EFFector Vol. 21, No. 11 March 28, 2008 editor@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 464th Issue of EFFector: * Comcast Reduces Protocol Discrimination, Plans to End It Altogether * Letters to the Editor: People Speak Out on Surveillance * PrivacyFinder.org: Search, But with Privacy * Hollywood's Record Year Shows MPAA's Piracy Folly * Monetizing File-Sharing: Collective Licensing Good, ISP Tax Bad * Computers, Freedom, Privacy - and Policy * EFF at the LugRadio Live Exhibition in San Francisco! * Visit the EFF Booth at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco! * miniLinks (7): NY Times Wiretapping Coverage -- The Inside Story * Administrivia For more information on EFF activities & alerts: http://www.eff.org/ Make a donation and become an EFF member today! http://eff.org/support/ Tell a friend about EFF: http://action.eff.org/site/Ecard?ecard_id=1061 effector: n, Computer Sci. A device for producing a desired change. : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : * Comcast Reduces Protocol Discrimination, Plans to End It Altogether Last month, shortly before the FCC held its first hearing in an investigation of Comcast's interference with BitTorrent and other P2P protocols, we noticed that Comcast was no longer injecting forged TCP RST packets in the simple tests we had been running on its cable network. Some sources with access to larger datasets informed us that the cable ISP was nonetheless still using RST packets against some BitTorrent sessions, just not the simple uses of BT and Gnutella that we had been testing. The status quo: Comcast is still interfering with P2P, but they are being more subtle about it. This week, Comcast has announced that it will phase out its discrimination against P2P protocols entirely by the end of the year. According to the WSJ's coverage, the cable company is considering switching to non-discriminatory dynamic traffic shaping, which -- as we've previously argued -- is a much more responsible way of coping with network congestion. We're also pleased that Comcast is collaborating with the BitTorrent developers; we've been urging them to collaborate with the wider technical community for some time. This is a big victory for common sense and a big victory for an Internet based on open standards, not the whims of major ISPs. But there's still more work to do. In particular, the Internet community clearly needs to do more testing to validate the practices of the many of ISPs around the planet. For more about packet forging by Comcast: http://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-affair For the release by Comcast announcing future collaboration with BitTorrent: http://www.comcast.com/About/PressRelease/PressReleaseDetail.ashx?PRID=740 For this complete post by EFF Staff Technologist Peter Eckersley: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/03/comcast-reducing-discrimination-planning-end-it-altoghether-isp-testing-remains-es : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : * Letters To The Editor: People Speak Out on Surveillance With Congress in recess, surveillance issues have receded from the front pages. But look a few pages further, and you'll find signs that the issues are very much on the minds of ordinary Americans. From Vermont to Arizona, citizens are writing to local papers, thanking members of the House that stood against telecom immunity. Recognizing also that the battle will likely continue all the way to the President's desk, the letters argue for our legislators to stand firm to protect the Constitution and our rights. For this complete post by EFF Activism & Technology Manager Tim Jones: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/03/people-speak-out : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : * PrivacyFinder.org: Search, but with Privacy One small search engine is experimenting with ways to be an aide, rather than a threat, to privacy. PrivacyFinder is a research project at the CMU Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory (full disclosure: Lorrie Cranor, who heads the lab, is also on the EFF Board). It offers an interface to Yahoo! and Google, but with two notable improvements: an excellent logging/data retention policy and a feature that shows the user information about sites' privacy policies along with the search results. That way, if two sites offer the same service but one of them is better from a privacy point of view, the user will see that quickly. PrivacyFinder seems to be making productive use of P3P, an old privacy standard that has, in many other respects, fallen short of expectations. If you run a search on the site, you can quickly see when one result matches your privacy standards and others don't. Privacyfinder's logging policy is among the best in the industry. (Ixquick is also first-rate.) Privacyfinder only keeps search records for a week, unless the user explicitly opts in to being tracked. Because the CMU Laboratory wants to do research on the use of search engines, it's offering prizes for people who are willing to be tracked for research purposes. That's the way we like to see it done. For some measures you can take to protect your search privacy: http://www.eff.org/wp/six-tips-protect-your-search-privacy