Lance Rose writes anti-cryptoanarchy in WIRED

[rishab@dxm.ernet.in]

I've missed recent traffic so forgive me if this has already come up.

Lance Rose writes a particularly twisted piece in the Idees Fortes section of
WIRED 3.02 (February). His basic premise is that tradritional forms of 
copyright law are sufficient to ensure that the Net poses only limited 
problems to mass content producers such as Time Warner. I agree with this,
as most people feel uncomfortable about 'stealing' however impossible it is
to detect. Lance Rose, though, goes on to insist that the reason for the
copyright law's strength will be the power of the omnipresent Net Cops (sic).
So that you don't consider him entirely ignorant, he acknowledges the 
increasing use of anon remailers. However, he adds (repeatedly), "Can't
we all use anonymous remailers to keep the Net knee-deep in infringing copies?
Nope. Net cops can swiftly clean each new infringement out of the major online
markets as soon as it appears." 

How will they do this so efficiently? By "deploying software agents" net-wide
to "search out anonymous infringements." He later admits the possibility of
"friend-to-friend" markets, but rejects the possibility of such markets growing
out of hand, as "few or none of the participants will know everyone else in the
circle" allowing cops to join them undetected (as if the Information Liberation
Front would mind giving the _cops_ pirated software). "A symbolic legal attack"
every once in a while will scare would-be black-marketeers.

Later, he does discuss the hidden costs of acquiring pirated versus genuine 
stuff - "the time and effort needed to track down pirate dealers [...] 
who are so deep underground even the cops can't find them."

Sheesh. And here we are, post-BlackNet, discussing untraceable paid-for
anon-remailers (which exist today on Sameer's c2.org blind server) and
data havens. I haven't bothered to hunt for Lance's address, which is not
given, but really I thought someone as prominent a SysLawyer as him would
be clued in. Nor have I found the time to send WIRED a letter. 

OTOH maybe ignorance, for LEA-friendly legislators who read WIRED, is bliss?
Let the sleeping dog lie, etc, just finish your data haven code ;-]

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Rishab Aiyer Ghosh                                "In between the breaths is
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