similar grounds of exclusivity violation. Judge Thomas Quinn of The Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois ruled that the merger of Sprint and Nextel violated iPCS' exclusive right to own, operate, build, and manage the Sprint PCS network in its territory and mandated a Nextel divestiture in those markets. Following years of appeals, the Supreme Court upheld the ruling and gave Sprint until January 25, 2010 to divest.
Today, Timothy M. Yager, President and CEO of iPCS said, "We are very pleased that the Court has again ruled in our favor as we seek to have Sprint live up to its obligations under our affiliation agreements...We are confident that after the evidence is presented in this case the Court will uphold the business deal that we reached with Sprint over ten years ago to 'be Sprint' in our exclusive territories and offer the most advanced seamless wireless nationwide network to our subscribers."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Flashback 1990: The debut of Windows 3.0

Publié: mai 1, 2009, 10:24pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

This is most likely neither the first nor the last article you will read on the subject of Microsoft Windows 3.0. The attention being given the new product is not only deserved, but in many cases carefully orchestrated. The weeklies and fortnightlies have already extolled the merits of Win3's "three-dimensional" buttons, proportional text, and now-boundlessly managed memory. Their gold-star awards have no doubt been bestowed upon the product for being the best in its class, albeit the only product in its class. The "pundits" have already laid blame upon someone for Win3's alleged tardiness to market. The entire story is so well-patterned, it may be read without ever having laid eyes to the printed page.
Yet if we follow the pattern, we miss the real story...
It is May 1990. For several months, reporters had been prepared by Microsoft to cover what was being billed as the most important event in the history of software. It was the beginning, we were told, of the end of DOS, and the birth of a new software "ecosystem" that enabled independent developers to build graphical applications for the first time, without having to jump through the many hoops and stroke the countless egos of Apple. Microsoft would have a hands-off policy in the development of software that supports what was being called, for the first time, the Windows Operating Environment.
Sure, it still used the MS-DOS bootstrap, but don't tell anyone that. And sure, that bootstrap still required 640K of conventional RAM, but don't tell anyone that either. The real benefits were to be seen in something Macintosh itself couldn't do: run more than one application at once, with true multitasking and pipelining for the very first time...and all in color.
The prospects for applications were boundless, and Microsoft wanted to be seen as opening all the doors and not stepping through them first. The first question in journalists' minds was, would there be a counterpart to Hypercard? Without a Hypercard, Windows may as well be broken. Rest assured, we were told, a company called Asymmetrix would provide the toolkit that would revolutionize programming, with a bit of Microsoft's funding. The next generation metaphors for Windows were being created not by Microsoft but by Hewlett-Packard, for a product called NewWave -- again, Microsoft made certain journalists knew, with its help but not its supervision. And the world would know Windows was for real when it used an everyday spreadsheet with a name familiar to everyone: Lotus 1-2-3 G.
In the spring of the turn of the decade, I had a regular series in a magazine that was widely considered to be "Computer Shopper in exile," called Vulcan's Computer Buyer's Guide, staffed by many former Shopper regulars who would, like myself, become regulars there again once a dispute with the new owners, Ziff-Davis, was resolved. I had the lead role in covering the biggest software release in history, for a magazine whose editors told me flat out, "Use as much space as you need."
Months earlier, Microsoft had granted me some of the first demonstrations of Dynamic Data Exchange ever shown outside its laboratories. It was astounding to me, and I was proposing to write a book on it all, except that none of the book editors at the time knew, or appeared to care, about running two applications at once. "We want a book about Excel or a book about Word," one editor told me toward the close of a conversation. "No one wants to read a book about Excel and Word."
It was uncharted territory, as every editor I worked with kept reminding me. One of these days, my former Shopper editor told me, you'll be writing this story in May and someone on the other side of the screen will read it in May. But for now, it was the August issue we were working with, and complete with interviews with everyone we thought would matter -- Asymmetrix, HP, and Lotus included -- I headed forward for 33 pages of draft copy, with a full head of steam...