For the PrivacyFinder search page: http://www.privacyfinder.org/ For this complete post by EFF Staff Technologist Peter Eckersley: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/03/search-privacy : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : * Hollywood's Record Year Shows MPAA's Piracy Folly To hear the MPAA tell it, Hollywood faces a mortal threat from something vaguely defined as "piracy." The danger is supposedly so great that the MPAA has been lobbying Congress for help -- all the while inflating their numbers to exaggerate the amount of filesharing on college campuses. But recent news reports show the movie industry has just had a record-breaking year. The box office brought in $9.63 billion, a 5.4% increase over last year. And that's only box office -- if 2006 numbers are any indication, sales from theatrical showings will amount to just 20% or so of overall revenue. It seems that the threat of piracy isn't so great after all. As Ars Technica put it: "If piracy is killing the movie business, it's doing so in exactly the same way that home taping killed the music business in the 1980s." So why the constant panic messages from the MPAA? Paying customers are forced to watch absurd PSAs bemoaning the evils of piracy before enjoying a legally bought or rented film. And the MPAA continues to lobby Congress for protection. The film industry is doing well because it has given the public what it wants -- inexpensive movies available in a variety of forms. The industry would do well lay off the heavy-handed rhetoric and enjoy its ever-increasing revenue stream. For the MPAA report touting record-breaking revenues: http://www.mpaa.org/2007-US-Theatrical-Market-Statistics-Report.pdf For this complete post by EFF Designer/Activist Hugh D'Andrade: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/03/hollywoods-record-year-shows-mpaas-piracy-folly : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : * Monetizing File-Sharing: Collective Licensing Good, ISP Tax Bad Last week at SXSW, music industry veteran Jim Griffin broached the idea that file sharers pay a small fee through their ISPs in exchange for unlimited file sharing. There are many reasons to recommend an idea like this (as we've been saying since 2004), but there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it. We are big fans of a collective licensing solution for the music file-sharing dilemma: music fans pay a few dollars each month in exchange for a blanket license to share and download whatever they like; collecting societies collect the money and divvy it up between their member artists and rightsholders. It's not a radical idea -- that's roughly how we pay songwriters for radio play, concert hall performances, and the music playing in your favorite restaurant. But this should not turn into, as some have called it, an "ISP tax." Any collective licensing solution should be voluntary for fans, artists, and ISPs alike. We don't have a compulsory "restaurant tax" for songwriters -- there's no reason to have a compulsory "Internet tax" for file sharing. It should give fans what they want, rather than trying to withhold things from them -- after all, artificial scarcity is what got us into this mess. And it must give artists the freedom to choose among competing collecting societies, which is the only mechanism that will guarantee the kind of transparency and efficiency that much of the current music industry lacks. For Wired's coverage of Jim Griffin and collective licensing: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2008/03/music_levy For EFF's Voluntary Collective Licensing Proposal: http://www.eff.org/wp/better-way-forward-voluntary-collective-licensing-music-file-sharing For this complete post by EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann, including a quick reference guide to help distinguish a good collective licensing plan from a bad "ISP tax": http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/03/monetizing-file-sharing-collective-licensing-good-isp-tax-bad : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : * Computers, Freedom, Privacy - and Policy For the first time, U.S. technology policy has taken a front-row seat in this election year. If you had the candidates' ears, what would you tell them to do in regards to our digital world? Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP) is a conference with interests that have tracked those of EFF for almost a decade. This year, the 18th annual CFP will focus on what constitutes technology policy -- and organizers are asking for your help. CFP: Technology Policy '08 is an opportunity to help shape public debate on those issues being made into law, regulations, and infrastructure. The direction of our technology policy impacts the choices we make about our national defense, our civil liberties during wartime, the future of American education, our national healthcare systems, and many other realms of policy discussed more prominently on the election trail. Open participation is invited for proposals on panels, tutorials, speaker suggestions, and birds of a feather sessions through the CFP: Technology Policy '08 submission system. At CFP, policies ranging from data mining and