Yeah, we're live And now we awkwardly sit here for 15 seconds and make sure it works Yeah 15 silence dude, dude, dude. We are starting early though. So uh, that's nice. Maybe assuming that this actually works And this is the case. There's quite the delay Like I thought it was like a 15 second delay, but this is going on like 40 seconds now Maybe it's not gonna start until you get the countdown is finished Maybe Is that possible? Is that a thing? Because it hasn't started on my screen. Yeah It says we're live Did it break? Oh no We broke you too. Oh No wait something's happening. Okay. Is it working? Hey, we're live How's it going everyone? What? Huh? Okay So Jordan and I are here and we're going to be doing our live channel critiques where you guys can submit your videos and we will watch them on live Video will YouTube stuff. I was about to say television but this is obviously not television unless you're watching on a television than it could be and we will Yeah, we'll let you know what we think of your videos and give you tips on what you can do to improve your videos So not only that but it's spotlighting your stuff to show to other people. So make sure you give us stuff that you like so Anyways, Jordan has already picked someone or ahead of schedule. So We'll go ahead and start that up Yeah Madden 16 from Dylan does stuff. What a game. What a game So first I just like check it out the channel real quick alright First person we are the at the point now It looks like you are set to feed view instead of browse So make sure you switch it over to browse so you can organize stuff and playlists and stuff and make it so it's easily Navigatable and we can hop through your channel easily So I'm not going to go over that because I go over it 50 times each time So we'll skip that whole spiel. Anyways, we're starting off with the video Madden 16 new TOTW pack opening. I was just one of those card opening things. I have no idea. I don't I don't play Madden I know it's an awesome game.  There's stuff like OBS, which is what I'm using to stream right now You can also use that to record and there's plenty more free ones You can even get the bandicam free version if you don't mind a watermark but YouTube actually gives you a YouTube actually gives you a subscription for a free streaming X split X split broadcaster, which is the free version You can download that and you can use that for live streaming on YouTube That's just one of the things you can do. Well, I was thinking as far as a screen capture As far as screen capture, then yeah, there's plenty of free things out there. Yeah. Yeah, I Didn't know YouTube had a partnership with X split. That's cool. Yeah brownie. No I downloaded it just in case I want to stream in the future. Yeah, I know they did something wirecast, but I don't hear that So Was the microphone because it sounds like you're sat on your sofa a thousand miles away So Yeah, that's all good. You can sit closer to the if you haven't got an external microphone You can just sit closer to the camera itself You might be a bit too close to TV, but as far as your audience is concerned It's just gonna sound better instead of you being sounded like you're in the other room so Yeah, but this whole video kind of comes down to is Equipment is what it looks like because yeah, you definitely Like you're talking throughout the whole thing You're staying keeping the viewer engaged and what you're doing is good However, you need people to be able to hear it and you need people to be able to see it clearly Like I can't read this text up at the top right I don't know if I need to or not, but it is quite pixelated since you aren't recording up the screen.  It's gonna sound better So it's something you just kind of have to learn and play with and see how you can get the best quality for your setup Because I know lack of equipment sucks. It took me about 12 to 15 years to get all the equipment I have now and when I first started I had a camera now It's like up there. I don't know if you can see it or not They had a little turd camera that didn't record audio and an mp3 player with headphones that I rigged up to be the microphone and If you can imagine Like just a normal pair of headphones. How good of audio those would create as a microphone. They're not supposed to be a microphone, but So that's where I started and I understand so You have the personality and the charisma for you just need to try and up your overall quality to make it more enjoyable for the viewer Yes, I agree. All right So, let's go ahead and pick another one Is anyone else's Facebook broken Sad day Yeah, is anyone up with that dilemma right now Jordan. I were talking like hey, you ready. Oh, I didn't send What do I do? How do I talk to Jordan? Is there any other options carry your pigeon away? Snail Next month. Yeah. All right, so I saw Someone Pete I always missed this show. Could I get a critique since I'm seeing a lot of the same names are gonna give him a Chance since he did say he always misses the show. I'd like to see someone new There's that he does they any video in particular so it's up to us to figure one out. How about that? Oh, okay so Do you undo the channel trailer? Do you want to pick an actual video? Well, the train is always a good video to introduce new people to the channel.  They do look very nice. All right, uh, how about We watch an actual video because I'm not here to be jealous of other people I want a rainbow six first game and first thoughts. There we go I'm curious because I have seen this game is coming out and I was interested to see what it's like So that's a cool intro Okay Yay, somebody has come somebody has a comedic side. Yeah, and he's British Definitely looks pretty good so Overall quality and everything so far. I mean in like the first 10 seconds you threw some jokes out there You had some different comedy aspects to keep the viewer hooked The quality is not bad You microphone could add like a little bit of a boost maybe to Just seems kind of flat I think maybe that's what it is Yeah, but then again as far as levels sounds fine like all the explosions and gunshots about yeah, yeah It just has a weird Sound to it. I guess is what I'm getting at It sounds very tinny. Yeah Which a lot of that, you know, it depends on what equipment you have, but it does sound clear, which is nice It's not clipping. It's not scratchy. It just it sounds like I guess Jordan said tinny So it could be a headset microphone. Yeah, that's very true. I kind of gave up on headset microphones I haven't found one that I've liked What's funny is like I used to love headset mics I thought they were so convenient and so nice And I actually went back and watch some my old videos where I used that I was like wait I allowed myself to upload this. It's like I Used to think this was good. What and like this is like head over heels better than what my headset mic sounded like so It was like all staticky and clipping all the time and yeah So That's how me and Mike became friends. I started watching his gaming channel Back in 2012 I was like this guy's funny I do like the extra editing and such that you put into it because it's not just a straight-up gameplay You take extra time to edit in comedic parts like that spot where you killed that person you put sad music Like I love that little extra effort. Like, you know when I edit a gameplay. I just want to get it done and Uploaded I don't ever think about that extra stuff. And if I did Yeah, if I Spent that extra time. I think it'd make my videos all the better But I'm too lazy to do it. So like when people do that stuff. It really stands out to me and I think it's awesome Cool. I mean not much to really say other than just quality of Mike I guess and even at that it's good enough to watch. It's not His comedy is all there. I mean, yeah, that's probably the best thing about Now there is a lack of outro That would be nice So you can redirect viewers to your next video or it looks like you're doing vlogs as well You can have like a vlogs playlist and you can have a first impressions playlist And you can kind of redirect your viewers just wherever you see fit I think that's something that would really benefit your channel and Would help out all your videos as a whole So it's that was a really good quality video beginning to end. It was it was paced really well And I think it was done well Like I actually watched four minutes of it straight before I started skipping through weeks I realized we were on this video for too long. So that's always a good sign But yeah, cool stuff, do you have anything to add? No, that's pretty much you covered everything Keep being awesome There you go All right, so I'll let you pick someone Jordan. I sent you a link. Okay ahead of the game Yes This is Davy the gamer, okay, and also guys When you when we're reviewing people obviously we're not gonna be checking out the chat because we are watching the videos So instead of like just commenting over and over asking us to watch we're not gonna be able to see that Why don't you watch the channels with us and watch the videos and even give them your own feedback on it? So We'll let you know and we're looking for channels and you guys can come at them So that way we can keep it kind of clutter-free and we can all kind of help support each other so Which video do you want to watch? Davy the gamer intro, let's say Let's do 50 Instructors whatever that means. Okay Wow straight away copyright music That's copyright.  There's nothing else there. So It's kind of tough to critique. I Think what I can see here is recorded by mode bees and Never heard of that one before it's looks like he's playing on his phone or tablet. So that's For one that's cool because I have absolutely no clue how to record phone games except for using an emulator on a computer So props to you on that because you're already one step ahead of the game there Now the quality is kind of low But I'm assuming that's because you're using a free app since you have the watermark down there And they probably limit you to that so if you have like, you know an extra five bucks, whatever it costs to get The pro version I'm sure that would benefit you and that benefit your overall quality so I Mean heck $5 and a lot just ask for it for Christmas or your birthday or something or go Moa lawn Get $5 and buy that and then that would help your overall quality there I've just been going through the channel and It's pretty much all just like the same mobile minutes. Yeah, I'll upload and And also with the copyright music I was just watching a video about San Andreas because I love San Andreas and It was um, don't it was um fear the Reaper. No, not fear of the Reaper fear of the dark by Iron Maiden. Oh, yeah But listen to it on your own time But yeah, I Think you have a cool niche there if your goal is to go for mobile gaming and I know that's tough to do Commentary on mobile. I'm sure. Oh, wow the quality on this one looks much better. I did a different one But yeah Like a lot of people that I've seen that do this type of stuff They'll record it and then they'll go later and then do voiceover on their computer And then that way they can add some voice and that way you don't just have to put music to keep it Entertaining so you're obviously going in you're editing it afterwards to add music So if you go in and just you know, do your voice over for it Then you can add something to it to give it a little bit extra spice and make it more interesting because I don't really know too Many people that do mobile gaming. So there's a lot of stuff you could do with that if you're Looking to optimize on that Hopefully you can understand me because there's nothing in here on English. So I just realized that I Just talked to no one All right, so let's go ahead and pick another one Okay, give me a second Try to find All right, we are going to check out this one Wooper King Vlogs. I was just on his channel.  