Radley points to this story about a Minnesota ruling that the state must give a man convicted of drunk driving access to the source code of the breathalyzer used in the case against him. Radley gets it exactly right:
This is a great ruling, and needs to happen more often. Not just for breath machines, but for red light and speed cameras, too.
The companies that make these machines have in the past refused to turn over source code, which in some instances has led to mass acquittals.
You’re supposed to have the right to confront your accuser in this country. If these machines are going to be the only thing standing between an innocent person and the wreckage that comes with a DWI conviction, defendants have every right to examine their margin for error, how they process breath samples, and whether they’re tamper-proof.
Quite so. I also think the “trade secret” argument is a bit of a red herring:
This isn’t the first time breathalyzer source code has been the subject of legal scrutiny. A Florida court ruled two years ago that police can’t use electronic breathalyzers as courtroom evidence against drivers unless the source code is disclosed. Other alleged drunk drivers have had charges thrown out because CMI refuses to reveal the Intoxilyzer source code.
If a state is contractually prohibited from allowing a defendant from examining all relevant evidence in a criminal case—and that’s what the source code is—then the state should have to choose between re-negotiating the contract or dropping the case. Any trade secret issues are and should be the problem of the prosecutors, not the defendant.
Over at Ars, Ken FIsher reports on Google’s decision to drop its online video store:
Google contacted customers late last week to tell them that the video store was closing. The e-mail declared, “In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective August 15, 2007.”
The message also announced that Google Checkout would issue credits in an amount equal to what those customers had spent at the Google Video store. Why the quasi-refunds? The kicker: “After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.”
See, after Google takes its video store down, its Internet-based DRM system will no longer function. This means that customers who have built video collections with Google Video offerings will find that their purchases no longer work. This is one of the major flaws in any DRM system based on secrets and centralized authorities: when these DRM data warehouses shut down, the DRM stops working, and consumers are left with useless junk.
Continue reading →
We’ll see if I agree with Larry Lessig’s ultimate concluions regarding problems of corruption, but he has certainly started things out on the right foot, with a wiki seeking examples for study. Here are my contributions, under the heading of “The Market”:
* Dan Morgan, Sarah Cohen and Gilbert M. Gaul, Dairy Industry Crushed Innovator Who Bested Price-Control System. ”’Washington Post”’, December 10, 2006
* Eric M. Jackson, The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth, World Ahead Publishing, 2004.
* The incestuous relationship between real estate developers and local government officials is certainly an example of corruption. No specific work to cite, but Kelo v. New London is obviously a good example of the interests of ordinary citizens being shoved aside for the interests of large corporations.
* Tim Carney, The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money has some good examples of corruption.
And under “history”:
* Gabriel Kolko, Railroads and Regulation, 1877-1916 Greenwood Pub Group; New Ed edition (January 1977). An excellent history of the origins of the Interstate Commerce Commission and its corruption by railroad interests. Ralph Nader produced a report documenting the outcome in 1970, which was reported on by Time magazine.
What else should be on the list? Add your suggestions in a comment here and then head over to Lessig’s wiki for more details. Be sure to read the directions at the top.
Fred von Lohmann explains why the Electronic Frontier Foundation has taken up the case of a used music merchant who’s been targeted by UMG for selling CDs marked “promotional use only.” At stake is the first sale doctrine: the principle that once a copyright holder sells or gives away a copy of a copyrighted work, that the new owner has the right to do as he pleases with that copy, including re-selling it, and that printing “not for resale” on the CD doesn’t change the equation.
Sounds like a worthwhile case. Legal documents are here.
A funny comment in response to my NBC debates story:
FOX news has every right to own it’s debates because they are fictional and for entertainment purposes only. If you want non-fiction, try a legitimate news source.
Over at Ars I report on NBC’s decision to “allow” bloggers to make use of debate footage:
skeptics might question whether the networks had the right to restrict use of the footage in the first place. Under the principle of fair use, copyright law permits the reproduction of excerpts of copyrighted material for criticism, comment, and news reporting. Although determining the precise scope of fair use is never an exact science, showing a clip from a presidential debate is about as clear-cut an example as we can imagine. In most cases, bloggers will be legally entitled to use debate excerpts without paying any attention to NBC’s license restrictions.
Nevertheless, NBC’s announcement (and ABC’s and CNN’s announcements before them) will give rank-and-file bloggers peace of mind. That’s important because in the past, the networks have sometimes been trigger-happy in sending takedown notices. Even if the law was on their side, some bloggers might have been reluctant to take the risk of prolonged copyright litigation.