Yet if we follow the pattern, we miss the real story. There is a real development taking place between the authors of and for Windows 3.0, which concerns the remodeling of the computer application. We are familiar with the application as a program and its associated data, which is entered and exited like a jewelry store or a bank. We sometimes see ourselves "in" an application, just as we often see ourselves "in" the subdirectory pointed to by the DOS prompt. The data we need while we're "in" the program is much like the diamond necklace behind the display case; we're allowed to look at it and touch it, but unless we're very crafty, we're not allowed to take it outside. It doesn't belong to us, even if the data's very existence is due to our having typed it in.
The entire contraption of the DOS environment -- along with the guilt feelings it so subtly leaves us with -- are being shattered by Windows 3.0. There is a movement under way by Microsoft and its independent software vendors (ISVs) to abolish the structure which grants exclusive ownership rights of a set of data to an application. Having done that, the movement will also seek to dissolve the programmatic barricade which surrounds the once-exclusive application, allowing for the equal distribution of correlated tasks within an arbitrarily-defined computing job, to other programs non-specifically.
It's a difficult concept to discuss in the orchestrated fashion with which we have become accustomed, so instead I offer a hypothetical situation: Assume you have an inventory list card file. You want to compare gross profit percentages, so you demand such a list from the computer. Your spreadsheet -- whatever that may be -- shows you the list. You didn't need to save the card file, translate it, export it, and re-import it -- the list simply appeared. You want to see how these figures look graphically, so instantly you see a detailed pie chart. You'd like to make this chart part of your report to your superiors. This is quite simple to accomplish. Since what you're reading is the report to your superiors, the word processor saw your chart and automatically composed a standard form. This was sent to your typesetting program, which is providing the image you're seeing now.
Your superiors are in six different countries and two of them are out on the road somewhere. you tell your machine to send them all a copy of the report you're looking at now. The machine already knows two of them have fax machines, two are available via WANs, and the other two have cellular phones connected to laptops. You neither know this nor care; you just have your computer "send" the report to them, regardless of the media of transmission. The report is received in six different places, even if the recipient computers' operators weren't using their machines at the time. A mere three minutes of your life have been expended in the processing of the weekly profit report.
You have just been witness to an example of the model for the meta-application -- one smoothly-flowing, correlated process combining the resources of several programs from different vendors. This is the model Windows 3.0 seeks to gradually implement. Actually, this is what OS/2 was supposed to implement at first; its muddled and haphazard development agenda has prevented it from leading the way.
The meta-application is not an inevitable fact of computing; the marketing debacles of cross-vendor cooperation it imposes may render it as ineffective as OS/2 in changing our computing habits. Still, it is something to be wished for. And it is a far more important facet of the Windows 3.0 story than faceted buttons and little pictures. The way in which world industry and commerce works is not affected in the least by faceted buttons and little pictures.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
EcoFocus: Linux maven Xandros demos Presto dual-boot Windows/Linux software

Publié: mai 1, 2009, 9:22pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh
By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews
In a demo at this week's EcoFocus press event in New York City, Jordan Smith, product marketing manager for Xandros, showed how his new downloadable Presto dual-boot software allows fast power-up to either Windows or Linux.
If you choose Linux at boot time, you get access in something like five to 20 seconds to a Xandros desktop Linux environment that includes Skype, FireFox, the the Pidgin "universal chat client," Thunar file manager, Windows List, and Xandros' online Presto Application Store. Here you'll find the latest Sun Java 6 runtime, Adobe Reader, Picasa photo management software, the Last.fm audio player, games, and lots of other additional software.
Presto incorporates technology created by Xandros with Asus and Intel for Asus' original Linux Eee PC. But for "instant on" bootup to its newer Eee PCs for Windows, Asus is now using the HyperSpace embedded OS from Phoenix instead.
