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University of Washington, Seattle    <http://www.cs.washington.edu>        Application Fee:  $45        Deadline:         December 31, 2001 	Average for admitted students:        GPA:              3.70        GRE Verbel:       629        GRE Analytical:   759        GRE Quantitative: 778        GRE Subject:      785	Transcripts:      1University of Maryland, College Park <http://www.cs.umd.edu>        Application Fee:  $50        Deadline:         January 15, 2002 	Transcripts:      2        Average for admitted students:        GPA:              3.50        GRE:              1950Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh          <http://www.cs.cmu.edu>	Application Fee:  $65	Deadline:         January 5, 2002	Transcripts:      1University of Oregon, Eugene         <http://www.cs.uoregon.edu>	Application Fee:  $50	Deadline:         February 1, 2002	GRE Verbel:       50%        GRE Analytical:   65%        GRE Quantitative: 65%	Transcripts:      1 Johns Hopkins University             <http://cs.jhu.edu/>	Application Fee:  $0	Deadline:         January 15, 2002	Transcripts:	  1Cornell University                   <http://www.cs.cornell.edu/>	Application Fee:  $65	Deadline:         January 1, 2002	Transcripts:      1University of California, Berkeley   <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/>	Application Fee:  $40	GPA:              3.00	Deadline:         December 15, 2001	Transcripts:      1University of Wisconsin, Madison     <http://www.cs.wisc.edu>	Application Fee:  $45	GPA:              3.00 (3.75 in CS courses)	GRE Verbel:       600	GRE Analytical:   600	GRE Quantitative: 700	GRE Subject:      700	Deadline:         December 31, 2001 (December 1, 2001 for fellowships)	Transcripts:      1 (+1 copy)Michigan State University           <http://web.cse.msu.edu/>	Application Fee:  $30	Deadline:         December 28, 2001 (December 1, 2001 for fellowships)	Transcripts:      2	GPA:              3.2	GRE:              2000 New York University                 <http://cs.nyu.edu/csweb/Academic/Graduate/> 	Application Fee:  $60	GRE Analytical:   ~700	GRE Quantitative: ~700	Deadline:         January 4, 2002 	Transcripts:      2University of California, San Diego <http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/>	Application Fee:   $42	Preapplication Id: 3559	Deadline:          January 7, 2002	Transcripts:       1Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Application Fee:   $60	Deadline:	   January 1, 2002	Transcripts:       1
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Fair Use in a Digital Age (Snve Hfr va n Qvtvgny Ntr)The Full Weight of the DMCABy Julian Catchen <topeka@catchen.org>Third part in a series.In 1998, Congress passed a law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).  The act fundamentally altered the landscape of copyright law, making it a crime to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work" or to distribute any such circumvention device.  At the end of 1999, a small hacker magazine, known as 2600 was sued for providing access to software that allowed the content of DVDs to be viewed.  2600 was the first of what would become many cases of people being prosecuted, sued and threatened under the purview of the DMCA.In July of 2001 Dmitry Sklyarov gave a talk at the DEF CON computer hacker conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.  His lecture focused on a relatively new publishing format, the electronic book  (eBook), and security considerations of using it. Sklyarov was a Russian graduate student who studied cryptography and also worked for a Russian company, Elcomsoft.  Elcomsoft published software that recovered passwords, allowing companies to recover the data contained in password-protected documents where the password had been lost.  His lecture discussed the weaknesses inherent in eBook software, and showed how easily protection schemes for that software could be broken.   On July 17, on his way back to Russia, Sklyarov was arrested at the Las Vegas airport.eBook files are basically modified versions of portable document files (PDFs) with attributes added to control how many times the file could be read, copied, printed or used.  The idea of the format was to give publishers great control of how their copyrighted works could be used.  The publisher could produce everything from free texts to "pay-per-view" books -- the software would enforce the license of the book.  The only problem was the manufacturers had over-sold the capabilities of their eBook software to actually protect the texts stored within them.  Some of the manufacturers had created protection schemes so flimsy, that the encryption meant to protect the text from unauthorized use was a step above pig-Latin.  Sklyarov's lecture at DEF CON discussed how to break several of these weak schemes and demonstrated a product that Elcomsoft had built for this exact purpose. Adobe Corporation, which is best known for its Photoshop and Acrobat Reader products, had been investing heavily in eBook technology.  Since they invented the original PDF standard they had high hopes for the sale of eBooks and produced one of the most popular programs for reading eBooks, the Acrobat eBook Reader.  Sometime earlier, Adobe had heard of Elcomsoft's efforts at breaking the protection of eBooks and knew that they were selling a product that could disable the protections eBooks were supposed to provide to book publishers.  As the criminal complaint against Sklyarov showed, Adobe approached the FBI and told them about the Elcomsoft software and that Sklyarov, the Russian graduate student and employee of Elcomsoft, would be giving a lecture in Las Vegas in ten days.  Soon after, Sklyarov was taken into custody and charged with violating the DMCA. If proven guilty, Sklyarov faced a possibility of twenty-five years in prison.  The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent a technological measure whose purpose is to protect a copyrighted work.  But, in an interesting feat of circular logic, the DMCA is only supposed to make it a crime to circumvent "effective" technological measures.  Of course, if a measure was broken it would seem that it was not very effective.  However, this fact has not deterred prosecution.  The DMCA also makes it illegal to traffic in such software.  It is important to note, however, that the DMCA is an American law and Elcomsoft is a Russian company.  There is no DMCA in Russia and it is not illegal to produce software that can break copy controls there.Many people were outraged by this action of the U.S. Government.  