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Doctorow: "You Can't Destroy the Village to Save It: W3C vs DRM, Round Two"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Jan. 14, 2016

Jan. 14, 2016

JANUARY 12, 2016 | BY CORY DOCTOROW You Can't Destroy the Village to Save It: W3C vs DRM, Round Two The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the nonprofit body that maintains the Web's core standards, made a terrible mistake in 2013: they decided to add DRM—the digital locks that train your computer to say "I can't let you do that, Dave"; rather than "Yes, boss"—to the Web's standards. At the time,we fought the proposal on a principled basis <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/lowering-your-standards>: DRM has no place in the open Internet because of the many ways it shuts down legal, legitimate activities. We lost. So we came back witha new proposal <https://www.eff.org/pages/objection-rechartering-w3c-eme-group>: the W3C could have its cake and eat it too. It could adopt a rule that requires members who help make DRM standards to promise not to sue people who report bugs in tools that conform to those standards, nor could they sue people just for making a standards-based tool that connected to theirs. They could make DRM, but only if they made sure that they took steps to stop that DRM from being used to attack the open Web. This is nowhere near as good as the W3C rejecting DRM altogether, but it's/much/better than nothing. If the W3C is going to create new DRM standards, let them make them in a way that minimizes the risk to security researchers and standards-implementers, the people that the W3C exists to serve. We've asked the W3C to make this into their policy. The only W3C group presently engaged in DRM standardization is due to have its charter renewed in early 2016. The W3C called a poll over that charter during the Christmas month, ending on December 30th. Despite the tight timeline and the number of members who were unavailable over the holidays, a global, diverse coalition of commercial firms, nonprofits and educational institutions came together to endorse this proposal. More than three quarters of those who weighed in on our proposal supported it. Those supporters include Stanford University, the Open University, the University of Southampton, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro,Ripple (a payments company) <https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-eff-open-approach-to-security-will-defin…>, the Hypothes.is project and several others all said that they would not agree with the group being rechartered at all unless EFF's covenenant were made a condition of participation. The proposal is now in the hands of the W3C's executive, specifically W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe and Director Tim Berners-Lee. They have it in their power to substantially mitigate some of the worst potential effects of DRM at the W3C. If the W3C adopts EFF's proposal, they will be saying to the companies that push for DRM: "You are welcome to standardize any technology in our group, but you must promise not to use that work to sue programmers for doing normal things that are important to the Web's openness and survival." To understand why DRM is a bad technology for open standardization, you need to understand the laws that protect it. Around the world, laws like the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Canada's C-11, New Zealand's Bill 92A; and accords like the European EUCD, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and the US-Australian and US-Korean Trade Agreements establish special legal protections for DRM. These governments (and many others) give legal backing to companies that try to lock you out of devices, software, and media that you own, and this interferes with activities like repairing your own electronics or your car, making backups or remixes of videos, auditing the security of medical devices, and many more legitimate and otherwise-lawful activities. It gets worse. In practice, it's not hard to break DRM, so to slow the spread of information about how to remove the locks on the stuff you own, laws like the DMCA also has been used to punish disclosure of bugs and defects. This doesn't mean that bad guys—enemy spies, cyber arms-dealers, voyeurs, identity thieves, and griefers—don't discover and weaponize these bugs. It just means that you don't get to learn about them until they are used in a high-profile attack, or until a brave security researcher risks a lawsuit to come forward. While DRM has many other failings, these two are especially pointed in the context of Web standards: 1. DRM is incompatible with interoperability Interoperability—plugging one thing into another—is why standards exist. Sometimes, vendors welcome interop, offering APIs and other hooks for follow-on tools to plug into. Sometimes, manufacturers don't bother, or actively try to block third party equipment from playing nice with their own (think of inkjet printer cartridges). In the absence of DRM, it's perfectly legit (and common) for manufacturers to figure out how to let you plug something they make into something you own, even when this goes against the wishes of the original manufacturer. You bought it, you own it, you get to decide what you plug into it. DRM exists to stop users from doing things they want to do and to stop innovative companies from helping users do things they want to do -- or would want to do, if they had the option. Your cable box, for example, will be designed to stop you from recording your favorite shows for long-term storage and viewing on the go. But if you could just plug any digital video recorder into your cable box, you could record those shows, move them to your laptop, and watch them ten years from now. DRM locks up the data coming out of your cable box with encryption that is arguably unlawful to break, even to do something legal, like make a copy for personal use. That's not unusual: tech companies have dreamed of the "toaster-maker gets to sell you the bread" business since forever. The common response to this is for a competing manufacturer to design a widget that converts the proprietary, locked output from your gadget into a standard, open one, that can accept a variety of apps, recorders, lightbulbs, bread, etc. DRM laws put a roadblock in the way of this innovation. So DRM only exists to/prevent/compatibility without explicit permission—the opposite of a standard. 2. DRM is a security disaster The prohibition on reporting bugs in systems with DRM makes those bugs last longer, and get exploited harder before they're patched. Last summer,the US Copyright Office collected evidence <https://www.eff.org/document/library-congress-2015-dmca-1201-rules>about DRM interfering with reporting bugs in tractors, cars, medical implants, and critical national infrastructure. The W3C's roadmap for HTML5 is for it to have the flexibility and power to replace apps as the default way to control all those devices and more. If standards-compliant browsers have legal barriers to reporting vulnerabilities in them, it exposes the whole technological world and everything we do in it at risk of attacks that can't be headed off until it's too late. Many of the eminent security researchers who participated in the Copyright Office's latest rulemaking to consider exemptions to Section 1201 of the US DMCA have endorsed EFF's proposal for a nonagression covenant, including Bruce Schneier, Matthew Blaze and Matthew Green. This isn't the first collision between proprietary rights and the W3C. In 1999,the W3C had to decide what to do about software patents <http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/0507-patent-policy-overview/#%284%29>. These patents were and are hugely controversial, and the W3C was looking for a way to be neutral on the question of whether patents were good or bad, while still protecting the Web's openness to anyone who wanted to develop for it. They came up with a brilliant strategy: a patent nonaggression policy—a policy we modelled our DRM proposal on. Under this policy, participation in a W3C group meant that you had to promise your company wouldn't use its patents to sue over anything that group produced. This policy let the W3C take a position on the open Web (the Web is more open when your risk of getting sued for making it better is reduced) without taking a policy on whether patents are good. The DRM covenant does the same thing. Without taking a position on DRM, it takes the inarguable position that the Web gets more open when the number of people who can sue you for reporting bugs in it or connecting new things to it goes down. The World Wide Web Consortium is at a crossroads. Much of the "Web" is disappearing into apps and into the big companies' walled gardens. If it is to be relevant in the decades to come, it must do everything it can to keep the Web open as an/alternative/to those walled gardens. We're trying hard to help them do that. But if the W3C executive won't take the lead on keeping the Web open, they must, at a minimum, not impede those who haven't given up the fight. CC BY