Unlike HyperSpace, though, Presto is a Windows .exe software utility, meaning that it doesn't need specific chipsets or BIOS tweaks for quick boot-ups, according to Xandros' Smith. Consequently, Presto can be used on just about any PC hardware running Windows, even netbooks and old laptops, he contended. Windows Vista and XP are both supported.
Smith said Xandros has been aiming Presto mostly at bulk purchases by OEMs and big customer organizations such as banks for use in speeding up large volumes of PCs. But in moving Presto out of beta early last week, Xandros also started offering a license for individual use, priced at only $19.95.
Back in February, Xandros announced a port of its desktop Linux OS to an ARM processor -- expected to appear in netbooks from Freescale -- which competes with Intel's Atom chipset.

FOR MORE:
- Presto and your PC is on by Angela Gunn
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Verizon needs more time to complete the Alltel merger

Publié: mai 1, 2009, 7:23pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews
To ensure Verizon's merger with Alltel was a pro-competitive move, the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice required that Verizon divest from 105 mobile markets where Verizon and Alltel services overlapped. The merger will make Verizon the largest mobile carrier in the United States, and this mandate constitutes the biggest divestiture Verizon Wireless has had to execute in its nine years of existence.
Because the action is so large and complex, (each marketing area has approximately 200 pages worth of assets to auction off) Verizon has filed for an extension with the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, asking for another 60 days to complete the divestitures.
The poor state of the economy is also slowing down Verizon's situation. According to the company's letter to the bureau (PDF available here), Verizon had 70 prospective buyers for the divested markets, each of whom wanted extra due diligence and data before placing their bids. Even though Verizon requested that all bids be submitted by March, it could not get the bidders' data out in time.
"Although the company has diligently managed the divestiture process, the sheer size and complexity of the divestitures coupled with the current economic conditions have forced bidders to conduct far more due diligence than usual. This has made it impossible to complete the divestitures within the initial 120-day period," the company's filing says.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
EcoFocus: PCs and software meet bikes, paint, and other green goods

Publié: mai 1, 2009, 7:17pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews
At Pepcom's EcoFocus press event this week, HP launched new notebooks featuring HP Smart AC Adapters for automatically making power adjustments when needed. Available preloaded with a choice of Microsoft Windows or Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11, the five new HP ProBook models also come with HP Mobile Broadband, a system combining an HP m2400 module with built-in Qualcomm Gobi technology to support wireless connectivity to multiple broadband networks and operators.
Priced starting at about $529, the ProBooks come in 14-, 15.6-, and 17.-3-inch widescreen flavors. All five ProBooks are also outfitted with a new keyboard design, in which the keys are raised in an attempt to prevent dust and dirt from settling underneath. The notebooks offer a mercury-free design and high-definition backlit displays. A compatible USB 2.0 docking station is slated to ship in June, Betanews was told.
Meanwhile, Lenovo highlighted its ThinkCentre M58e all-in-one desktop PC system, now shipping for the past couple of weeks. The all-in-one incorporates Lenovo Power Manager, a power management tool for reducing the PC's carbon footprint, noted Lenovo's Aimee Foskie, during a product demo.
Like HP and Lenovo, PC makers like Sony and Toshiba also showed off full line-ups of previously announced computers -- along with accessories such as displays and printers -- touted as compliant with specifications such as Energy Star and EPEAT. Even the netbooks were eco-friendly.
Also at EcoFocus, a first-time "green" show from Pepcom, Monster released two new Digital PowerCenters for home theater systems. Monster's HDP 850G (priced at $99.95) and HDP 900G ($129.95), each equipped with Monster GreenPower technology for shutting off home theater components when not in use.
A start-up named MakeMeSustainable introduced a Web-based software system, now in beta, aimed at letting consumers and companies calculate and track their own carbon footprints, get suggestions for cutting their energy costs, and share energy-related information online with friends and business partners.
