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RE: Hughes Markets? (Was Re: Copyright commerce and the street musician protocol)
>Well how exactly does one prevent data from being stolen once it has
been
>unlocked? I pay my 2X to view the picture anonymously and now I copy it
>save it and distribute it worldwide. I fail to see how any
>encryption/watermark scheme can prevent me from doing so.
The short answer: you can't prevent theft of copyrighted data if the
user has physical control of the computer the data resides on.
The long answer: depending on the OS and the hardware, you can make it
difficult enough that it is not worth the effort for low-value data. As
a veteran of the copy-protection wars (so, am I one of just 3 people on
this list approaching/into middle age? (hi Tim and William :))), I know
that it is impossible to protect unencrypted data if the user has
physical control of the system. Unfortunately, in order to use the
data, you have to decrypt the darn stuff!! Especially with the OSes
commonly in use on PCs (DOS, Win3.1, Win95, MacOS), there is very little
memory protection going on, so snarfing the data can be done entirely
through software by a determined cracker -- there is no need to resort
to hardware hacks.
Technological protection against theft of intellectual property is like
the search for the Philosopher's Stone during the Middle Ages -- many
are seduced by the promise, but it is a promise that cannot be kept by
personal computers. If the display device is/incorporates a
general-purpose computer that can be physically accessed, then the data
in the display device is subject to compromise. The very flexibility
and accessibility of a general-purpose computing device is its undoing
when it comes to protected unencrypted data -- and data has to be
unencrypted to be used.
==========================================================
Mark Leighton Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics
[email protected] Indianapolis, IN
"Their walls are built of cannon balls, their motto is
'Don't Tread on Me'"