I want to check out a vlog Vlogs gaming and fun. Where is that? Which one is that? Which one's which? Vlogs gaming and oh, sorry. I'm reading the air. Sorry.  I was reading the banner So, oh Wait, hold on. Hmm. Is he doing animation? Oh Nice, you have your own t-shirts All right, what about vlog number one? Oh never mind. That's only three seconds. Not much a critique there Okay, I'm only seeing updates as far as vlogs. Yeah, I'm not seeing actual vlogs. So oh wait airsoft war. There we go Vlog number three airsoft war and Q&A announcement. Let's check this guy out. Oh We got some GoPro action up in here We got to hang the video It's towards the top It doesn't look like a vlog. It's like a red thumbnail. Yeah, it's a Pokemon. Yeah. Yeah It's always exciting. Oh Boy you're playing in your backyard Sorry, I'm English. So I'm just trying to figure out how your garden works.  It's called a yard a Gardens where you plant things. It's not where you play airsoft Grass is planted by the rain. Yeah, but I don't try to grow grass. It just happens. Oh Man, I miss playing airsoft So go ahead Yeah, yeah, I mean he might be a stranger you never know So one thing There is lack of music or audio Like I can't hear anything right now I'm waiting to just get like blown out with some Sounds the other kid another sound for whatever reason that whole clip was muted Which I know GoPro doesn't have the best audio in the world, especially if you're using mounted stuff But uh, you know add some music in there just to help pace it royalty-free music, of course There's partnerships if you're partnered with freedom where you can work with epidemic sound or Different stuff like that and download their music for free and use it in your video Yeah, I love epidemic sounds actually really cool That's one of the many perks that I'm very happy with this partnership, but uh Yeah, you stuff like that to help pace the video and That would make it a lot more enjoyable entertaining for the for the viewer. Also It looks like you both have a GoPro and you just did like one take on him Then one take on the other one or something like that Maybe just play for like an hour and record it all and then shop it down to like a whole bunch of funny and cool moments and stuff Watching gary's mod. Yeah. Yeah, it's a vlog. She could do whatever you want, but uh, you know Just try and if you add music and then add more clips so you can cut out all the dry spots Then it will be a lot more entertaining for the viewer because I mean airsoft videos do really well So It's okay to spend a little bit extra time on vlogs excel you can make them really fun to watch a bit of advice on When you're hand when you're holding the GoPro the microphone is the most sensitive microphone you will ever Come across. Oh, yeah, when you're turning it on yourself. We hear everything like So maybe when you're editing like don't talk and then turn the camera and then start talking then cut that out in editing but It also sounds like he still has the case on Is in a wolf or like one of the skeleton cases because you can hear the little plasticky sound Whenever if I have to use GoPro for a vlog I pop it out of the case and I just hold on to it unless you have the one that can't come out of the case the Just GoPro hero if that's the one you have then forget I said anything But if you don't and you have just a normal GoPro that you can actually take out of the case You can get better audio that way and it's not going to have as much sound interference. So Long on go pros and art You are shooting 720 at 60 frames, that's cool That's the other thing if you're doing 60 frames with GoPro You could do slow motion stuff, which would be really awesome with your airsoft and you could also switch it up to like What 240 frames a second with GoPro depending on which one you have so you could do some really slow motion fun shots at the airsoft stuff So Yeah Props to you You're definitely ahead in the right direction. You just need to kind of finesse your editing now Yeah, so like I said when you're holding the GoPro and you turning it to yourself. Mm-hmm Just cut that turning round out because it also saves time and it also looks good Oh, yeah, yeah, that'd be something to just wait to talk until it's facing you in your reposition And then cut that part out so you don't have that sound interference and then Like Jordan said it looks nice too if you're cutting There's nothing wrong with actually chopping out parts of your clip Cool. So that was a nice. That was a good video. Yeah. All right. You're about to send you another one This is a girl loves gaming. This is her channel trainer. Okay. Oh, I see your girls love gaming The Call of Duty funny funny moments. Is that the one you wanted? Yep. That's the one. Okay Oh, there's some language. I also kept for the tad So is this classic the classic sneaky snitch by Kevin McLeod Mm-hmm. So is this like a conversation and Call of Duty? That's there's an actual game play. It must be a funny moment There we go, I can't really crank up the audio to hear whoa All of a sudden X-Files came in. Yeah X-Files. Was it X-Files? I believe so so one thing I probably point out is The audio levels again For example, like when the X-Files came in it was very loud and I had to turn down the video But as far as that as far as I'm aware, I can see straightway Everything else audio wise Audio level wise is fine Maybe yeah, maybe having a little bit louder Yeah, I mean quality so like the overall quality of the video is nice like your webcam quality is really nice and It sounds like your audio isn't bad either Your friends audio got a little bit scratchy at times. Yeah. Yeah, definitely your audio is good But like I said before your Quality is kind of hindered by the people you let play with you So if your friend has a scratchy mic that's like hey, how's it doing? You know, that's gonna make your video lose the overall professionalism How's it doing? So Another thing that I'd like to point out this is tough But one of the things as a commentator for your channel When you're playing with friends and this is for your channel You need to still make sure that you're talking throughout it Because a lot of the time these funny moments are your friends talking and then like you respond to it or something like right here So you're not saying anything, but it's your friend speaking So just to keep the viewer intrigued on what you're doing make sure that you are engaging with the audience and you're talking Because there is a lot of just quiet moments like if I was to meet your friends This would be you know, 50% not talking So you kind of have to try and even that out and speak up Don't be afraid to speak up because this is your channel.   She's like sits at the corner and like but Yeah, yeah So also something that you've done, which is really good and quite a few youtubers do it now is subtitles Yeah, I love that addition. Yeah, and especially with the pictures like the tenting things Yeah, when it's for some reason sometimes make the video funnier, so yeah, I don't know what it is But it's makes funny. It's a very it's a very cool font and it gives it extra emphasis. I think on the joke Yeah, and it's the right color which is going with your icon your girls gaming icon on the bottom left So that blends in nicely Except when it's blue I'm assuming that's for your friend Yeah I'm liking the little Purple haze around your webcam. That's just giving through some of the other videos real quick. Yeah I'll probably recommend shrinking your game cam web cams slightly So it's not so dominating keep the mind. She's a girl though. People probably like that I See some gamer youtubers like female ones. They'll just take up half the screen like yep. It's about me not about the game focus The yeah, I'll keep my pinning quail So yeah, I I think you have an overall high quality channel, I think you're doing well I think like I said the one thing when you're playing with friends. Just don't be afraid to speak up and And your quality on what you do is good So just keep that in mind when you're like letting people play with you that have different quality mics So like I'm watching the black ops 3 beta right now and like you're talking throughout it and like that's what I expect from a commentator So like this one's really good as far as keeping people interested She definitely knows what she's doing as far as outro. She's got those annotations going. Yeah. Yeah It's so important. Definitely And also you've apparently been on here for a year and you've got over 1,100 subscribers nice. Yeah, good job Cool, yeah, good channel I actually did enjoy the content and that's Good. Yeah, I think you are on the right path. Just don't be afraid to open your mouth Alright, so let's go ahead and pick another one What oh My god, no way What I've just seen something which we should check out. What's that? Doodle has done. Yeah, that's what I am pulled up right now. I Wanted to see that Not even gonna lie. All right There you go. We're watching we're watching doodles reacting to Monday video critiques Please tell us how bad of quality we have and how much we need improved stuff There's two of you Wait, this is the guy we watched before they did the FIFA stuff correct. Yeah. Yeah, this is what this is what Kicked off our argument. Yeah, I I Remember the ending and everything Yeah, I still love the fact that you put extra work into it. I'm not gonna repeat all the stuff we talked about last time But uh, I'm not even gonna critique. I'm just gonna watch this one. Yeah Danish Did I say he was British baby, okay This is such a vanity thing right now Sorry, but I'm excited to watch this Ten minutes later. All right, we're back on the street. Let's keep on going guys Yeah, I'm I'm actually gonna critique his critique about that critique the critique of a critique Oh You're right.  Yeah, I'm sorry You can't tell British and Danish part shame on you. Yeah So one thing That could probably help you with this particular video since this is a critique show and we're here to help people I notice you use bandicam to screen grab this and Chop out that spot now what I would recommend is go up here in your address bar and Write before YouTube type SS and when you hit enter It's gonna redirect you to a site where you can actually download that clip Now it is a two hour one hour video So it might be a bit big But you want to have that bandicam logo up at the top and it'd be full Quality you wouldn't have to just capture it and then have the watermark throughout the whole thing So I know this isn't really what you do as a you know your videos normally but that way you can get rid of that screen capture spot and You can actually just download the whole video So that would help you and I'm sure that helps some other people out there That's a nice little trick that saved my life plenty of times Yeah, but thank you for making it cuz that just yeah completely just threw us off Yeah, I mean, I'm just skimming it right now. Obviously we're live, but I'm enjoying it. It's fun So props to you on that. I think that's definitely funny. Yeah, and like I said, just keep in mind It's SS in front of YouTube and if you do that you can download any video on YouTube They do max out the quality at 720 you can't download full 1080 But I mean 720 you just scaled up to 1080 and not a lot of people are gonna notice so Anyways, let's go ahead and grab another one. Thanks for making us laugh Yeah Please check me out sexy Mike All right gonna pick that one Nick low one two three HD Okay, send me a link. He said please check me out sexy Mike Does it sound like I say sexy instead of zesty So actually get that sometimes do you refer to yourself as zesty anymore on these videos and on gameplay. Yes Supposed to yeah Well, see you guys I'm back in the day when he used to be Way back in the day was my concurrence and all that.  All right, what videos we watch?  Cool 25 minutes long and some more Kevin McLeod music. I'm watching a chilly sad So Chicken burritos just 899. Don't forget the chili beans. Enjoy it with your friends. I Mean I not gonna lie didn't make me a little bit hungry All right, so So first yes, I think it's the microphone situation What I was gonna suggest is in your intro Maybe say your name because I have no clue how to say this Nick low or I mean, I feel like I mispronouncing it so I'm kind of scared to say it So if you'd start off your videos when you have a unique name that people might not know how to pronounce Say it for them and that way they can understand how to say it like what's up guys? This is Nick low. Hopefully I'm saying that right You know, so that way you're introducing them to you and what your channel is and That way you can kind of help people remember that name since it is a unique name I didn't know you could do draw my thing in Minecraft. Yeah, it's actually pretty fun. I'm awful at it You'd be good since you're a Microsoft paint artist Yes, that was a nice plug then like thank you very much Really though this dude draws in Microsoft paint. I look at it like why This is so difficult and how are you so good? Go home I know right So You're doing galaxy cat Oh boy So, yeah, like Jordan said microphone that's a gamer's worst enemy It sounds like you might be using Yeah, I Mean in reality you can have all the personality of the world in a bad mic and no one's gonna watch so I'd say yeah, I mean you need a new mic Unfortunately, so it sounds like you're using webcam mic So it has a kind of a hollow Echoey sound to it and if I switch over to this which I don't know if I can do Let's see if I can do it for fun Switching to mic or webcam microphone now, so if you listen to me now, I should sound pretty bad and Echoey, I don't know if you switched or not For you Jordan. No when I'm talking to you. Yeah, you're old. Oh, it's which for you too. Yeah. Yeah, awesome So I sound great, huh? And this is a hundred dollar webcam. So It should theoretically have good audio, but it doesn't so anyways now I should be back to normal. Hopefully No, yes. Hello Hello, hello. Am I okay now? No, you still sound like crap you always do get off the stream So, yeah, that's just a small example of like what a Microphone like a condenser mic on desk or something can do compared to just a microphone like where a webcam is like That's only two feet away and you could tell a huge difference in quality So Bring the microphone up close Get in the shot if you have to hide it if you can but uh Some of us don't have that luxury Other than that the video quality is nice. It looks really clear and crisp King wants to know if it's possible to watch the stream once it's ended. Yes It just becomes a standard YouTube video because he wants to apparently react to this one Everyone's gonna do reaction videos now once they can do we'll make a new playlist for react to React to my freedom videos Yes, it just turns into a normal video once the stream finishes. Yeah, it'll show up and I believe it will even pop up in your subscription box afterwards and Yeah subscribe and Then if you go to the videos tab you'll be able to see all the streams that we've done I think I've actually organized them into playlists. Maybe if I'm good, which I probably not maybe I don't know I should have but yeah Quality wise it's good. You're talking throughout which is good Sounds like you have a good energy, but like I said with the mic it kind of hurts us from hearing what you're saying Now one more technical note. I'd like to bring up. I see one two four five ads on this video So there's the intro ad there's one in the middle one in the middle middle one in the last half and Then one at the end I Think it'd be best For you to do just beginning and end if you're wanting to put more ads on it because the end ad Everyone's used to an intro ad That doesn't make anyone mad the outro ad you can X off the video if you're done You don't have to watch that But if I get to the middle of your video and I hit another ad and I have to watch another 10 second ad or something I might not want to stay I have seen Bigger youtubers do this where like let's say this is borderline their job They can almost do this full time and if they have that extra little bit to push them over the top They could pay their bills and commit to this Then I've seen people put an ad in the middle just to help fund the things that they need to do to entertain their viewers That's okay, but right now you're not getting a ton of views which I understand you want more money everyone wants more money, but uh That's just a little bit too much in my opinion, so Yeah, definitely, I mean I'm just saying there's no one in this world that if you hand them a $20 bill They're like, I don't want that crap get away from me.  I remember you recording videos back when freedom was way smaller You still make videos down. How do you keep yourself motivated work like lots of energy drinks? I Mean I enjoy helping the community I enjoy being here and being able to share what I feel is knowledge whether or not it's not is a different story, but Yeah, I don't know If I want to do them Yeah, I mean YouTube as a whole just really doesn't get old to me and as long as I enjoy it There's no reason I'm gonna lose motivation because I enjoy it. So yeah Anyway, I'm gonna send you a link. This is um, apparently this is a vlog when he went to I'll get you the channel name now. Oh god waffle in actress When he went to a Eurogamer Okay, apparently he met syndicate problem. We're just gonna call him waffle. Yeah, it's cool I like the music if it's royalty-free It's like the type of stuff that I'd use in my vlogs which this is a vlog so Give me a link Are you backstage it looked like it kind of wrapped Yeah your friend we're gonna go get ready for a Eurogamer 2015 2016 20s it what? No I didn't hear that part. I haven't turned down though. That's awesome. So Is that is this England? Look at England. It is Eurogamer. So I'd assume it's not America So see these are the type of vlogs that I like where people will Like edit in like B-roll and like other fun clips of stuff and go through and do This type of stuff with music in the background, but it's not necessarily needed all the time You know, you could fade it out and talk in spots But on the spot where it is just montage just have some fun music in the background to paste the vlog I Think it's executed really well But there is like a little bit of shakiness to the camera like this little shakiness like you know Just camera movement isn't bad, but sometimes and you're like rearranging. It's actually shaky so You know either cut that part out if you can or What sorry I just popped up a text that I was reading Oh Man Okay, sorry that threw me off a little bit but But yeah, just try and stabilize your footage a little bit like I saw on B-roll There is like some unnecessary shake towards the end You can even crop that last like ten percent and then slow it down by ten percent So it's a hundred percent smooth and it's not going to be too noticeable that you slowed it down That way if you need it to like cut to the beat and you you know needed that extra footage you could still use it But I really like what you've done here, it's just the execution of actually vlogging Sometimes it's just a little bit too much shake for my taste Yeah, yeah, that really cut me off guard But yeah, I think this is cool that's a nice highlight of what you've done I It's definitely watchable. I think it was fun And you like you you know you talked throughout it and stuff In one thing as far as the talking goes I see a lot of vloggers do this when they're in public They're okay holding the camera up recording forward You know if they're just recording stuff that they're wanting to show their friends That's easy, but when they go to talk to the camera they hold it like down here So it's kind of hidden and they're not holding it up to actually talk eye level and have that nice like flattering angle versus a double chin angle and You know a lot of people will try and hide the camera The thing with that is a confidence thing. Yeah, definitely You feel a bit you feel a bit silly having a camera like especially if it's high up Yeah, and you do feel you just don't want to call Attention to yourself, I guess But the thing is when you're I've noticed this from going to conventions when you're a convention That's like based around YouTube or based around gaming it for some reason the atmosphere is just so much better So you know what to do it. Yeah, and only that but it's promotion for yourself If you have your camera up and you're confident about it, even if you're not confident about it at all Then people are gonna see this camera stuff like this guy's vlogging They know what it is.  It's like, oh, it's waffle in a tux. Oh, it's in a tux That's what it is. Yeah, I figured it out But uh Yeah, sorry, I just got really excited there But yeah, you can use it as self-promotion or another thing that I enjoy doing is if it's awkward for you Make it so much more awkward for everyone else So like like let's say you're in an elevator Just hold the camera up and just like smile at the camera with everyone in the background watch them all like duck away from the camera You know, it's like you're uncomfortable you're in here talking of like to a camera in front of everyone And you know it's uncomfortable, but make everyone else feel more uncomfortable I have a rash it's a little bit itchy, but don't worry. It's not air contaminant Yeah Yeah, there's there's options there and another good thing is bring a friend with you if you have a friend You put them on the spot instead of you. You can hold the camera on them easy But uh, like just kind of he's going to another gaming event in december Which one is that because I may want to join Yeah, since you guys are in the same area Yeah, same area same country. Yeah Well, sorry Where's he gone? All right So I I thought that was cool Props to you on that one I think you did really well with the editing style and the b-roll and then the added random company that caught me off guard and Made me sound dumb I Do you like vlogs are easy to watch? If they're if they're done really well, I love watching them Um one last thing as far as your title goes We both had trouble pronouncing it and now that I look at it. I realize it's waffle in a tux Uh, maybe like uppercase i uppercase a uppercase t or something just so like it stands out and you can tell they're different words And same goes for your banner where it's all uppercase um Like if I was to read this for the first time I think it was like waffle in a tux You know Yeah, something like really foreign Yeah, so if you or maybe have your um icon as an actual waffle in an actual tux Like a kfc thing like with the little big head little body Yeah Yeah, i'm gonna show you that's an american thing without no one doing it You have kfc Yeah, but we don't have the big head in the little No, you have to look at it so Okay, all right take a look at this picture jordan and then look at the bow tie and just picture a little body Yeah So imagine that but a tuxedo instead of a bow tie Sorry for derailing the stream But uh, all right, so let's go ahead and just show me a picture of colonel sandal Yeah, yeah, yeah All right, let's go ahead and pick another one Waffle in a tuxedo costume for halloween. Yes