But the PCs and software on hand at EcoFocus dotted a landscape also made up of a wide assortment of other "green" ware, including anti-pollution paints from Benjamin Moore and Pratt & Lambert; recycled paper goods from Marcal and Mohawk; PiSAT's "green" solar lantern/flashlight; Mariah Power's windspire vertical axis wind turbine; an electronic bike from Ultra Motors USA, and an alternative air conditioning system from CALMAC.
Unlike Schwinn's previously released Tailwind hybrid bike, Ultra Motors' A2B requires no peddling when its removable lithium ion battery is in use, said a company rep. If the A2B's battery power does run out, you can always peddle the vehicle like a regular bike. That scenario does seem kind of unlikely, though, since Ultra Motors also provides a built-in "realtime state-of-charge indicator."
For their part, CALMAC's IceBank Energy Storage Systems store energy from relatively cheap sources such as wind power and off-peak electricity overnight, in the form of ice. The ice is then used the next day to cool buildings like retail stores, schools, banks, and office buildings.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Top 10 Windows 7 Features #10: Homegroup networking

Publié: mai 1, 2009, 6:59pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
Beginning now, Betanews is going to get a lot more intimate with technology than you've seen us before, particularly with Microsoft Windows 7 now that it's becoming a reality. Next Tuesday, the first and probably only Release Candidate of the operating system will become available for free download.
It's probably not so much a testing exercise as a colossal promotional giveaway, a way to get Windows 7 out in the field very fast...and use that leverage to push Vista out of the way of history. So much of what you'll see in the Release Candidate in terms of underlying technology is finalized; any tweaks that will be done between now and the general release date (which PC manufacturer Acer blabbed last night will be October 23) will likely be in the looks department.
So with a reasonable degree of confidence that the Win7 RC is much more than half-baked, today Betanews begins a continuing series looking into what we believe to be the ten most important new features that Win7 brings to the table -- features that represent significant changes to the platform we've been calling Vista, and changes which appear very likely to be improvements. Maybe they should have been part of Vista to start with.
There's no reason that the experience of setting up networking equipment at home should be a subset of the pain and misery businesses sustain when they toil and sweat over Vista. Business networking has evolved into a very complicated context that cannot be made simpler or more palatable or livable through the use of any metaphor you can come up with. You can't make Active Directory simple enough for everyday home users to want to wrestle with it, or even for sophisticated network admins to want to deal with the same dredge when they get home.
In Microsoft laboratory projects that first came to light during the "Code Name Longhorn" project in 2003, engineers found themselves reasoning this way: There's only a few basic principles that home network users want to see implemented anyway. They want all their machines to share content with one another. They want any resource to be visible to the entire network (why would you want to hide a printer?). If they do mean to hide something from accessibility, users want the ability to do so explicitly, but only when it's necessary. They want portable components and devices to know they're on the network when they're in range or plugged in, and for the network to know when they're gone. And they want other people's equipment to stay off of their network.
So the trust situations between home network components should be fairly straightforward. Thus rather than forcing home users to wrestle with enterprise-quality network resources, but just have them wrestle with it the same way every day until they get accustomed to it, the engineers came up with an idea called "Castle," whose legacy is a mention in Microsoft's pre-release privacy statement for Longhorn testers. Without invoking any part of Active Directory (and making the Windows Client far more cumbersome than it needed to be), this system created a kind of default home network user template that applied in most situations, creates the trusts that most users would expect, and gives users easier ways to adjust those trusts when necessary.
Vista was so late to the game in getting anything even partly resembling Castle to market that only in Service Pack 2, which hasn't even been released to the public yet, will we see a feature called Windows Connect Now -- a facility that actually works just fine in Windows XP SP2 -- be implemented for the first time in Vista.
Finally, Windows 7 is giving this concept a try, with what's called the Homegroup (now with a lower-case "g," in keeping with the growing trend to remove unnecessary upper-case from product names). The basic concept boils down to this: If Win7 devices can identify themselves as being "at home" when they're on premises, then there's really no reason why their shared resources can't all be seen as unified. In other words, not "Scott's Pictures" and "Jennifer's Pictures" but "Pictures."
