I feel pretty certain that they do analyze the traffic too. There is no such thing as absolute security, just layers. Also, I doubt that the audio CAPTCHA is a target for cracking because it is much more CPU intensive to crack than an image one. Not as viable for cracking large numbers of CAPTCHAs, like what spammers have to do.

I could be wrong on that though.

I think you are confused about an element of the case though. Ticketmaster is not accusing the company of copying anything, but rather, accessing. The DMCA makes it illegal to traffic in tools that allow you to circumvent access controls or to use them.

Caching, as you describe, is actually very well protected under the DMCA. Furthermore, there is an implied license to copy a page as is standard practice for viewing it on the Web. In short, I don’t think anyone is going to court over personal caching.

As far as torturous interference goes, that is part of the suit as well. Like most lawsuits, it is a shotgun approach, with many different torts in it, we were just focused on the copyright and DMCA issues here.

Brach of contract and interference are other matters that will be decided later as well.

Hope that clarifies things!

I feel pretty certain that they do analyze the traffic too. There is no such thing as absolute security, just layers. Also, I doubt that the audio CAPTCHA is a target for cracking because it is much more CPU intensive to crack than an image one. Not as viable for cracking large numbers of CAPTCHAs, like what spammers have to do.

I could be wrong on that though.

I think you are confused about an element of the case though. Ticketmaster is not accusing the company of copying anything, but rather, accessing. The DMCA makes it illegal to traffic in tools that allow you to circumvent access controls or to use them.

Caching, as you describe, is actually very well protected under the DMCA. Furthermore, there is an implied license to copy a page as is standard practice for viewing it on the Web. In short, I don’t think anyone is going to court over personal caching.

As far as torturous interference goes, that is part of the suit as well. Like most lawsuits, it is a shotgun approach, with many different torts in it, we were just focused on the copyright and DMCA issues here.

Brach of contract and interference are other matters that will be decided later as well.

Hope that clarifies things!

As an engineer for the reCaptcha project I would have hoped you thought differently. Anyone familiar with fourier transforms and hidden markov models already have your audio cracked. Why don’t you guys just simply remove the captcha portion and analyze the traffic itself? You’ve already got enough adoption to make it useful.

On to the topic…

The unfortunate thing about this story is the abuse and misinterpretation of the word “copy”. The act of viewing a website, and thus containing the website in your computer’s RAM should absolutely not, under any circumstances, be considered willfully copying the content. This *entire* case hinges on the fact that this misinterpretation, unfortunately, has precedence in the courts.

If this is considered copying the content, I invite everyone to rally up and begin a class action lawsuit against every ISP that uses a performance enhancing proxy who is willfully engaging in blatant copyright infringement on an enormous scale. Not that I hate the intarwebs, but it’d prove a point.

Again, if they go that far they should be blinding us because I guarantee I can recall at least a full sentence of this website and reproduce it from short term memory alone.

I think TicketMaster should have gone after something more along the lines of tortious interference, or “simply” place a value on the traffic from the automation, the likelihood of turning away future customers due to latency arguable caused by him, etc, etc.

This is quite literally how we wind up with stupid laws. Some jackass convinces a judge who has no idea what the intertubes are that something way over his head is illegal.

You wanna know the answer to the CAPTCHA problem? Establish precedence in the court of law that tortious interference of a TOS, and knowingly breaking a TOS while continuing to use the service, is illegal. Problem solved, and hey, no more making our copyright law even more insane.

As an engineer for the reCaptcha project I would have hoped you thought differently. Anyone familiar with fourier transforms and hidden markov models already have your audio cracked. Why don’t you guys just simply remove the captcha portion and analyze the traffic itself? You’ve already got enough adoption to make it useful.

On to the topic…

The unfortunate thing about this story is the abuse and misinterpretation of the word “copy”. The act of viewing a website, and thus containing the website in your computer’s RAM should absolutely not, under any circumstances, be considered willfully copying the content. This *entire* case hinges on the fact that this misinterpretation, unfortunately, has precedence in the courts.

If this is considered copying the content, I invite everyone to rally up and begin a class action lawsuit against every ISP that uses a performance enhancing proxy who is willfully engaging in blatant copyright infringement on an enormous scale. Not that I hate the intarwebs, but it’d prove a point.

Again, if they go that far they should be blinding us because I guarantee I can recall at least a full sentence of this website and reproduce it from short term memory alone.

I think TicketMaster should have gone after something more along the lines of tortious interference, or “simply” place a value on the traffic from the automation, the likelihood of turning away future customers due to latency arguable caused by him, etc, etc.

This is quite literally how we wind up with stupid laws. Some jackass convinces a judge who has no idea what the intertubes are that something way over his head is illegal.

You wanna know the answer to the CAPTCHA problem? Establish precedence in the court of law that tortious interference of a TOS, and knowingly breaking a TOS while continuing to use the service, is illegal. Problem solved, and hey, no more making our copyright law even more insane.

Agreed on all points. Fortunately though, as long as the nice folks at reCAPTCHA are monitoring the situation, there is little need from me to follow the situation.

Someone has to stay vigilant, just not always me. Doesn’t mean my eyes aren’t open for the next big more in this area tough.

Agreed on all points. Fortunately though, as long as the nice folks at reCAPTCHA are monitoring the situation, there is little need from me to follow the situation.

Someone has to stay vigilant, just not always me. Doesn’t mean my eyes aren’t open for the next big more in this area tough.

I do agree that making better CAPTCHAs is the answer, because no abuse protections system is ’set-and-forget’. One needs to be constantly vigilant.

I do agree that making better CAPTCHAs is the answer, because no abuse protections system is ’set-and-forget’. One needs to be constantly vigilant.

Excellent points all around there. I can’t find anything to take issue with, which is rare for me!

It is very important to remember that changing technology is easier than trying to change the law. It takes only a short while to upgrade a CAPTCHA system, well, at least when you compare it to the years and years it can take to track the person down who cracked it and bring them to court.

I also want to stress that I love reCAPTCHA in part for some of the reasons you stated. It makes much more sense than installing a plugin that has to be upgraded every few months as new cracks arise.

I was very skeptical about using reCAPTCHA on my site, or any CAPTCHA system, but am glad I did.

I have zero regrets and nothing but praise. Your system is the first real deal bloggers have had available.