FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
FITUG e.V.Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/technology/15TUNE.html?printpage=yes
January 15, 2001
Group Says It Beat Music Security but Can't Reveal How
By AMY HARMON
Edward W. Felten, an associate professor of computer science at Princeton , is perhaps best known for his role in the Microsoft antitrust trial. During the trial, where he demonstrated a program that he said stripped the Internet Explorer browser from the Windows operating system, he spent hours explaining what he had done and how he had done it.
But the professor has been far less forthcoming about a more recent hack, and at a conference last week he explained why: Lawyers have advised him that publicizing the details of his tinkering could violate a 1998 federal law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
As part of an industry competition to test the security of a digital music copyright protection system developed by a group of entertainment and technology companies, Professor Felten was part of a group that says it successfully disabled the system. But he said he was reluctant to make public the details of how it was done because the 1998 law made it a crime to manufacture or "offer to the public" a way to gain unauthorized access to any copyright-protected work that has been secured by a technology like encryption.
"It is not clear the extent to which we're allowed to publish our results or discuss them in public," Dr. Felten told about 400 people at Georgetown University last week at a two- day conference sponsored by the Coalition for the Future of Music.
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