Enrolling a computer as a homegroup member is a simple process -- so simple that reviewers of the earlier Win7 betas, for good reason, were skeptical that the security would be as porous as Windows XP. To become a member of an existing homegroup, one need only know the password, the default for which was generated when the first Win7 computer created the homegroup. For now, only Windows 7 computers can be homegroup members, and that will likely always be the case seeing as how WCN functionality was only just now added to Vista SP2 (unless there is an SP3 to come).
Next: The promise of single media libraries...
The real payoff from homegroups comes in the form of libraries, which is Win7's new aggregate view for shared system folders. Under this system, like content from multiple locations can be made accessible from a single resource to all members of the homegroup. While it seemed to make sense at first to segregate content in a home network in accordance with how accounts are allocated, the way things ended up, keeping track of locations as well as categories ("Pictures of Dad belonging to Jake," "Pictures of Dad belonging to Dad," etc.) became too much of a headache...the kind with which Vista eventually became permanently associated.
Perhaps the true test of homegroups' and libraries' usefulness in Win7 will come with the new Windows Media Center for Home Premium and Ultimate users. Currently in Vista, WMC enables you to set up "watch folders" throughout a home network, presumably with the idea of being able to automatically enroll new content as it enters folders everywhere in WMC's purview. The problem is, not only is WMC watching those folders, but so are you, so you end up having to traverse the network directory tree to locate what you wand -- not unlike playing a game of Frogger blindfolded.
Under the homegroup system, libraries that aggregate content throughout a homegroup will be visible to the new WMC as a single source. You want videos, you go to "videos." And conceivably (this is something I'll have to see myself to believe), a PC running the new WMC will be able to stream content from any member of the homegroup, to any member of the homegroup, almost as though WMC were a passive server.
If you're a Media Center veteran, you may already be hearing the comfortable plinking sound of unspent coins being returned to your piggy bank. There has actually been a cottage industry in Media Center Extender devices being sold to individuals who, technically, didn't actually need them. The MCE is supposed to make networked devices accessible to WMC, and some devices like external hard drives do so legitimately. But many such devices -- especially the ones that promise to stream photos, music, and videos to any PC in the house -- are essentially stripped down Wi-Fi adapters, some of which are being purchased by folks who already have Wi-Fi adapters.
In a homegroup-endowed world, these particular customers would not need MCE devices; they'd use the routers they already own to let Windows do the job that it was supposed to do in the first place.
From the perspective of a Windows engineer, the biggest barrier the homegroup system may overcome is that of enrolling portable PCs as homegroup members while they're in the home, and yet enabling them to be domain members while they're in the workplace. Even with Vista, this was essentially impossible even though its newer TCP/IP stack included setup for alternate IP locations. I personally wrestled with this issue to no avail; at present, it's impossible for a business' laptop PC that uses a VPN to also be a member of a local Windows 3.11-style workgroup; it can be one or the other, but never both.
The promise of Windows 7 is that laptops may be transported to work, become "business PCs," and be enrolled with all their enterprise-level Active Directory privileges; then be taken home, become "home PCs," and be open to all the family's shared files, aggregate libraries, and other conveniences; and ne'er the twain shall meet. This will be an extremely tall order, which if fulfilled, will be fabulous: Corporations' policies for the use of company equipment, or even personally-owned laptops with access to company resources, only tightened during the Vista era.
If the computer truly is the network, as folks like Bill Gates have been saying for decades, then perhaps part of what had been plaguing Vista all this time is due to home users' perception of the task of networking. The homegroup system is a big gamble to address and solve this perception problem, and with all its promise, it can either succeed spectacularly or fail spectacularly. We'll probably be seeing some of the spectacle long before the final release date.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Obsolete New Zealand copyright law faces total rewrite

Publié: mai 1, 2009, 5:27pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews
Having a copyright law that was drafted before the Internet Age has proven too problematic for New Zealand, and after trying a number of incremental updates, the government is considering a total rewrite.