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Diritto all'oblio e pubblicità obbligatoria: come si conciliano?
by Diego Giorio Jan. 14, 2016

Jan. 14, 2016

http://www.altalex.com/documents/news/2015/12/09/diritto-a-oblio-pubblicita… Segnalo questo commento ad un'ordinanza della Corte di Cassazione Saluti a tutti D.

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Why Apple is weighing in on a British government surveillance bill
by Alessandro Mantelero Jan. 13, 2016

Jan. 13, 2016

Why Apple is weighing in on a British government surveillance bill Eerke Boiten http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/why-apple-weighing-british-government-… -- Prof. Avv. Alessandro Mantelero Politecnico di Torino Nexa Center for Internet and Society | Director of Privacy Politecnico di Torino–Tongji University| Coordinator, Double Degree program in Management and IP Law Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology | Part-time Expert, School of Public Administration http://staff.polito.it/alessandro.mantelero @mantelero EMAIL POLICY: twice a day (Mon-Fri)

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Dati pubblici aperti, dati privati protetti
by Diego Giorio Jan. 13, 2016

Jan. 13, 2016

http://www.lastampa.it/2016/01/13/tecnologia/linventore-del-web-bisogna-pre… Un intervento di Sir Tim Berners Lee in occasione di una sua visita in Italia. Saluti a tutti D.

