[00:00.000 --> 00:01.720]  The corporations attack.
[00:05.960 --> 00:13.740]  We have Acidus and Virgil who hacked a university student ID system and got sued.
[00:15.060 --> 00:22.680]  There have been times in the past where 2600 and on off the hook, people have called in and said, Man, you guys are so political.
[00:22.880 --> 00:24.100]  I'm tired of all the politics.
[00:24.100 --> 00:28.880]  But you tend to become really interested in politics when somebody shows up at your door with a subpoena.
[00:30.160 --> 00:39.420]  We also have Dan Morgan of Satellite Watch News, which I mentioned before, described how things work and got in a lot of trouble for it.
[00:39.920 --> 00:45.620]  And we also have Wendy Seltzer with the EFF and I'm going to let her begin.
[00:47.400 --> 00:57.540]  Thank you very much for inviting us to join you here as Electronic Frontier Foundation, Premier Online Civil Liberties Organization.
[00:57.800 --> 00:59.060]  We're a member-supported nonprofit.
[00:59.280 --> 01:03.260]  We've got a table at the back and that's the end of the non-commercial pitch.
[01:03.860 --> 01:09.440]  But this is a really important subject here.
[01:10.480 --> 01:19.640]  When corporations attack, they often seem to think that the laws are written just for them and just from their perspective.
[01:20.920 --> 01:34.560]  And they seem also to think that hiring expensive lawyers gives them the right to do whatever they want, running all over the rights of individuals, of small organizations, even small businesses.
[01:34.560 --> 01:43.220]  And one of EFF's very important projects is to make sure that they don't get to rewrite the law to their ends.
[01:43.560 --> 01:52.560]  I run the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse online at chillingeffects.org where we collect cease and desist letters that corporations send out.
[01:52.560 --> 02:11.080]  Very often they rewrite the laws as they would like to see them, claiming that copyright law protects them against any reverse engineering of their products, even though copyright law, in fact, protects reverse engineering for interoperability.
[02:11.500 --> 02:27.520]  You see corporations claiming that trademark law prevents anyone from criticizing a product and calling it by name, or prevents people from putting up parody sites or educational sites using the trademark.
[02:28.040 --> 02:37.080]  They send out the nasty letters and far too often people see that and think it's the law and are deterred.
[02:37.080 --> 02:51.140]  We're trying to help people understand those, that even corporations face limits on their powers, and that even they have to live by the laws as they're written and interpreted.
[02:51.880 --> 03:01.740]  And at Schilling Effects we post these cease and desist letters with annotations to help people understand that they do have legal rights in response.
[03:01.740 --> 03:19.740]  And we're available at EFF to talk with people who are in situations like this to help you understand your rights and to help catalog the way that the law is being used.
[03:20.360 --> 03:26.800]  So, for example, we have a catalog of DMCA uses and abuses.
[03:26.800 --> 03:36.540]  So, big Hollywood entertainment companies claim that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is necessary to protect their works against piracy.
[03:37.040 --> 03:51.620]  They claim that without the DMCA they never distribute digital works, never give the public the high quality DVDs that they've been producing.
[03:51.620 --> 04:05.460]  And we show that DMCA is not only being used to protect DVDs but to prevent you from playing your DVDs on a Linux operating system.
[04:05.740 --> 04:13.680]  Or to prevent you from interoperating with the DVD player to make a clip for a fair use excerpt.
[04:13.680 --> 04:19.620]  And not only is the DMCA being used to protect movies, it's being used to protect printer cartridges.
[04:20.200 --> 04:28.040]  Lexmark claims that the DMCA permits you from interoperating your own printer cartridges with its printer.
[04:28.320 --> 04:35.060]  Because the printer cartridge does a little software handshake with the printer before starting up.
[04:35.060 --> 04:41.200]  And they claim that that's an authentication measure protected against circumvention by the DMCA.
[04:41.600 --> 04:55.480]  And, as I think Virgil and Acidus will tell you, the DMCA is often waved around as a frightening piece of legislation because it can have pretty scary consequences.
[04:57.780 --> 05:11.080]  We're there trying to provide a backstop for people to say, you know, we've still got some rights and we've got to fight for those as well as fighting in Congress to pull some of those rights back to us.
[05:11.780 --> 05:25.560]  Do you really think that, in our lifetime, it will ever change to where we have those rights back or will the Constitution of the United States keep being crushed by corporate America?
[05:29.340 --> 05:41.560]  As this whole list things work from time to time, we've got to have some hope that fighting in the courts in front of smart judges and educating our representatives about what these laws really...
[05:42.140 --> 05:44.320]  ...that we'll be able to turn the...
[05:45.600 --> 05:47.480]  Alright, we're going to get this thing going.
[05:47.640 --> 05:48.440]  My name's Dan Morgan.
[05:48.620 --> 05:50.040]  I used to publish a Satellite Watch News.
[05:50.160 --> 05:50.840]  I don't do it anymore.
[05:51.860 --> 05:54.280]  Because corporate America said, I can't do it.
[05:54.920 --> 05:56.600]  These guys introduce themselves down there.
[05:56.720 --> 05:57.400]  Take it away for a minute.
[05:58.080 --> 05:59.280]  Hi, I'm Acidus.
[06:00.800 --> 06:05.220]  I kind of found out firsthand with Virgil how corporations will knee-jerk.
[06:06.700 --> 06:11.640]  You're going to hear us talk a lot about laws and you're probably going to sit there and go, blah, blah, blah.
[06:12.020 --> 06:14.040]  You know, DMCA this, that, doesn't really affect me.
[06:14.220 --> 06:18.140]  Well, when you see something wrong and you try to fix it and then a bunch of lawyers...
[06:18.140 --> 06:22.400]  You're at a con and at 1.30 in the morning, the con organizers come and knock on your door.
[06:22.500 --> 06:25.260]  They're saying, you're being sued for presenting this type of information.
[06:25.260 --> 06:29.860]  You find out really damn fast the extent of these laws and exactly how scary they are.
[06:30.060 --> 06:36.060]  So I highly encourage everyone, you know, try not to think of this as some legalese, this, that, and the other.
[06:37.020 --> 06:39.100]  They...it's frightening how much they really affect you.
[06:40.360 --> 06:40.680]  Yeah.
[06:41.200 --> 06:42.140]  I'll just second all of that.
[06:42.320 --> 06:45.360]  I mean, of course, being 2600, it's like, oh, well, of course you're doing politics.
[06:45.600 --> 06:47.040]  Well, that's what 2600 does.
[06:48.120 --> 06:50.380]  I don't know, it...and like, well, that's that.
[06:50.580 --> 06:56.320]  But I don't know, it really is annoying when you're doing, like, normal research, not really bothering anyone, then the lawyers show up at your door.
[06:56.600 --> 06:58.780]  I mean, you know, it kind of puts a hamper on things.
[06:59.800 --> 07:04.140]  So, yeah, it actually is important that you watch and look at these things.
[07:04.920 --> 07:05.300]  Yeah.
[07:06.100 --> 07:08.560]  The attitude of the satellite watch news when I bought it.
[07:08.640 --> 07:09.800]  First of all, I did purchase this.
[07:09.880 --> 07:11.240]  I bought it from a gentleman in Virginia.
[07:12.120 --> 07:19.000]  Because I...it's because I was a subscriber, and the person that was publishing it was getting tired of writing.
[07:19.460 --> 07:21.380]  He had published it during the days of C-Band.
[07:21.460 --> 07:23.300]  Does anyone in here know what C-Band satellite is?
[07:23.860 --> 07:24.420]  All right.
[07:25.340 --> 07:28.220]  C-Band is the big, ugly dish that you see in people's yards nowadays.
[07:28.220 --> 07:35.820]  If you...if you see them in anybody's yard, they're usually pointed towards the ground because they have a small mini dish cable from the sky.
[07:37.240 --> 07:47.280]  It was always our policy and belief that if you put something in space, you pay to put a satellite in space, put that programming on it, you encrypt it.
[07:47.340 --> 07:48.080]  That's your programming.
[07:48.240 --> 07:49.120]  You're entitled to revenue.
[07:50.200 --> 07:54.360]  That should not be stolen or hacked or taken.
[07:55.460 --> 08:09.440]  However, the position of the satellite watch news was to report both sides of the industry, even the compromises and what people did not want you to hear, who were transmitting those pay TV signals.
[08:09.660 --> 08:10.560]  And we did that.
[08:10.740 --> 08:12.160]  We...we did very well at it.
[08:14.100 --> 08:37.120]  We found by doing that and doing a good job for many years, that A, the original people who started encrypting satellite signals, General Instruments, HBO was the big start of the whole thing, home box office on C-band, would eventually be hacked.
[08:37.440 --> 08:38.840]  And it would be some years later.
[08:39.840 --> 08:45.740]  It would be done when they brought out or implemented the home video site for the Scrambler.
[08:45.740 --> 08:47.020]  In the beginning, nothing was scrambled.
