PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania -- It's a bit of a mystery: First, the recording industry successfully intimidated a team of academics led by a Princeton University professor into not revealing the vulnerabilities of a music watermarking scheme.
But a French researcher presented similar work at a conference here on Friday, a day after Princeton's Ed Felten backed down, and encountered nary a lawsuit.
Julien Stern, the co-author of the analysis, reports he never even received a lawyer nastygram. "They never contacted me," he said.
The paper he wrote with another graduate student, Julien Boeuf, is called "An analysis of one of the SDMI candidates," and it was available on their website long before lawyers from the Secure Digital Music Initiative contacted Felten.
So why didn't SDMI ask him to delete it?
First, the French grad students published their paper immediately, instead of waiting to unveil it at the Information Hiding Workshop this week.
Second, the French researchers penetrated just one of the technologies in the SDMI challenge -- and the Princeton team was more successful.
Third, and perhaps most likely, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act doesn't exist in France and doesn't cover the activities of French citizens. The music industry claimed that by presenting his paper, Felten would have violated the DMCA.
Next year's workshop, incidentally, is scheduled to be held in Europe.
IMC Unbound: The Independent Media Center of Seattle is no longer gagged.
Last Saturday, the journalist collective was served with a federal court order telling them to turn over information about who posted to the group's website -- but not tell anyone about it.
That sparked a torrent of rumors, some accurate and some not, and frenzied attempts by IMC staff to contain reports of the feds' visit by deleting posts from the site.
On Friday, the IMC said it is now free to discuss the court proceedings and distributed a detailed report. It says: "We regret the feelings of confusion and disempowerment which many users of the IMC sites experienced due to Saturday night's blackout of postings on this topic, and the general frustration caused by the gag order."
The investigation, apparently being conducted by the FBI and the Secret Service, involves security plans from the Quebec City trade summit that appeared on an IMC site.
Antitrust update: A prominent Microsoft foe is now predicting at least a partial antitrust win for the company before an appeals court.
Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who led the state coalition against Microsoft, said this week that the DC Circuit Court of Appeals would probably overturn a breakup order from U.S. District Judge Thomas Jackson.
When asked if there was any chance that the judges would uphold the current judgment against Microsoft, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller replied, "probably not in its entirety," according to a report in The Boston Globe.
Crypto-cash: Attorney General John Ashcroft said this week that he needs more money to spend on encryption-breaking.
On Thursday, Ashcroft told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that the Justice Department could use a few million dollars more to spend in the area -- $28.14 million, to be exact.
"The nation's growing dependency on technology systems has resulted in a heightened vulnerability of our banking system, critical transportation networks and vital government services, while also significantly increasing the incidence and complexity of crime," Ashcroft said. "To address the emerging cyber threat, the FY 2002 budget includes $33 million in increased resources."
The rest of the money would go to hire more federal prosecutors and agents.
