Re: Content controls

At 1:57 PM -0700 11/8/97, William H. Geiger III wrote:

>Once you have given me the keys to unlock and display the data I can save
>it, copy it, reproduce it and distribut it. To assume otherwise shows a
>lack of understanding of computer systems and moderen OS's. Sure I would
>need to write some software and jump through some hoops to do it but there
>is nothing that your system can do to prevent me from doing so. Now wether
>it is worth the effort to do so will depend on the value of the data
>involved. Once you have given me the ability to display the data you have
>lost the battle as I can do whatever I want with it.

Exactly so. Once able to go into the listener's ears, the viewer's
eyeballs, or the customer's whatever, the battle is basically lost.

About the best that can be hoped for is to insert some "almost unnoticeable
mark"--a watermark, a notch filter (a la early scheme for combatting DAT
piracy), etc. And even these "almost unoticeable marks" are easily twiddled
away. Unless they are so noticeable that serious image or sound distortion
occurs when the marks are removed or obscured.

Even purely digital works are easily copied. Even unique IDs per software
piece are easily removed (e.g., by having N customers compare and diff out
the noncommon bits).

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Tim May <tcmay@got.net> writes:
> Even purely digital works are easily copied. Even unique IDs per software
> piece are easily removed (e.g., by having N customers compare and diff out
> the noncommon bits).

About 15 years ago I was trying to break the code in some software
distributed by some Canadian folks... (It was cheap to buy, and
I was doing it for fun.) Basically, every customer's executables
were almost completely different because they were encrypted with
a totally different key and decrypted at runtime.  The trick was to
disassemble the decryption code and to compare the decryption
results from two copies to see where the customer name was embedded.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps