No Freedom to Speak - Court blocks security conference talk

[Jei]

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.