[08:47.880 --> 08:49.900]  The programmers found out it was...
[08:51.920 --> 08:56.320]  The programmers eventually found out that people were stealing their signals because it was free to air.
[08:56.600 --> 08:59.280]  And they decided to do something about it, so they contracted General Instruments.
[08:59.360 --> 09:00.460]  General Instruments made a box.
[09:00.920 --> 09:02.160]  And they started selling it.
[09:02.320 --> 09:03.240]  Everybody started to encrypt.
[09:03.340 --> 09:04.920]  Analog, video, digital audio.
[09:06.420 --> 09:08.260]  That went along for a number of years.
[09:08.720 --> 09:12.600]  This magazine started writing about it back when the previous publisher had it.
[09:12.600 --> 09:17.820]  General Instruments never bothered the previous publisher one little bit.
[09:18.800 --> 09:24.020]  During that time, prior to buying this thing, I was doing a satellite radio talk show about satellite technology.
[09:25.400 --> 09:30.860]  The chief security officer for General Instruments calls me one day and said he'd like to be on my radio program.
[09:31.320 --> 09:32.860]  His name is Jim Shelton.
[09:34.180 --> 09:40.740]  Jim came on the show and he said how much he enjoyed this publication, the satellite watch news.
[09:40.740 --> 09:45.520]  Now, mind you, he's the chief security officer for General Instruments.
[09:46.420 --> 09:48.920]  And I said, Jim, why do you enjoy it?
[09:49.060 --> 09:51.240]  He said, number one, you tell us where we're lacking.
[09:52.440 --> 09:54.100]  We should know that, but we don't.
[09:55.080 --> 09:59.720]  He said, number two, you give us a source of the people selling it.
[10:01.240 --> 10:07.760]  And I said, then why hasn't there been many raids at all?
[10:07.760 --> 10:09.420]  There was a few raids, big known people.
[10:09.720 --> 10:12.180]  Very few raids, though, in this country at the time.
[10:13.000 --> 10:18.020]  He said, because over time, we like to see it get implemented in people's homes.
[10:18.240 --> 10:25.740]  And eventually, we take great pride and pleasure in actually shutting it off because we find out the cloned key.
[10:25.740 --> 10:28.140]  So they had this cloned key.
[10:28.380 --> 10:42.480]  What it was is someone was building a device, taking the EEPROM with the instruction set, taking a known working subscribe descrambler, and cloning several units to the master descrambler.
[10:43.620 --> 10:48.460]  Well, this went on and on and on for years, but General Instruments never did attack the magazine.
[10:50.260 --> 11:01.020]  Then I'd been running it for a couple years, and in 1997, I was running it probably for about four years then, I received a cease and desist order from DirecTV.
[11:01.800 --> 11:05.960]  They said, A, we would like you to drop all the advertising in your magazine.
[11:05.960 --> 11:10.020]  Well, no magazine can be supported on subscription-based alone.
[11:10.520 --> 11:12.420]  You need your advertisers.
[11:14.640 --> 11:30.560]  Knowing that we at Satellite Watch News had never been directly involved in any type of compromise, felt that in no way we were in jeopardy or violating any law, we ignored the cease and desist order.
[11:32.080 --> 11:33.680]  Several months went by.
[11:35.960 --> 11:38.780]  I want to say probably about four months.
[11:39.520 --> 11:41.620]  A gentleman walks in my office one day, never seen before.
[11:41.680 --> 11:42.600]  I live in a small community.
[11:42.720 --> 11:43.920]  It's kind of like Podunk Nowhere.
[11:44.720 --> 11:45.560]  You know everybody.
[11:45.880 --> 11:46.760]  This guy walks in.
[11:46.840 --> 11:47.860]  He says, You Dan Morgan?
[11:47.920 --> 11:48.480]  I said, Yes, sir.
[11:48.720 --> 11:49.380]  I said, Can I help you?
[11:49.880 --> 11:51.880]  He says, I've got a Christmas present for you, pal.
[11:52.240 --> 11:55.340]  Slaps down a 23-page summons and complaint.
[11:56.320 --> 11:59.200]  Of course, the first big bold line, you are being sued.
[12:01.040 --> 12:07.520]  And goes on to have me sign the paper and out the door I go.
[12:07.680 --> 12:09.640]  So I sat down and read this in real disbelief.
[12:09.840 --> 12:11.000]  Real, real disbelief.
[12:13.280 --> 12:23.380]  The following night was Wednesday night and I did my radio show from 9 to midnight and talked about what had happened that day.
[12:25.920 --> 12:31.800]  At first, I guess I was really pissed off, upset, mad angry.
[12:32.820 --> 12:45.760]  But then, talking about it on the radio show and explaining it to people, it's amazing who really listens to what you're trying to tell people if you're telling the truth.
[12:45.760 --> 12:50.340]  The next morning, I get a call from two attorneys that were subscribers.
[12:51.620 --> 12:57.480]  And so we started discussing, you know, he wanted to see the summons and complaint, wanted me to fax some copies.
[12:57.800 --> 13:06.680]  And of course, you want to qualify anybody that may represent you in federal court, and I did that.
[13:06.680 --> 13:09.860]  And the next day, I faxed him the summons and complaint.
[13:10.320 --> 13:13.380]  And we got it underway, our whole program underway.
[13:13.400 --> 13:14.540]  We started building a defense.
[13:20.580 --> 13:33.020]  Ultimately, to make a long story really short, the attorney I had, I feel, was bought off by direct television.
[13:34.380 --> 13:35.920]  And I'll tell you why.
[13:37.220 --> 13:42.380]  Three days before depositions, he calls me up.
[13:42.560 --> 13:49.840]  We had done a prior radio show talking in general about possible defenses, very generalized defenses.
[13:51.140 --> 14:01.060]  He said, we talked about these on the radio, and somehow he felt that breached our client attorney privilege.
[14:02.440 --> 14:08.100]  I passed it by several other attorneys, and they said the man wanted out.
[14:08.360 --> 14:11.780]  Someone scared him, and scared him badly.
[14:12.660 --> 14:14.600]  Would you like to interject something on this?
[14:14.680 --> 14:15.920]  I see you over here going...
[14:15.920 --> 14:23.380]  Yes, because the attorney-client privilege is always something that's the client's to choose to do with what he wants.
[14:23.380 --> 14:33.140]  And so that is really improper, almost unethical behavior of an attorney to withdraw over that.
[14:33.480 --> 14:36.780]  So now, depositions are going to happen.
[14:37.360 --> 14:41.420]  Believe you me, you think actually being right in the courtroom is scary?
[14:42.620 --> 14:44.480]  These depositions were scary.
[14:44.740 --> 14:46.220]  These people have big teeth.
[14:46.940 --> 14:48.260]  This is DirecTV.
[14:48.260 --> 14:51.480]  Does anybody really know who DirecTV really is?
[14:52.760 --> 14:54.100]  General Motors!
[14:54.320 --> 14:55.420]  And who else?
[14:55.680 --> 14:56.080]  Hughes.
[14:56.120 --> 14:57.880]  Hughes Aerospace, that's correct.
[15:00.400 --> 15:05.100]  Well, I've got to tell you, they own the American Constitution.
[15:07.380 --> 15:09.860]  Our Constitution... they do.
[15:10.260 --> 15:12.480]  Our Constitution was traded for dollars.
[15:12.480 --> 15:20.280]  You know, I spent three tours in Vietnam, 20 years in the military, intelligence, fighting for this.
[15:21.980 --> 15:23.200]  This don't exist.
[15:23.660 --> 15:26.380]  Your American Constitution is the American dollar.
[15:27.700 --> 15:29.220]  That's exactly what it is.
[15:29.460 --> 15:31.540]  And it's been a real tough thing.
[15:31.740 --> 15:33.580]  I'm sure Wendy disagrees with that.
[15:33.740 --> 15:34.800]  She's an attorney.
[15:34.800 --> 15:42.760]  But, folks, really, your innocence is determined by the amount of money in your wallet.
[15:43.540 --> 15:46.280]  It's not determined about what is right and what is wrong.
[15:46.580 --> 15:48.180]  It's the amount of money in your wallet.
[15:48.720 --> 15:54.200]  To make a long story really short, because I know these guys want to get on to some stuff too, I was sued.
[15:55.020 --> 15:56.900]  The judgment was one million dollars.
[15:59.420 --> 16:01.640]  Today, this judgment has not been satisfied.
[16:02.260 --> 16:03.660]  It still hangs over my head.
[16:04.460 --> 16:06.900]  And I'd like to read a letter...
[16:08.180 --> 16:08.980]  I'm a letter...
[16:08.980 --> 16:09.820]  When do you read this?
[16:10.260 --> 16:11.080]  This is hard.
[16:12.720 --> 16:14.960]  That my attorney wrote in the final issue.
[16:19.370 --> 16:28.190]  Dear subscribers, it pains me as the attorney for Dan Morgan, Morgan Aerospace, Inc., and Satellite Watch News, to announce that this is the last issue of the magazine.