Prime Minister John Key took office in November, and his center-right National Party ended a nine-year Labor Party incumbency. Controversy arose shortly thereafter as The Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act 2008, which was passed before Key's election, came into force. A clause in the act allowed ISPs to terminate a user's account based upon suspected illegal file sharing, similar to theThree Strikes Rule being drafted in France at the same time.
Because an agreement could not be reached in the month's time allotted for discussion, the provision was stricken down, and Commerce and Justice minister Simon Power was to begin work on a replacement section.
Now, however, the government has frozen all changes, and is considering a total rewrite of the copyright law, instead of just an adjustment of section 92a.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Copyright Office holds hearings on proposed DMCA exemptions

Publié: mai 1, 2009, 12:36pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews
Every three years, copyright activists see a glimmer of light in the dark tunnel of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That's when US Copyright Office throws open its exemption process, in the ongoing effort to make the 1990s-era rules fairer and better adapted to modern usage. Whether that's a successful effort or simply another leap in front of a train... well, what would a bunch of activists be if they didn't even try?
To that end, the Copyright Office heads to Stanford on Friday for public hearings on the formal comments received by that office, and will continue the Rule Making process -- the fourth since the DMCA was approved -- in Washington DC next week. The nineteen comments received have been grouped into eleven documents.
[Hearings times shown are PDT for May 1, EDT for later dates]
Document 1
Who: American Foundation for the Blind
Class(es) of work to be exempted: Literary works
The basics: This isn't the first time that advocates for the visually impaired have had to take their case through the Rule Making process, as the AFB's comment points out bitterly: "Six years after the 2002 Rule Making [that first granted exemptions to provide fairer access to the blind and visually impaired], copy protection continues to pose a significant barrier to digital content access." The trend, the brief notes, is actually to decrease accessibility, especially when particular titles are linked to particular vendors. (Kindle, anyone?) The organization, which is itself a copyright holder, asks the Copyright Office to extend and give teeth to the previously granted exemptions.
Hearing schedule: May 8, 10:00 am
Document 2
Who: Megan Carney
Class(es) of work to be exempted: Subscription-based streaming video
The basics: A three-part critique of platform requirements: They make older hardware obsolete, they're primarily used as a tool to block competitors, and there's no way around the restrictions they put on content.
Hearing schedule: May 8, 3:30 pm
Document 3
Who: Mark Rizik
Class(es) of work to be exempted: Motion pictures protected by anti-access measures
The basics: This one's for you, Linux crew. The petition notes that much anti-access tech requires that a royalty fee be paid, which is impossible on a freely distributed platform such as Linux.
Hearing schedule: Unknown.
Document 4a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h
Who: Cary Handman, Media Resources Center UC Berkeley (a); Kevin L. Smith, Duke University (b); Renee Hobbs (c and d), Peter DeCherney et al, University of Pennsylvania (e and f); Library Copyright Alliance and Music Library Association (g); Gail Fedak (h)
Class(es) of work to be exempted: Commercially produced multimedia used in classroom teaching and other educational uses
The basics: These petitions collectively make a case for protecting the fair-use rights of educators to excerpt works. The petitions differ on the exemptions previously granted in 2006; some recommend that they be expanded, while others merely ask that they continued beyond their 2009 expiration date. The apparent individual petitioners are, like the others on this list, information professionals at various American universities. Similar in certain ways to Document 11, but focused on educational use.