Get on it now Is it a turn to pick? Yeah, sure do it. Okay. Uh, I think I had somebody did I have somebody I can I can't remember. I got distracted by kfc Oh, no, no, that was mine. So, um I'll try and pick another one Do you have trouble there? Having a bit of trouble. There's too many people now The chat is going so fast So how's your day good Just as that we've done just as that one way. Mm-hmm. Yes, we do this All right, let's check out Let's check out this channel. Okay. I'm not familiar with that channel name Is uh, oh god loud it is uh Minecraft PvP co-hot yet. Oh my lord. Link me. I'll just say the link. Yeah It is by xx thomas gamer xx We wrecked so hard Saw us for no updates Okay, first and foremost, this is a pet peeve of mine It does not fill the whole screen Now it is shot or recorded correctly. It's just not scaled up So it looks like you have like a 720 video and a 1080 render setting So it just gave black boxes around it So in your editing software, just play around with it until you get something correct Uh, do like little snippets and try different render settings and upload them to youtube as unlisted And then once you find something that fills the box completely and you found the render setting for you And uh, or you can just watch some tutorials over it and get it correct off the first try, but Yeah, I've I've been known to do this by accident. Yeah, I'll finish my video and I'll upload it and I'll just be like Yeah, but see like it is 60. Um, it's 720 at 60 fps. So like It's good quality. It doesn't fill the screen. So That's just a technical mistake Yeah, you definitely don't know. I've got I've got a halloween story about that It's when I was uploading while I was going to upload my christmas carol video last christmas And we finished the entire video and it was all ready to go as soon as I hear upload youtube says no We don't like it and it was in 360p at its highest and I was like, oh god. No So when I went to go back and fix it I realized I had formatted the entire video and all of its files in 360 Dial was ruined So it had to be delayed for an entire year until I can get it uploaded again Oh, man So I am looking at a different video the one before it And it it does fill up the whole screen. That's 1080p at 60 fps as well But it seemed like it shrugged in areas. So you probably turn it down to 720 and forgot to change the sequence settings So Yeah, so you got it right. You just need to yeah, you need to double check before it goes live Yeah, and don't just upload the video and go. Yeah, it's upload and then just never watch it. We'll see I'm guilty of that sometimes you guys are probably familiar of that and the uh Freedom videos and you see me because I get yelled at a lot like what you know, why don't you even watch it? It's like I did I just watched the whole thing. Okay. Let me alone I don't want to watch 10 minutes of myself. I'm boring But yeah, um Copyright music Is an issue So at least I think it is it's linked on the bottom of your description suggested by edm. Does that mean copyright? Edm I have no idea what that means. Yeah, it's a copyright thingy So yeah, watch out for copyright infringement. That's uh bad You can get your channel deleted you can get your videos deleted. You can get Everything screwed up due to copyright. So Use your own music or use royalty-free music or beg a friend who can make music to make you music Literally beg him Would it be an idea to have links in our videos? Is in the stream videos for royalty-free music because we seem to be doing that every week It's an every single description on freedom Ah, well damn it Let me double check just to make sure but I'm 90 percent certain I mean, there's like a million links. So yeah, there's music position epidemic sound. Yeah, it's all there Oh good Yep, so guys there are links to music sites down below if you are interested So Yeah Excellent. So yeah, I freedom answered my own question Very good very good All right, so let's go ahead and pick another one. That one's kind of tough because it's one of those that just have music throughout the whole thing Um, unless you have anything else to state Thanks for watching my video again. Hope you like the jimmy salad part Yeah We don't talk about that All right, it's your turn All right, so we are looking for people to submit us videos I'm looking How do you know when it's copyright? Because you didn't get it from a royalty-free music site When you when you can't log into your youtube anymore. Yeah, that's very true So copyright music Don't go anywhere. That's just music downloads.   Don't do anything like that. Don't even go to royalty-free YouTube channels because a lot of times they'll remix copyrighted stuff and say it's their own Go to royalty-free sites that state they are royalty-free and they actually have licenses that you can prove that you own this Um, I've even seen issues lately with uh Like royalty-free sites like josh woodward and stuff. So if you don't have a license don't think about it So like epidemic sound you get free by being a freedom partner You can use that and there's actual proof of license saying that you own this track and you could do whatever you want with it and uh Yeah, also it doesn't matter if you don't monetize your video Yeah, you've still come down on you for it. Yeah, it depends on the artist Sometimes they'll just put an ad on your video that will go towards the artist other times if the artist is uh Not nice. They'll be like, okay. Bye. Bye. Give me your channel. It's mine now It's just it's just safe not to Yeah, just same goes for videos and movies like re-uploading other stuff or uploading tv shows It's all copyright. So if you don't understand copyright, there's plenty of Tutorials and schools over copyright infringement. So just make sure you're not doing it because it's a scary world Okay, I found one. He's found one So There you go, oh wrong chat Here check out this random person. Yay. There you go. Okay, first and foremost, it's looking top-notch quality Just to remind you it's not for kids So we'll just watch parts of it and mute The evil within fun moments, right? Okay Spoil anything like Because I was on a channel earlier and I was gonna watch make us watch um until dawn videos, but I realized oh hang on that might be Yeah, we're we're watching the The quality not the content of the game. Yes, so but I know full well we'd get someone going. Hi. Hi Shed enough Okay, I'm already a fan of this channel. You've you've won me over you have quality Like I like the visuals up here fast-paced editing as far as the funny moments goes it looks like you're kind of set up for like a live stream and It's pretty cool So Yep 1080p at 60. That's awesome Nora Did you hear her? Yeah So I was also checking out this outro here very very cool Yeah To be honest just skimming through that can already tell there's nothing I could say that would You'd be able to improve Like the audio quality is good your visuals good the recordings good You're Yeah, you're actually entertaining to watch you have a good personality That's just gonna be me There you go, I just subscribed I like this channel You're one of those guys that people see and like why do you have only have 500 subscribers? You're like well because no one shares my stuff So You're definitely up there. You're definitely You're probably one of the best gaming things I've seen in a good while Yeah, all you all you need to do now is um Get sharing Yeah So, I mean, I guess that's some advice we can give do Collaboration with other youtubers do stuff to get your channel out there because there's only so much you can do with Helping that you're gonna be seen organically You know You can't rely on your video on your viewers to share all your content to get you seen Yes, that's like a really awesome way to get seen but At a smaller number they don't have as much poll as when you have you know You post up a funny video and a thousand people share it so What I'd recommend is find other youtubers that like your content for instance Jordan And hit them up send them an email say hey, I I like your content Would you want to work would you want to do videos together? I do this type of game? I saw you do it too. We can collaborate and then cross promote each other And that way you could start being seen on other platforms and other people will see you and then you could start getting your name out there Because like channels like these that need to be seen need to be seen. So you have the quality just need to get it out there If you are gonna get in contact with me just know I am not a gaming channel You're like, where do I do I'll just watch you play games and go Yep Um, yeah, I literally have nothing to say other than Work on getting your name out there Hmm I didn't like the channel as well channel is very nice. Yeah, I think that's a good one to wrap it up on because we just hit the hour mark And uh, I actually a little bit longer an hour because we had an extra few minutes there And then I would keep it going guys, but we do have I have other stuff I need to get done today unfortunately and actually we're doing another stream And two hours celebrating my friend Lauren's channel hitting 200,000 subscribers So if you're interested on that you could follow me on social media and I'll tweet that out and Facebook it out and stuff like that so you guys can join I'll be there as well. I'm gonna I'm gonna come check it out And then if you want to check out Jordan's channel, his link is down in the description below as well in the cards He posted up a lot of random videos like him getting on water balloons and And then my channels yeah, yeah, oh man that hurt me And then my channel is in there as well as the cards as well So anyways guys, thank you for hanging out with us. I am back from vacation now So I'll be back doing this every Monday. Jordan will probably attend some here and there if not all of them because he's weird So anyways guys, that's it. We'll see you next time. See ya