[16:28.190 --> 16:37.310]  Unfortunately, the unlimited resources and bankroll of DirecTV and other plaintiffs had literally forced Satellite Watch News and Dan Morgan to shut down operations.
[16:37.910 --> 16:50.290]  Dan Morgan has been forced by DirecTV to close the Satellite Watch News, the DB1 radio show, and has basically been banned from participating in anything to do with, quote, underground satellite technology.
[16:51.030 --> 16:58.870]  A permanent injunction has been ordered by the United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, prohibiting Dan Morgan and Morgan Aerospace, Inc.
[16:58.970 --> 17:09.070]  from publishing, selling, and any issues of Satellite Watch News, publishing, or accepting for publication any advertisements for the sale or use of counterfeit access cards.
[17:09.390 --> 17:20.810]  Dan is also prohibited from publishing or accepting for publication any information intended to promote the use of counterfeit access cards or to assist third persons in the use of satellite signal theft devices.
[17:21.290 --> 17:29.210]  And finally, has been required to turn over the master copy and all other copies of Pirate Video 9 to the plaintiffs.
[17:30.150 --> 17:34.790]  It will be interesting to see if DirecTV will pick on someone its own size in the near future.
[17:35.290 --> 17:47.050]  Hopefully, it will be a corporation with the financial backing and resources to really determine whether it is legal for a publisher to sell advertising space to a vendor who deals in merchandise that is deemed illegal within the United States.
[17:47.250 --> 17:50.150]  There are numerous magazines that continue to do so today.
[17:51.290 --> 17:53.350]  The attitude in the world today is frightening.
[17:53.350 --> 17:56.510]  As a young man, I've listened to people tell me that America has changed.
[17:56.810 --> 18:01.850]  I've listened for years about the insidious nature and agenda that big business and government has taken on.
[18:02.150 --> 18:05.990]  I really resisted the temptation to believe nobody wants to be betrayed.
[18:06.250 --> 18:11.750]  Nobody wants to believe that because of money and greed that our nation is at risk of losing its heart and soul, the Constitution.
[18:12.110 --> 18:20.770]  The principles of freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press, privacy rights, are all being bombarded by corporate America and by your own government.
[18:22.990 --> 18:24.230]  That's basically it.
[18:24.350 --> 18:25.230]  That's what it says.
[18:25.610 --> 18:28.230]  You know, we're all going to get it one day.
[18:28.490 --> 18:36.490]  And again, I cannot instill in you how important it is to do something about something when it's actually being done to you and it's wrong.
[18:36.730 --> 18:39.990]  Don't sit and wait to protect your Constitution, folks.
[18:40.490 --> 18:48.910]  If you get a chance to make a difference, most people will never believe what happens to us because they've never been in our shoes, ever.
[18:49.490 --> 18:52.790]  They sit home, they hear about this, they hear about that, and they go, oh, good, good, good.
[18:52.870 --> 18:56.470]  But when it happens to them, they're going, wow, what do I do?
[18:57.070 --> 19:02.550]  If you start taking care of what's left of the Constitution, if anything, it'll have it if you ever need it.
[19:02.670 --> 19:04.470]  And we can talk about this a lot more later.
[19:04.470 --> 19:06.570]  I want these guys to get on with their stuff, too.
[19:06.790 --> 19:07.130]  Thank you.
[19:07.630 --> 19:07.890]  Sure.
[19:14.210 --> 19:25.730]  I think one thing Virgil and I will certainly wholeheartedly endorse is that money and law is a big concern.
[19:26.650 --> 19:37.910]  As it said in the newsletter, you know, the unlimited resources that companies can bring to bear against you when you're threatening their revenue stream is staggering until it's centered on you.
[19:38.390 --> 19:48.610]  And you don't really realize the scope of the people you pissed off until you see what they're coming after you with.
[19:49.130 --> 19:57.610]  Virgil and I basically took a crack at a campus card system, something that all of you, if you go to a university...
[19:58.250 --> 19:59.350]  Let's put it on the slide thing.
[20:00.270 --> 20:02.570]  You probably have something that looks like this.
[20:02.830 --> 20:04.510]  It's got a mag stripe on the back.
[20:04.790 --> 20:06.970]  And this is my life at college.
[20:07.550 --> 20:07.990]  I...
[20:11.920 --> 20:25.080]  Actually, coincidentally enough, after Virgil and I raised a big stink about the security of these things, the institute I go to, Georgia Institute of Technology, they implemented a plan that was supposed to be deployed over three years of removing the social security numbers from the cards.
[20:25.100 --> 20:29.800]  They redeployed it in three months after our article came out and after we got sued.
[20:30.020 --> 20:32.240]  So there was a plus side.
[20:33.520 --> 20:33.980]  Yeah.
[20:34.520 --> 20:41.420]  Actually, for the record, if you have cards like that, most of you probably do, they probably use basically the exact same system.
[20:41.960 --> 20:45.620]  And we were just generally interested people, just looking at things.
[20:46.200 --> 20:48.000]  And while this was around, it looked interesting.
[20:48.400 --> 20:51.780]  And, of course, like the rest of you, we'd like to find something interesting.
[20:52.460 --> 20:52.920]  We published.
[20:53.060 --> 20:55.560]  We asked us to publish an article in 2600.
[20:55.940 --> 21:00.340]  And then he and I later tried to present our findings at a conference.
[21:00.540 --> 21:02.260]  And, of course, he was like, very pertinent things.
[21:02.320 --> 21:03.120]  You know, it's like everywhere.
[21:04.800 --> 21:10.300]  And then we get a knock at the door and it's Johnny X telling us that, oh, the lawyers are coming.
[21:10.500 --> 21:11.500]  It's like, oh, well, hmm.
[21:12.240 --> 21:12.400]  Uh-huh.
[21:13.060 --> 21:13.860]  You know, I mean, you don't really...
[21:13.860 --> 21:16.780]  I mean, you know, this entire thing was not really expected.
[21:17.240 --> 21:19.680]  And to put it lightly.
[21:20.420 --> 21:25.860]  That's really the key here is you do things that you don't really expect anyone to care about.
[21:26.000 --> 21:27.640]  I mean, the funny thing is this.
[21:27.760 --> 21:34.780]  If we hadn't gotten sued, we would have gave a presentation in front of, you know, 200-something people about what we thought is a pretty interesting system.
[21:34.800 --> 21:36.100]  And that would probably be the end of it.
[21:37.020 --> 21:41.700]  As Laszlo pointed out, one of the big kind of themes in this conference is become the media.
[21:41.860 --> 21:42.980]  You need to educate people.
[21:43.200 --> 21:51.040]  I think Virgil and I owe a pretty big debt to the fact that we didn't get screwed more is because our story was picked up by Slashdot.
[21:51.160 --> 21:52.560]  They talked about it on Off The Hook.
[21:53.140 --> 21:54.520]  People were sending...
[21:54.520 --> 22:00.340]  Blackboard was getting such bad negative press, they wanted to end this as quickly and painlessly as possible.
[22:01.700 --> 22:05.300]  And getting the mainstream public to understand more about hacking.
[22:06.100 --> 22:07.120]  You know, they see...
[22:07.120 --> 22:11.980]  We were on the front page of the Washington Post and it says, you know, hackers prevented from giving talk.
[22:12.180 --> 22:17.680]  And, you know, your average, you know, Joe six-pack is going to see that and go, damn, hackers trying to take my credit card number?
[22:17.780 --> 22:18.200]  Fuck them.
[22:18.540 --> 22:20.360]  I mean, that's what they're going to say.
[22:20.660 --> 22:23.760]  And it's all about educating them that it's more.
[22:24.140 --> 22:26.260]  Virgil and I were looking at... we viewed as simple research.
[22:26.260 --> 22:28.860]  As I said, if you go to a university, you have to use this.
[22:28.960 --> 22:29.720]  You don't have an alternative.
[22:30.560 --> 22:33.400]  And our initial thing was we were concerned about the security of this.
[22:33.740 --> 22:36.820]  Now granted, we can't really talk too specifically about what we found.
[22:36.960 --> 22:38.540]  Or anything about what we found.
[22:38.540 --> 22:39.760]  That's kind of like what we got sued.
[22:40.140 --> 22:41.480]  The information is out there.
[22:41.580 --> 22:42.120]  It's been published.
[22:42.140 --> 22:42.860]  It's been mirrored.
[22:45.020 --> 22:47.260]  We viewed this as a rather innocuous thing.
[22:47.460 --> 22:52.060]  We viewed it as something we saw that it was a wrong we thought we could address.
[22:52.300 --> 22:53.900]  We did research into it.
[22:55.340 --> 22:59.800]  And we never expected that a corporation would react as violently as we did.
[23:00.300 --> 23:04.240]  A friend of ours gave us a t-shirt, kind of a la the American Express commercials.
[23:04.400 --> 23:06.180]  And it says, EFF membership, $20.
