stories filed under: "germany"
German Courts Say That Info On Your Computer Is Private
from the just-say-nein dept
The German government has been pushing for the ability to spy on computers of suspected criminals and terrorists. A little over a year ago, a court came down firmly against a proposal to allow German authorities to use spyware on computers of suspected criminals to gather information. Now another German court has ruled on a similar issue, noting that using surveillance systems to spy on personal computers would be a violation of privacy rights. While German authorities are already complaining about how this will make it difficult for them to catch criminals and terrorists, it sounds like they are overreacting. Courts will still be able to approve such surveillance if authorities can show evidence of why the surveillance is needed. This seems completely reasonable, as laws shouldn't be made solely to make it easy to catch criminals. They should be made to protect the rights of individuals. When those two things come into conflict, the rights of individuals should prevail.Amazon Quietly Dumps DVD Rental Business; Guess Netflix Isn't So Easy To Beat
from the netflix-never-dies dept
You really have to hand it to Netflix. Every time some new (big) entrant enters the market and prognosticators insist that Netflix is going down, the company has managed to keep on chugging along -- while the competitors eventually capitulate. Remember back in 2002, when Wal-Mart entered the DVD rental market, and everyone thought that Netflix had no chance? Fast forward a few years, and Wal-Mart was shutting down its efforts and handing them over to Netflix instead.Then there's Amazon. In 2004, Netflix itself broke the news that Amazon was entering the market, causing plenty of concern. After all, Wal-Mart was a big stodgy company, where you could (possibly) predict that it wouldn't be able to succeed in a web-based endeavor. However, Amazon was a very different story. Except that it wasn't. Amazon realized just how difficult it was to do a good job with DVD rentals in the US, and chose to focus just on the UK, hoping to build up experience there without having to compete head-on with Netflix. There was even talk that Amazon might follow Wal-Mart into just letting Netflix handle its own DVD rentals in the US. No matter what, it appears that Amazon's little experiment didn't go all that well. It has now sold off the DVD rental business in the UK and Germany to competitor Lovefilm (while also taking a stake in the company).
Either way, it's yet another example of a big company assuming it could easily take on Netflix in the DVD rental business and finding that it wasn't nearly as easy as expected. While Blockbuster is still hanging in there, Netflix has shown time and time again that what looks like a simple business isn't always so easy to replicate. This is an important lesson for those who insist that big companies can always just come in and crush small upstarts. That's not the way things always work. An idea is one thing. Execution is something entirely different.
Filed Under: dvd rentals, germany, uk
Companies: amazon, netflix
German Government Struggles To Tap Encrypted Skype Calls
from the crypto-works dept
The Wikileaks project is starting to bear fruit, with documents leaked to the site beginning to get a lot of attention. The latest example is correspondence between the German government and a vendor (via Slashdot) that apparently makes software for intercepting Skype calls. Interestingly, the interception technology appears to be pretty primitive and rather expensive. The software has to be installed on the Skype client, and the vendor suggests that this can be accomplished by attaching a trojan to an e-mail or physically entering the premises to install the software on the target machine. And, evidently, only Windows 2000 and XP are supported; Vista support is still in the works. The company charges thousands of euros per target computer. This suggests that Skype's encryption technology is secure against at least the eavesdropping techniques available to the German government. Apparently they haven't found a way to decode encrypted Skype traffic off the wire, so they're forced to resort to these fairly cumbersome attacks on Skype clients -- attacks that are no more convenient for law enforcement than simply bugging the target's office. That suggests that the risk of comprehensive government surveillance of online telephony is still a fair ways off. If you encrypt your online activities, they're probably pretty secure. Of course, it's entirely possible that other government agencies, such as the NSA, have more sophisticated eavesdropping technology that they haven't shared with the Germans. My guess is that any government agencies possessing really sophisticated eavesdropping tools are also less likely to have their private documents show up on Wikileaks.Filed Under: encryption, germany, skype, trojans, voip, wiretapping
Companies: skype
German Proposal Gives A New Perspective On 'Spyware'
from the big-brother-is-hacking-yo dept