Speaker today is going to be Jennifer Granick. Okay. Hello everybody. Thank you for coming to our talk today. I'm Jennifer Granick. I'm the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Thank you very much. It's nice to be back. Very nice. And I'm going to talk to you today about two cases we did having to deal with computer crime in the past year. I'm going to have with me two of the lawyers who have worked on these cases who work with me at the EFF. I have Kurt Oppsall there on the end. He's a senior staff attorney. And Marcia Hoffman, who's a staff attorney with EFF. And they worked on these cases with me. And in fact, one of the cases I'm going to talk about is a case that happened here at DEF CON last year. And Kurt and Marcia were our lawyers here on the ground. So they know everything that happened in this event. And my goal here is to... Okay, this is working. My goal here is to tell, through telling these two stories about these two computer crime cases, to illustrate something to you about the laws that applies to computer crimes. And then also to maybe help draw some lessons so that people can avoid getting themselves in trouble the next time. Because as much as trouble can be fun for lawyers, it's usually not fun for people. And we want to help people save to the extent possible. In order to do this, I'm going to talk a little bit about the computer crime law overall, particularly the federal law. I'm going to talk about the MBTA versus Anderson case, which is a case where the Boston Transit System sued three MIT students who wanted to give a talk here at DEF CON last year. And Kurt and Marcia were lawyers on that case. I'm going to tell you a little bit about the United States versus Lori Drew case, which has been very influential in some other kinds of computer prosecutions. And then I'm going to tell you about another case we did involving a student at Boston College. And then hopefully some lessons. Okay, EFF, we got some applause. We have a short period of time here, so I'm not going to go too far into this. But I do want to say that we have a Ask EFF panel today at 4 o'clock. If you have questions about the work that we do, or if you have questions about the work that you do that are of a non-confidential nature, then I would suggest that you come to that panel and we'll be there to just answer questions and talk about stuff. If you have questions of a confidential nature, you know who we are and we're around to try to help you guys to the extent possible. And if we can't help you, then hopefully we will be able to find you somebody who can. Okay, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a kind of long federal statute. It prohibits computer crimes and has several different sections to it. And I'm just showing you what the sections are here. A very interesting aspect of it is it has a civil cause of action. So a lot of the case law in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is primarily a criminal statute, has developed in the civil context. And I think that that's been a real problem with the statute. It's like people, judges, litigants look at things in a civil context where all at its stake is money, quite a bit different from how we hope that they would look at things and be very rigorous about the application of the law when the law is the difference between freedom and imprisonment. Okay, so a number of different provisions in the statute and I am going to focus on this one and another one. So unauthorized access statute, okay. Basically this is what the section of the statute says. It requires two essential things which are the act that transforms your behavior from legal to illegal. A, you access a computer and B, you do it without authorization or in excess of authorization. And the case law has said that basically anything is accessing a computer. You send it a packet, you look at a web page, whatever it is, you've accessed it. So that's really not a meaningful distinction. It's like you used a computer. So what does it mean without authorization? This is the thing that we should have be the major distinguishing factor then. And the case law, again, is unfortunately really broad about what's authorized and what's not authorized. I mean all of us use computers every day where we don't have any kind of written permission or anything like that. So what does it mean for it to be authorized? And as I said, in these civil cases and some other contexts, the definition has been read very broadly. In some cases it's like these former employees who simply are acting against their employer's best interests when they access their accounts on the computer and the courts have said, well, you know you're not supposed to do it so you are acting without authorization. There's other cases that say the opposite. And then there's the Lori Drew case which we'll talk about in a little bit. So this is one of the major provisions of the federal criminal statute and most of the state statutes mirror the same idea of access without permission or unauthorized access. Every one of the 50 states has a computer crime statute. They all differ really widely. Some are worse than the federal statute, hard to say, and some are a little bit better. Okay, the next important provision of the CFAA is this provision which is about transmission of a program information coder command that causes damage to a computer. Transmission of information. Okay, keep that in mind. So MBTA versus Anderson. Anybody remember this talk from last year? Okay, yeah. So some people wanted to go. It was a talk given by three MIT students. We're really sorry that they couldn't be here today to talk with you guys about their experience. They're off doing other stuff. So that's too bad. But basically what they did was for a class with their professor at MIT, they studied the security of this transit system including a MagStripe card and a RFID stored value card that was being implemented and rolled out in the Boston Transit system. And basically what they did was they totally compromised the MagStripe card and they had some theoretical ways based on the protocol that they thought the RFID card was totally broken too and they did this whole reverse engineering of it and everything. So they wrote a term paper about this for their professor, Ron Rivest, who's a very well-known, very well-respected computer scientist. They got an A. And then they decided, that's important. You'll see why it's important. You know, we know we talk sort of later on because this is the stuff that we need to tell the judge about why these kids are in a bunch of punks that we shouldn't care about and we have to have some respect for what they're actually trying to do here and it shows that their research is sort of legitimate. We'll talk about this more. So then they decided to give their talk here at DEF CON last year and they called their talk Anatomy of a Subway Hack and in the abstract for the talk, they promised to teach DEF CON attendees how to get free subway rides for life. Who wouldn't want that? Okay, one thing that they did do was before the talk they met with the MBTA, that's the Boston Transit system and they told them about what they had found and they met with an engineer there and what the MBTA said was, you know, we really don't like this free subway rides for life part. Can you change it and make the abstract less sensationalistic? So we did that and everything seemed fine and we came here to DEF CON. I was actually here just for Black Hat last year and then I left, but DEF CON started. It was Friday, just like it is today and Marsha and Kurt were there and we'd talked to a lot of people before giving their presentations. We talked to these guys, but we thought basically everything was fine. So if you guys want to take over and tell the story from here, please. So yeah, on Friday afternoon we're thinking all is well. We had a few minor issues that had come up prior to that but we're thinking things were pretty much moving in the clear legally when all of a sudden we found out that a lawsuit had been filed. The lawsuit had been filed that afternoon in Boston, Massachusetts and it was filed at the end of the day there with no notice being provided to the students. We did find out about it ahead of time because MIT had been provided with some notice and they filed a complaint, a temporary restraining order application for declaration, seven exhibits. These are things that take a while to produce. It's not something you sort of decide to do and then half an hour later you're filing it in the courtroom. So there certainly would have been time to give notice but nevertheless no notice was given, no opportunity for any attorneys to represent the students before the court that Friday afternoon. It was filed so late in the day that the duty judge out there in Massachusetts got it. After the court sort of closed for the week, one judge has the short straw. It has to be the duty judge for the weekend in case emergencies came up and the MBTA contended that this was one of those emergencies and they wanted to get a temporary restraining order right then and there on the spot Friday evening. So let me just, they're just to flip over. These are some of the other things they wanted. So they said that this was a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, something which is the cyber crime main federal statute. And they also had a claim against MIT saying that MIT had negligently supervised the students. It was a class project and so they felt that MIT was on the hook and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim was sort of the reason that they were in federal court instead of the state court that they had a whole bunch of state claims as well. Yeah. And here's the stuff that they were asking for. Just to sort of point out, they wanted treble damages. They wanted a gag order that would have prevented the students from even saying that the security was compromised. They wanted something where we didn't imply that MIT had approved of the research or the presentation in any way. They certainly didn't want our clients to say free subway rides for life and they wanted the students to be forced to provide their research to the MBTA even though they had had this meeting with them beforehand. Of course they didn't mention the meeting in any of these lawsuit papers that were filed. So you want to talk about maybe the gag order part a little bit? Indeed. So the gag order was very interesting because in addition to saying they couldn't give the talk, it went a little bit further in particular that they couldn't indicate that the security of the subway system had been compromised. So which is kind of an interesting thing because the lawsuit itself indicates that the security has been compromised. So I guess if their gag order had been issued as written, they couldn't even mention to anybody that the suit had been filed. It made no sense. In fact, this was filed on the public docket so anybody who looked at the docket could tell that there was at least a claim that the security had been compromised. So they're like, why did you get sued? And they're like, I can't tell you, man. I'm sorry. But read their papers. So we want to talk a little bit about how you met the students and what happened next. Absolutely. So one thing that we've started to do as part of the Coders Rights Project is to be available to speakers to talk before a presentation is given about some of the legal issues that might arise, talk about some strategies that might be necessary and to sort of get a heads up to where trouble might arise. And that year we talked to a number of different people and we actually were relatively satisfied in this case that it wasn't going to be a big problem because on August 4th, the Monday prior, there had been a meeting that had gone well. Do you want to talk a little bit about the booth or the EFF is in process? Why don't you take it from here because you talked to them first. I'll jump in when I come in. All right. Yeah, so that Friday afternoon, we're tracked down. I believe I was over at the shooting gallery, the EFF fundraiser. You can go shoot at the screen, practice your shots and raise some money for us. Please all go try that. And someone came up to me and said, oh my god, we have an emergency. A lawsuit has been filed. So we immediately began to round up the troops, ended up going up to Marsha's room to have a little bit of privacy and start trying to figure out what's been going on, trying to get a copy of the papers that have been filed. It's actually a fairly difficult thing to do to figure out what's been going on from 3,000 miles away from the courthouse without the papers involved. We already mentioned this, but I just want to underscore the way that we found out about this lawsuit was the general counsel at MIT had apparently been notified by the MBTA that this lawsuit was in the works. And they called the students to let them know. And that was how we found out about it. And at that point, we started trying to reach out to the MBTA to find out what was going on. And it took us quite some time to really get into contact with somebody representing MBTA and to get copies of the papers. We actually had to wait until the papers came up on the court's electronic docket. Yeah, we ended up getting the papers directly from the court. There's an electronic filing system that the federal courts use, very handy stuff so you can get a hold of a docket. And one thing which was really