[23:06.760 --> 23:12.540]  You know, Industrial Espionage Act violation, you know, half a million dollars.
[23:13.280 --> 23:17.380]  DMCA violation, which we also were threatened with but not charged with, half a million dollars.
[23:17.520 --> 23:20.400]  And it says on the back, Acidus and Virgil must shut the hell up, priceless.
[23:22.020 --> 23:23.240]  And that's what they'll do.
[23:23.240 --> 23:30.060]  They will use unlimited amounts of funds and try to scare the hell out of you to stop talking.
[23:30.340 --> 23:32.600]  And to be quite frank, it works pretty effectively.
[23:33.080 --> 23:33.820]  It does.
[23:34.040 --> 23:36.620]  You know, I'm not going to try to say, yes, I'm brave and I'll stand up.
[23:36.720 --> 23:39.400]  You know, when you're 22 years old, you don't...
[23:39.400 --> 23:41.160]  I make less than 10 grand a year.
[23:41.160 --> 23:42.660]  And now I'm on college loans.
[23:42.760 --> 23:46.640]  And when a corporation comes up to you and says, we are going to screw you over.
[23:46.760 --> 23:47.800]  We are going to sue you.
[23:47.940 --> 23:52.400]  We are going to, you know, threaten all sorts of felonies and misdemeanors and everything.
[23:52.940 --> 23:57.220]  When you feel you're just doing the right thing, it's very overwhelming.
[23:58.740 --> 24:00.880]  Porkchop, in the previous talk, he said something really good.
[24:00.880 --> 24:05.140]  There's a difference between legality and morality.
[24:05.700 --> 24:07.080]  And I don't think...
[24:07.080 --> 24:10.360]  Even now, Virgil and I would ever question our morality in this.
[24:10.480 --> 24:11.880]  We felt we were doing the right thing.
[24:11.980 --> 24:15.160]  We felt we were trying to educate and prevent problems.
[24:16.280 --> 24:19.480]  And the legality of it kind of caught up to us pretty quickly.
[24:22.100 --> 24:23.480]  Would you even...
[24:24.460 --> 24:26.000]  I mean, you guys got busted.
[24:26.140 --> 24:27.020]  You were 22 years old.
[24:27.160 --> 24:27.560]  Is that...
[24:27.560 --> 24:29.120]  $10,000 a year.
[24:29.360 --> 24:30.820]  How would you like to have been in my spot?
[24:31.380 --> 24:34.500]  $150,000 a year business taken away from you overnight.
[24:34.700 --> 24:34.900]  Bang.
[24:35.360 --> 24:35.800]  Ouch.
[24:36.060 --> 24:37.420]  I mean, it was just gone.
[24:38.240 --> 24:39.080]  They took it.
[24:39.160 --> 24:39.900]  They shut it down.
[24:40.120 --> 24:47.460]  As a matter of fact, they had a federal marshal come up and lock the place up until everything that could be reproduced was gone.
[24:48.360 --> 24:49.300]  Pretty scary, huh?
[24:49.300 --> 24:49.320]  Yeah.
[24:50.380 --> 24:51.140]  It is.
[24:51.340 --> 24:55.940]  Especially, like, when we say it's things we view as information.
[24:56.020 --> 24:58.420]  Things that are ultimately supposed to be protecting you.
[24:58.960 --> 25:00.960]  These companies don't really care about protecting you.
[25:01.080 --> 25:02.920]  I'm not speaking of any specifically.
[25:03.180 --> 25:03.560]  This is...
[25:03.560 --> 25:05.320]  I've become rather jaded since getting sued.
[25:05.440 --> 25:06.680]  And I've come to the conclusion...
[25:06.680 --> 25:09.980]  Look at Diebold and the voting that we have.
[25:10.040 --> 25:11.980]  I'm sure Wendy could talk forever about this.
[25:12.560 --> 25:15.520]  They don't care about having a paper-backed ballot.
[25:15.740 --> 25:17.600]  They really don't care about the democratic process.
[25:17.700 --> 25:18.520]  They care about making money.
[25:18.520 --> 25:24.800]  And when they see, you know, two kids from the South who, you know, are doing research and saying, hmm, you know what, maybe this isn't a good idea.
[25:25.400 --> 25:27.680]  They don't see two people trying to do the right thing.
[25:27.760 --> 25:29.420]  They see a threat to their revenue stream.
[25:29.440 --> 25:31.560]  And they want to crush that as quickly as possible.
[25:31.680 --> 25:39.860]  And they will bring the full weight of the laws that they paid special interest groups to get passed, like the DMCA and the Espionage Act against you.
[25:40.480 --> 25:44.880]  And so the big thing to take away from this is learn about what the hell people are passing.
[25:45.100 --> 25:46.920]  Learn about what these acts actually say.
[25:47.160 --> 25:53.860]  Learn about why innovation and research into seemingly innocuous areas you're going to get screwed on.
[25:55.360 --> 26:02.100]  I think there's something else that I thought was, like, very interesting in our experience that you probably won't hear other places.
[26:03.240 --> 26:05.040]  Assets and I, like, we had read about the DMCA.
[26:05.220 --> 26:06.820]  Like, we read Slashdot, you know, like everyone else.
[26:06.900 --> 26:08.000]  And we, like, we sort of knew these things.
[26:09.000 --> 26:12.360]  So, you know, we were, you know, kind of careful when we were, like, doing our research.
[26:12.360 --> 26:15.860]  Because, like, we'll, you know, we don't want to, like, commit any, you know, violations or anything.
[26:16.920 --> 26:26.280]  But, but once again, once, once we became a threat to, to, to someone's revenue stream, like, all sorts of laws you've never heard of just all of a sudden just come out of the woodwork.
[26:27.040 --> 26:30.180]  And, like, like classic ones that we were threatened with.
[26:30.300 --> 26:33.540]  We were threatened with the, see, the Industrial Espionage Act.
[26:33.640 --> 26:34.760]  Yeah, that sounds, sounds kind of fun.
[26:34.780 --> 26:36.220]  Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
[26:37.220 --> 26:38.020]  Illegal wiretapping.
[26:39.180 --> 26:40.480]  All sorts of crazy stuff.
[26:40.960 --> 26:48.960]  Yeah, yeah, and, well, I know the most, like, a great deal of the, of the tech laws, especially past at the state and local level.
[26:49.660 --> 26:52.820]  They're generally written by people who have extremely little, little clue.
[26:53.740 --> 26:55.560]  And no one really knows what they mean.
[26:55.680 --> 26:57.420]  Because, like, they're, they're brand new laws.
[26:57.540 --> 26:58.460]  They haven't been well tested.
[26:59.100 --> 27:05.360]  And, and generally, if, if you're just some, some random security researcher, you'd rather them not be tested on you.
[27:06.140 --> 27:10.240]  Because, like, because, like, all the penalties run up, oh, say, around half a mil.
[27:10.240 --> 27:12.860]  You know, which is, you know, kind of rough for a college student.
[27:15.260 --> 27:20.240]  Yeah, the, the point is we're not trying to, to doom and gloom and, and frighten you.
[27:20.440 --> 27:25.580]  I actually, as I said, more, morally, we don't really see any problem with what we did.
[27:25.780 --> 27:32.380]  I mean, yes, we acknowledge it would be wrong for someone to go out physically vandalize systems and, and do particular things.
[27:32.380 --> 27:36.780]  But in the spirit of independent security research, we are all for that.
[27:37.040 --> 27:39.260]  And the key is watch your back and protect yourself.
[27:39.980 --> 27:45.200]  And so I really think that's kind of, like, I would like to try to discuss and certainly answer any questions.
[27:45.300 --> 27:46.580]  I'm sure anyone else here would.
[27:47.640 --> 27:48.680]  Document your steps.
[27:48.820 --> 27:49.660]  Document what you're doing.
[27:50.640 --> 27:52.660]  And Virgil and I have had this discussion before.
[27:52.820 --> 28:02.780]  If anything you're doing in any way results in possibly threatening some type of corporation, before you publish your research, go, you know, buy an hour or two of a tech lawyer's time and talk with them about what you're doing.
[28:04.020 --> 28:08.860]  The, the easiest way to protect yourself is document every step of the way what you're doing.
[28:10.140 --> 28:13.620]  So after the fact, they can't say, you know, oh, you did X, Y, and Z.
[28:14.580 --> 28:15.960]  And that's why we're suing you now.
[28:17.820 --> 28:19.800]  Yeah, I would, like, definitely second that.
[28:19.940 --> 28:24.400]  I mean, again, like, Billy and I were not expecting, like, this to happen.
[28:24.740 --> 28:26.640]  And, I mean, to put it lightly.
[28:28.840 --> 28:29.400]  Well, yeah.
[28:29.780 --> 28:44.980]  And if, if, if any of, like, in any of your, like, own research, if anything that you do could be a threat to some major corporation's revenue stream, you should, you should think about this, you know, before you actually publish or, or do it.
[28:45.460 --> 28:50.400]  Because there will be all sorts of weird things you've, you've never heard of that will be brought to bear on you.
