[dvd-discuss] Censorware decryption and designated cat-bellers

[Seth Finkelstein <sethf(at)sethf.com>]

microlenz@earthlink.net wrote:
> There was a lot of discussion regarding the numbers of people that
> may want to do censorware decryption. I do not think the committee
> realized that many are content that others do.

	Well, I've tried to convey this to the committee very clearly.
And I have legal concerns *plus* smears e.g. from Slashdot's Michael Sims
to burden me. Frankly, being the designated cat-beller isn't worth it!
[Reference:  http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/cpbfaq.html#whatlawsuit
and  http://www.spectacle.org/0203/sims.html ]

	One of the less-amusing parts of:

	http://sethf.com/anticensorware/hearing_dc.php

MR. TEPP: I understand your point. I guess what I'm curious about is,
why no one else is interested -- I mean, those sound like interesting
questions. Why isn't anybody else looking at this? Why aren't these
institutions that conduct these studies interested in the architecture
of the filtering software?

MR. FINKELSTEIN: Because there's no money in it and it is legally
risky. There is a quote from Ben Edelman, who is part of the Edelman
v. N2H2 case, a widely-reported quote: "I want to go to law school. I
don't want to go to jail."

When I look at what I spent on this -- "spent" is even the wrong word
-- when I look at the effort I put into this, when I could have been
building a business during the IPO gold rush, there's times I really
wonder if I made the right decision.

Nobody who is looking at a research project is going to say, "Well,
gee, let me put my research into something which might get me sued,
which might get me unending legal hassles, which might get me into
trouble with the dean, which might get me bad press, which will
certainly get me enmity of these powerful companies, or I could do
something cheap and easy." What are they going to take?

Look at what happened to Ed Felten with the threats from the Secure
Music Digital Initiative case. People get scared.

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  sethf@sethf.com  http://sethf.com
Anticensorware Investigations - http://sethf.com/anticensorware/
Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/