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[DMCA-Activists] Re: DC 7/17: Tactic
From: |
Kevin Marks |
Subject: |
[DMCA-Activists] Re: DC 7/17: Tactic |
Date: |
Thu, 11 Jul 2002 18:29:36 -0700 |
Lars, good points, and complementary to mine - you take a position
closer to Lessig's; I can see some technological loopholes to exploit.
Make sure you submit them into the comments form - they should end up in
the record, and can be helpful for sympathetic congressmen.
The 'trust' issue is a strong one at the moment, as is 'transparency'.
We need to emphasise these. Here's the full text of my
On Thursday, July 11, 2002, at 05:41 PM, LG wrote:
[sorry for the excessive CC, but I don't know who subscribes to which
lists]
From: "Kevin Marks" <address@hidden>
DRM destroys value, and is futile due to Church-Turing
DRM could be "good enough" using the kind of system that TCPA/
Palladium is considering (a TCB based on resonably tamper-proof
hardware).
The essential point, though, is that any DRM system that tries to
restrict use of a work after download (i.e., not intitial [network]
access
but local access) is built on the premise that the cleartext must be
kept
in a sealed box.
But I can see the cleartext. I can thus record it, either by tapping
into the chain digitally at some point, or as a last resort by going via
a camera & microphone. The analog holes are my pupils and ears.
Markets don't work without trust (as Bush said yesterday). Trust your
customers.
"Traditional" copyright law didn't really affect the average citizen.
If you
buy a book, you can basically do anything you like with it.
"Traditional"
(C) is mainly an issue for authors, publishers, libraries and tv/radio
broadcasters. When we are moving to digital, copyright will become an
important part of the rules governing what the citizen can - or can
not - do
in their private home.
Which is what I am getting at with mediAgora. We need to make the chain
of rights that is implicit and aggregated within a current publication
implicit and fungible by editing, with clear ways to republish. You can
be free as in speech and free as in market without being free as in
beer - that is the point of what I am trying to describe there.
You can freely edit and republish works, as long as the creator gets
paid what they would have for the unedited work. They can even cut you
in a bit for promoting it if they want to.
Much more detail here:
http://mediagora.com
Here's the full text of my comments (their bits quoted):
SUMMARY: The United States Department of Commerce Technology
Administration (TA) announces a public workshop on digital
entertainment and its availability to consumers. The workshop will help
gather data on such issues as the status of technical standards that
provide the framework necessary to enable legitimate digital media
distribution and the present state of strengths, weaknesses and
availability of current and imminent technological solutions to protect
digital content, barriers that are inhibiting movies, music and games
from coming online.
Topics to be addressed at the workshop include:
The effectiveness of efforts to pursue technical standards or solutions
that are designed to provide a more predictable and secure environment
for digital transmission of copyright material;
This is odd phrasing - the TCP protocol provides a highly predictable
way of transmitting copyright material, and end to end encryption can
readily ensure that information is not intercepted in transit - this is
used by millions of people every day for online banking, online
purchasing and remote access to company networks.
What I surmise you are asking about here are so-called 'Digital Rights
Management' schemes or DRM. Instead of discussing specific efforts, I'd
like to point out general principles that apply to all such attempts.
Firstly, this is a misapplication of encryption. Encryption is for
sending a secret between two trusted parties so that it cannot be
intercepted by a third party. What DRM attempts instead is to make the
remote device a trusted counterparty, as you don't trust the person
owning it.
Secondly, there is a fundamental principle of computer science known as
the Church-Turing thesis, which proves that any suitably powerful
computer can exactly recreate the results of any other one. The
implication of this is that any remote machine could be mimicking the
correct responses, but still copying the data. These efforts are doomed
to fail. If you talk to any DRM technologist, they will admit this,
which is why their schemes provide for 'repudiation' and
self-replacement.
Thirdly, encumbering the copyright material with digital locks and
limitations makes it far less attractive - people like the freedom to
read, listen, view and edit in the order and at the times they want, and
will pay less for less convenient, technologically limited forms.
Major obstacles facing an open commercial exchange of digital content;
As the President wisely said yesterday, you can't have a market without
trust.
The major obstacle that an open commercial exchange faces is the fact
that the publishing industries don't trust their customers, and that in
many cases they have forfeited the trust of the creative artists they
represent.
The second major obstacle is the cartelisation of existing media
publishing with price fixing and discriminatory pricing.
The third obstacle is the difficulty of sending payments, though PayPal
makes this less of an issue. The effort for the customer of keeping
track of these payments and not being 'nickeled and dimed to death'
should not be underestimated either.
What a future framework for success might entail;
A future framework for success will entail building a marketplace based
on trust, that does not discriminate against any creator or customer,
and that rewards promoters for achieved sales. I have outlined just such
a framework at http://mediagora.com
Current consumer attitude towards online entertainment.
The notion of a 'consumer' is wrong here, as digital works are not
consumed - they are copied as needed, but do not wear out.
If you examine the web, you will find that it is mostly composed of web
pages by individuals - more than 2 billion of them. People entertain
themselves by reading others pages and writing their own, filled with
their thoughts, jokes, deeds and dreams, passing ideas from one to
another, chatting in chat-rooms, playing games with one another, and
sharing music they care about.
The attitude is that the whole world is only a few clicks away, and they
won't be forced to watch advertisements any more.
In closing, I'd like to quote Thomas Jefferson:
"It would be curious... if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an
individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and
stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than
all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power
called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as
he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself
into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess
himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the
less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an
idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he
who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That
ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the
moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition,
seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when
she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening
their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move
and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive
appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of
property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising
from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce
utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and
convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody...
The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right, but
for the benefit of society."
Kevin Marks, July 11th 2002
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http://mediagora.com - encourage copying, expect payment