[28:51.160 --> 28:52.660]  If, if they so choose to bring it.
[28:52.900 --> 28:55.340]  And if they do, there's not much really you can do about it.
[28:55.540 --> 28:55.700]  Yeah.
[28:56.080 --> 28:58.200]  The, the best thing is to really do research.
[28:58.280 --> 28:58.920]  Document your steps.
[28:59.100 --> 29:00.280]  Go to the EFF website.
[29:00.480 --> 29:04.200]  Learn about the difference between a trade secret, a copyright, a patent.
[29:04.460 --> 29:04.860]  Learn them.
[29:04.980 --> 29:08.260]  I mean, we, we were getting nailed under a trade secrets act.
[29:08.260 --> 29:15.160]  Uh, I think just recently the, uh, DeCSS, uh, some judge overturned, um, some ruling.
[29:15.400 --> 29:20.300]  It, it was basically saying, uh, DeCSS is no longer, or, uh, CSS is no longer a trade secret.
[29:20.540 --> 29:23.800]  You can't possibly prosecute people for continuing to publish this code.
[29:23.860 --> 29:29.680]  However, if you're going after someone who has a, uh, a patent or a copyright on this, um, they can nail you.
[29:30.140 --> 29:35.160]  Um, in our particular instance, what we were examining, they were saying, oh, that's a trade secret information.
[29:35.160 --> 29:40.820]  Trade secret information, it's only a trade secret if they take necessary steps trying to protect that.
[29:41.360 --> 29:55.800]  Like, I'm from Atlanta and, you know, Coca-Cola has, like, the Coke formula in a vault, inside another vault, with guard dogs and, you know, like, guards and, you know, so if anybody actually got the trade secret, you couldn't really publish it because they have taken accurate steps to protect it.
[29:55.800 --> 29:58.020]  They've taken means to do so.
[29:58.500 --> 30:03.160]  Um, so, go to websites, research, um, find out what it is you're tackling.
[30:03.740 --> 30:08.300]  Um, and definitely try to separate the, the morals from the legalese.
[30:08.460 --> 30:10.780]  And worst comes to worst, publish it anonymously.
[30:10.960 --> 30:12.700]  Do you know what I, do you know what I really did find?
[30:13.360 --> 30:17.540]  That if you're doing good and doing it well, they will come and see you.
[30:17.740 --> 30:20.300]  If you don't know what the hell you're talking about, they'll leave you alone.
[30:20.520 --> 30:20.820]  Yes.
[30:20.900 --> 30:22.240]  Just pretend you don't know anything about it.
[30:22.240 --> 30:30.740]  But, when I was in court with DirecTV, Larry Rissler, who was the chief of security for DirecTV, pulled me off his side and he said, you know, he says, I gotta tell you something.
[30:31.300 --> 30:39.420]  He says, it's been talked about in our conferences that you know about, more about the internal workings of our satellite system than we do.
[30:41.080 --> 30:42.620]  Well, I took that as quite a compliment.
[30:42.900 --> 30:48.640]  But then, you know, when you stop and think about it, you kind of figure out why you're being sued because you're doing it good, you're doing it well.
[30:49.600 --> 30:50.620]  So, that happens.
[30:50.620 --> 30:55.420]  Drew, I actually have a quote on my website and it's almost like a little manifesto.
[30:55.480 --> 30:59.300]  And it says, I'm a hacker and you are afraid and that makes you more dangerous than I ever could be.
[30:59.840 --> 31:04.880]  And so, that's why I really like the kind of theme of this HOPE conference, is getting people to kind of break down those barriers.
[31:05.100 --> 31:08.680]  And curiosity is not a crime.
[31:08.820 --> 31:09.760]  It should not be a crime.
[31:10.600 --> 31:12.320]  And to some extent, it is right now.
[31:12.320 --> 31:14.840]  And that's a very sad thing, I think.
[31:16.780 --> 31:20.400]  And we need to try to take what steps necessary, educate people.
[31:20.500 --> 31:26.880]  I mean, if you actually sit down and explain to someone the DVD regioning coding system, they're like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
[31:27.660 --> 31:30.860]  And it's a lot... I bought that, I bought this, what do you mean?
[31:32.820 --> 31:45.760]  Yeah, so I left law school a bit of an idealist, thinking that whoever made the best legal argument in court, whoever wrote the best briefs and did the most thorough legal research, would be able to win.
[31:45.960 --> 31:59.140]  And unfortunately, more and more, as I've seen the system in operation since then, I've realized how much resources, often how much money it takes to get to the stage where you can make that argument.
[31:59.140 --> 31:59.640]  Yes.
[31:59.780 --> 32:06.720]  And it's a sad fact of life that the American legal system costs an awful lot.
[32:06.900 --> 32:11.300]  It costs a lot to defend, to write an answer to a complaint.
[32:11.300 --> 32:17.800]  It costs more to defend depositions and take depositions and to produce documents in response to discovery.
[32:18.360 --> 32:24.940]  And it takes a lot to challenge someone who has the resources to fight.
[32:24.940 --> 32:29.760]  But we're not content leaving the system that way.
[32:30.020 --> 32:42.520]  We don't want this to become a totally corporate-driven system where, even though the laws are nicely written out on paper, the ordinary citizen can't take advantage of them.
[32:42.520 --> 32:50.520]  And that, in part, that's why EFF exists, it's why ACLU exists, it's why legal aid bureaus exist.
[32:50.740 --> 33:07.820]  There are organizations out there trying to help the individuals, the nonprofits, the disadvantaged, the underprivileged, the impoverished, to fight back, and to fight for justice, as the laws are written.
[33:08.260 --> 33:25.940]  And it's also why I'm appealing to you to become politically active, to understand the law, and to understand how the law impacts your activities, so that you can go back and educate your friends about why it's important to vote, and so that you can go educate your representatives.
[33:26.280 --> 33:29.040]  Start out on a local level, a state level.
[33:29.220 --> 33:37.120]  Tell your representatives about the importance of being able to investigate, the importance of protecting knowledge and understanding of technology.
[33:37.480 --> 33:40.400]  Why it's so important... Don't talk about hacking.
[33:40.520 --> 33:43.320]  Talk about the freedom to tinker and the freedom to understand.
[33:43.520 --> 33:49.880]  The freedom to know what's going on inside that black box that's sitting under your desk or under your television.
[33:49.880 --> 34:08.040]  The freedom to know what's going on so that you can be the next generation of innovators, so that you can produce the next TiVo, the next PC, the next operating system, the next jump of technological innovation that this country depends on for its productivity.
[34:08.480 --> 34:16.960]  And tell them, if that knowledge is locked up the way corporations want it to be, there will be no next generation.
[34:16.960 --> 34:19.280]  Technological innovation will stagnate.
[34:19.420 --> 34:21.180]  It will die with what we have now.
[34:21.360 --> 34:35.440]  DVD hasn't changed in five years because it's been locked up with the CSS encryption format and a web of contracts between the major motion picture studios and the technology vendors who make authorized DVD players.
[34:35.640 --> 34:42.320]  And as a result, we've got nothing like the VCR improvement over basic television.
[34:42.320 --> 34:45.640]  We've got nothing that allows us to make excerpts from DVDs.
[34:45.740 --> 34:57.880]  And if you want to store a hundred movies on a server in your closet so that you can watch them by pressing a button instead of fiddling with discs in plastic cases, you've got to spend $30,000.
[34:58.600 --> 35:00.200]  That's not the cost of the hardware.
[35:00.360 --> 35:02.740]  That's the cost of all of the licensing agreements.
[35:02.760 --> 35:09.020]  And that's the cost of all of these claimed trade secrets and claimed copyright anti-circumvention protections.
[35:09.020 --> 35:18.120]  We want innovation that costs less and is available to more people, and that's what we need to be telling our representatives.
[35:18.700 --> 35:25.040]  We need that for the general public, not these special interest protections that they're being encouraged to enact.
[35:25.040 --> 35:35.860]  If you've heard about the Induce Act, that would add a new level of copyright liability to anyone who aids, abets, or induces a copyright infringement.
[35:36.240 --> 35:40.960]  That's something that's before committee in the Senate right now.
[35:40.960 --> 35:46.720]  Now, they need to be told that that could outlaw Apple's sale of the iPod.
[35:46.840 --> 35:50.340]  It could outlaw any manufacturer's sale of hard disks.
[35:50.500 --> 36:00.940]  It could outlaw journalists writing about all of the wonderful things you can do with technology because someone might be aided by one of their articles to infringe a copyright.
[36:01.440 --> 36:10.360]  And we need you, everyone in this audience and everyone that you can tell, to be talking to your elected representatives who are there serving you.
[36:10.620 --> 36:15.720]  You need to tell them, let's make the laws work for us again.
[36:16.120 --> 36:16.760]  Very good.
[36:16.860 --> 36:19.500]  What she's saying, if they're going to make a new law,
[36:23.940 --> 36:27.420]  if they're going to make a new law, learn about the law, just don't ignore it.