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Private messages at work can be read by employers, says court
by gianluca quaglia Jan. 13, 2016

Jan. 13, 2016

Private messages at work can be read by employers, says court continua qui http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35301148

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convegno giornata europea in materia di privacy 28 gennaio 2016 " La società sorvegliata. I nuovi confini della libertà"
by Mauro Alovisio Jan. 13, 2016

Jan. 13, 2016

Gent.me /i segnalo dal sito del Garante privacy interessante convegno in occasione della giornata europea della protezione dei dati personali http://www.garanteprivacy.it/web/guest/home/docweb/-/docweb-display/docweb/… *28 gennaio 2016 - ore 9,30 - 13,30 Aula del Palazzo dei Gruppi Parlamentari - Via di Campo Marzio, 78 - Roma* *" La società sorvegliata. I nuovi confini della libertà"* *PROGRAMMA* *Apertura dei lavori* *Antonello Soro* - Presidente del Garante per la protezione dei dati personali *Prima sessione* *"Quanto controllo può sopportare una democrazia?"* *Marco Minniti* - Sottosegretario alla Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri *Giuseppe Roma *– Sociologo *Armando Spataro* – Magistrato *Coordina: Augusta Iannini *- Vicepresidente del Garante per la protezione dei dati personali *Seconda sessione* *"Condivisione, profilazione, Big Data"* *Fabio Chiusi* – Giornalista *Maurizio Ferraris* – Filosofo *Guido Scorza* – Avvocato Coordina: *Giovanna Bianchi Clerici* - Componente del Garante per la protezione dei dati personali *Terza sessione* *"Privacy e sicurezza nella società digitale"* *Gian Domenico Caiazza* – Avvocato *Stefania Maurizi *– Giornalista *Carlo Nordio* – Magistrato Coordina: *Licia Califano* - Componente del Garante per la protezione dei dati personali *Chiusura dei lavori* *Laura Boldrini *- Presidente della Camera dei Deputati *R.S.V.P. cerimoniale(a)gpdp.it <cerimoniale(a)gpdp.it>* *L'accesso alla Sala sarà consentito fino alle ore 9,15. Gli uomini sono tenuti a indossare la giacca*

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giochi di prestigio contro la libera diffusione dei beni culturali
by Simone Aliprandi Jan. 13, 2016

Jan. 13, 2016

Ho cercato di ricostruire un quadro abbastanza completo di tutti i "giochetti" con cui si cerca in modo pretestuoso di tenere sotto chiave beni culturali che non dovrebbero essere sottoposti più ad alcuna limitazione: http://www.mysolutionpost.it/blogs/it-law/piana/2016/libera-diffusione-beni…. Se avete ulteriori casi da segnalare e commenti su quanto da me scritto, sarebbe utile che me li segnalaste in modo che possa tenerne conto per un eventuale articolo di approfondimento. Grazie. Un caro saluto. -- Simone Aliprandi - http://www.aliprandi.org | http://www.array.eu

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licenziamento per utilizzo mail a fini personali
by Mauro Alovisio Jan. 13, 2016

Jan. 13, 2016

Gent.mi segnalo interessante sentenza della corte europea dei diritti dell'uomo su licenziamento per utilizzo mail per fini personali http://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/digital/38930_usi-la-mail-aziendale-com… http://www.lastampa.it/2016/01/12/tecnologia/le-aziende-possono-controllare…

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82° Mercoledì di Nexa - 13 gennaio 2016
by Giuseppe Futia Jan. 12, 2016