nice, it's on the next slide, was the support that DEFCON provided us. They were able to give us access to what probably was the most secure connection to the internet in the hotel. Thanks a lot. Which we really appreciated. So we got some private space to work in and we're able to get on the internet and be able to do attorney-client-privileged communications and work-product communications in a more secure environment than we might have if we just got on the Wi-Fi here. Yeah. I learned that the year before when somebody sniffed my password during the Mike Lynn case. Thanks. And one thing, so what ended up happening was that the court in Massachusetts was unwilling to issue the gag order immediately. At least wanted to hear from us. So it put off the hearing until 11 o'clock East Coast time the next morning, which was to say 8 a.m. our time. So we had about 12 hours to prepare for our hearing because this was all sort of coming down around 8 in the evening before we sort of got this sorted out. Now that's not a whole lot of time to prepare for a hearing to file some papers to get a briefing. And one of the things that is sort of very nice to do is to tell our side of the story and to tell our side of the story it was helpful to get an expert declaration. Get somebody who is, who are not our clients but a third party who has some expertise in this area of technology to explain to the court. The court doesn't know anything about these sorts of technologies. And to explain to the court a little bit more about what's going on. Ordinarily it would be nigh impossible to find a qualified security expert at 8 o'clock on a Friday night for 8 a.m. Turned out, however, at DEF CON this was not impossible. In fact, we had some really great support. So a lot of thanks to Eric Johansson for providing that expert declaration staying up most of the night with us. Robin Wagner, an attorney, also worked with us and worked with Eric to put together that declaration as we pulled our collective all nighter to prepare for the hearing the next day. You know, that's one of the things just back to the point Kurt made before about how much time it takes to put together a lawsuit like that.  You multiply that by lawyer's hourly rates. You know, just filing this lawsuit was, you know, a multiple thousand dollar sort of ordeal you think that we would have merited a phone call ahead of time. Okay. So we had a hearing. The hearing was set for Saturday and we had the hearing that morning. I argued it. I appeared by telephone from our office in San Francisco and then we had the students and the other lawyers on the case who all were here. We were in a hotel room huddled around an iPhone listening to it on speaker. So that's a very interesting way to participate in a hearing. Yeah, really being able to like exercise your advocacy skills to great effect under this thing. And of course the Boston people were all there and the judge who was the duty judge decided, okay, well they asked for this really broad gag order. I'm not going to give them that gag order, but I am going to issue a gag order, okay? And then this is the gag order that he issued. So, and here we are. They're like, he's like, I'm not messing with your free speech. Go ahead and give your talk, but just don't do this. So now we're the lawyer. Put yourself in the lawyer's shoes, right? Okay. We definitely don't want our students to violate a federal court order. How do we know what information would assist another in a material way, whatever that means, to circumvent or otherwise attack the security of the fair media system? We have no idea. I mean, just say, yeah. An example of, if it was read broadly, if the students handed out a copy of applied cryptography to somebody, that would be information that could assist in a material way to circumvent a security system. Basic educational tools are information. And while we fundamentally disagreed with the interpretation of the law, and I think we're going to get into this in more detail in a minute, the statute talks about transmission of information. And as it was ordinarily understood, up until this point, that meant sending something over a wire to hack a computer. As the MBTA said that should be understood, that was talking at a conference. And that's a very novel interpretation of it, but if the court ended up agreeing with it, then virtually anything that you might do that could be construed as assisting somebody in figuring out this hack would push and perhaps violate the court's order, presenting a tremendous amount of risk for the students. Yeah. So that seems so obviously wrong, doesn't it? I mean, it just is like the computer crime act just doesn't seem to regulate talks you give at conferences. So how did that happen? What happened? First of all, judges don't know. There's a lot of fear. And you have the MBTA coming in saying, our security's going to be horribly compromised, and you've got these punks who want to give their talk at their little hacker conference, like this is not important. Time's not up the essence. We don't have to worry about this. This is not really important to worry about compared to this danger that could happen to the system. And judges who don't understand have a lot of sympathy for this idea, saying something to the contrary, but this judge on this Saturday said, you know what, you just don't do anything and so we couldn't give the talk. So now we made a motion for reconsideration, saying like, okay, this is clearly wrong. And we tried to sort of further promote the atmospherics of the case by getting a letter from computer scientists saying like, look, this is what is done. You know, this is how things go. We put in a declaration about the fact we had the prior meeting with the MBTA, which they had elided in their earlier papers. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act doesn't apply. Okay, this was the provision that they sued under. And this is what it says. And as Kurt said, they are arguing that the term transmission includes a verbal communication. And that's, you know... Well, I want to just mention one thing about the prior slide, the letter from the computer scientists. And this was also something that was really handy and really useful to turn around again on very, very short notice and get a really who's who in computer science who was able to sign this letter and show to the court that this wasn't a story about some just kids who were messing around, but this was something that was important to the very science of computers. That people who were respected academics from top institutions in computer science also thought that this was a very important issue and changed the atmosphere of the situation considerably. So we really like to appreciate that the computer science community was able to come together and short notice and help out on this. Okay, so another thing that the MBTA was arguing was they said, look, this isn't a speech issue. This is a responsible disclosure issue. We're not asking you to do anything that's not normally done. It is the common practice in the computer security industry to follow responsible disclosure. And what responsible disclosure means is you don't tell anybody anything until we've had a chance to fix it. And here's just a little snippet of the brief where they argued this. They quoted Microsoft and they quoted Google and they said, look, we're not asking you to do anything that people don't do all the time. There's no idea of the subtlety of responsible disclosure or any of the complexities that have to do with what the issue is or if the vendor can fix or the danger to the community or any of that stuff or a sense of the idea of that responsible disclosure may be a personal practice or a ethical practice or a preferred statement on some of the players in the industry but it's not a crime not to follow it. And it really presents this real disparity or sort of imbalance because we're in a position of if we say anything and the court doesn't think it was in accordance with the court's order our students can be held in contempt whereas the MBTA can file whatever they want on the public docket and it's like whatever. So we were very surprised actually at some of the times at some of the stuff they put in the public docket because it was stuff that we were our students were not going to present during their talk. So we argued certainly we argued the First Amendment and we said look this is a speech case you can't have a prior restraint against speech this isn't just some little thing this is a fundamental constitutional violation and then we were scheduled for a hearing on Thursday, August 14th before the regular judge. So maybe you want to talk a little bit about some of the litigation-y stuff that happened before this hearing. Well and I do want to just mention so the students pulled their talk as most of you know but that gag order was still in place and there were a lot of questions that people had and there were a lot of reporters here who wanted to report on the issue and they were in this position where not only could they not give their talk but moving forward they couldn't talk about this either and so we kept fighting over this and we were working to get the gag lifted and so the second hearing in front of the real judge in the case was how many days later Jennifer? It was the Thursday so it was Saturday to Thursday. So we ended up working extremely hard over the next several days trying to file papers to show the court that the TRO should not have been issued and at this point the gag needed to be lifted and there was a tremendous amount of paperwork filed on both sides. The MBTA was very, very aggressive. We had many, many, many docket entries. Usually when you look at a court docket it takes a long time for the filings to really rack up but we had close to 80 filings over just the course of several days. It would ordinarily take months and months to sort of reach that number of filings we were I think averaging about six filings a day when you might go 20 days to a month between filings in a regularly paced litigation and this is a strategy that sometimes is out there to sort of bury the other side in paperwork or make things very difficult with filings and that actually can be a very effective strategy especially if the defendants are in a position where they have to pay for their counsel and may not be able to afford to have a counsel deal with all this sort of deluge of paper but we provide our legal services pro bono and actually sort of enjoy getting into the trenches and so we were able to round up the troops necessary to deal with this onslaught and push back as hard as we could. It didn't kill us, only made us stronger but the way they were was to be like we'd be on the phone with the main lawyer who was this guy from this outside firm Lord only knows how much he cost Boston and he'd be talking to us like I'm sure we can work it out we can negotiate something it'll all be fine here's our proposal and then of course we're sort of obligated to take proposals to our clients and we're like well we don't think that's going to fly but we'll talk to our clients and we'd hang up the phone and 30 seconds later across the electronic filing there'd be like five new briefs and a whole bunch of arguments they filed stuff half an hour before the hearings they filed it for the last hearing they filed stuff while Marsha and Cindy who were going to argue the case were in the air I mean it was really sort of they were distracting us with the one hand of filing stuff on the other hand we were like okay well that's fine and I'll tell you the paperwork got much easier to deal with when the law firm of Fish and Richardson started to help us out we got some tremendous