Tuesday, April 22, 2003
Your Firewall Might Become Illegal...
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 05:01 PM
"Why would a program that stops harmful worms from spreading run afoul of a law that is on the surface intended to stop cable theft? Because, like the less-damaging federal DMCA law, Super DMCA is overly broad and lacks common sense (see Peter Coffee's column on these laws). One of the common aspects of these laws is that they make illegal any device or program that can "conceal or to assist another to conceal from any communication service provider or from any lawful authority the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication." Aside from LaBrea, this makes a whole set of common IT programs and hardware illegal, from firewalls to VPNs to privacy applications."
What a scary law...I'm glad Canada hasn't passed anything similar yet, although if this becomes common across all the states, I'm sure we'll see something similar proposed here. 8O
What a scary law...I'm glad Canada hasn't passed anything similar yet, although if this becomes common across all the states, I'm sure we'll see something similar proposed here. 8O