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News Bytes By Michael Conry

Contents: Legislation and More Legislation Linux Links Conferences and Events News in General Distro News Software and Product News

Selected and formatted by Michael Conry

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January 2003 Linux Journal

All articles older than three months are available for public reading at http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine.php. Recent articles are available on-line for subscribers only at http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/.

ElcomSoft Innocent

Dmitry's incarceration was to last 3 weeks, subsequent to which he was required to remain in the United States for a further 6 months while various legal details were hammered out. The result was that Dmitry would not have to face prosecution. Instead his employer, ElcomSoft, would have to face the charges, and Dmitry would be obliged to return to the US to testify in the trial. In the course of these events, widespread public opinion was sympathetic to Dmitry's plight, and this was likely a factor in Adobe's distancing itself from the case. Notwithstanding this, Adobe is still (as reported by The Register) a strong supporter of the DMCA, and advocates further criminal prosecutions.

In the intervening period leading up to the current trial, unsuccessful attempts were made to pre-emptively stop the prosecution based on challenges to the constitutionality of the DMCA law. These arguments were based on assertions of the right to free speech (including the rights of third parties to fair use of copyright materials), and also on a claim that the law was so vague as to be unconstitutional. Judge Ronald Whyte dismissed these motions in May 2002. Although the Judge accepted that computer code was free speech, he asserted that the DMCA was content neutral and thus dealt with computer programs on the basis of its purpose, rather than its content. He also decided that no fair use was prohibited by the DMCA, while acknowledging that many uses may be made substantially more difficult. Whyte also ruled that the law was sufficiently precise to be constitutional. This decision is a significant victory for the DMCA supporters, as was noted by Lewis Clayton in his review of IP cases in 2002, and strengthens the legitimacy of the law.

Following some difficulties with visas and the US State Department, Dmitry and Alex Katalov (chief executive of ElcomSoft) finally travelled to California in December 2002 for the trial. Some transcripts from the trial have been made available online. Additionally, Lisa Rein has done a good job of reporting on the court proceedings. A significant point on which the trial hinged was whether ElcomSoft wilfully broke the law. It was the jury's opinion that while ElcomSoft's product may have violated the DMCA, they did not distribute it while aware of this infringement. The open manner in which the product was distributed contributed to this image. The jury is also reported as having difficulties with the severe curtailment of users' rights inherent in the application of the DMCA to the ebook format.

The consequences of the verdict are unclear. Don Marti believes it is a hugely positive development, and that Federal prosecutors will be slow to attempt another DMCA criminal case given the failure of the ElcomSoft prosecution. Linux Weekly News is less upbeat, and sees this primarily as a victory for ElcomSoft. The point is made that it has now been shown that the DMCA can lead to "expensive criminal trials and arrests, even if they win in the end". This is only partly true, since as Don points out, the Federal authorities will only prosecute cases they believe can be won, and the ElcomSoft verdict raises the standard of evidence required to justify such an opinion. However, the civil-law provisions of the DMCA can also be used to cripple smaller companies with the burden of an expensive DMCA defence, and it is at the discretion of the complainant if and when to bring such cases.

Below is a quasi-random selection of the recent media reporting on the case, arranged in approximately chronological order.

• Gov't tightens its case in hacking trial [ZDNet]
• Opening Salvos in ElcomSoft Trial [Wired]
• ElcomSoft programmer takes stand [SiliconValley.com]
• 'I'm no hacker', Sklyarov tells US court [The Register]
• Trial told no proof of ebook piracy [Reuters]
• Defense rests in ElcomSoft copyright trial [SiliconValley.com]
• Testimony ends in Adobe hacking trial [News.com]
• Jury scrutinises DMCA in ElcomSoft case [The Register]
• ElcomSoft Jury Asks for Law Text [Wired]
• ElcomSoft verdict: Not guilty [News.com]
• Firm beats digital copyright charge [Detroit Free Press]
• ElcomSoft found innocent in DMCA case [2600]
• Software Hackers 1, DMCA 0 [Tom's Hardware]
• Verdict Seen As Blow to DMCA [Wired]