tremendous help from them again pro bono totally for free even though for most clients they charge hundreds of dollars an hour and they were just instrumental in the case as well yeah absolutely thanks for mentioning them I mean that was really they were super helpful and it made us feel a lot better knowing that there was going to be a team of paralegals who were going to be able to put all our papers together into the right format and get them filed so that was awesome okay so we had the hearing on oh I'm sorry so we had the hearing on Thursday I argued it and the judge was like I really think I need to know more so why don't we let there be more discovery and we'll talk about this another time we'll talk about it on Tuesday and then Marsha went to the hearing on Tuesday with Cindy Cohn who's our legal director so you want to talk a little bit about that yeah absolutely you know again it was a situation where you know we walk into the courtroom and the opposing attorney comes and hands us things that he's already given to the court and you know is hoping we'll be decided right there before we've even had time to read them there was the paper that fortunately you had to stop over on your flight out there so you could read the paper well yeah exactly when Cindy and I were flying out there we had some difficulties and our flight kept getting pushed back we ended up taking basically a red eye out there but the red eye wasn't a direct light we had to stop in like I don't know Phoenix or something and we were actually able to download some papers that they had filed you know an hour or two before to read right there that otherwise we would not have seen until you know we arrived at like six in the morning you know we arrived in you know basically like at basically at dawn and then the hearing was at nine and Cindy was just amazing total champ and she got up there and you know I don't know how many of you have heard Cindy speak but she's you know a wonderful charismatic speaker and she's of course like that in court as well and the judge was very interesting you know he listened to what Cindy had to say he listened to what opposing counsel had to say he really didn't ask any questions and you know they went back and forth and spoke for quite some time and at the end of it it seemed pretty clear to us that he had made his decision before he even walked in the room he seemed to be reading off a piece of paper his decision that in fact what the MBTA was saying violated the law probably didn't and the gag order was not appropriate and he lifted it at that point yeah he lifted the gag order immediately which was great and we were super happy so how did we win this case was it the first amendment that prevailed and all of our glorious arguments about the importance of the Constitution and free speech and academic sharing of information no it was a comma remember the computer fraud and abuse act section that I showed you and there is a comma in it and what we argued was that when Congress wrote this statute and put that comma there what they meant was that the transmission of information and the damage caused must both be to a protected computer the transmission cannot be to an audience or to an unprotected computer or to a dog or whatever because that then this is why you hire a lawyer that would not require that comma and so when Congress put that comma there congress meant that both the transmission and the damage had to be a protected computer and since the conference wasn't a protected computer the CFAA didn't apply okay so so much for the first amendment we won and because they dismissed that case there was no federal claim the motion for the preliminary injunction that they had filed was denied and the gag order was lifted so somebody asked this question at Black Hat so I'm just going to kind of address it here like were we sad that the first amendment hadn't been the vindicator of rights and I think that we get into this because we care about the free speech rights like that's the part that matters to us but this result is actually far more powerful in terms of settling this issue because the first amendment has their standards and you can look at it differently maybe under certain circumstances and there's sort of imminent danger and all of these other stuff other things about first amendment jurisprudence but this is pretty clear giving a talk at a conference is not a transmission to a protected computer CFAA doesn't apply so we were very happy with this result and after that we basically they dismissed the lawsuit the students met with the MPTA and told them everything they know and everybody happily went off into the sunset and there was no further problems to be had so all in all a slog very difficult but a joyous end so okay now I'm going to talk a bit about our Boston College case but before I talk about this case I have to tell you a little bit about the Lori Drew case now this case sometimes people refer to as the Myspace Suicide case so maybe people have read about it in the papers or something Lori Drew is the defendant in this case and basically what happened is this Missouri housewife created an account on Myspace using a false name that purported to be a teenage boy this fake teenage boy through various people had communications with a teenage girl neighbor said her mean and hurtful things and the girl killed herself committed suicide there was no Missouri law that covered this so a prosecutor a United States attorney in Los Angeles brought federal charges criminal charges under the computer fraud and abuse act against the Missouri housewife and had her stand trial there basically what they argued was that Myspace tells you that you can't give false information in their terms of service so when you give false information like your false name or false age or something like that you violated the terms of service and if you're not using the service in accordance with the terms then you are not authorized to use the service and unauthorized use of the service is unauthorized access which violates the federal criminal law okay so this was their argument they filed an amicus brief in this case arguing that that's not what the computer fraud and abuse act is about that violating a terms of service which isn't even really an enforceable contract can't possibly also be a federal crime and the judge the woman was convicted of a misdemeanor and then the judge a couple of weeks ago overturned the conviction but he hasn't issued a written order yet and of course this is a ridiculous type of argument because if you think about the types of terms of service that are out there basically if you use Google and you're under the age of 18 you're committing a computer you're committing a computer crime and then one of the other examples that we gave in the brief was match.com and match.com has this terms of service that says you can't use the service unless you are single or separated from your spouse so I married so I wasn't able to go look this up we had to get another person to go look it up because I don't know or the lawyers were not the clients so I didn't want to get in any kind of trouble but it was like look judge this is ridiculous so it was in this atmosphere of this very loose idea that lots and lots of things are unauthorized access and just not even listening to a terms of service is one that this Boston College case came up and basically a student at Boston College was accused of sending an email about his former roommate claiming that the former was gay and coming out of the closet and the email came from whatever the acronym was for the Boston College Gay, Lesbian Association at yahoo.com here's the email and they did some investigation and thought that they had traced this email to our client Calixte and they sought a search warrant to search his room and the search warrant said you know here we have some reason to believe that he sent this email for other reasons to believe that he is a nefarious computer hacker because he is a computer science major considered master of the trade among his peers he is employed by the IT department so he's a master of trade and they said well you know and it is not uncommon for him to appear with unknown laptop computers he says or given to him for fixing what part of he is employed by the IT department did we miss and then of course the icing on the cake Calixte uses two different operating systems to hide his illegal activities one is the regular BC operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on we can't make this stuff up so you know we were like and I know you know for those of you who followed this case or read slash dot and that sort of thing there was some discussion out there on whether we really misrepresented how ridiculous this was which is one of the reasons why I include the actual snippet from the search warrant this wasn't like oh he's familiar with his computers and he knows he uses Linux or something like that of course he was familiar with the computers they were roommates for a year or something like that this is like look two operating systems hides his illegal activities and one is regular and the other is this suspicious black screen white font thing so I use this so okay and they said sending this email violates the Massachusetts computer crime statute and I hope that this provides a thoughtful counterpoint to what the federal statute is so one of the statutes is obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation you send an email through yahoo not even clear how that could even arguably apply the second statute they claimed it violated with this unauthorized access to a computer system and this is a really interesting counterpoint as you see okay you whoever without authorization access should be is punished and it's a crime and then the statute goes on to say it has this interesting additional sentence which is that the requirements of a password or other authentication to gain access shall constitute notice that access is limited to authorized users well what exactly does this mean this is really interesting and it's not in the federal law basically what we're saying is look the Massachusetts statute requires there to be not some sort of like oh you acted bad or you violated the terms of service or you probably shouldn't have done it or you know your boss wouldn't like it or it wasn't nice or any of this stuff that are this broad interpretation of the computer fraud and abuse act has allowed it to be abused for but is ridiculous to make a crime we said Massachusetts has done much better in the way that they have drafted their statute they've said look we're looking for circumvention of some kind of safeguard something like that and that's what gives the user that's what gives the user notice and they said okay so sending this email from whoever at yahoo.com violated both these statutes and the judge issued the search warrant and the search warrant let them go into his room our clients room and here's what they seized so sending an email let me say a little bit about I know let me say a little bit about search warrants for those who are too familiar with it a search warrant basically is a authorization from a judge that allows law enforcement to go into or invade in some way your expectation of privacy and look for evidence of a crime okay so into your house or you know into your you know into not car because cars are sort of a strange special thing but like to go into your office or that sort of thing and they have to show probable cause that evidence of a crime will be found there and what's probable cause it's probable more likely than not and so the officer files an affidavit explaining the facts about why he thinks it's probable he files it