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 Post subject: DMCA Changes
PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 11:27 pm 
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The DMCA had some sizable changes made to it this week:

Quote:
- allow owners of used cell phones to break access controls on their phones in order to switch wireless carriers.
- allow people to break technical protections on video games to investigate or correct security flaws.
- allow college professors, film students, documentary filmmakers and producers of noncommercial videos to break copy-protection measures on DVDs so they can embed clips for educational purposes, criticism or commentary.
- allow computer owners to bypass the need for external security devices called dongles if the dongle no longer works and cannot be replaced.
- allow blind people to break locks on electronic books so that they can use them with read-aloud software and similar aides.


Full article is at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02813.html or on the front page of http://www.eff.org. It's not explicit permission to openly provide information about how to evade security mechanisms, but maybe it will provide some context for discussing methodology without needing to worry about getting immediately slammed with a DMCA infringement notice. Treating poker clients as "video games" is probably stretching the letter of the law, but I think it maintains the spirit.

Any chance the reverse engineering discussion policies can be loosened slightly? (Though I'd like to say the mods have been very cooperative with me deciding on a case by case basis).


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 Post subject: Re: DMCA Changes
PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 11:37 pm 
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That's an interesting news ...

PokerProspector wrote:
Treating poker clients as "video games" is probably stretching the letter of the law, but I think it maintains the spirit.

I think Poker clients can fit to that. They are a game, after all (especially the play money versions which are marketed on TV).

PokerProspector wrote:
Any chance the reverse engineering discussion policies can be loosened slightly?

Here I'm not so sure. I read this change as that you can RE such software for the purpose of discoveiring and fixing security flaws. It would be quite brave to assume that anyone here would do this for this purpose (Although I won't exclude it, as we had guys here working for anti-virus companies).

I would rather leave this rule active for now.

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 Post subject: Re: DMCA Changes
PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 11:47 pm 
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indiana wrote:
That's an interesting news ...

PokerProspector wrote:
Any chance the reverse engineering discussion policies can be loosened slightly?

Here I'm not so sure. I read this change as that you can RE such software for the purpose of discoveiring and fixing security flaws. It would be quite brave to assume that anyone here would do this for this purpose (Although I won't exclude it, as we had guys here working for anti-virus companies).

I would rather leave this rule active for now.


Understandable - thanks for the quick reply!

But members are also notifying websites: I do remember rootw0rm found that Full Tilt e-mail leak in the protocol a while ago and did end up notifying them:

rootw0rm wrote:
FTP had a serious security issue which I noticed a few weeks ago. My bot is packet based, but I have to split the packets into FTP messages myself. There is a mix of fixed length and variable length messages in the FTP protocol. I log any packets that are unusual or fail to process so I can fix any bugs in my packet handler. I noticed I was getting packets with extra information appended to them. this information included player handle, email address, full name and address, etc. The FTP server was reusing packet buffers without clearing them. Account detail packets from people were being reused for specific table info packets which were then sent to other people. I *think* only tournament players were exposed to this security breach but I can't be sure.

I gave FTP packet logs of the bug and it was silently fixed (no client update) on or about May 13th. So that probably explains the email incidents. Not sure how many people out there would've noticed this, I thought it was pretty obscure and hoped nobody else knew.


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