DVD Jon

Jon Johansen is another young man who has found himself in court in the past month as a consequence of his involvement in software development. Jon's case began three years ago, when the young Norwegian participated in the development of the DeCSS program. The purpose of DeCSS was to allow playback of DVD movies on systems, such as Linux, which lacked DVD playback software. Though Johansen has been strongly associated with the DeCSS software, he is keen to point out that he was only a minor collaborator in its development. However, the other collaborators in the project have remained anonymous, leaving Johansen facing criminal charges in a Norwegian court.

Though Jon could have faced up to 2 years in jail, the prosecution has sought a sentence of 3 months probation along with payment of US$1400 court fees and confiscation of his computers should he be found guilty. Jon has strongly defended his innocence. Prosecution questioning appears to have focused on the possible use of DeCSS for DVD piracy. Johansen has argued that although DeCSS could possibly be used in some forms of piracy, piracy is entirely possible and quite easy even without DeCSS. The primary purpose of DeCSS is the playback of DVDs that customers have legally purchased. A verdict is expected early in January 2003.

It is worth putting this case in the context of other cases which have been taken in the US to suppress DeCSS. Cryptome has a large number of documents relating to these cases, as does the EFF. Of particular interest is Jon Johansen's testimony in the New York DeCSS trial, where he gives much of the background to these cases. Though Jon's trial relates to the actual development of the software and breaking protection on a DVD, in the case of the NY trial the issue concerned the legality of simply linking to DeCSS on the internet. Many have objected strongly to these draconian prosecutions, and have ridiculed the law by finding novel, clever or humorous ways to distribute DeCSS. An example is Phil Carmody's publication of a prime number which is also, neatly, a valid DeCSS executable. This follows from his first "illegal" prime which contains the DeCSS source code.

The Yes Men

The DMCA has also found use in efforts to silence a group of satirical impostors, known as The Yes Men. A parody website, which was located at www.dow-chemical.com, was constructed to draw attention to the 18 year legacy of the Union Carbide chemical disaster in Bhopal, India which killed 20,000 people. Union Carbide is now a part of the larger Dow company. On the 18th anniversary of the tragedy, a hoax press release was issued, purporting to be from Dow and addressing why Dow was unable to accept responsibility for the injuries and deaths.

"We understand the anger and hurt," said Dow Spokesperson Bob Questra. "But Dow does not and cannot acknowledge responsibility. If we did, not only would we be required to expend many billions of dollars on cleanup and compensation--much worse, the public could then point to Dow as a precedent in other big cases."

Dow's reaction was one of anger, and a letter was sent to the site's upstream provider verio.com requiring the removal of the website. This communication served notice of a violation of the DMCA (the parody used logos and designs from the original Dow website), and this effectively obliged Verio to take immediate action. Verio withdrew service to Thing.net, the New York activist oriented ISP hosting The Yes Men's site. This action simultaneously took down a range of unrelated arts based websites. Subsequently, Verio has served notice that Thing.net must relocate to another provider within 60 days, after which point service will be terminated.

As well as intimidating the service providers, Dow succeeded in taking control of the www.dow-chemical.com domain name (which it turns out they owned, as it was registered by the pranksters in the name of James Parker, son of the Dow CEO). Nevertheless, the website can be viewed at numerous mirrors. A list of current mirrors can be found in The Yes Men's account of events. The original press release is also included.

Australian newspaper, The Age, has published an interview with Rick Moen (yes, the Rick Moen of The Answer Gang).

LinuxDevices.com has published the proceedings from the Fourth Real-Time Linux Workshop held December 6-7, 2002 in Boston.

