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University of Washington, Seattle    <http://www.cs.washington.edu>
        Application Fee:  $45
        Deadline:         December 31, 2001 
	Average for admitted students:
        GPA:              3.70
        GRE Verbel:       629
        GRE Analytical:   759
        GRE Quantitative: 778
        GRE Subject:      785
	Transcripts:      1

University of Maryland, College Park <http://www.cs.umd.edu>
        Application Fee:  $50
        Deadline:         January 15, 2002 
	Transcripts:      2
        Average for admitted students:
        GPA:              3.50
        GRE:              1950

Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh          <http://www.cs.cmu.edu>
	Application Fee:  $65
	Deadline:         January 5, 2002
	Transcripts:      1

University of Oregon, Eugene         <http://www.cs.uoregon.edu>
	Application Fee:  $50
	Deadline:         February 1, 2002
	GRE Verbel:       50%
        GRE Analytical:   65%
        GRE Quantitative: 65%
	Transcripts:      1 

Johns Hopkins University             <http://cs.jhu.edu/>
	Application Fee:  $0
	Deadline:         January 15, 2002
	Transcripts:	  1

Cornell University                   <http://www.cs.cornell.edu/>
	Application Fee:  $65
	Deadline:         January 1, 2002
	Transcripts:      1

University of California, Berkeley   <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/>
	Application Fee:  $40
	GPA:              3.00
	Deadline:         December 15, 2001
	Transcripts:      1

University of Wisconsin, Madison     <http://www.cs.wisc.edu>
	Application Fee:  $45
	GPA:              3.00 (3.75 in CS courses)
	GRE Verbel:       600
	GRE Analytical:   600
	GRE Quantitative: 700
	GRE Subject:      700
	Deadline:         December 31, 2001 (December 1, 2001 for fellowships)
	Transcripts:      1 (+1 copy)

Michigan State University           <http://web.cse.msu.edu/>
	Application Fee:  $30
	Deadline:         December 28, 2001 (December 1, 2001 for fellowships)
	Transcripts:      2
	GPA:              3.2
	GRE:              2000 

New York University                 <http://cs.nyu.edu/csweb/Academic/Graduate/>
 	Application Fee:  $60
	GRE Analytical:   ~700
	GRE Quantitative: ~700
	Deadline:         January 4, 2002 
	Transcripts:      2

University of California, San Diego <http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/>
	Application Fee:   $42
	Preapplication Id: 3559
	Deadline:          January 7, 2002
	Transcripts:       1

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
	Application Fee:   $60
	Deadline:	   January 1, 2002
	Transcripts:       1


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Fair Use in a Digital Age (Snve Hfr va n Qvtvgny Ntr)
The Full Weight of the DMCA

By Julian Catchen <topeka@catchen.org>
Third part in a series.

In 1998, Congress passed a law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright 
Act (DMCA).  The act fundamentally altered the landscape of copyright law, 
making it a crime to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively 
controls access to a work" or to distribute any such circumvention 
device.  At the end of 1999, a small hacker magazine, known as 2600 was 
sued for providing access to software that allowed the content of DVDs to 
be viewed.  2600 was the first of what would become many cases of people 
being prosecuted, sued and threatened under the purview of the DMCA.

In July of 2001 Dmitry Sklyarov gave a talk at the DEF CON computer hacker 
conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.  His lecture focused on a relatively new 
publishing format, the electronic book  (eBook), and security 
considerations of using it. Sklyarov was a Russian graduate student who 
studied cryptography and also worked for a Russian company, Elcomsoft.  
Elcomsoft published software that recovered passwords, allowing companies 
to recover the data contained in password-protected documents where the 
password had been lost.  His lecture discussed the weaknesses inherent in 
eBook software, and showed how easily protection schemes for that software 
could be broken.   On July 17, on his way back to Russia, Sklyarov was 
arrested at the Las Vegas airport.

eBook files are basically modified versions of portable document files 
(PDFs) with attributes added to control how many times the file could be 
read, copied, printed or used.  The idea of the format was to give 
publishers great control of how their copyrighted works could be used.  
The publisher could produce everything from free texts to "pay-per-view" 
books -- the software would enforce the license of the book.  The only 
problem was the manufacturers had over-sold the capabilities of their 
eBook software to actually protect the texts stored within them.  Some of 
the manufacturers had created protection schemes so flimsy, that the 
encryption meant to protect the text from unauthorized use was a step 
above pig-Latin.  Sklyarov's lecture at DEF CON discussed how to break 
several of these weak schemes and demonstrated a product that Elcomsoft 
had built for this exact purpose. 

Adobe Corporation, which is best known for its Photoshop and Acrobat 
Reader products, had been investing heavily in eBook technology.  Since 
they invented the original PDF standard they had high hopes for the sale 
of eBooks and produced one of the most popular programs for reading 
eBooks, the Acrobat eBook Reader.  Sometime earlier, Adobe had heard of 
Elcomsoft's efforts at breaking the protection of eBooks and knew that 
they were selling a product that could disable the protections eBooks were 
supposed to provide to book publishers.  As the criminal complaint against 
Sklyarov showed, Adobe approached the FBI and told them about the 
Elcomsoft software and that Sklyarov, the Russian graduate student and 
employee of Elcomsoft, would be giving a lecture in Las Vegas in ten 
days.  Soon after, Sklyarov was taken into custody and charged with 
violating the DMCA. If proven guilty, Sklyarov faced a possibility of 
twenty-five years in prison.  