[36:27.420 --> 36:30.200]  Even though it doesn't pertain to you, study it.
[36:30.380 --> 36:34.160]  And if you think it pertains and it's going to hurt America, fight for your rights.
[36:34.940 --> 36:35.080]  Yeah.
[36:35.520 --> 36:41.740]  Wendy brings up a really good point and I think relates directly back to the shutting down of this satellite news article.
[36:42.700 --> 36:49.760]  You'll notice hackers, if they have IT jobs, they are normally either in administration or the security industry.
[36:50.160 --> 36:54.960]  Hackers aren't sitting there going, man, I want to figure out how to crack this system and then, yay, I can keep cracking it.
[36:54.960 --> 36:59.720]  You know, as Abaddon always says, yeah, if you're 15 and angry at your dad, you want to go break something.
[36:59.880 --> 37:02.760]  But the bigger part of hacking is the creation.
[37:04.140 --> 37:09.120]  Hackers, you know, you can expose the problems in LEAP so you don't make the same damn mistakes again.
[37:10.360 --> 37:17.880]  The satellite newsletter was exposing the problem of having EEPROM-based authentication systems for accessing satellite networks.
[37:17.880 --> 37:27.060]  And by having that information available, you know, the 17-year-old kid who's entering college and is interested in this, you know, that's something he can examine.
[37:27.880 --> 37:28.640]  That's something he can learn.
[37:28.760 --> 37:32.180]  That's something he can write a thesis on the next generation of way to do things.
[37:32.460 --> 37:42.760]  I mean, Marconi and everyone else, they wouldn't make inventions if the previous inventions had been a black box with a little button on it that had encrypted stuff coming out.
[37:42.760 --> 37:44.700]  And if you took that box apart, you get sued.
[37:44.900 --> 37:47.520]  If you try to figure out what that data coming out of is, you get sued.
[37:47.720 --> 37:51.320]  It's the stagnation of innovation that is facing us is incredible.
[37:51.580 --> 37:52.800]  You want to know what's really funny?
[37:54.240 --> 38:11.320]  Is the encryption system that DirecTV used in the United States was developed by NewsDatacom, the same, the very same encryption system, the smart card that was used by the very well-known Sky B Sky system in Europe.
[38:11.580 --> 38:18.100]  It was cracked years before DirecTV implemented their direct-to-home system here.
[38:18.260 --> 38:19.600]  They utilized the same thing.
[38:20.560 --> 38:23.820]  I mean, why would General Motors buy a known flat tire?
[38:24.740 --> 38:26.200]  And it's pretty weird, isn't it?
[38:27.720 --> 38:34.940]  The nice thing to know, though, is we are kind of being doom and gloom-esque and saying go out and, you know, try to fight it almost.
[38:34.940 --> 38:38.620]  And for some extent, people are understanding it.
[38:38.820 --> 38:42.560]  My dad asked me the other day, so explain this whole open-source software to me and why it's good.
[38:42.620 --> 38:46.780]  Why is publishing instead of proprietary and closed standards good?
[38:46.780 --> 38:49.280]  I mean, the MPAA is just trying to protect their revenue stream.
[38:49.300 --> 38:49.940]  That makes sense.
[38:50.140 --> 38:58.120]  It's like, I understand protecting revenue stream, but if you open yourselves up, you allow for more innovation.
[38:58.820 --> 39:00.240]  Wendy mentioned TiVo.
[39:00.360 --> 39:09.360]  And TiVo, I think, is a prime example of a company that understands the importance of being able to still have a business model, but make itself open for innovation.
[39:09.740 --> 39:18.200]  I mean, TiVos are starting to come now with network ports and stuff built in because people hacked the original TiVos to include network cards because they didn't want to use a modem.
[39:18.200 --> 39:19.540]  I mean, I'm a college student.
[39:19.700 --> 39:21.320]  I don't have local phone service.
[39:21.640 --> 39:24.420]  I, you know, I'm buying a cell phone and I have high-speed internet.
[39:24.720 --> 39:25.860]  So TiVo does me no good.
[39:26.020 --> 39:29.660]  I don't want to pay $30 a month to my TiVo in addition to the TiVo fees.
[39:29.820 --> 39:32.600]  So, you know, people took the TiVo apart and said, hey, let's put this in.
[39:32.980 --> 39:42.620]  TiVo is sitting there going, damn, we have a motivated, intelligent, and more importantly, unpaid research pool out here, which is good.
[39:42.620 --> 39:43.820]  And it's market research.
[39:44.080 --> 39:45.500]  What are people interested in?
[39:45.620 --> 39:46.800]  We developed this product.
[39:47.000 --> 39:47.920]  People use the product.
[39:48.060 --> 39:52.240]  And then when they see a niche that it doesn't fill, they develop freely for it.
[39:52.320 --> 39:55.160]  They release it under this license that lets us use it too.
[39:55.540 --> 39:56.380]  Everyone wins.
[39:56.740 --> 39:59.040]  And I think companies are starting to see that.
[39:59.220 --> 40:01.600]  I think that you need to encourage that.
[40:02.360 --> 40:05.380]  It's the only way you're going to start getting some of these laws overturned.
[40:05.380 --> 40:15.540]  As soon as corporations realize that proprietary and closed models do not in any way protect their revenue stream more so than an open model.
[40:15.740 --> 40:19.800]  Or, excuse me, rather that an open model does not threaten their revenue stream, they'll embrace it.
[40:19.860 --> 40:20.200]  They will.
[40:20.240 --> 40:21.340]  Because they don't care about it.
[40:21.380 --> 40:22.240]  They care about the money.
[40:22.980 --> 40:26.880]  So, you know, tell people about TiVo's model of innovation.
[40:27.420 --> 40:29.120]  Try to get more people interested in this.
[40:30.080 --> 40:33.680]  It'll open everything up and make things a lot more easy for the rest of us.
[40:33.740 --> 40:34.460]  We won't get sued.
[40:37.860 --> 40:40.040]  There are clearly lots of things being said here.
[40:40.460 --> 40:44.760]  I think, like, one, like, real key point that, like, if you remember, like, nothing else.
[40:45.000 --> 40:45.980]  I'll actually remember this.
[40:46.280 --> 40:50.220]  It's basically that, like, if you're doing research and you can say, like, relatively innocuous.
[40:50.360 --> 40:54.040]  But if you think about it, you say, hey, this might threaten some company's revenue stream.
[40:54.160 --> 41:01.920]  In particular, if this company's parent, parent, parent, parent, parent company is GE or GM or someone really, really big and you had no idea.
[41:02.640 --> 41:05.020]  Well, you know, you should think about this.
[41:05.760 --> 41:11.200]  Because, I mean, the second you do threaten that revenue stream, a huge weight can be brought on you in an instant.
[41:11.320 --> 41:13.040]  And the only thing you have to do is just catch their eye.
[41:14.500 --> 41:23.640]  So, before you, like, do anything, certainly, like, read the law or even better, you actually talk to a lawyer before you publish or research anything that might be threatening.
[41:23.640 --> 41:38.840]  Like, Virgil and I were looking at, our lawyer gave us an estimation of approximately half a million dollars worth of defense fees and probably a two to three year trial with extensions, appeals, reversals of what we were looking at.
[41:38.940 --> 41:47.240]  Just so we could talk in front of 200 people about something that probably not enough people should, not enough people do care about and they should do more.
[41:47.240 --> 41:57.160]  And just for the right to talk in front of 200 people about a security issue, we were looking at having to pay half a million dollars and essentially three years consuming of our lives.
[41:57.820 --> 42:00.260]  That is the type of weight these people will bring to bear on you.
[42:00.520 --> 42:01.800]  And it can be quite intimidating.
[42:02.760 --> 42:04.100]  And so, talk with the lawyer.
[42:05.360 --> 42:18.700]  We analyzed what they were looking at us with and decided, you know, based on a few very slight things, we felt confident in our ability to fight this, but we are worried that one small technicality could overturn the entire issue.
[42:19.080 --> 42:24.520]  And granted, the entire case would probably be thrown out, but we'd still have half a million dollars worth of legal fees to pay.
[42:26.960 --> 42:27.440]  So...
[42:27.440 --> 42:28.640]  Yeah, I...
[42:28.640 --> 42:29.360]  Go ahead, Wendy.
[42:29.720 --> 42:30.060]  Sure.
[42:30.360 --> 42:46.100]  Just to reemphasize the weight of legal fees and legal expenses, there are strategies for getting beyond some of that.
[42:46.360 --> 43:07.140]  We can do things like declaratory judgment complaints, where before you get sued, if you have a threat that somebody's going to sue you, if you do something further, then we can bring a lawsuit on your behalf, where, although it's still expensive to defend,
[43:07.320 --> 43:11.200]  you don't have the risk of a tremendous judgment on the other side.