under oath a magistrate some kind of judge or some independent party reviews the affidavit and makes an as purportedly independent decision about whether this is actually something that's worthwhile invading somebody's privacy for it's our constitutional privacy scheme there's other you know statutory basis for privacy and everything but this is basically the thing so in order to go into his room they had to get the search warrant they got the state they filed this ridiculous affidavit the judge signed off on it actually it wasn't even a judge they have these clerks who review the search warrants in Massachusetts who are like commissioned by the judges to look at these and I would love to see the statistics on how many of these they kick back and say to the officer like no I don't think so you didn't do it this time so their hand probably gets very tired from signing these things over and over again and so they said oh yeah sure sees everything and so here's what they see his cell phone his iPod touch his camera like how is evidence of even assuming that sending this email is a crime how are any of those things going to contain evidence of that crime thank you okay ridiculous right and his to linux cd aha there we go because you know what that was for okay so what the government argued the commonwealth of Massachusetts argued here's their portion of the thing but here's what they said sending these emails which purport to be from another individual you could infer that doing that violated the boston college computer use policy we haven't shown you a policy we don't know what the policy says there's nothing but people know this is the kind of thing that you're probably not allowed to do and so when you sent it that probably constituted the crime of unauthorized use of a computer this was their argument so Massachusetts has a really weird procedural thing that allowed us to get before a judge from the highest court in Massachusetts relatively quickly you can appeal and if a single judge of the court wants to take your appeal then they do and here is how the judge you know we argued this and here's how the judge dismissed this this issue and when she says the judge she means the judge the judge below so this is the supreme court judge writing as the judge trial judge observed the sending of emails from public email services does not seem to constitute the crimes of obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation or unauthorized access to a computer system the commonwealth's claim that such an email might be unlawful because it violates a hypothetical internet use policy maintained by bc both goes well beyond the reasonable inferences that may be drawn from the affidavit and would dramatically expand the appropriate scope of the statute okay so what we have here is two grounds a they didn't bring the facts before the court to suggest that this was true or before the person who signed the search warrant and b that's just not what Massachusetts prohibits so a really resounding statement in this published opinion saying Massachusetts computer crime statute no way could you have one of these terms of service type crime prosecutions under this statute so again a major victory for us something we're super happy about because otherwise basically what happens is you put any old thing up in your terms of service and then when a company doesn't like what you did they can just turn around and say okay well that was in our terms of service you didn't do that so we think that you violated the law and we're going to refer you for criminal investigation and potential prosecution and you know for users who want to use the internet and be anonymous and hide themselves from advertising and all of that stuff is just simply not a tenable position alright so what are the lessons that we can learn from both these cases computer fraud and abuse act is dangerous stay away that's why we have the fire extinguisher up here I was talking about the computer fraud abuse act they brought it up because you know okay computer fraud abuse act is dangerous okay I've shown you in these two cases two really kind of scary ways in which the computer crime law has been arguably stretched to cover this stuff and even though we won these cases it can provide a real kind of fear because there's uncertainty and people don't know and it's kind of a chilling effect instructional speech is less likely to be protected by the courts so you know anything that makes the court feel like you're teaching somebody else how to do a bad thing they don't like that and code they feel even more strongly about like if code can execute so it's a little bit like a tool even though we know this is speech and we know that it's useful and code communicates ideas courts are more suspect about instructional speech first contact situations are the hardest I mean a lot of us have followed you know kind of the responsible disclosure debates and all of this stuff and how various software companies have dealt with it over time and I think what we've really seen is that software companies have come to understand that vulnerability disclosure is part and parcel of their business and they need to deal with it whether they let you know even if they don't like it but you get somebody who's never dealt with something like this before like the Boston transit system or the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic or you know any one of these RFID card manufacturers or you know any one of these types of companies who haven't really dealt with this all that much and sometimes their first reaction is fear okay atmospheric matter so as we talked about you know there's a lot in the case about these kids and their DEF CON thing and then being punks and not being important and are really trying to counter that with declarations from experts and from computer scientists and academics saying you know this is legitimate research this is speech this is something that we really can care about you know I think that if it you know hadn't been for the free subway rides for life this talk might have raised a lot less hackles in the in the MBTA and and you know this is always a difficult thing when you're a lawyer because you're trying to help your client sort of mitigate risk and I tend to be a little bit on the kind of extreme side of this and you know I think that hyperbole and puffery and making the talk seem fun is a really important part of communicating ideas and I think a really important part of what makes DEF CON really fun on the other hand you know if you say something that's going to freak the judge out and scare the shit out of the company then you're going to be more likely to get unwanted attention so it's always a little bit of a balancing there and we try really hard not to be the Scrooge's who say don't have fun but you know it's choices that people have to make. Litigation can be grueling I mean this two or three weeks in the Boston College in the MIT case was brutal I mean I lost my glasses nobody was sleeping they were on the red eye the students were really it's under a ton of stress for them you know because they need to provide declarations and if there's discovery they need to be around to give us information and stuff if you make the choice and some people here at some point in their lives and their professional careers may if you make the choice that you're going to go ahead and do something that you think is a little bit legally risky and you're ready to deal with the problem of litigation be psychologically prepared to for the litigation and the grueling aspect of it that's going to come later so that you can weather that well the excitement wears off and it becomes a slog which we enjoy but as I said normal people don't and then I think also a little bit about the issue of responsible disclosure being like maybe it's an evolving norm that's subtle and has a lot of aspects to it but but not a legally enforceable requirement backed up by the by the criminal law what can you do don't agree to terms of service if at all possible if you're going to do research or any kind of reverse engineering or that sort of thing get a legitimate non infringing copy of the software you're going to look at from somewhere like ebay or something like that don't don't infringe and try not to click I agree because courts will look at that and say well you clicked I agree so you know you're more likely to be held accountable to the terms of service if possible get permission for your testing if possible test only on your own systems if you can load all the software on computers you own and hack your own computers then you don't have to worry about the computer fraud and abuse act and causing damage to other people's computers and think about you know as you present your research the idea of the atmospherics and making some choices about how you're going to present your research at conferences or what you're going to say about it or that sort of thing knowing that you know subsequently you might be explaining all this to a federal judge later on and like I said you know we try to be enablers you know to help people not only by protecting them from these ridiculous claims but also from by enabling people to go ahead and do the research they want and present it in the way that they want but there's sometimes there's a little bit of trade-offs there work with and educate the vendors I mean I think that you know the fact that they went to MBTA ahead of time was really useful especially once we put that in the record with the judge and we're like you know judge one of the things they didn't tell you is that we did tell them ahead of time and the judge was like I think you know it's sort of like why did they lie I mean we know why they lied about it but the judge was like you know that's not really all that impressive I think the thing that I learned from this case in terms of working with the vendors one of the things I always tell my clients is you know first thing you do is you go to the engineers you know the people who are there who understand the technology who are going to understand what you say and the take away isn't going to be oh my god it's totally broken they're going to steal money from us but you know our implementation needs improvement and that kind of thing the thing I learned from dealing with this case is that you need to get buy in from the higher ups too because even though the engineer was like go with God apparently the policy people at the MBTA were not so optimistic it seemed to be a misunderstanding yeah there was a big misunderstanding so be prepared for litigation right to congress the computer fraud and abuse act was just amended in September of 2008 to make it even broader it will come up for amendments again and when it does we'll write about it in our newsletter and we'll post stuff about it on our web page and hopefully people will call or write their senator and say you know what the computer fraud and abuse act isn't preventing computer crime it doesn't need to be any broader it's actually chilling legitimate research and legitimate speech by computer security people and then finally you know if you are doing something and you have questions about it and you want to protect yourself consult an attorney you can call us you guys know how to get in touch with us if we can help you we can if we can't help you we'll try to find somebody who can and we'll refer you out and that is all so where's our questions we're not going to take questions now we're going to take them in another room right so thank you all for coming we're going to take questions in room 106 so if you have questions we'll see you there and hopefully we'll see you at our talk at four and thank you very much