In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Sat, 23 Jun 2007 00:47:57 +0100
<5840129.7yKq1C773W@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> ____/ [H]omer on Friday 22 June 2007 22:07 : \____
>
>> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>>> Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying
>>
>> Yeah - make it illegal, that'll stop the blighters.
>>
>> Er...
>
> That's just the irony that had the story 'wtf'-tagged. People
> who pirate don't care about the rules. By making such stupid
> laws, you only punish those who want to preserve their
> collections and watch what they paid for in the future.
>
> There was recently an article about permitting the buyer to
> make a single copy for personal use (backup), but this latest
> development seems to contradicted.
The law has changed since then. Somewhere in Section 1202,
I think, of the Copyright title section of USC -- I don't
remember the exact title but it should be easy to find --
the general idea is that a duplicating device sets a bit
on the disk that forbids further duplication.
>
> Piracy will stop when the RIAA starts collecting all camcorders
> and microphones (heck, the Americans can't even collect all
> those guns) and then cuts off people's ears (the MPAA will
> throw acids in their eyes).
>
> The inability to take streetsmarts into consideration is the
> same type of thing that makes poor search engines that are
> susceptible to get-rich-fast domains.
>
It is also instructive to remember what happened to DivX
way back when. (The old one, that is. Apparently there's
a new one as well.) IIRC, DivX was a pay-per-video
system that used a phone line in addition to the usual
cable connection.
It flopped.
Besides, data is *inherently* duplicable and *must* be.
A disc is useless (except as a coaster) unless read by a
laser or magnetic head, and the head duplicates the data
while reading it, pumping it into the system buss and/or
decoder circuitry, which then processes it in some fashion
to go out to the speakers (or to earphones in the case of
an old Walkman), or to a display screen.
A RAM stick pushes electrons out onto its pins, duplicating
contents therein, and ultimately doing the same as the
disc reader.
Ferrule core, magnetic tape, sci-fi crystal scanner,
microwave intercept device (mobile phone), RJ45 NIC --
all must duplicate data, or capture transient data,
which is about the same thing.
A writer of course duplicates transient data on the system
buss, making a permanent or semipermanent copy on the disc,
or going over a bridge to, say, the Internet.
Even if one encrypts the data in the duplication
pathways, and decrypts it only as it's about to go out
to final display/audio, someone will find a way to tap
that decryption point (and emulators already have this
capability -- QEMU or VmWare in particular keeps track of
what's on its emulated display so that it can pump it out
to the *real* display).
Oops.
There is one bright spot (if one can call it that) -- it
is possible to send data in such a way as to eliminate
man in the middle attacks, using quantum encryption.
The general idea is that reading a light quantum alters
its state (this is a fundamental QM property); two readers
therefore screws things up beyond redemption.
That doesn't, however, take care of the permanent archival issue,
or the unauthorized retrieval of certain information. It
just means the link layer is protected -- but does nothing
about the endpoints.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Useless C++ Programming Idea #10239993:
char * f(char *p) {char *q = malloc(strlen(p)); strcpy(q,p); return q; }
--
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