Carnegie Mellon CS Professor challenges Sony by mirroring Geohot's PS3 hacks | Hacker News Reader

Carnegie Mellon CS Professor challenges Sony by mirroring Geohot's PS3 hacks

cs.cmu.edu

620 pointselliottcarlson81 comments

About a decade ago, David Touretsky (the professor behind this) hosted a "gallery" of versions for the DeCSS decryption software.

Prof. Touretzky reminds Sony's lawyers of this, in the linked article:

"Note to Sony lawyers: no doubt you're eager to rack up another billable hour by sending legal threats to me and my university. Before you go down that unhappy road, check out what happened the last time a large corporation tried to stop the mirroring of technical information here: The Gallery of CSS Descramblers (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery). Have you learned anything in ten years?"

Touretzky is also one of scientology's biggest online critics:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/

I believe CMU's lawyers are well-acquainted with responding to legal threats against him.

CMU's lawyers most certainly had to vet this before it went up publicly, so lets raise a toast to those attorneys, and most importantly Touretzky, for their efforts.

This was not a spur of the moment thing - these guys did their homework.

"Ding"

CMU's lawyers most certainly had to vet this before it went up publicly

I doubt that. Academics are used to operating with autonomy, and by nature don't confer with lawyers before speaking. So I'm curious why you're so certain he presented this to the lawyers first.

As someone who's taken a few classes with said professor, I highly doubt he consulted any lawyers before doing this.

From my experience at CMU, I'd say that isn't likely:

The administration is very cautious and conservative most of the time, and if they had been involved, this would have,at the very least, taken weeks to happen.

That said, the CS department head may have given him a thumbs up (probably even literally), knowing that legal will be forced to back them up, if he asked anyone at all before hand.

I sincerely doubt that. It would be essentially identical to SONY vetting a professor's online posts/research results.

Additionally, Team fail0verflow's github is also mirrored: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/GeoHot/mirror/ps3publictools.git/

Did Github remove the code at the request of Sony? While I realize they don't want to get embroiled in a legal battle, I find it unfortunate as well.

Looks like it's still there: https://github.com/geohot/ps3publictools

I do wish there was someone with Sony's PoV here to try to explain to us their rationale and how they hope to actually win this battle overall- as they can't really imagine that they can make the information go away with lawsuits.

This just seems like another test of the anti-circumvention provision in the DCMA. Unlike the XBox modding trial that was dismissed [1], this case actually has nothing to do with piracy, as geohot made it a point not to add in piracy enabling features.

[1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/crippen-dismissed/

CMU CS professors have a history of kicking ass. Robert Harper is another one who is a very vocal anti-DMCA campaigner, and hosts his own political radio show :-)

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/

I don't believe his radio show is still on air, but yes.

This should be called "How to be a real man", by Professor Touretzky.

Oddly enough on Geohot's site and the professor's mirror it states "do not mirror file, link to geohot.com".

Well A) given the state of affairs I can't imagine that geohot minds the show of support.

B) I think it would be kind of hilarious of Geohot gave CMU a takedown notice for it, yeah it would be a dick move, but really hilarious.

Geohot should send a cease and desist to Professor Touretzky

Mirroring rocks! A point-and-click guarantee of defeating censorship.

The blink tag was a nice touch.

Hmm... no blinking in Chrome. I think I'm happy about that "feature"...

IE and Chrome don't support blink, only Firefox does. A legacy of the Netscape heritage I'd imagine, since blink is a Netscape proprietary HTML addition.

Gecko also supports text-decoration:blink if you’re a fan of semantic markup and keeping presentation in the presentation layer.

Personally, I’m waiting for “Bug 173540 - make text-decoration:blink pulse instead of blink” to be fixed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=173540

Fun trivia: the blink tag actually started as a joke[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_element

Personally I think a <marquee> would have also sufficed.

OT: My first website back in the mid-90's had both a <blink> and <marquee> tag in it... so so sad...

Mine also had a java applet with a lame animated menu! Beat that :)

My website featured a permanent 'Under Construction' graphic.

My website was actually a gopher:// site.

I had a BBS.

I actually went out, met and talked to other people.

Luxury! In my time, there weren't other people to talk to. ;-)

It can't get more old-school than that, you win :)

Like at an internet cafe or someplace with free wifi?

time to get a PS3 master key t-shirt!

