Known data havens for pirates? Doubtful

I forget who wrote:
> blame them. Copyrighted data on a server in a jurisdiction that
> doesn't acknowledege the copyrights - a prime use for Data Havens
> when they come of age.

I suppose you _are_ aware that the US has threatened China with punitive
duties on $100 BILLION dollars worth of trade, and that China has started
holding some show trials (without shutting down its state-owned CD-piracy
factories). It's not going to be easy to find a country more willing and
able to ignore international copyright law (Berne Convention etc) than China;
however, despite howls of protest even China is likely to knuckle down 
eventually. What may be likely is distributed piracy markets, such as 
described in Tim's BlackNet spoof.

Read my earlier post on what Lance Rose thinks.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh                                "In between the breaths is
rishab@dxm.ernet.in                                  the space where we live"
rishab@arbornet.org                                        - Lawrence Durrell
Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410  
Voicemail +91 11 3760335                 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

In the world according to rishab@dxm.ernet.in:
> I forget who wrote:
> > blame them. Copyrighted data on a server in a jurisdiction that
> > doesn't acknowledege the copyrights - a prime use for Data Havens
> > when they come of age.

> I suppose you _are_ aware that the US has threatened China with punitive
> duties on $100 BILLION dollars worth of trade, and that China has started
> holding some show trials (without shutting down its state-owned CD-piracy
> factories). It's not going to be easy to find a country more willing and
> able to ignore international copyright law (Berne Convention etc) than China;
> however, despite howls of protest even China is likely to knuckle down 
> eventually. What may be likely is distributed piracy markets, such as 
> described in Tim's BlackNet spoof.

One of the major features of the Uraguay round of the GATT (General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) is a large revision of internation patent
and copyright law (which is currently de facto non-existent in many 
countries).  Intellectual copyrights are still somewhat vague in the
current agreement, but there will be a course for hearing through the
WTO (World Trade Organization).

In the case of Asian countries, APEC (Asian Pacific Economic Conference)
is laying out intellectual property right regulations for conference 
members (the US, Canada, and most of the Pacific Rim including China).
Though these agreements are still a long way from clearing up copyright
disputes and their enforcement remains dubious, they should help to 
stop such blatant infractions of copyright status.

Of course, one need not look to China for copyright violations, just take
a look at all the video tape pirates in New York or other cities ...

|Robert

-- 
Robert Seymour					rseymour@reed.edu
Reed College Artificial Life Project		NeXTmail, MIME, PGP accepted

  WWW Pages

The comments about data havens have been interesting to read. Being
the analytic-retentive type, I like to view things as tables and
graphs, of such things as: who knows location (nobody, some,
everybody) vs. types of data supported, for example. But I won't make
such a table here, now.

[Note on my responses. Netcom is not accepting mail connections, so
Cypherpunk mail basically doesn't arrive from the early morning to
very late in the evening. This has to do with toad not using "MX mail
records," as near as we could figure out. Please don't send
suggestions, as I can't get either toad or Netcom changed. I merely
point this out to explain why I basically am out of the debate during
the day. The information highway is becoming a dirt road.]

I mainly agree with Rishab's point: the idea of a known, fixed
location that carries Infocalypse material is deeply flawed. Data
havens just won't be in known locations, at least not primarily.

While I found Bruce Sterling's "data havens" in the Caribbean, Africa,
and Asia interesting and provocative, they made no sense as viable,
stable entities. No site which is _known_ to be a Warez site, a
bootleg Nazi medical data site, a copyright violation haven, etc.,
will last for long. Whether knocked out as a result of a
U.N. Resolution (infinitely easier than zapping Saddam), or sabotaged
the way the French SDECE hit the "Rainbow Warrior," or merely
subverted at ground level, the site cannot last. "The Center cannot
hold."

Fortunately, there is no reason for data havens to be in fixed
locations. Or in traceable, identifiable locations.

My BlackNet thought experiment was much more than a mere Gedanken
experiment: as many of you learned, it was/is a real key, and 2-way
communication has happened. Of course, you mostly all know I was the
instigator (and those who don't haven't followed the debate and/or
haven't read the Cyphernomicon section on BlackNet).

rishab@dxm.ernet.in wrote:

> I suppose you _are_ aware that the US has threatened China with punitive
> duties on $100 BILLION dollars worth of trade, and that China has started
> holding some show trials (without shutting down its state-owned CD-piracy
> factories). It's not going to be easy to find a country more willing and
> able to ignore international copyright law (Berne Convention etc) than China;
> however, despite howls of protest even China is likely to knuckle down 
> eventually. What may be likely is distributed piracy markets, such as 
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> described in Tim's BlackNet spoof.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Yes, this is the way to go. The data havens have a location that is a
public key in cyberspace. Think of it as one entity placing an
anonymous, untraceable classified ad in a newspaper, readable by many,
and others placing ads in response. A two-way communication channel is
thus opened up, without regard for the physical location of each, the
nature of the communication, the data to be transferred, etc.