[43:12.400 --> 43:35.120]  And we've tried that with a little twist in the Diebold case that was mentioned earlier, when Diebold was threatening people for posting excerpts from... and email archives from Diebold's technicians' discussions of the insecurities of e-voting machines.
[43:35.120 --> 43:48.360]  They sent threat letters to ISPs threatening litigation if the ISPs didn't cut off their customers for posting, if colleges didn't cut off their students for posting these email archives.
[43:48.360 --> 44:10.440]  And on behalf of one ISP, the online policy group, and some Swarthmore students, we took that into court and we sued Diebold for misusing copyright and for a declaratory judgment that copyright doesn't extend to blocking important political speech.
[44:10.440 --> 44:24.240]  And there, we're still waiting for the ruling, but we're hoping to get a ruling that says, you know, there are limits to copyright, there are limits to what you can threaten and get away with.
[44:24.460 --> 44:41.400]  And if we can even recover attorney's fees in that case, then it will be another avenue to go forward to help people say, you know, the law stops someplace and here's where we come back and reclaim our rights.
[44:42.780 --> 44:43.300]  Okay.
[44:43.560 --> 44:47.120]  If anybody has any questions for any of us, come on up.
[44:47.240 --> 44:48.740]  We're more than glad to answer.
[44:51.790 --> 44:52.850]  We have contestants.
[44:52.850 --> 44:53.910]  I think we have some brave souls.
[44:54.230 --> 44:55.450]  We have some contestants.
[44:56.270 --> 44:58.110]  I've got a question for you two.
[44:58.270 --> 45:02.030]  And just kind of in the interest of disclosure, I should say that I'm Johnny X.
[45:02.150 --> 45:05.010]  I'm one of the organizers of the Interz0ne Convention in Atlanta.
[45:05.370 --> 45:10.210]  And I'm the guy who had to deliver the bad news to Virgil and Acidus up there.
[45:12.370 --> 45:13.610]  A little background here.
[45:13.690 --> 45:23.910]  The way that they were served is that the other convention organizer who's not here at HOPE received an email cease and desist about 12 hours before their talk.
[45:23.910 --> 45:33.650]  And that was followed up the next day by a courier delivering papers to the hotel and actually delivering them to the hotel staff at the front desk.
[45:34.730 --> 45:39.970]  The papers were addressed to aliases, not individuals.
[45:39.970 --> 45:42.630]  No one's real name was on there or anything like that.
[45:42.770 --> 45:45.870]  It's really funny when you get a FedEx package for Acidus.
[45:47.570 --> 45:49.450]  Virgil, code poet.
[45:50.510 --> 45:51.870]  Interz0ne organizers.
[45:51.870 --> 45:53.390]  That's how they were addressed.
[45:53.710 --> 45:55.430]  And we talked with these guys.
[45:55.570 --> 45:56.730]  We didn't know what our legal rights were.
[45:56.810 --> 46:01.490]  We were kind of stupid in that we didn't have a lawyer on hand at the convention.
[46:01.890 --> 46:02.930]  We've learned since.
[46:03.330 --> 46:14.670]  And we figured it would probably be best to go ahead and just not do the talk and see if we could get this resolved easily without anyone getting hurt and the lawyers being unleashed.
[46:14.670 --> 46:20.550]  And a year on down the road, I've kind of changed my mind on that.
[46:20.830 --> 46:22.590]  I mean, you guys got fucked.
[46:23.090 --> 46:25.510]  And you can't talk about this.
[46:25.570 --> 46:27.990]  And you had legitimate security concerns.
[46:28.410 --> 46:30.610]  And I feel like we kind of caved in.
[46:30.790 --> 46:35.930]  And it would have been very easy to claim after the fact that, you know, what the fuck are you talking about?
[46:35.950 --> 46:37.050]  We were never properly served.
[46:37.050 --> 46:44.310]  If you sent an email, you delivered stuff to Virgil, the code poet, and had the front desk guy at the hotel sign for it.
[46:44.390 --> 46:45.970]  I mean, they didn't know who to get this to.
[46:46.070 --> 46:50.210]  We had no idea that you guys were trying to get in touch with us before this happened.
[46:50.370 --> 46:50.470]  Yeah.
[46:50.570 --> 46:50.790]  Hello.
[46:50.950 --> 46:53.390]  Phone call to the hotel asking for the organizers.
[46:53.610 --> 46:55.130]  Why didn't you send cops down or something?
[46:56.430 --> 46:58.410]  I think we should have gone for it.
[46:58.710 --> 47:00.570]  And what do you guys think?
[47:00.650 --> 47:07.930]  I mean, you were the ones really who were facing the $500,000 in fees and DMCA charges and what was the other biggie?
[47:07.990 --> 47:12.110]  Domestic economic terrorism or espionage and a long trial.
[47:12.330 --> 47:14.430]  What are your opinions now a year after the fact?
[47:18.170 --> 47:21.550]  I think what out there is mostly pretty depressing.
[47:22.170 --> 47:29.790]  Which is mostly that like a vast majority of the laws, they're either just flat out bad or no one really knows what they mean.
[47:30.430 --> 47:35.130]  And they all carry extremely heavy fines or extremely heavy prison sentences.
[47:36.910 --> 47:42.170]  And generally, you know, you don't want to be the one that finds out what these laws mean since no one really does.
[47:42.470 --> 47:46.710]  And it's because, well, if it comes out not in your favor, well, that's very bad.
[47:49.250 --> 47:54.350]  Well, yeah, yeah, I doubt I would have done anything differently, even though I must admit it really does suck.
[47:54.710 --> 48:05.810]  But, well, I don't desire to be the one who spends like five years losing, you know, going to debt for a very long time and then find out I go to prison for 15 years.
[48:06.590 --> 48:09.190]  Now, we were never charged criminally.
[48:09.570 --> 48:11.810]  These were all civil cases.
[48:11.810 --> 48:19.910]  And we were essentially dealing with the civil version of a lot of these criminal laws that you'll hear about some of the more famous hackers getting charged with.
[48:21.210 --> 48:29.350]  It essentially came down to, with discussions with our lawyer and stuff, we felt fairly confident with the intent.
[48:29.350 --> 48:34.270]  We, we had a past history of showing that this was, this was not for economic gain.
[48:34.410 --> 48:38.730]  This was for interoperability or for education and security.
[48:39.290 --> 48:45.690]  We were concerned about a little bit with how research was conducted, which is why stress, you know, document your steps.
[48:45.930 --> 48:51.090]  And we were very concerned that after five years, a judge would essentially say to the defendants, you guys got nothing.
[48:51.090 --> 48:55.850]  And then say to the, say to us, you guys did this one little thing, so I'm dismissing this.
[48:56.330 --> 49:00.530]  We, we could not be guaranteed that we wouldn't go into insane amounts of debt for this.
[49:01.010 --> 49:06.230]  Um, so we reached a settlement agreement, which unfortunately we can't tell you the terms of it.
[49:06.590 --> 49:13.390]  Um, and all parties ended up walking away from it reasonably content.
[49:14.850 --> 49:26.490]  Uh, just as a follow-up to that, I think it's interesting that, um, all the Diebold, I mean, uh, pardon me, Blackboard, um, press releases afterwards were claiming that, um, it never would have worked.
[49:26.630 --> 49:31.130]  And you guys didn't know what you were talking about, you know, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin.
[49:31.750 --> 49:42.570]  And none of the mainstream press seemed to pick up or comment on the fact that if you didn't know what you were talking about, it would have been a lot easier to let you make fools of yourselves at a technical convention.
[49:43.250 --> 49:50.990]  Than have, um, SAB Law, which is also, uh, Foreign President Clinton's law firm, and they charge a shitload of money, come after you guys.
[49:51.390 --> 49:57.490]  You know, why not let you embarrass yourselves in public and let, you know, get picked apart if they really didn't know what they were talking about.
[49:57.810 --> 49:58.470]  And, uh, everything...
[49:58.470 --> 49:58.990]  No comment.
[49:59.290 --> 49:59.490]  Yeah.
[49:59.650 --> 50:01.770]  Well, that was a rhetorical question not directed to you.
[50:01.850 --> 50:10.770]  I would like to say that, uh, in closing, that everything that you couldn't talk about and more is, um, now on the internet.
[50:10.770 --> 50:14.790]  And all sorts of fun new exploits have come out and, uh, go Google.
[50:15.150 --> 50:16.370]  So, there you go.
[50:16.630 --> 50:16.930]  Yes.
[50:17.090 --> 50:17.250]  Thanks.
[50:17.590 --> 50:18.070]  Thank you.
[50:22.490 --> 50:26.330]  This isn't so much a question, but just a, um, comment about...
[50:26.330 --> 50:27.950]  I used to subscribe to Satellite Watch News.
[50:28.150 --> 50:28.710]  Well, thank you.
[50:29.250 --> 50:32.270]  And, um, I don't know if it was 96 or 90...
[50:32.270 --> 50:33.690]  Whenever DirecTV started...
[50:33.690 --> 50:34.270]  Harassments?
[50:34.270 --> 50:34.990]  Yeah.
