Good news on the Intellectual Property front, as five of the six candidates supported by IPac won their races yesterday. The one exception was Brad Carson, who was contesting a tight Senate race in Oklahoma. While these six were the first, IPac is still quite young, and thus didn’t have the opportunity to have a large impact on the ’04 elections. The real focus is on preparing for the 2006 elections. Two years really isn’t all that long to achieve the goals on our list.
Law & Government
Vote
Electoral Shedding
An interesting commentary on the upcoming election, and the unlikely, though constitutionally possible, situation that electoral shedding could elevate a person who is not running for president to the top spot: Tech Central Station – Tie Goes to the…
> Interested in becoming president this year? If so, hope for an electoral college tie. With an unlikely, but plausible, perfect tie — 269 electoral votes for both George W. Bush and John Kerry — anyone meeting the Constitutional qualifications for president could end up president. Here’s how.
Sixth Circuit Reverses Lexmark DMCA Ruling
As reported on Copyfight, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a ruling that was in favor of Lexmark against Static Controls, a company that makes replacement ink/toner cartridges. As the EFF explains “When Static Controls reverse-engineered the authentication procedure in order to enable refilled and remanufactured cartridges to work with Lexmark printers, Lexmark sued in Lexington, KY, claiming both copyright infringement and circumvention in violation of the DMCA.”
A snippet from the opinion:
> Lexmark would have us read this statute in such a way that any time a manufacturer intentionally circumvents any technological measure and accesses a protected work it necessarily violates the statute regardless of its “purpose.” Such a reading would ignore the precise language – “for the purpose of” – as well as the main point of the DMCA – to prohibit the pirating of copyright-protected works such as movies, music, and computer programs. If we were to adopt Lexmark’s reading of the statute, manufacturers could potentially create monopolies for replacement parts simply by using similar, but more creative, lock-out codes. Automobile manufacturers, for example, could control the entire market of replacement parts for their vehicles by including lock-out chips. Congress did not intend to allow the DMCA to be used offensively in this manner, but rather only sought to reach those who circumvented protective measures “for the purpose” of pirating works protected by the copyright statute.
Passport Chips
Wired has a great article discussing the plan to use RFID microchips in American passports. While I am a fan of technology, and the speed and security improvements it often brings, I must admit that I shiver when I think of some of the stupidity that can come along with it. For example, the fact that the current plan is to use technology that would be able to read these chips remotely. At first this sounds like it could prove to be a convenient setup for traveler and customs alike as it would cut down on lines. But, the problem lies in the fact that anyone with an RFID reader (which are inexpensive, and easily available to the public) will be able to read the data held on a passport remotely. Oh, and the data isn’t encrypted. At all. So much for security and identity protection. A nice quote from the article:
> The State Department hopes the addition of the chips, which employ radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology, will make passports more secure and harder to forge, according to spokeswoman Kelly Shannon.
> “The reason we are doing this is that it simply makes passports more secure,” Shannon said. “It’s yet another layer beyond the security features we currently use to ensure the bearer is the person who was issued the passport originally.”
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> But civil libertarians and some technologists say the chips are actually a boon to identity thieves, stalkers and commercial data collectors, since anyone with the proper reader can download a person’s biographical information and photo from several feet away.
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> “Even if they wanted to store this info in a chip, why have a chip that can be read remotely?” asked Barry Steinhardt, who directs the American Civil Liberty Union’s Technology and Liberty program. “Why not require the passport be brought in contact with a reader so that the passport holder would know it had been captured? Americans in the know will be wrapping their passports in aluminum foil.”
Hopefully the digital signature used on the passport is truly secure, and this won’t prove an issue.
Insecure Electronic Voting
Ed Felton presents a great explanation of one of the key problems with Diebold’s electronic voting machines. More importantly, he explains the issue in very simple, straight-forward terms. This is an easy article for anyone to read, and everyone should as it may well have a major impact on this year’s elections.
Link provided by the EFF