RE: Prosecution of Cracking Security Systems

[David Van Wie <dvw@hamachi.epr.com>]

Tim May wrote:

> One thing that worries me is that some of the proposed laws about
> intellectual property and enforcment of copyrights may make it illegal to
> try to break the cryptographic protections of systems, even systems one 
has
> control over. (Some similarities to the "no reverse engineering"
> shrink-wrap licenses.)
>
> It's conceivable that Netscape Communications could, under these
> "anti-hacking" laws, seek a prosecution of some future Goldberg and 
Wagner.

Actually, Lehman's report does not recommend this harsh of a measure.  The 
report recommends penalties (some criminal) for tampering with and disabling 
mechanisms that are protecting copyright for protected works, and the 
protected works themselves.  If a hacker operating in the "public service" 
mode you described were tampering with and/or disabling a protection 
mechanism that was applied to their own works, or test patterns and the 
like, they wouldn't fall under the recommended guidlines.  It is pretty 
clear from my reading that you need to have an intent to violate copyright 
(i.e. steal stuff) in order to trigger the penalties.

Who knows how badly Congress will mangle all of this...

dvw