This just in: the California Institute of Technology and Loyola Law School are presenting a mock trial this Friday, May 21st, to play out a scenario in which a student creates a distributed computing application to crack DRM systems, leading to the criminal prosecution of everyone involved under the DMCA.
The trial will have many realistic touches: a real federal judge will hear the case, the prosecution will be advised by real federal prosecutors, and the defense by EFF 's Fred von Lohmann. Brad Hunt of the MPAA will provide expert testimony for the prosecution, while EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen will provide testimony for the defense.
Even cooler: the event is free and open to the public. If you're in the Los Angeles area and can get away from work or study mid-day, stop by and check it out.
Category: Events
Pretty interesting. I looked over some of the documents and I think it is a bit unrealistic though. The concept is that a student developed for a class a distributed computing system capable of breaking 56 bit keys. This was for a classroom cipher, but then the professor set it up to break the DTCP cipher used for digital video protection, which is also 56 bits. And he made a web interface to allow anyone to access it. Now people all over the country are recording encrypted digital video streams (like between a set top box and the TV) and using this web interface to decrypt their DTV. The professor and college are being sued to shut it down.
There are two technical problems here. The first is that it is implausible that 56 bit keys can be broken so easily. The EFF built an enormously expensive special purpose machine to break 56 bit DES keys. Distributed networks can do it but they have to be extremely large and they take a very long time. It's unlikely that a student project could have put that much resources together. Also, due to its slow speed and ability to work on only one key at a time, such a system would not be suitable for people all over the country to be taking advantage of it like this.
The other problem is that although the DTCP encryption does use only 56 bit keys, it changes the keys every 200 seconds. This means that even after this huge key break effort, you only get 3 minutes of video. To use this system to decrypt a TV show or movie would require 20 to 100 key breaks, making it even less practical.
All in all the hypothetical scenario is not realistic given current technology. Maybe in 10 years things will be different. It's too bad that they could not come up with a more plausible hypotethetical, since these cases often turn on specific technical issues.
Permalink to CommentIt might have been interesting if the case used the planned brute-force attack on the DeCSS keys, before they were found in the wild.
Note the judge has a great deal of leeway to decide this issue in a narrow way, that wouldn't be very useful in the real world, by invoking the "(g) Encryption Research" exemption.
And of course, it's not "for real", so the political considerations that enter into finding against the moneybags, won't be a factor.
Permalink to Comment会计
Permalink to Comment
Tracked on May 19, 2004 08:47 PM
Tracked on May 20, 2004 12:45 PM