disLEXia

Wednesday, 16. July 2003

§ 86 TKG

Shortly after we published Factual and Legal Risks regarding wireless Computer NetworksI got aware of § 86 TKG ("Telekommunication Code"). § 86 TKG states:

A radio installation may not be used to receive messages not indendet for it. The content of such messages and the fact thet they have been received may not be communicated to others, even if the recieiving was unintential [...].

I never got arround reviewing legal literature on § 86 TKG, but it is ovious that this paragraph is so broard, it has to be interpreted restrictivly to be compatible with the constitution.

Now I steped on two court cases which indicate that the courts are very reluctant to apply § 86 TKG. [disLEXia 3000 blog]
08:32 | permanent link | mail this

Friday, 11. July 2003

Fiedler on Communication control on the Datahighway

At the netzzensur blog i have posted a (german language) summary of a talk given by Dr. Christoph Fiedler on "Communication control on the Datahighway". He drew interesting conclusions on the constitutional freedom of press and the special protections of press granted by the protection of press from police actions.
09:04 | permanent link | mail this

Tuesday, 01. July 2003

Does 'True' Warchalking Really Exist?

Christian Sandvig thinks warchalking - marking WiFi Networks with chalk - is plain hype.

He is probably right and to proofe his point he is willing to pay a bounty to everyone showing him otherwise.
08:55 | permanent link | mail this

"digital shoplifting" in Japan

Japanese use their Camera equipped mobile phones to send pages of books (mangas?) to their friends while browsing in the book store. Japanese press calls this "digital shoplifting".

Read more at Lenz Blog.
08:11 | permanent link | mail this

Monday, 30. June 2003

DRM circumvention research and the German constitution.

This spring Germany got legislation to transform the 2001 European copyright directive into German law.

The new law has a DCMA-like anti-circumvention clause: § 95a of the new German UrhG prohibits circumvention of technical protection measures and the production, import, distribution, sale, rental and advertisement of circumvention devices or services.

But the German legal structure will provide notable exceptions to this: Article 5 III of the German constitution reads: "Art and science, research and teaching are free. The freedom of teaching does not release from allegiance to the constitution." This constitutional rights can only be constrained by other constitutional rights, which means practically that the § 95a UrhG can't narrow scientist's rights to do research on technical protection measures for content. The administration acknowledged this fact by stating in their reasoning for the law: "Acts of circumvention committed solely for scientific purposes (e.g. cryptography) will not be prohibited."

This will create a new battlefield at the courts about the question if certain actions constitute "scientific research" or are just acts of commercial product development. Thes will be a problem because a huge part of crypto research is not done in academic settings but by amateurs or in industry. Perhaps german researchers on DRM should create a working group with strong academic ties and publish their research through this working group documenting the scientiffic focus of their work.

May be germany will actually become a crypto-heaven by one day beeing the only (?) WIPO state which by law allows research in DRM systems.
10:38 | permanent link | mail this

Google Censorship

Some English language remarks by the Transblawg about the ongoing debate in Germany about google.com returning different result sets when beeing accessed from different countries. Read more here.

Also browse TRansblawg's archive for older pices on this subject.
08:50 | permanent link | mail this

Bibliography of Computer-related Crime

I have updated my 'compkrim' Bibliography available at http://md.hudora.de/jura/bib-compkrim/

It contains more than 1300 sources related to computer abuse and crime usable as a BibTeX database or as HTML for browsing pleasure.
00:04 | permanent link | mail this

Sunday, 29. June 2003

Swiss ISP is blocking all Internet access to some sites. Blocking just Web access is "too hard".

The german computer Magazine c't is reporting in it's actual issue (Heft 14, Seite 42, 30.06.2003) that the biggest ISP in Switzerland, "Bluewin", is blocking again sites being critical to the swiss system of justice. Bluewin is not only blocking Web access, but also email and presumably everything else, because blocking only web access would be "technically to hard".

In fall 2002 a judge ordered ISPs to block pages but in Spring 2003 a higher court dismissed the orders, see http://md.hudora.de/blog/guids/22/92/3321213426132496.html

This time the judge send no orders but a letter to ISPs mention the possibility of criminal prosecution against them.

Bluewin has a history of blocking dating at least back to 2001. In 2002 SIUG, the Swiss Internet Usergroup found that Bluewin is not only blocking critical and right-wing sites but also access to the homepages of their competition - see http://www.siug.ch/presse/Presse.20020405.html (in german)
11:31 | permanent link | mail this

Friday, 27. June 2003

Nochmal: Kiel und RSS.

Ich bin da wohl nicht der einzige: K.F. Lenz, Rainer Langenhan und Udo hatten ähnliche Probleme.

Da wurden aber anscheinend nur die Headlines verwendet, hier der ganze Content. Wie auch immer, unethisches verhalten.
09:22 | permanent link | mail this

kielanwalt.de: Plagiat?

Der Kieler-Anwälte "Prof Dr. Weiß Kreitz Strunk" scheinen meinen Content unter http://www.rechteinfach.de/cgi-bin/kielanwalt.pl?http://md.hudora.de/blog/rss.xml als den Ihren ausgeben zu wollen. Pfft.
09:09 | permanent link | mail this

Monday, 23. June 2003

Internet Sperrungen in Deutschland und Anderswo

Eine "Sperrungs-Timeline" gibt es hier.
08:42 | permanent link | mail this

Sunday, 08. June 2003

How to Get a Paper Accepted at OOPSLA

Keeping this in mind might be a good idea - especially when writing Abstracts.
21:55 | permanent link | mail this

Friday, 06. June 2003

11.7.: Blockveranstaltung zur Wirtschafts-/Computrkriminalität

Am, 11.7.2003 16:00-19:00h wollen Privat Dozent Dr. Friedrich Toepel und ich eine Veranstaltung zur Wirtschafts- und Computerkriminalität im Institut für Strafrecht abhalten.

Wer Interesse an der Veranstaltung hat, möge sich mit einer kurzen Mail bei ftoepel@mailhost.jura.uni-bonn.de oder md@hudora.de melden.
13:15 | permanent link | mail this

disLEXia, a research project by Maximillian Dornseif