Some links of particular interest from Linux Weekly News:

• Dave Jones explains what's new in the 2.5 kernel and what problems 2.4 users might encounter if they upgrade.
• Germany sees security in Linux
• klisa security update
• KDE 2.x and KDE 3.x fails to quote arguments to shell commands properly. No exploits are known, but updates have been released.
• EU copyright deadline.
• Nvidia releases faster Linux drivers for its graphics cards. They are freely distributable, but the source is closed.

An encouraging Siliconvalley.com report on the accessibility of Linux to new users.

Vanishing Features of the 2.6 Kernel.

Dustin Puryear explores recent enhancements to Samba. (Dustin is also an LG author.)

The BBC reports on free software, as explained by Richard Stallman.

Fitting a computer to an albatross.

Some interesting stories from The Register:

• Amnesty criticises tech giants for 'aiding' Chinese human rights abuse.
• Open Source makes inroads in the EU.
• SSH flaws sighted. OpenSSH appears to be safe though.

Newsforge commentary on teaching GNU/Linux to new users.

PC World article reporting a study which says that the appeal of Linux is emotional rather than technical.

Tinyminds.org have interviewed kernel developer Robert Love. He discusses some issues relating to the current development kernel series, and how new features will manifest themselves for desktop users.

Some links highlighted by Linux Today:

• NewsFactor article on alternative web browsers, focus is on Konqueror and Opera.
• Brazilian petition (Portuguese) of President-elect Lula, urging him to favour free software over proprietary alternatives.
• Linux Productivity Magazine has run an issue focusing on VI and Vim.
• The Samaritans decides to use Linux.

Linux and Main, rewindable desktops. Summarises a paper by Bowie J. Poag.

Some links of interest from Linux Journal.

• The Real Battle at Comdex: Intellectual Property vs. Internet Protocol
• E-mail as a System Console, Part I explains how you can use procmail and fetchmail to build a program that will let you remotely control when a system makes a dial-up connection, how long it stays connected and when it disconnects. Part I explains the project and links to Part II.
• Book review of The Business and Economics of Linux and Open Source.
• An introduction to the concepts of linking and loading in Linux and why shared libraries are so useful.
• A discussion of Bluecurve.
• Phil Hughes, publisher of Linux Journal, has announced a new mailing list for people involved in moving government offices to open source, providing a forum for the questions, problems and solutions they all face in their work.

Santa considers switch to Linux, Red Hat is frontrunner.

LinuxSecurity.com has reported that despite the availability of fixes attackers are still compromising servers with well known attacks. The article has tips on improving security and security awareness. Some interesting links from Slashdot:

• Using Your iPod Under Linux
• ATI cards on Linux.
• Rivals Sony and Matsushita agree to jointly develop a version of Linux for their consumer electronics products.
• Lawrence Lessig explains the different effects of copyright on books and e-books.

Listings courtesy Linux Journal. See LJ's Events page for the latest goings-on.

Consumer Electronics Show	January 9-12, 2003 Las Vegas, NV http://www.cesweb.org/
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo	January 21-24, 2003 New York, NY http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/
O'Reilly Bioinformatics Technology Conference	February 3-6, 2003 San Diego, CA http://conferences.oreilly.com/
Game Developers Conference	March 4-8, 2003 San Jose, CA http://www.gdconf.com/
SXSW	March 7-11, 2003 Austin, TX http://www.sxsw.com/interactive
CeBIT	March 12-19, 2003 Hannover, Germany http://www.cebit.de/
4th USENIX Symposium on Internet Technologies and Systems	March 26-28, 2003 Seattle, WA http://www.usenix.org/events/
PyCon DC 2003	March 26-28, 2003 Washington, DC http://www.python.org/pycon/
AIIM	April 7-9, 2003 New York, NY http://www.advanstar.com/
SD West	April 8-10, 2003 Santa Clara, CA http://www.sdexpo.com/
COMDEX Chicago	April 15-17, 2003 Chicago, IL http://www.comdex.com/chicago/
Real World Linux Conference and Expo	April 29-30, 2003 Toronto, Ontario http://www.realworldlinux.com
USENIX First International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys)	May 5-8, 2003 San Francisco, CA http://www.usenix.org/events/
USENIX Annual Technical Conference	June 9-14, 2003 San Antonio, TX http://www.usenix.org/events/
CeBIT America	June 18-20, 2003 New York, NY http://www.cebit-america.com/
The Fourth International Conference on Linux Clusters: the Linux HPC Revolution 2003	June 18-20, 2003 Las Vegas, NV http://www.linuxclustersinstitute.org/Linux-HPC-Revolution
O'Reilly Open Source Convention	July 7-11, 2003 Portland, OR http://conferences.oreilly.com/
12th USENIX Security Symposium	August 4-8, 2003 Washington, DC http://www.usenix.org/events/
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo	August 5-7, 2003 San Francisco, CA http://www.linuxworldexpo.com

