Next DC CopyNight Is Tuesday, June 24th at Public Knowledge

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Hi folks,
...and we're back, after some radio silence.
Did you miss CopyNight? How did you cope in its absence? Did you discover eHarmony? Clean up your mp3 tags? Start publishing your childhood diaries under a Creative Commons license? I urge you to abandon your newfound hobbies and come back to CopyNight this Tuesday.
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CopyNight DC at Public Knowledge
Ste. 650, 1875 Connecticut Ave. NW (Dupont Circle Metro)
6:30 PM, Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
Please RSVP at Eventbrite:
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/129941659
Public Knowledge will provide pizza and beer. Let them know if you're coming so they can order appropriately. If you want to donate a six-pack to the cause, you'll find a liquor store at Florida and T St. NW.
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I'll be out of town for this meeting so longtime CopyNighter Carey Lening will lead off the conversation. The topics on the table include 1) the implications in the findings of a University of Washington investigation into P2P copyright enforcement policies and 2) technological collusion between the MPAA and cable companies that could lead to a backdoor Broadcast Flag.
More information about these topics below.
Thanks again to Alex and Sherwin and everyone else at OK for hosting us.
Joseph Price
dc@copynight.org
P.S. PK's building will be locked down after 6 PM but there will be a lookout downstairs opening the door until 6:40 PM. After that, give the Public Knowledge office (202.518.0020) a call and they'll come let you in.
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1. The University of Washington Study on investigating P2P copyright enforcement policies:
http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/
Practically any Internet user can be framed for copyright infringement today.
By profiling copyright enforcement in the popular BitTorrent file sharing system, we were able to generate hundreds of real DMCA takedown notices for computers at the University of Washington that never downloaded nor shared any content whatsoever.
Further, we were able to remotely generate complaints for nonsense devices including several printers and a (non-NAT) wireless access point. Our results demonstrate several simple techniques that a malicious user could use to frame arbitrary network endpoints.
Even without being explicitly framed, innocent users may still receive complaints.
Because of the inconclusive techniques used to identify infringing BitTorrent users, users may receive DMCA complaints even if they have not been explicitly framed by a malicious user and even if they have never used P2P software!
Software packages designed to preserve the privacy of P2P users are not completely effective.
To avoid DMCA complaints today, many privacy conscious users employ IP blacklisting software designed to avoid communication with monitoring and enforcement agencies. We find that this software often fails to identify many likely monitoring agents, but we also discover that these agents exhibit characteristics that make distinguishing them straightforward.
2. MPAA proposed to waive FCC's ruling against Selectable Output control devices:
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1625
On May 9, the MPAA filed a petition to waive the FCC's ruling against selectable output control (SOC) (PDF). The MPAA and its studio constituents seek to allow multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) — that is, cable companies — the power to turn off the digital and analog outputs on your devices, as they choose. This includes not only cable boxes, but also anything connected to your cable signal, such as your Tivo, your Slingbox, or even a TV using CableCARD.
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In 2004, the FCC ruled that no one may "embed data … so as to prevent its output through any analog or digital output" (18 FCC Rcd. 20885, codified as 47 CFR § 76.1903). That order agreed with public interest advocates that there were already good ways for MVPDs to protect their copyrights by shutting off "compromised" outputs ... However, it opined that selectable output control went one step too far. MVPDs could not embed any information signaling that a device must wholly shut down an output type. In addition, the FCC also recognized that selectable output control would block certain legal fair use rights, such as time-shifting.

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There's a lot of cross-over in this subject with the Broadcast Flag (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag), and its a rather big deal. For example, if legislation were to pass on the SOCs, it would make all the televisions recently purchased to comply with the Feb. 2009 DTV transition obsolete.