Jan. 12, 2016

Se non visualizzi correttamente questo messaggio clicca qui <http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-82> NEXA 82° Mercoledì di Nexa Mercoledi 13 gennaio 2016, ore 18.00 - 20.00 Via Boggio 65/a, Torino (primo piano) http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-82 Perché Internet è anti-utopia Speaker Fabio Chiusi (giornalista e fellow del Centro Nexa) Ingresso libero This event will be webcast live: http://nexa.polito.it/upcoming-events I giochi sono finiti, per la privacy”, dice il fondatore di WikiLeaks, Julian Assange: la sorveglianza di massa online è un fatto, e continuerà a esserlo. Per questo dovremmo concentrarci su cosa significhi vivere - e proteggere i propri dati personali - in un mondo che è una “casa di vetro”, sì, ma non per i controllori: per i controllati. Quella di Assange è tuttavia solo una goccia in un mare di opinioni analoghe: se, si chiedono molti osservatori qualificati, la rete Internet è nata con una promessa di utopia - uguaglianza, democrazia, conoscenza, ma soprattutto libertà - come mai oggi non parliamo che del suo contrario? Come mai, nella cronaca come nella cultura (libri, fumetti, film), almeno a partire dal ‘Datagate’ non facciamo che associare il web alla distopia? Come mai i fatti sembrano perfino più cupi delle fantasie anti-utopiche oggi tornate, non a caso, di gran moda? E soprattutto: perché per l’opinione pubblica questo massiccio slittamento dai diritti ai doveri è del tutto o quasi indolore? Eppure la rete produce ulteriori disuguaglianze, posti di lavoro vanno in fumo perché automatizzati o resi superflui dalle nuove intelligenze artificiali, gli algoritmi sostituiscono esseri umani in decisioni sempre più umane: sono fatti dibattuti, ma concreti. È per via di forme di propaganda e manipolazione insidiose e invisibili, sui social network come sui motori di ricerca, o è davvero la perdita generalizzata del valore stesso di tutelare la propria privacy online? In questo incontro, l’obiettivo è formulare alcune considerazioni che contribuiscano a una risposta alle difficili ma cruciali domande poste dalla nostra era iperconnessa e ipercontrollata, tra cui: * cos’è l’utopia internettiana, e perché sta fallendo * cos’è una distopia tecnologica, e sue tracce nella cronaca * come l’antiutopia di Internet ha fatto irruzione nella cultura popolare * il ruolo della retorica della “sicurezza nazionale” nella distopia internettiana e quello, paradossale, dell’ideologia del “digitale” * dopo l’antiutopia: fine della democrazia o del capitalismo? * alcune possibili forme di resistenza: dalla “obfuscation” al “cifrare tutto”, dalle carte dei diritti in Internet alle riforme politiche Di questo tema discuteremo con *Fabio Chiusi*, giornalista e fellow del Centro Nexa su Internet & Società. BIOGRAFIA - e informazioni supplementari [Fabio Chiusi] FABIO CHIUSI è un giornalista freelance (Wired, L'Espresso, Repubblica) e un blogger (ilNichilista <http://ilnichilista.com/>, Chiusi nella Rete <http://chiusinellarete-messaggeroveneto.blogautore.repubblica.it/>) che scrive regolarmente di censura e sorveglianza su Internet, analizzando il complesso rapporto tra tecnologie digitali, politica e società. Ha conseguito un "Master of Science" in Filosofia della Scienza presso la London School of Economics. È autore di /Critica della democrazia digitale. La politica 2.0 alla prova dei fatti/ (Codice Edizioni). Letture consigliate e link utili: * Barlow, J. P. (1996), /A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace/ <https://projects.eff.org/%7Ebarlow/Declaration-Final.html> * Brunton, F. e Nissenbaum, H. (2015), /Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest/, The MIT Press, London * Mason, P. (2015), /Postcapitalism: a Guide to Our Future, Allen Lane, UK/ // /Ulteriori link utili e letture consigliate sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-82 / // Che cosa sono il Centro Nexa e i cicli di incontri “Mercoledì di Nexa” e “Nexa Lunch Seminar” Il Centro Nexa su Internet & Società del Politecnico di Torino (Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica) è un centro di ricerca indipendente e interdisciplinare che studia Internet e il suo effetto sulla società. Maggiori informazioni all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/about. Durante i “*Mercoledì di Nexa*”, che si tengono *ogni 2° mercoledì del mese* alle *ore 18 in punto*, il Centro Nexa su Internet e Società apre le sue porte non solo agli esperti e a tutti coloro i quali lavorano con Internet, ma anche a semplici appassionati e cittadini. Il ciclo di incontri intende approfondire, con un linguaggio preciso ma divulgativo, i temi legati alla Rete: motori di ricerca, Creative Commons, social networks, open source/software libero, neutralità della rete, libertà di espressione, privacy, file sharing, big e open data, smart cities e molto altro. Al centro di quasi tutti gli incontri un ospite pronto a dialogare con i direttori del Centro Nexa, il Prof. Juan Carlos De Martin del Politecnico di Torino e il Prof. Marco Ricolfi dell'Università di Torino, nonché lo staff e i Fellows del Centro Nexa. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa, incluso un elenco di tutti i “Mercoledì” passati, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi. Si segnala inoltre che dal maggio 2012 *ogni 4° mercoledì* del mese *dalle ore 13 alle ore 14* il Centro Nexa organizza anche i "*Nexa Lunch Seminar*". Una lista di tutti i “Lunch Seminar” passati è disponibile all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/lunch-seminars. See our events calendar <http://nexa.polito.it/events> if you're curious about future luncheons, discussions, lectures, and conferences not listed in this email. Our events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa e i Nexa Lunch Seminar, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/events. Weekly Events Newsletter. Sign up <http://nexa.polito.it/mailing-lists> to receive this newsletter if this email was forwarded to you. To manage your subscription preferences, please click here <https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa>. Connect & get involved: Jobs, internships, and more <http://nexa.polito.it/get-involved> Nexa Center for Internet and Society Newsletter

