23 dezembro 2002

VITAMEDIAS
Will this land me in jail? Our story starts with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Web site, which has an area called "Security and Law Enforcement" featuring four password-protected Microsoft Word documents. No password is necessary to download those encrypted documents, but a password is required to open and read them.
According to the brief descriptions on the TSA Web site, the four files cover airport security procedures, the relationship between federal and local police, and a "liability information sheet." A note on the site says this "information is restricted to airport management and local law enforcement." (Who knows? Maybe the sure-to-be-convincing reasoning behind banning those deadly nail clippers will be revealed.)
Anyway, a confidential source recently gave me what I believe is the correct secret password to the documents.
But here's the catch, and it's a pretty silly one: If I type the password into Microsoft Word or even tell you what it is, I could be liable for civil and criminal penalties under the DMCA. Section 1201 of the law contains two prohibitions: First, "no person shall circumvent a technological measure" that controls access to copyrighted information, and second, no one may publish information such as a password that's designed to circumvent "a technological measure that effectively controls access" to a copyrighted document.
Civil penalties include hefty fines and computer confiscation. And since CNET News.com is a for-profit business, I need to worry about criminal sanctions too. Under the current law, I or my editors can "be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both."
That's the section of the DMCA under which first Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov and then his employer, ElcomSoft, were prosecuted. True, ElcomSoft beat the rap--but who's willing to risk having a different jury reach a different conclusion? How about if a prosecutor calls it a case of endangering national security? And even an acquittal would happen only after years of agonizing and expensive legal proceedings. No thanks.
[Aliás, como o caso Sklyarov demonstrou, nem mesmo alguém noutro país está a salvo se abrir os documentos: quando entrar nos Estados Unidos, pode ser preso. Junte-se o caso Gutnick e eis a emergência de leis nacionais de âmbito internacional.]