A VoIP expert has unveiled new proof-of-concept software that allows an attacker to monitor other peoples' VoIP calls and record them for later review. Unencrypted VoIP really isn't very secure; if you have access to the raw network traffic of a call, it's not too hard to reconstruct the audio. Encrypted traffic is another story. German officials have discovered that when suspects use Skype's encryption feature, they aren't able to decode calls even if they have a court order authorizing them to do so. Some law enforcement officials in Germany apparently want to deal with this problem by having courts give them permission to surreptitiously install spying software on the target's computer. To his credit, Joerg Ziercke, president of Germany's Federal Police Office, says that he's not asking Skype to put back doors in its software. But the proposal still raises some serious question. Once the installation of spyware becomes a standard surveillance method, law enforcement will have a vested interest in making sure that operating systems and VoIP applications have vulnerabilities they can exploit. There will inevitably be pressure on Microsoft, Skype, and other software vendors to provide the police with backdoors. And backdoors are problematic because they can be extremely difficult to limit to authorized individuals. It would be a disaster if the backdoor to a popular program like Skype were discovered by unauthorized individuals. A similar issue applies to anti-virus software. If anti-virus products detect and notify users when court-ordered spyware is found on a machine, it could obviously disrupt investigations and tip off suspects. On the other hand, if antivirus software ignores "official" spyware, then spyware vendors will start trying to camouflage their software as government-installed software to avoid detection. Ultimately, there may be no way for anti-spyware products to turn a blind eye to government-approved spyware without undermining the effectiveness of their products.Hence, I'm skeptical of the idea of government-mandated spyware, although I don't think it should be ruled out entirely. That may sound like grim news for law enforcement, which does have a legitimate need to eavesdrop on crime suspects. But it's important to keep in mind that law enforcement officials do have other tools at their disposal. If they're not able to install software surveillance tools, it's always possible to do it the old-fashioned way--in hardware. Law enforcement agencies can always sneak into a suspect's home (with a court order, of course) and install bugging devices. That tried and true method works regardless of the communications technology being used.
Filed Under: germany, skype, spyware, voip, wiretapping
Germany Says Nein To Private Copying
from the who-would-want-to-do-that? dept
A bunch of folks have submitted the news that Germany's upper house of parliament has approved a new copyright law that forbids any kind of private copying of music or movies. There aren't many details in the Variety article about why such a strict law would get approval, though it does note that the politicians ignored widespread criticism against the law. Obviously, this is the type of law that some large entertainment companies would push for, though if it really does become the law, they'll find that it harms them a lot more than it helps them. That's because forbidding private copying will make music, movies and TV shows a lot less valuable to purchasers. If you can't rip a CD to mp3 format to place on your iPod, that CD is suddenly a lot less valuable. It's amazing that such a law would pass, but the end result is going to be criminalizing a large segment of the population while making entertainment products a lot less valuable. It's hard to see how that's beneficial to anyone. Update: In the comments there's a good clarification, that suggests the Variety report isn't entirely accurate (or at least leaves out some of the details). This may just forbid circumvention of copy-protected material -- and then forbid any additional copies of content that was originally copy protected. Thus, it might not forbid copying a CD or DVD that has no copy protection. Still, given how many people still make private copies of copy-protected music in order to listen to it on a different device for convenience, this would still criminalize a lot of activities -- though, perhaps not as many as the original report suggested.Filed Under: copyright, germany, private copying
German Prosecutors Tell Entertainment Industry They Won't Help Going After P2P Users
from the petty-offense dept
We've never quite understood why in the US and some other countries, a civil matter between businesses and their customers should require help from public law enforcement. However, that's what happened with copyright issues, as the entertainment industry has been able to get various law enforcement organizations from the FBI to SWAT teams to work for them. They've also got the US's top cop proposing legislation for their benefit. However, it looks like folks in Germany have a very different view. Public prosecutors in Germany are apparently telling entertainment industry lawyers that they won't help the industry track down file sharers, noting the "obvious disproportionateness" of trying to go after people for file sharing, and noting that unauthorized file sharing was merely "a petty offense," while pointing out that, despite industry claims to the contrary, "there was no evidence that substantial damage had been done." In other words, they're saying that the German gov't shouldn't get involved in a private business squabble from an industry that is blowing file sharing totally out of proportion -- especially when there's little evidence that file sharing is actually doing any harm. Sounds like a pretty reasonable position.