iCanProgram

Spaces are still available for the iCanProgram course. iCanProgram began a year ago, offering online programmer training courses with a "no fee in return for a Cancer Research donation" format. Over the course of 2002 more than 1500 students have participated.

GFDD

Debian Weekly News reported on the 'stable' launch of GNUtemberg! Free Documentation Database, or GFDD. The GFDD is a free database for free documentation, providing services such as indexing, translation management, information on official publishing, document ratings, statistics and search.

Galuna S.R.L.

Galuna S.R.L. aims at supporting and improving Linux for Romanian users. The company translated major parts of GNOME desktop environment and helps new users migrate from Microsoft products to Linux, increasing productivity while reducing costs and software piracy rate which is very high in Romania.

To help clients benefit from open-source software advantages at high quality standards, Galuna offers both standard and custom solutions. Visit www.galuna.ro for presentations of Linux advantages and available desktop applications.

IBM Ships New Linux Ready eServer Systems

IBM has announced that it is shipping Linux ready IBM eServer pSeries systems. Equipped with POWER4 processors, IBM claims the new eServer system costs substantially less than a comparably configured Itanium 2 based system from Hewlett-Packard.

rpmseek.com - New rpm search engine

The new Linux portal www.rpmseek.com claims to offer users of the Linux operating system a convenient search engine for rpm packages. The packages can be searched by various criterions, such as package name, file name, distribution, keywords, dependencies or files that a package contains. Dependecies between packages are resolved by cross references.

For every rpm package there are numerous detailed informations collected, links to different mirror servers are listed for the download in geographically arranged order. Another highlight is the classification of all rpm packages into categories. This way, a special software type or functionality can be found by browsing the tree structure of the categories. The site also aims to offer a range of documentation and discussion groups.

Debian

The Debian Project has updated the current stable release (Woody) to Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 updated (r1). This update has involved the acceptance and rejection of some packages. The total list of changes for both the regular and non-US branches can be viewed online

Debian Weekly News reported that apt-get.org is now up and running. It maintains a list of unofficial APT repositories.

Debian Weekly News also highlighted two resources which would be of some use to those customising Debian. Martin Sjögren has made available scripts for building CD images based on the new debian-installer. This is of use in putting together small CD images. Also of interest is Create your first Debian Package. Clemens Lee's new Mini-HOWTO entitled " How to Create Your First Debian Package", which describes how to create a Debian package for installation on one's own computer, rather than for inclusion into the official Debian archives.

DesktopLinux has published an interview Colin Walters of the Debian Desktop subproject

DebianPlanet have published an article describing the process of downgrading from Sarge to Woody with Debian.

Mandrake

In the past month, MandrakeSoft has publicised financial difficulties that could threaten the future of the business. The company has appealed for more users to contribute financially through the purchase of Mandrake products, or by investing directly in the company. It is also hoped that the introduction of commercial licences will help generate larger revenue streams, though Mandrakesoft is at pains to emphasise that this does not represent a retreat from Free Software.

