MESSAGE
DATE | 2003-03-30 |
FROM | vin
|
SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Firewalls set to become illegal in many American states DMCA
|
From owner-hangout-desteny-at-mrbrklyn.com Sun Mar 30 22:33:11 2003 Received: from www2.mrbrklyn.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mrbrklyn.com (8.12.3/8.11.2/SuSE Linux 8.11.1-0.5) with ESMTP id h2V3XBqb026117 for ; Sun, 30 Mar 2003 22:33:11 -0500 Received: (from mdom-at-localhost) by www2.mrbrklyn.com (8.12.3/8.12.3/Submit) id h2V3XBHH026116 for hangout-desteny; Sun, 30 Mar 2003 22:33:11 -0500 X-Authentication-Warning: www2.mrbrklyn.com: mdom set sender to owner-hangout-at-www2.mrbrklyn.com using -f Received: from www2.mrbrklyn.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mrbrklyn.com (8.12.3/8.11.2/SuSE Linux 8.11.1-0.5) with ESMTP id h2V3XBqb026110 for ; Sun, 30 Mar 2003 22:33:11 -0500 Received: (from ruben-at-localhost) by www2.mrbrklyn.com (8.12.3/8.12.3/Submit) id h2V3XB7B026109 for hangout-at-www2.mrbrklyn.com; Sun, 30 Mar 2003 22:33:11 -0500 Received: from paix.pilosoft.com ([216.66.12.246]) by mrbrklyn.com (8.12.3/8.11.2/SuSE Linux 8.11.1-0.5) with ESMTP id h2V3BGqb025717; Sun, 30 Mar 2003 22:11:16 -0500 Received: from linux (dsl-38-117-145-134.pilosoft.com [38.117.145.134]) by paix.pilosoft.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h2V375b32077; Sun, 30 Mar 2003 22:07:05 -0500 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" From: vin To: Ruben I Safir , hangout-at-nylxs.com Subject: [hangout] Firewalls set to become illegal in many American states DMCA Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 22:13:16 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.4.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <200303302213.16773.vin-at-nylxs.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by mrbrklyn.com id h2V3BGqb025718 Sender: owner-hangout-at-mrbrklyn.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vin List: New Yorkers Linux Scene Admin: To unsubscribe send unsubscribename-at-domian.com to hangout-request-at-www2.mrbrklyn.com X-Evolution: 0000002d-0000 X-Keywords: X-UID: 11271 Status: RO Content-Length: 4292 Lines: 97
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8595
Firewalls set to become illegal in many American states
Legislation by the ignorant
By Arron Rouse: Friday 28 March 2003, 13:21
AN INTERESTING PIECE of news has surfaced that will have sys admins fainting in disbelief. Eight states have put forward bills that would have a devastating effect on network security and even networks themselves if they come to pass. The wording in the bills is dumb enough that firewalls could become illegal.
The news about the bills was brought to our attention by Edward Felten, more famous for having a go at a different Bill. The states in question are Texas, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alaska, Tennessee and Colorado. The proposed legislation is intended to extend the much loathed Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Felten is definitely used to legal issues, having presented evidence against Microsoft in the antitrust trial. According to his news article on Freedom to Tinker, the various states bills all require the banning the use of any technology that conceals "the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication." It doesn't take much to think that firewalls, routers, network address translators and many other pieces of standard kit all do exactly that. Unless the bills are radically changed, the Internet could effectively become useless in those states.
The wording in the bills is almost certain to change once the correct pressure is applied but it just goes to show what happens when you leave legislators to their own devices. You can find Felten's full article here. It includes links to the text of three different states' proposed legislation. ยต
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000336.html
March 26, 2003 Use a Firewall, Go to Jail
The states of Massachusetts and Texas are preparing to consider bills that apparently are intended to extend the national Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (TX bill; MA bill) The bills are obviously related to each other somehow, since they are textually similar.
Here is one example of the far-reaching harmful effects of these bills. Both bills would flatly ban the possession, sale, or use of technologies that "conceal from a communication service provider ... the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication". Your ISP is a communication service provider, so anything that concealed the origin or destination of any communication from your ISP would be illegal -- with no exceptions.
If you send or receive your email via an encrypted connection, you're in violation, because the "To" and "From" lines of the emails are concealed from your ISP by encryption. (The encryption conceals the destinations of outgoing messages, and the sources of incoming messages.)
Worse yet, Network Address Translation (NAT), a technology widely used for enterprise security, operates by translating the "from" and "to" fields of Internet packets, thereby concealing the source or destination of each packet, and hence violating these bills. Most security "firewalls" use NAT, so if you use a firewall, you're in violation.
If you have a home DSL router, or if you use the "Internet Connection Sharing" feature of your favorite operating system product, you're in violation because these connection sharing technologies use NAT. Most operating system products (including every version of Windows introduced in the last five years, and virtually all versions of Linux) would also apparently be banned, because they support connection sharing via NAT.
And this is just one example of the problems with these bills. Yikes.
UPDATE (6:35 PM): It's worse than I thought. Similar bills are on the table in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alaska, Tennessee, and Colorado.
UPDATE (March 28, 9:00 AM): Clarified the paragraph above about encrypted email, to eliminate an ambiguity.
Topic(s): Security , Super-DMCA , Technology and Freedom Posted by Edward W. Felten at 01:04 PM | permanent link | Followups (24)
____________________________ NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene Fair Use - because it's either fair use or useless.... NYLXS is a trademark of NYLXS, Inc
|
|