There's no point of dedicating resource on fighting freedom of speech. Sony just has to shift strategic position. I mean you don't see Microsoft and Apple whining about it. I know that Sony has dedicated A LOT of money on each individual PS3 console, but they knew this day would come. Instead of trying to sue and put restrictions on the first amendment, they should learn how to make money with a hacked system.

What does this have to do with the first amendment? The first amendment prohibits the US government from making certain laws. "Freedom of speech" is freedom from government restrictions on speech, not from any actions of private businesses or individuals.

I'm surprised you need this spelled out for you, but the professor is unaffiliated with and has no contractual relationship with Sony. Since he's just mirroring someone else's code, he probably hasn't even agreed to a TOS.

Therefore any successful litigation against him would require reference to some law that makes it unlawful to disseminate the actual information. It's difficult to imagine how such a law would hold up to a rigorous first amendment challenge.

Your other posts make it clear that you believe this guy has breached some private contractual obligation to Sony, and I'm curious to know where you're getting that idea.

1. If someone breached an NDA and you helped/instigated them in doing so, you will be held jointly liable in civil damages. First amendment will not protect you against that, and there is ample case law in this area. Sony might lose the case, but not for the 1st amendment reasons.

2. Kindly avoid the condescending tone.

1. My understanding was the same as benreesman's: breach of an NDA only makes the person who agreed to it liable. IANAL but I did some searching around for the precedents you mentioned, and I found a few that back up what you say, but they all seem to set a fairly high bar for "helping/instigating" someone breach their NDA; for example knowing about the terms of the NDA. It seems unlikely the professor, who simply mirrored the code, would fall under those precedents.

2. Right on here, actually. Last night I was particularly annoyed at dangrossman's tone elsewhere (eg "So you've never heard of an NDA?") hence the snark in my original post, but after sleeping on it I'm sort of embarrassed it got to me that way.

Honestly, I was going to reply in kind at the time, but then decided to do my part in keeping HN civil. :)

This prof will likely not get in trouble, however my comment was regarding the general sentiment - the claim that you cannot get in trouble for helping to violate someone else's contract is dangerously incorrect. The bar might be high, I don't know enough about that, but in general you most certainly can get in trouble that way.

I was thinking about the case where Kai-Fu Lee breached his contract with Microsoft by joining Google, and Google ended up sued and paying a settlement for the instigation.

incorrect.

Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's not true.

correct. it's because it's not true that I don't like it.

I said nothing of the sort. I simply said that the first amendment is not involved in this case, in reply to someone who said it was.

The fact that Sony is bringing the case doesn't really stand in the way, because the DMCA is a government law, so must respect the First Amendment. The government is the one prohibiting certain kinds of activities, via a law passed by Congress; the fact that the DMCA's enforcement mechanism is suits by private parties doesn't change that.

Via the DMCA, the U.S. government prohibits "dissemination" of "technology, devices, or services" designed to circumvent copy-protection systems. The first-amendment generally doesn't allow the government to prohibit "dissemination" of things that qualify as "speech", so the open question is whether any of the things being prohibited qualify.

(Universal v. Reimerdes, one of the DeCSS cases, upheld the DMCA against a similar challenge, so it's an uphill battle. A stronger case would probably be an attempt to suppress a cryptography-research paper via the DMCA, since publishing papers is the kind of activity usually assumed to be protected by the First Amendment. There've been a few potential test cases of that sort, but the plaintiffs seem to always back down before they get to a ruling.)

Maybe a professor should coauthor a paper with geohot?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/46739943/Complaint The law in this case is the DMCA (though it seems that Sony are also trying on accusations under computer-crime laws and bunch of other things). Only the fifth of Sony's eight claims for relief seems to be based on the PS3's user agreement, while it seems the motion for a temporary restraining order is entirely based on the DMCA and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. I am not a lawyer.

Private individuals and businesses cannot do anything to prevent free speech. At best, they can petition the government to do so on their behalf. Hence the first amendment issue.

I disagree. If first amendment is executed explicitly as what it states, we can share whatever we want on the internet. Napster wouldn't have lost in court, and you can all all sorts of videos on Youtube. Private businesses over and over again tried to use lawyers to fight cases in the courts to protect their "intellectual property" and "copyright". By all means, I believe those things should be respected, or else the business world would be corrupted. But little by little, these private businesses are limiting to what we can share and express. For example, it is illegal to lipsync on Youtube because it violates the copyrights of music label companies.

So you've never heard of an NDA? What about the TOS that prohibits you from writing hate speech on Facebook, or posting porn to YouTube?