Rock

ROCK Linux 1.5.20 has been released.

Slackware

Slackware 8.1 has recently been reviewed by Unix Review and by Distrowatch.

SuSE

SuSE Linux has announced that the German city of Schwäbisch Hall (population 36,000) will build its IT infrastructure entirely on SuSE Linux - replacing a more costly Windows installation. The town will deploy SuSE Linux on IBM Intel-based servers as well as up to 400 PCs - saving the city an estimated amount of more than one hundred thousand Euro over the Windows installation.

Xandros Desktop

DistroWatch has published a review of Xandros Desktop 1.0.

ActiveState PureMessage: email protection

ActiveState Corp., a producer of email gateway filtering systems, has released PureMessage 3.0 (formerly PerlMx), an update of its anti-spam, anti-virus, and policy compliance solution. PureMessage 3.0 provides IT administrators with new features including a web-based administration console, enhanced spam identification and management flexibility, optional end user quarantine management, next generation anti-spam heuristics, and the McAfee anti-virus engine. The product is aimed at mid to large sized organisations.

SCO Update and UnixWare 7.1.3

The SCO Group has announced the launch of SCO Update Service, a new program that is claimed to make the upgrade process for SCO operating systems more efficient and less costly. The service is available for SCO Linux 4.0, UnixWare 7.1.3 and will be available for SCO OpenServer 5.0.7 when it ships early next year.

The Update Service simplifies and streamlines the process of deploying new technology and keeping deployed systems up-to-date. This service provides electronic notification and delivery of operating system changes, gives the system administrator control of the upgrade process and helps customers accurately budget for the cost of system upgrades.

Farpointer

Farpointer Technologies has announced a new automated session management tool for the Apache server. The company's iConductor server module interacts with HTML files to automatically implement session tracking via any URL. In addition, iConductor manages simple key/values as well as complex documents such as Web Services requests and replies. These features save a significant amount of developer time in building Internet-based applications. A free trial version of iConductor and an online demonstration are available online.

CylantSecure free for personal use

Cylant, a provider of host-based intrusion prevention systems for the Linux server platform, has announced that it is offering the newest version of CylantSecure (2.0.2) free for personal use.

ProjectForum

ProjectForum provides a solution for flexible workgroup collaboration and coordination of projects over the web. It can be used for project planning, todo lists, design notes, task assignments, meeting notes, problem reports, team discussions, collecting feedback, research, brainstorming and more. Version 1.1 (the first public release) is now available, with versions for Linux, as well as Windows, MacOS X, and FreeBSD.

ActiveState Updates Perl Development Portfolio

ActiveState has announced new releases of its Perl tools and language distribution: Perl Dev Kit (PDK) 5.0, Visual Perl 1.7, and ActivePerl 5.8. The Perl Dev Kit features tools for building and deploying Perl applications. Visual Perl is the Perl plug-in for Visual Studio .NET. ActivePerl is ActiveState's quality-assured distribution of Perl, available for Linux, Solaris, and Windows.

Fast Hardware Backup of Big IDE Drives

Arco Data Protection Systems, a provider of low cost IDE disk mirroring (RAID 1) hardware, has announced the release of The DupliDisk3. DupliDisk3 facilitates maintenance up-to-the-minute backups of data and software. The DupliDisk3 supports the Windows, LINUX , Macintosh and DOS operating systems and works by creating an exact bootable replica of your hard drive. The software is designed to handle drives as large as 131 Petabytes (131,072 Terabytes) and can provide copy speeds up to 48 Gigabytes per hour (800 Mbytes per minute).

Mick is LG's News Bytes Editor.

Born some time ago in Ireland, Michael is currently working on a PhD thesis in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College Dublin. The topic of this work is the use of Lamb waves in nondestructive testing. GNU/Linux has been very useful in this work, and Michael has a strong interest in applying free software solutions to other problems in engineering. When his thesis is completed, Michael plans to take a long walk.