Protests broke out in July in more than 25 different cities and a boycott was launched against Adobe for its role in the affair.  The founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman stated, "this is an ironic reversal of roles for the US and Russia. During the cold war, Russia was noted for its harsh efforts to stamp out the unauthorized copying and redistribution of information (samizdat). Today Russia has dropped this, and the United States is picking up where Russia left off. "Under extreme pressure from computer hackers, free speech activists and IT professionals, Adobe withdrew its support from the complaint later in July.  The Government, however, refused to halt its prosecution.  Eventually, a plea agreement was worked out and Sklyarov was allowed to return to Russia in exchange for testifying against his company.  While in the U.S., Sklyarov spent a total of twenty-one days in jail, and five months of forced home-detention in Northern California.  The case against Elcomsoft is still pending.In September of 2000, a consortium of music and technology companies, known as the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), offered up a challenge to the digital community.  "Hack SDMI" was a way to "show off your skills, make some money, and help shape the future of the online digital music economy."  The contest was simple:  SDMI had been working on several "watermarking" technologies to prevent digital music from being copied.  A watermark could theoretically be inserted into a digital music file, and would be detectable by SDMI approved music players, but would not change the quality of the music.  The idea was to create a watermark that could not be removed without destroying the digital music itself.  If you tried to play or copy a digital music file without the mark, the hardware would refuse to cooperate.  So, show that the watermarks could be removed, and SDMI would pay you and your cohorts $10,000.  Of course, as part of the deal, any information you uncovered during the process, or any code you wrote to help do it would become the property of SDMI and you would have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.Many hackers refused to participate in the contest.  They saw it as the music industry arrogantly trying to convince people to destroy their own fair use rights to digital files for a little prize money.  Some cryptographic researchers, however, thought that the contest was silly.  As cryptography expert Bruce Schneier stated, "watermarking does not work. It is impossible to design a music watermarking technology that cannot be removed," and hence they wanted to prove that the SDMI technologies could never work.Soon after a group of researchers, led by Dr. Edward Felten of Princeton University and including people from Rice University and Xerox's Palo Alto research lab, announced that they had broken all six proposed technologies.  Instead of collecting their prize, however, they gave up the $10,000 and instead elected to publish their results at an upcoming security conference.When the work of Felten's team became public, along with their intention to publish the results, members of the SDMI, represented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), sent a letter to Felten.  In it, they warned him, "[u]nfortunately, the disclosure that you are contemplating could result in significantly broader consequences and could directly lead to the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. Such disclosure ... would subject your research team to enforcement actions under the DMCA and possibly other federal laws."  Felten temporarily withdrew his research from publication.As with the Sklyarov case, the action of the SDMI companies created a huge public backlash and several days later the RIAA claimed it never really intended to sue Felten and his team and subsequently, they published their research.  In order to preemptively protect their right to publish, Felten and his team sued the RIAA and sought a declaratory judgment from the court recognizing their right to publish research without violating the DMCA.  In November 2001 the case was dismissed and in February 2002, citing further assurances from the RIAA and  the government, Felten agreed not to appeal the decision.These cases represent only the beginning of the use of the DMCA as a blunt weapon.  In March of this year the Church of Scientology threatened to sue the Google search engine if it did not remove links to a popular anti-Scientology web site that was supposedly posting copyrighted church documents (xenu.net).  Blizzard, Inc., makers of popular computer games, which can be played over the Internet, threatened to sue the volunteers who produced bnetd, an Internet-based program  that allows owners of Blizzard games to play them over the Internet without using Blizzard's own software.  Blizzard claimed that the makers of bnetd were violating the DMCA by circumventing controls to Blizzard's proprietary software.  In November 2001, the World Trade Organization threatened the Yes Men (a group of prankster activists) with action under the DMCA, if the group did not give up their ownership of the "gatt.org" domain name.  The WTO's predecessor had been the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the Yes Men were using the gatt.org web site as a parody of the WTO.When the 2600 case first started, many people dismissed it because it only affected a small hacker magazine with a niche readership.  However, time has shown the effect of the full weight of the DMCA on American society.  It has impacted everyone from foreign citizens to university researchers.  From video-game-playing teenagers to political dissidents.  According to the Department of Justice, the average prison sentence served for rape is about five years.  Dimitry Sklyarov faced twenty-five years in an American prison for working for an employer who had him writing a program that was legal in his own country. A program that at the very worst allowed publishers to know that their texts were insecure and at the very best allowed a blind man to have his computer read an eBook to him aloud despite the eBook's license that forbid auditory performances.   In the final part of this series, I will investigate possible alternatives to the current course the DMCA has set for American society.  We will look at realistic rights to fair use and the continuing threat to it that the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act presents.
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