You can contract away your right to speech as easily as anything else. This has nothing to do with the first amendment.

What is a company going to do if you break an NDA? Call out a hit squad? Break your kneecaps?

Oh, that's right, they'll get the government to step in.

With regards to your second issue, you're making the classic mistake of conflating a user's right to free speech with a provider's obligation to distribute that speech. Facebook has no obligation to distribute anything, and choosing not to distribute some things is not a limitation on free speech.

> Oh, that's right, they'll get the government to step in.

Only by suing you, civilly, in a civilian court of law. Unless the company is the United States Military, you can't really be thrown in jail for breaking the contract on its own. One would have to willfully spread the information learned while under the NDA, with the intent of that information causing damage, like a security hole in some bank's network a hired pen-tester finds that allows an attacker to illegally obtain money.

an nda is a contract, it's breach makes only the privileged party liable, and even then only civilly. wrong wrong wrong wrong!

As soon as Sony files a lawsuit they bring the government (and therefore the first amendment) into the picture.

One of the court's primary purposes is to uphold agreements where one party has contracted away their right to some speech (NDAs, terms of service agreements, exclusivity agreements, etc).

The only time a court upholds the first amendment is when striking down a law made by congress, a state or a local government as unconstitutional. Read the bill of rights. They are limitations on the power of government.

No. The government cannot make law restricting the freedom of speech. But legally signing away your freedom of speech is an enforceable contract. It has nothing to do with "bringing in the government, ERGO freedom of speech". That is not the way litigation works.

Signing away your freedoms in a contract is sometimes legal and enforceable. However, even if the language of the contract is clear, it can be invalidated for being unconscionable or for lack of consideration.

I didn't sign shit when I bought my PS3. Sony isn't requesting that the US government enforce for them a contract that I signed fair and square, they're just using the court system as their own personal goon-squad.

A contract doesn't have to be signed to be enforceable.

And not all contracts are enforcable. ATT got slapped pretty hard by saying you are unable to sue by agreeing to this contract. You give up some rights in a contract but certainly not all.

Debatable.

Well, technically correct of course, it doesn't have to be signed. But it's an open question where the lines are drawn with regard to agreeing to a contract you never read and understood.

Especially all those "robo-signed" foreclosure documents.

http://www.businessinsider.com/dead-womans-name-robo-signing...

okay let's link it bank. If you make a hack for PS3, fine. I doubt Sony would find out unless they have vans driving around the neighborhood like Google. But it's illegal if you start sharing it. Isn't this what Sony is trying to prevent? Having a free hacks released on the web, and therefore people can access it freely? I'm sure there are certain laws written within Congress, as many people below has stated that points specifically to sharing on the web. But in essence all of them were drafted and passed with the First amendment as the foundation

I would dare to say that more money probably went into this issue so far than Sony will ever lose because of the hack?

This is awesome.

I remember DeCSS, my favorite was people getting tattoos of the source code.

DeCSS is too big for your arm. You're thinking of RSA http://www.geekytattoos.com/illegal-tattoos-rsa-tattoos/

Or the AACS key, which is much more manageable as a permanent addition to one's body.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy

tattoo: http://www.thenewfreedom.net/wp/2007/05/02/takedown-this/

ah, right

I think this could fit: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/hannum-efdtt-source...

Anybody else find it really funny that a guy called 'touretzky' is threatening Sony. Just me? Oh.

This is so F'ing awesome! I was feeling bad for the hackers. This news made my day.

This professor is indescribably awesome.

Maybe he can team up with that professor from cambridge who wrote that letter to the banks and they can be an international crimefighting duo.

The Cambridge professor was Ross Anderson. He replied to a letter from UK Cards Association requesting the university to take down a research paper by a PhD student. The issue was about the chip-and-pin no-pin vulnerability.

HN Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2039117

Take down request: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/20101221110342233.pdf (pdf)

Professor Anderson's reply: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/ukca.pdf (pdf)

More reasons he's awesome- he wrote a fantastic introductory book to Common Lisp in 1990 that holds up to this day. It's also considered a good general early CS text by many.

It is available for free download from his own directory at CMU: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/

Now I know why the name sounded familiar!

I know! Makes me really proud to have gone to school there and pissed that I wasn't in computer science and learning from that guy

He was a guest lecturer for one of my classes a few years back and talked about all the stuff he went through to keep up the Scientology documents. Pretty ridiculous all in all-I must say I almost certainly wouldn't be willing to deal with all the bs he went through. Glad someone was willing though.

Yea!

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