Court blocks security conference talk

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://news.com.com/2100-1028-996836.html

By John Borland 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 14, 2003

A pair of students were blocked by a federal court from presenting
information at a Georgia security and hackers' conference on how to
break into and modify a university electronic transactions system.

Washington D.C.-based education software company Blackboard
successfully convinced a Georgia state court to block the students'
presentation, which was scheduled to be given at the Interz0ne
conference in Atlanta last weekend.

Blackboard argues that the restraining order blocked the publication
of information gained illegally, which would have harmed the company's
commercial interests and those of its clients. But conference
organizers contend that the students' free speech rights were
abridged.

"The temporary restraining order pointed out that the irreparable
injury to Blackboard, our intellectual property rights and clients far
outweighed the commercial speech rights of the individuals in
question," said Michael Stanton, a Blackboard spokesman.

The company claims that the speech being blocked is commercial speech
because the students were a "small competitor" to Blackboard. One of
the students, Georgia Institute of Technology's Billy Hoffman, had
threatened to give away code allowing any computer to emulate
Blackboard's technology, the company claims.

Programmers' rights to publish or present information that would help
break security technology has been an increasingly controversial issue
over the past few years.

Much of the controversy has focused on the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act, which contains a provision making it illegal to break
technological security measures protecting copyrighted works, or even
to publish information explaining how to do so.

The best-known case in this area had to do with Princeton University
professor Edward Felton's attempts to present information on how to
break protections created by the now-defunct Secure Digital Music
Initiative. Felton said that SDMI attorneys told him he would be
violating copyright law if he presented his work. The Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA), a key part of the SDMI effort,
denied making legal threats.

Although an initial cease and desist letter sent to the Interz0ne
conference organizers hinted that the students may have violated the
DMCA, the complaint that resulted in the temporary restraining order
did not touch on that copyright law.

Instead, the restraining order was grounded largely in federal and
Georgia state antihacking laws and a state trade secrets act.

The information set to be presented was gleaned after one of the
students had physically broken into a network and switching device on
his campus and subsequently figured out a way to mimic Blackboard's
technology, the company told the judge. Because that alleged act would
be illegal under the federal and state laws, publication of the
resulting information should be blocked, it argued.

The state judge agreed, at least temporarily. A hearing on a permanent
injunction against publication or presentation of the work will be
held in Georgia state court Wednesday.

The students, Hoffman and the University of Alabama's Virgil Griffith,
could not immediately be reached for comment.



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