wiretapping, to file-sharing and open access, and e-voting to electronic medical records will be addressed by expert panels of technologists, policymakers, business leaders, and advocates. Our decisions about technology policy are being made at a time when the architectures of our information and communication technologies are still being built. Debate about these issues needs to be better-informed in order for us to make policy choices in the public interest. Join in the discussion by submitting an idea to CFP. Registration is available online. You can also take part in the discussion and information-sharing about technology policy at the CFP '08 Blog, the CFP '08 Wiki, and CFP groups at LinkedIn and Facebook. For the CFP '08 Blog: http://cfp08.blogspot.com/ For the CFP '08 Wiki: http://www.cfp2008.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page For more information about funding for journalists wishing to attend CFP: http://www.cfp2008.org/wiki/index.php/Funding_for_Journalists For the CFP '08 online registration page: http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=193762 For this complete post by EFF International Affairs Director Eddan Katz: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/03/cfp-technology-policy-08 : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : * EFF at the LugRadio Live Exhibition in San Francisco! Come visit EFF at the Metreon Theater in San Francisco on April 12 and 13 during LugRadio Live, a unique conference powered by LugRadio, the long-running British web radio show on Linux and open source. The conference will feature talks from developers and entrepreneurs involved in projects across the board -- from Banshee to Wine and everything in between. Check out the conference schedule for more information. For the LugRadio Live speaker and session schedule: http://lugradio.org/live/USA2008/schedule For the LugRadio Live registration page: http://lugradio.org/live/USA2008/register : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : * Visit the EFF Booth at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco! The Web 2.0 Expo takes place April 22 to 25 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and EFF will be there! The Web 2.0 Expo "takes the pulse of the Web ecosystem and looks to its future, training a spotlight across the Web 2.0 universe to illuminate how the Internet Revolution is being created and delivered." The sessions focus on vital issues facing web innovators and entrepreneurs today: development, user experience, open platforms, financing, and more. Stop by the booth between sessions to chat and support EFF! For more about the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco: http://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2008/public/content/home : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : * miniLinks The week's noteworthy news, compressed. ~ NY Times Wiretapping Coverage -- The Inside Story An excerpt from NY Times author Eric Lichtblau's new book on warrantless wiretapping. http://www.slate.com/id/2187498/ ~ Fee for All -- Music as Service from ISPs Warner is developing proposals that would make access to music a service charged by ISPs. http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/03/27/Warners-New-Web-Guru ~ Charging Schools Instead of Suing Students A new proposal from major labels would charge schools a fee to allow students to share music legally. http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/03/proposal-legal.html ~ CBC Uses BitTorrent for Prime Time Release A high-resolution version of a series finale was released without copy protection over P2P networks for more efficient distribution. http://www.thestar.com/columnists/article/349948 ~ DHS Blinks -- New Hampshire Joins Montana in Real ID Victory Two out of four hold-out states have been receiving unrequested extensions on Real ID requirements. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/new-hampshire-j.html ~ Big City Muni Wi-Fi is Dead, Urban Wireless Isn't Plans to blanket cities with free wi-fi aren't panning out -- but free urban hotspots are spreading. http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/big_city_muni_wi_fi_dead_urban_wireless_isn_t ~ Rock Against Telecom Immunity! A song for telecom companies that broke the law when they handed their customer's data to the NSA without a warrant. http://maxmarginal.blogspot.com/2008/03/rock-against-telecom-immunity.html : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : * Administrivia EFFector is published by: The Electronic Frontier Foundation 454 Shotwell Street San Francisco CA 94110-1914 USA +1 415 436 9333 (voice) +1 415 436 9993 (fax) http://www.eff.org/ Editor: Richard Esguerra, EFF Activist richard@eff.org Membership & donation queries: membership@eff.org General EFF, legal, policy, or online resources queries: information@eff.org Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged. Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of EFF. To reproduce signed articles individually, please contact the authors for their express permission. Press releases and EFF announcements & articles may be reproduced individually at will. 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