Ars reports that Universal Music is pondering a leap onto the no-DRM bandwagon:
Doug Morris, UMG’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement that the company began internally considering the DRM-free waters earlier this year, and the company is expanding its plans into a nationwide test to “provide valuable insights into the implications of selling our music in an open format.”
The test will see UMG offering a portion of its catalog—primarily its most popular content—sold without DRM between August 21 and January 31 of next year. The format will be MP3, and songs will sell for 99¢ each, with the bitrate to be determined by the stores in question. According to Universal, Amazon, RealNetworks, and retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart will have first crack at selling the music. RealNetwork’s Rhapsody service will offer 256kbps tracks, the company said in a separate statement.
Universal has apparently snubbed Apple, choosing to make DRM-free music available on other music services first.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the slow-motion train wreck that was Movielink has finally come screeching to a halt:
Movie-rental chain Blockbuster Inc. secured a foothold in the small but potentially significant online movie downloading business by acquiring Movielink LLC, a downloading service owned by the major Hollywood studios.
After several months of talks, first reported in March, Blockbuster said late yesterday it had acquired Movielink from the studios for undisclosed terms. The Wall Street Journal had reported in March that the price was said to be less than $50 million, although the final deal was less than $20 million, said a person familiar with the situation.
This looks even worse for the studios when you consider that, according to Ars, the studios have sunk more than $100 million into the company over the last five years.
I can’t say I’m surprised. As I’ve argued here before, the service was over-priced, low quality, and so crippled with DRM that they were dramatically less useful than DVDs. Is it any wonder few consumers jumped on board?
I really hope Blockbuster is buying MovieLink for the customers or the relationship with the studios. Because they certainly can live without MovieLink’s technology.
While I’m on the subject, my favorite TLF reader sends me this “mythbusters” page on the liquids ban from the TSA’s website. Here’s their explanation of why terrorists couldn’t combine multiple bottles of liquid:
We also paid close attention to the idea of terrorists combining multiple small bottles in a larger container or combining many small bottles together after going through the checkpoint. Due to the extreme volatility of liquid explosives, the international consensus was that those scenarios don’t represent a significant threat. Thanks to this unprecedented international cooperation, 67 countries, a great majority of the world’s air travelers are under a common set of security rules for the first time.
Can someone explain what this is supposed to mean? Are they saying that the liquids in question are so volatile that they’ll evaporate/explode the moment they come into contact with the air? I find it hard to believe drug stores would be selling such explosive liquids, so they must mean evaporate. I admittedly haven’t taken chemistry in a while, but I find it hard to believe there exist liquids that evaporate almost instantly from 3-oz containers, but can, in larger quantities, be reliably mixed with other liquids in an airport lavatory, with no equipment, in order to make a bomb powerful enough to take down an airplane.
Oh, and the explosion video is available on that site. It strikes me as pretty useless. No details are given about what was mixed, how it was prepared, or in what quantities, and we have no close-ups of the blast site either before or after. I’m sure that Sandia labs has chemists who know how to blow stuff up, but that hardly proves that a terrorist could do the same thing in an airport lavatory.
Bruce Schneier points to this underwhelming story purporting to explain that the liquid ban is really vital to airline security and not just security theater. Color me unimpressed.
Although I wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to view it, there’s apparently a video showing a large explosion made from the components in question at Sandia Labs. Fine, I’m sure there are some liquids out there that, if mixed together under the right circumstances, can produce a large explosion. The question is whether it’s possible to do that in an in-flight airline restroom, where you have very little space, no stable work surface, no access to lab equipment, not a whole lot of time, and no ventilation.
If the powers that be really wanted to convince us that this was a real threat, they should release details about what the ingredients are, so other labs can reproduce the results. The “national security” excuse doesn’t make any sense here: the terrorists obviously already know what ingredients they were using, so there’s no point in keeping the secret away from them. Moreover, if there were a real threat, public disclosure might have real benefits: labs around the country could work on developing new equipment to detect the ingredients in question, and passengers could be on the lookout for telltale signs that a liquid bomb was being mixed.
Finally, as Schneier points out, the really ridiculous part is that the TSA’s Byzantine liquids rules just don’t stop terrorists from getting a significant amount of liquid through the checkpoint. Schneier says that he was able to smuggle in 12 ounces of non-saline-solution liquid in a saline solution bottle. If it takes more than 12 ounces to make the plane go boom, you can have multiple terrorists go through the checkpoint, or make multiple trips.
The bottom line is that if every container of liquid is a potential bomb, then no liquids should be allowed through security at all. The TSA obviously isn’t that concerned, so it makes me skeptical that there’s anything more to the story than bureaucratic ass-covering.
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