All of that is just detail.

--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
                       | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
Cypherpunks list: majordomo@toad.com with body message of only: 
subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tc/tcmay

> 
> The comments about data havens have been interesting to read. Being

[ .. ]

> Yes, this is the way to go. The data havens have a location that is a
> public key in cyberspace. Think of it as one entity placing an
> anonymous, untraceable classified ad in a newspaper, readable by many,
> and others placing ads in response. A two-way communication channel is
> thus opened up, without regard for the physical location of each, the
> nature of the communication, the data to be transferred, etc.
> 
> All of that is just detail.

Hmmm... then why use a data haven at all?  Split the file into small
pieces, encrypt each and post each piece in a newsgroups (the pieces may
even be posted as small garbles of data in sigs?).  When you need to 
recover the file checksites which archive those newsgroups.

Just a thought. It's probably quite doable for small files.

Another idea: use encryption/secret sharing combined with steganography
and upload copies of the said files to various ftp-sties or BBS's. (It
may be that this is more secure than data havens, since few SysAdmins
would bother checking for steganographically hidden files...)

> 
> --Tim May

Rob

rishab@dxm.ernet.in wrote:

> factories). It's not going to be easy to find a country more willing and
> able to ignore international copyright law (Berne Convention etc) than China;
> however, despite howls of protest even China is likely to knuckle down 
> eventually. What may be likely is distributed piracy markets, such as 

In the foreseeable future (10 years?) there will exist jurisdictions that,
even after signing this or that convention, will be more or less lax
about pursuing violators. Thus I still believe, despite China's awaited
submission, that the Internet and 28.8 modems (and abundance of disk space)
are real threats to holders of copyright who want to protect every penny.

Encryption (by the way, how long might it take to IDEA-encrypt a 2 MB
.zip file? I never tried) will make it practically impossible to find
and prosecute at least private copyright abuse. They won't use thumb-
screws to obtain the key to your SecureDrive just on suspicion of
infringement (except possibly in Singapore). The present situation,
as we all know, is that few people are willing to pay for such software
as games if they can get a (cracked) version for free. I think this
attitude will expand to most software. The real war will be faught
between protectors and crackers (since it is usually not convenient
to export an opened, installed version to another system - and more
so the bigger and directory-spreading the program is). Actually, a
sort of data haven for cracks already exists. If you live in a
jurisdiction where cracks are illegal to advertize (let alone use)
they can be hard to find on your local BBS, but with an Internet feed
(or long distance modem calls) it's no problem at all. (For those
who don't believe in the shareware concept I recommend the Norwegian
nag-eliminator 'Buster' - although you need the registered version
for the latest versions :-)

Mr La Macchia got caught. How many didn't? Look at the IRC Undernet:
wArEz-bots all over the place - and I bet the net.cops are lagging
in bot comprehension (unfortunately, so am I...). And there is talk
about this Secure-IRC.

Mats

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In list.cypherpunks, asgaard@sos.sll.se writes:

>            (by the way, how long might it take to IDEA-encrypt a 2 MB
> .zip file?  I never tried)

Me, neither.  Let's find out....


[1] d:\doom>dir tt.zip

 Volume in drive D is unlabeled      Serial number is 0000:13FD
 Directory of  d:\doom\tt.zip

tt.zip        2292723   1-18-95  22:06
   2,292,723 bytes in 1 file(s)          2,293,760 bytes allocated
   4,853,760 bytes free

[1] d:\doom>timer^pgp +armor=off +compress=off +textmode=off -c tt.zip ^ timer
Timer 1 on: 22:16:16
Pretty Good Privacy(tm) 2.6.2 - Public-key encryption for the masses.
(c) 1990-1994 Philip Zimmermann, Phil's Pretty Good Software. 11 Oct 94
Uses the RSAREF(tm) Toolkit, which is copyright RSA Data Security, Inc.
Distributed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Export of this software may be restricted by the U.S. government.
Current time: 1995/01/19 04:16 GMT

You need a pass phrase to encrypt the file.
Enter pass phrase:
Enter same pass phrase again: Just a moment...
Ciphertext file: tt.pgp
Timer 1 off: 22:18:42  Elapsed: 0:02:26.05


'+textmode=off' is probably overkill, since PGP recognizes the non-text
content.  But my config.txt has armor and compress turned on.
Compressing almost doubled the time to encrypt, and armor gave me 39
*.asc files.
- -- 
Roy M. Silvernail --  roy@cybrspc.mn.org will do just fine, thanks.
          "Does that not fit in with your plans?"
                      -- Mr Wiggen, of Ironside and Malone (Monty Python)
          PGP public key available upon request (send yours)

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