The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent a technological measure whose 
purpose is to protect a copyrighted work.  But, in an interesting feat of 
circular logic, the DMCA is only supposed to make it a crime to circumvent 
"effective" technological measures.  Of course, if a measure was broken it 
would seem that it was not very effective.  However, this fact has not 
deterred prosecution.  The DMCA also makes it illegal to traffic in such 
software.  It is important to note, however, that the DMCA is an American 
law and Elcomsoft is a Russian company.  There is no DMCA in Russia and it 
is not illegal to produce software that can break copy controls there.

Many people were outraged by this action of the U.S. Government.  Protests 
broke out in July in more than 25 different cities and a boycott was 
launched against Adobe for its role in the affair.  The founder of the 
Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman stated, "this is an ironic 
reversal of roles for the US and Russia. During the cold war, Russia was 
noted for its harsh efforts to stamp out the unauthorized copying and 
redistribution of information (samizdat). Today Russia has dropped this, 
and the United States is picking up where Russia left off. "

Under extreme pressure from computer hackers, free speech activists and IT 
professionals, Adobe withdrew its support from the complaint later in 
July.  The Government, however, refused to halt its prosecution.  
Eventually, a plea agreement was worked out and Sklyarov was allowed to 
return to Russia in exchange for testifying against his company.  While in 
the U.S., Sklyarov spent a total of twenty-one days in jail, and five 
months of forced home-detention in Northern California.  The case against 
Elcomsoft is still pending.

In September of 2000, a consortium of music and technology companies, 
known as the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), offered up a 
challenge to the digital community.  "Hack SDMI" was a way to "show off 
your skills, make some money, and help shape the future of the online 
digital music economy."  The contest was simple:  SDMI had been working on 
several "watermarking" technologies to prevent digital music from being 
copied.  A watermark could theoretically be inserted into a digital music 
file, and would be detectable by SDMI approved music players, but would 
not change the quality of the music.  The idea was to create a watermark 
that could not be removed without destroying the digital music itself.  If 
you tried to play or copy a digital music file without the mark, the 
hardware would refuse to cooperate.  So, show that the watermarks could be 
removed, and SDMI would pay you and your cohorts $10,000.  Of course, as 
part of the deal, any information you uncovered during the process, or any 
code you wrote to help do it would become the property of SDMI and you 
would have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Many hackers refused to participate in the contest.  They saw it as the 
music industry arrogantly trying to convince people to destroy their own 
fair use rights to digital files for a little prize money.  Some 
cryptographic researchers, however, thought that the contest was silly.  
As cryptography expert Bruce Schneier stated, "watermarking does not work. 
It is impossible to design a music watermarking technology that cannot be 
removed," and hence they wanted to prove that the SDMI technologies could 
never work.

Soon after a group of researchers, led by Dr. Edward Felten of Princeton 
University and including people from Rice University and Xerox's Palo Alto 
research lab, announced that they had broken all six proposed 
technologies.  Instead of collecting their prize, however, they gave up 
the $10,000 and instead elected to publish their results at an upcoming 
security conference.

When the work of Felten's team became public, along with their intention 
to publish the results, members of the SDMI, represented by the Recording 
Industry Association of America (RIAA), sent a letter to Felten.  In it, 
they warned him, "[u]nfortunately, the disclosure that you are 
contemplating could result in significantly broader consequences and could 
directly lead to the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. Such 
disclosure ... would subject your research team to enforcement actions 
under the DMCA and possibly other federal laws."  Felten temporarily 
withdrew his research from publication.

As with the Sklyarov case, the action of the SDMI companies created a huge 
public backlash and several days later the RIAA claimed it never really 
intended to sue Felten and his team and subsequently, they published their 
research.  In order to preemptively protect their right to publish, Felten 
and his team sued the RIAA and sought a declaratory judgment from the 
court recognizing their right to publish research without violating the 
DMCA.  In November 2001 the case was dismissed and in February 2002, 
citing further assurances from the RIAA and  the government, Felten agreed 
not to appeal the decision.

These cases represent only the beginning of the use of the DMCA as a blunt 
weapon.  In March of this year the Church of Scientology threatened to sue 
the Google search engine if it did not remove links to a popular 
anti-Scientology web site that was supposedly posting copyrighted church 
documents (xenu.net).  Blizzard, Inc., makers of popular computer games, 
which can be played over the Internet, threatened to sue the volunteers 
who produced bnetd, an Internet-based program  that allows owners of 
Blizzard games to play them over the Internet without using Blizzard's own 
software.  Blizzard claimed that the makers of bnetd were violating the 
DMCA by circumventing controls to Blizzard's proprietary software.  In 
November 2001, the World Trade Organization threatened the Yes Men (a 
group of prankster activists) with action under the DMCA, if the group did 
not give up their ownership of the "gatt.org" domain name.  The WTO's 
predecessor had been the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and 
the Yes Men were using the gatt.org web site as a parody of the WTO.

When the 2600 case first started, many people dismissed it because it only 
affected a small hacker magazine with a niche readership.  However, time 
has shown the effect of the full weight of the DMCA on American society.  
It has impacted everyone from foreign citizens to university 
researchers.  From video-game-playing teenagers to political dissidents.  
According to the Department of Justice, the average prison sentence served 
for rape is about five years.  Dimitry Sklyarov faced twenty-five years in 
an American prison for working for an employer who had him writing a 
program that was legal in his own country. A program that at the very 
worst allowed publishers to know that their texts were insecure and at the 
very best allowed a blind man to have his computer read an eBook to him 
aloud despite the eBook's license that forbid auditory performances.   

In the final part of this series, I will investigate possible alternatives 
to the current course the DMCA has set for American society.  We will look 
at realistic rights to fair use and the continuing threat to it that the 
Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act presents.

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