[50:35.250 --> 50:35.470]  Okay.
[50:35.850 --> 50:37.350]  I, um, I called up, subscribed.
[50:37.750 --> 50:40.130]  I believe the woman taking subscriptions was your wife or a relative.
[50:40.490 --> 50:40.610]  No.
[50:40.610 --> 50:41.370]  Wife never worked for me.
[50:41.550 --> 50:41.750]  Okay.
[50:42.390 --> 50:45.030]  But she had said, where'd you hear about Satellite Watch News?
[50:45.270 --> 50:57.250]  And I said, funny thing, uh, DirecTV used to like to brag about, when it was throwing its legal weight around, you know, a residential subscriber was using it at, uh, you know, a bar and they were bragging about all this stuff.
[50:57.250 --> 51:03.490]  And I saw an article on DirecTV.com about how they were, um, threatening Satellite Watch News.
[51:03.690 --> 51:03.810]  Oh, yeah.
[51:03.850 --> 51:05.010]  One of their many press releases.
[51:05.170 --> 51:06.150]  I recall all of them.
[51:06.270 --> 51:07.710]  I said, what's this Satellite Watch News?
[51:07.830 --> 51:09.210]  And then looked it up and subscribed.
[51:09.250 --> 51:13.150]  So I thought that was kind of funny that DirecTV themselves were the reason I subscribed.
[51:13.570 --> 51:14.210]  Well, thank you.
[51:14.350 --> 51:14.970]  That is good to know.
[51:15.110 --> 51:16.030]  One good thing did happen.
[51:16.390 --> 51:17.090]  Thank you, sir.
[51:18.330 --> 51:20.610]  I've got, uh, comments and then one quick question.
[51:21.050 --> 51:22.790]  Um, comment on you guys.
[51:22.790 --> 51:29.930]  I've been, uh, a proponent of, uh, satellite exploitation and things like that for a long time.
[51:30.070 --> 51:32.790]  And thus, I've been reading up a lot on the internet about all the legal implications.
[51:32.790 --> 51:35.270]  And the people have gotten screwed over like you have.
[51:35.390 --> 51:35.850]  Yes, they have.
[51:36.010 --> 51:37.930]  And, um, they've just been reading.
[51:38.110 --> 51:47.930]  Every time you read about some, some company that gets shut down by DirecTV or whoever, uh, it's always for some strange, uh, reason that doesn't really make sense.
[51:48.050 --> 51:54.450]  And if you applied that reason to any other, like, legal situation that wasn't involved in something underground like this, the whole case would get thrown out.
[51:54.690 --> 51:54.950]  Yeah.
[51:54.950 --> 51:59.890]  And, uh, so I guess I'd like to say a lot of people do really realize that you got fucked over in the whole situation.
[52:00.190 --> 52:00.530]  Yeah.
[52:00.690 --> 52:00.810]  Yeah.
[52:00.850 --> 52:02.530]  That's why this band doesn't fit so good.
[52:02.530 --> 52:03.670]  Half of this is right back here.
[52:05.830 --> 52:06.190]  Yeah.
[52:06.310 --> 52:07.690]  They, they, they pretty well took it away.
[52:07.830 --> 52:08.530]  I appreciate your comment.
[52:09.070 --> 52:10.470]  Um, my question is more for you guys.
[52:10.590 --> 52:13.650]  Cause with the satellite watch news is kind of cut and dry and obvious.
[52:14.370 --> 52:19.310]  Um, you guys are about the average age of a lot of the people I see here.
[52:19.390 --> 52:26.750]  And you're speaking in front of a couple of floors of a lot of people who do what you do, uh, who like to tinker, who like to go, hey, what does this do?
[52:26.850 --> 52:27.590]  Let's take this apart.
[52:27.710 --> 52:28.530]  Let's see what it does.
[52:29.190 --> 52:31.470]  And then you get curious and go, what if I do this?
[52:31.730 --> 52:37.330]  Uh, and that applies to any situation, not even just, you know, magnetic stripes or anything like that.
[52:37.710 --> 52:48.910]  Um, and then a lot of people, a lot of kids like us, what they do when they find something out or you post it on the internet or you type up an article, maybe you give a presentation at school, something like that, something, you know, might do it for a class.
[52:49.590 --> 52:58.690]  Um, what would you say were the three biggest mistakes you, you made that led to you getting in trouble?
[52:58.970 --> 53:06.850]  What, what could people do to avoid yet still presents what they found?
[53:06.850 --> 53:07.830]  Okay.
[53:08.370 --> 53:08.430]  Um,
[53:11.450 --> 53:13.890]  this is a fine, fine line.
[53:14.190 --> 53:17.970]  Um, I, I understand there's a lot you can't discuss.
[53:18.570 --> 53:22.970]  So, I think it's more just one big question.
[53:23.130 --> 53:29.490]  What can people like us do to avoid getting in trouble yet still share with the community what we found?
[53:29.490 --> 53:37.250]  So, even though there are things like the DMCA, um, and things like that, uh, I, I love Australia, which is when you buy something, it's yours.
[53:37.390 --> 53:38.530]  You can do whatever the hell you want with it.
[53:38.690 --> 53:45.470]  And, uh, that's getting eroded a good bit here in the United States, but there still is something of a, if you own it, it's okay to do it.
[53:45.510 --> 53:51.990]  Like, if I owned, if I bought some type of system that talked, like, uh, the X11 cameras, right?
[53:52.090 --> 53:53.410]  I buy one of those things from my home.
[53:53.510 --> 53:58.650]  If then I figure out how the X11 systems and stuff talk, I wasn't necessarily cracking somebody else's network.
[53:58.890 --> 54:06.950]  And I think in our, our case, we don't have a couple million dollars to, you know, go buy a card-based system, so we kind of used the one that we had at hand.
[54:07.350 --> 54:15.690]  Uh, and that was essentially the concern is that we were using a resource that wasn't ours to conduct research without necessarily the consent of that institution.
[54:16.090 --> 54:25.650]  Um, at least at Georgia Tech, they have something that is, uh, any research that is done using Georgia Tech resources, um, they own significant hunks of it.
[54:26.090 --> 54:28.010]  So, um, yeah.
[54:29.090 --> 54:35.730]  Um, I think, I think Keith emphasized, number one, there are lots of laws that you just don't hear about until you're on the slate.
[54:35.910 --> 54:36.110]  Yeah.
[54:36.690 --> 54:41.810]  Um, before you do something that could threaten a company's revenue stream, uh, talk to someone about it.
[54:41.910 --> 54:42.770]  Talk to someone, like, in the know.
[54:43.370 --> 54:43.710]  Yes.
[54:43.710 --> 54:46.650]  And, and thirdly, if you want to publish, just publish anonymously.
[54:46.910 --> 54:48.870]  Just do not, do not do it in person.
[54:49.030 --> 54:49.870]  Do not do it at a conference.
[54:50.210 --> 54:52.590]  Just some anonymous email to a list somewhere.
[54:54.070 --> 54:54.710]  And, yeah.
[54:54.750 --> 54:59.290]  Of course, once it gets published and it's no longer a trade secret, then, you know, later you can come out and talk.
[54:59.450 --> 55:03.710]  Because once everyone knows it's not a secret anymore, they won't come after you to try to keep the genie in the bottom.
[55:03.750 --> 55:05.610]  We're being asked to start wrapping it up.
[55:05.830 --> 55:06.030]  Yeah.
[55:06.030 --> 55:06.870]  It's been a pleasure.
[55:07.030 --> 55:07.790]  It's been a lot of fun.
[55:08.370 --> 55:08.890]  Yeah, absolutely.
[55:08.890 --> 55:09.950]  We'll be around for a bit.
[55:09.990 --> 55:12.250]  We're sorry to those of you who haven't gotten to ask questions.
[55:12.330 --> 55:12.810]  We'll be around.
[55:12.810 --> 55:14.230]  We'll find all of us around, I think.
[55:14.230 --> 55:16.450]  We'll send it back or something, so you can talk to us.
[55:16.570 --> 55:17.110]  Thank you guys.
[55:17.110 --> 55:17.330]  Thank you.
[55:17.410 --> 55:18.030]  Thanks a lot.
[55:23.830 --> 55:24.830]  That was great, man.
[55:27.770 --> 55:30.450]  Coming up in a few minutes, the Prometheus Radio Project.
[55:30.830 --> 55:34.150]  If any of you would like a free T-shirt, this is all you have to do.
[55:34.310 --> 55:43.410]  If you know how to operate a video camera, the AV department has had a couple of people disappear on them, drug habits, I don't know what the deal is, whatever.
[55:44.810 --> 56:03.030]  So if you are interested in operating a video camera for a couple of hours, a few hours helping us out, so that we can, you know, make DVDs and distribute this knowledge throughout the planet, go over to either the AV area here or in the other room, and we're signing up some volunteers.
[56:03.750 --> 56:08.050]  You get a free T-shirt, and you get to, like, order people around and look cool.