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Berkman Center Webcast live oggi ore 18 - Haiti, Machine Learning, and Ankle Holsters: Reflections on the U.S. Treasury Department in the Late 1990s
by Giuseppe Futia Jan. 12, 2016

Jan. 12, 2016

Haiti, Machine Learning, and Ankle Holsters: Reflections on the U.S. Treasury Department in the Late 1990s https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/01/Cuellar <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2014/06/sigal> *with California Supreme Court Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar* Today, 6.00 pm Webcast live: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/webcast http://nexa.polito.it/berkman-webcast-live In 1997, as a freshly-minted lawyer, Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar joined the staff of the Treasury Department’s Office of Enforcement. Almost immediately, he was drawn into some of the fascinating issues that Treasury confronted at the time, from the regulation of electronic money to international policing and anti-corruption initiatives. In this talk, he’ll reflect on his years at Treasury and discuss some of the connections between the challenges he encountered at Treasury then and some of the dilemmas facing the world today. About Justice Cuéllar Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar began serving on the California Supreme Court in January 2015. His previous career was in public service, university administration, and legal academia, with a focus on administrative, criminal, and international law. A full-time Stanford University faculty member from 2001 to 2015, he was the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law and Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science before joining the judiciary. Cuéllar also was Director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Co-Director of the Institute's Center for International Security and Cooperation, and led university-wide initiatives on global poverty and on cybersecurity. In the federal executive branch, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy at the White House (2009-2010), Co-Chair of the Presidential Transition Task Force on Immigration (2008-2009), and Council Member of the U.S. Administrative Conference (2010-2015), among other positions. Cuéllar is on the boards of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the American Law Institute, and the American Bar Foundation, and leads the California judiciary's Language Access Implementation Task Force. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Cuéllar began his career after law school at the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Enforcement, and clerked for Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. A naturalized U.S. citizen born in northern Mexico, he is a graduate of Calexico High School in California's Imperial Valley, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale Law School.

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