
Carnegie Mellon CS Professor challenges Sony by mirroring Geohot's PS3 hacks - elliottcarlson
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/GeoHot/
======
jdp23
About a decade ago, David Touretsky (the professor behind this) hosted a
"gallery" of versions for the DeCSS decryption software.

~~~
aothman
Touretzky is also one of scientology's biggest online critics:

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/>

I believe CMU's lawyers are well-acquainted with responding to legal threats
against him.

~~~
blantonl
CMU's lawyers most certainly had to vet this before it went up publicly, so
lets raise a toast to those attorneys, and most importantly Touretzky, for
their efforts.

This was not a spur of the moment thing - these guys did their homework.

" _Ding_ "

~~~
scott_s
_CMU's lawyers most certainly had to vet this before it went up publicly_

I doubt that. Academics are used to operating with autonomy, and by nature
don't confer with lawyers before speaking. So I'm curious why you're so
certain he presented this to the lawyers first.

~~~
jhferris3
As someone who's taken a few classes with said professor, I highly doubt he
consulted any lawyers before doing this.

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elliottcarlson
Additionally, Team fail0verflow's github is also mirrored:
<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/GeoHot/mirror/ps3publictools.git/>

~~~
tibbon
Did Github remove the code at the request of Sony? While I realize they don't
want to get embroiled in a legal battle, I find it unfortunate as well.

~~~
ramidarigaz
Looks like it's still there: <https://github.com/geohot/ps3publictools>

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tibbon
I do wish there was someone with Sony's PoV here to try to explain to us their
rationale and how they hope to actually win this battle overall- as they can't
really imagine that they can make the information go away with lawsuits.

~~~
elliottcarlson
This just seems like another test of the anti-circumvention provision in the
DCMA. Unlike the XBox modding trial that was dismissed [1], this case actually
has nothing to do with piracy, as geohot made it a point not to add in piracy
enabling features.

[1] <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/crippen-dismissed/>

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mahmud
CMU CS professors have a history of kicking ass. Robert Harper is another one
who is a very vocal anti-DMCA campaigner, and hosts his own political radio
show :-)

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/>

~~~
cyrus_
I don't believe his radio show is still on air, but yes.

------
aces
This should be called "How to be a real man", by Professor Touretzky.

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david2777
Oddly enough on Geohot's site and the professor's mirror it states "do not
mirror file, link to geohot.com".

~~~
int_main_void
Well A) given the state of affairs I can't imagine that geohot minds the show
of support.

B) I think it would be kind of hilarious of Geohot gave CMU a takedown notice
for it, yeah it would be a dick move, but really hilarious.

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tpr1m
Mirroring rocks! A point-and-click guarantee of defeating censorship.

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michaelty
The blink tag was a nice touch.

~~~
InclinedPlane
IE and Chrome don't support blink, only Firefox does. A legacy of the Netscape
heritage I'd imagine, since blink is a Netscape proprietary HTML addition.

~~~
robin_reala
Gecko also supports text-decoration:blink if you’re a fan of semantic markup
and keeping presentation in the presentation layer.

Personally, I’m waiting for “Bug 173540 - make text-decoration:blink pulse
instead of blink” to be fixed:
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=173540>

------
riffraff
time to get a PS3 master key t-shirt!

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imkevingao
There's no point of dedicating resource on fighting freedom of speech. Sony
just has to shift strategic position. I mean you don't see Microsoft and Apple
whining about it. I know that Sony has dedicated A LOT of money on each
individual PS3 console, but they knew this day would come. Instead of trying
to sue and put restrictions on the first amendment, they should learn how to
make money with a hacked system.

~~~
dangrossman
What does this have to do with the first amendment? The first amendment
prohibits the US government from making certain laws. "Freedom of speech" is
freedom from government restrictions on speech, not from any actions of
private businesses or individuals.

~~~
jbri
Private individuals and businesses cannot do anything to prevent free speech.
At best, they can petition the government to do so on their behalf. Hence the
first amendment issue.

~~~
dangrossman
So you've never heard of an NDA? What about the TOS that prohibits you from
writing hate speech on Facebook, or posting porn to YouTube?

You can contract away your right to speech as easily as anything else. This
has nothing to do with the first amendment.

~~~
jbri
What is a company going to do if you break an NDA? Call out a hit squad? Break
your kneecaps?

Oh, that's right, they'll get the government to step in.

With regards to your second issue, you're making the classic mistake of
conflating a user's right to free speech with a provider's obligation to
distribute that speech. Facebook has no obligation to distribute _anything_ ,
and choosing not to distribute some things is _not_ a limitation on free
speech.

~~~
uxp
> Oh, that's right, they'll get the government to step in.

Only by suing you, civilly, in a civilian court of law. Unless the company is
the United States Military, you can't really be thrown in jail for breaking
the contract on its own. One would have to willfully spread the information
learned while under the NDA, with the intent of that information causing
damage, like a security hole in some bank's network a hired pen-tester finds
that allows an attacker to illegally obtain money.

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sever
This is awesome.

I remember DeCSS, my favorite was people getting tattoos of the source code.

~~~
JonnieCache
DeCSS is too big for your arm. You're thinking of RSA
<http://www.geekytattoos.com/illegal-tattoos-rsa-tattoos/>

~~~
uxp
Or the AACS key, which is much more manageable as a permanent addition to
one's body.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy>

tattoo: <http://www.thenewfreedom.net/wp/2007/05/02/takedown-this/>

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lhnz
Anybody else find it really funny that a guy called 'touretzky' is threatening
Sony. Just me? Oh.

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Jayasimhan
This is so F'ing awesome! I was feeling bad for the hackers. This news made my
day.

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lotusleaf1987
This professor is indescribably awesome.

~~~
JonnieCache
Maybe he can team up with that professor from cambridge who wrote that letter
to the banks and they can be an international crimefighting duo.

~~~
oozcitak
The Cambridge professor was Ross Anderson. He replied to a letter from UK
Cards Association requesting the university to take down a research paper by a
PhD student. The issue was about the chip-and-pin no-pin vulnerability.

HN Discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2039117>

Take down request:
<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/20101221110342233.pdf> (pdf)

Professor Anderson's reply: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/ukca.pdf>
(pdf)

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ddkrone
Yea!

