[clug] October CLUG - Thursday Oct 22 - Lightning talks - short focused fun for all

Paul Harvey csirac2 at gmail.com
Mon Oct 12 03:01:34 UTC 2015


On 9 October 2015 at 15:08, Bob Edwards <bob at cs.anu.edu.au> wrote:
[snip]
> How is it that this code has gone undetected for up to 8 years, even
> by our trusty government regulators? What other hidden secrets are
> there in our modern computerised devices (we already know a lot about
> the "extras" on our Apple and Google devices)? How do we get these
> "additional" functionalities detected and assessed? (How do we know
> that the PMs car isn't carrying a manufacturer-installed bugging device,
> for example?).

If the EFF is to be believed [1], the TPP will give us US-style DMCA
laws, which manufacturers from Lexmark (ink cartridges) to John Deere
(disabling sensors/counters to get out-of-warranty tractors going
again) are already using for less than obviously copyright related
issues.

Bypassing anything resembling DRM/copyright protection (such as engine
management firmware obfuscation) is to become a completely stand-alone
criminal act without any regard for whether there is any copyright
infringement involved (or indeed any of the reasons traditionally
enjoyed as "fair use"). So you have the ridiculous situation where it
might be possible for a copyright holder to be prosecuted for
downloading and storing their own content off YouTube (assuming they
stripped off any rights-identifying metadata or or other related
DRM-defeating things).

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/final-leaked-tpp-text-all-we-feared



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