Hearing schedule: May 1, 9am (a); May 6, 1:00 pm (a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h)
Document 5a,b,c,d
Who: Fred von Lohmann, Jennifer S. Granick, Electronic Frontier Foundation (a); MetroPCS Communications, Inc. (b); Paul Posner, Youghiogheny D/B/A Pocket Communications (c); Jonathan Newman, Wireless Alliance et al (d)
Class(es) of work to be exempted: Mobile-phone software
The basics: Something old and something new in the category we will broadly call "unlocking." The EFF represents a trio of cell-phone recyclers and refurbishers in requesting an extension on a previous exemption allowing for unlocked handsets; they're also requesting a new exemption that would allow iPhone owners to run the apps they please (a.k.a., "jailbreaking").
Hearing schedule: May 1, 1:45 pm (b,c,d); May 1, 3:45 pm (a); May 8, 1:00 pm (a,b,c,d)
Document 6
Who: Joseph V. Montoro, Jr.
Class(es) of work to be exempted: Computer programs that need dongles to function
The basics: Remember dongles? If you're a sysadmin stuck with a program that still requires a dongle for authentication, you live in terror of the day the thing is lost or ceases to function. Mr. Montoro, who is president of Spectrum Software, recounts a number of horror stories in his petition.
Hearing schedule: May 8, 11:00 am
Document 7
Who: Glenn Pannenborg
Class(es) of work to be exempted: Computer software
The basics: Security folk, here's your category. Mr. Pannenberg, a CPA and auditor, is requesting an exemption for forensic analysis such as that regularly done by professional investigators. He cites two incidents from his own experience.
Hearing schedule: Unknown.
Document 8a,b
Who: J. Alex Halderman, University of Michigan
Class(es) of work to be exempted: DRM-bearing content that messes with one's computer (a); videogames with DRM that messes with one's computer (b)
The basics: The topic is technological protection measures (TPMs); you may know them better in the form of the notorious Sony rootkit or last year's Macrovision SafeDisc fiasco. Dr. Haldeman, who successfully co-petitioned for a related exemption in 2006, is an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on security and privacy issues introduced by access- and copy-control systems.
Hearing schedule: May 7, 2:30 pm (a,b)
Document 9a,b
Who: Matt Perkins
Class(es) of work to be exempted: DTV transmissions carrying a DVR-trammeling "broadcast flag" (a); audiovisual content on Blu-ray or another medium with an Image Constraint Token (b)
The basics: Broadcast flags aren't a pressing problem yet, but a problem with previous rulings concerning access controls introduced dangerous confusion to the applicable rules. This petition seeks in part to clear the air before those controls are widespread.
Hearing schedule: Unknown.
Document 10a,b
Who: Christopher Soghoian
Class(es) of work to be exempted: Digital downloads requiring ongoing authentication by a remote server.
The basics: If you've ever been a member of a streaming-music service that went boom and took your music access with it, this one's for you. The petition would require that consumers who have purchased works be assured of continued access. Mr. Sogohian is currently a student fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Hearing schedule: May 6, 10:00 am (a,b)
Document 11a,b
Who: Fred von Lohmann, Jennifer S. Granick, Electronic Frontier Foundation (a), Kartemquin Educational Films, Inc. and International Documentary Association (b)
Class(es) of work to be exempted: Multimedia on DVD
The basics: Viva mashups! This petition seeks to protect the rights of artists to excerpt fair-use clips of video from DVDs for noncommercial film use. The EFF is on the case, as are the documentarians filing the second set of comments. Similar in certain ways to Document 4, but focused on artistic use.
Hearing schedule: May 1, 11am (a); May 7, 10:00 am (a,b)
All times are local to the hearing (that is, PDT today, EDT for the rest).
The EFF's tangles with the DCMA weren't limited to exemption hearings this week. The organization is also taking on Apple, which it charges made inappropriate use of the DMCA to force the company running Bluwiki.com, an open-source project, to remove a discussion relating to reverse-engineering iTunes for iPod and iPhone owners. The EFF has done battle before of whether reverse engineering circumvents protections and violates the DMCA, but Apple's pressure on OdioWorks appears to be based strictly on the discussion of tactics rather than any actual attempt.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009