Balance of information power was Re: Bad ideas from Microsoft et al

From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rafal@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Thu Apr 10 2003 - 08:28:38 MDT

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    On Wed, 2003-04-09 at 17:54, Hal Finney wrote:
    w.
    LDC wrote:

    > > So the only way for the rights-limited content to have any value is
    > > for the law to recognize the author's rights to restrict access to
    > > his creations, and for the many reasons I've outlined on this forum
    > > and elsewhere, I don't support such laws. This technology legitimizes
    > > those laws: it makes the assumption that the author has the right to
    > > control access to information made public, and provides a means of
    > > enforcing that assumption. But it wouldn't be valuable without the
    > > laws behind it, and it's the laws I really object to.

    Hal wrote:
     
    > Okay, I think this argument makes sense in its own terms: DRM only works
    > if there is the threat of force behind it, because otherwise people would
    > break the restrictions and get the data for free. It is this use of
    > force to restrict information that you find evil, and since DRM relies
    > on force, it is inherently evil as well.

    ### This is a fascinating thread in which I can't participate as much as
    I want because of time constraints, but let me make one observation:

    Trusted computing could work even without a threat of force behind it
    (in the sense of forbidding the use of non-trusted systems). There are
    huge databases of content, which are too complex and fragile to exist in
    a reliable and cheap manner on P2P networks. An example is the sum of
    all biomedical literature available on Medline, including the full-text
    articles. Trusted access points to this database would simplify selling
    it to users outside of universities. Now, a person with an access point,
    a camera pointed at the computer screen and a robot to type commands
    could circumvent any DRM restrictions, and copy parts of the database
    into non-trusted systems, but he could not provide on-demand access to
    the full database (which is crucial to the scientist) without either
    copying everything (impossible/expensive), or maintaining the trusted
    access anyway. In this case, the owner of the database would have an
    economic advantage over the bootleggers, and as long as the price of
    trusted access is not unreasonably high, the market for bootleggers
    would be quite limited. Trusted computing would enhance this economic
    advantage.

    It would be very important in this case to maintain the "fair use"
    provisions of current law and to extend them to P2P networks. They would
    act as a check on the power of the database owner - if he decides to
    increase prices too high, P2P networks could undercut him, but as long
    as he remains price/hassle competitive (=the total burden of price +
    inconvenience for his product is lower than for the P2P access), he
    would stay in business. This would be a win to all sides, with built-in
    non-governmental means of staying balanced. The copyright law would only
    proscribe *commercial* abuse of protected data, giving enough of a
    stimulus to produce it, but without the unrestricted monopoly that would
    exist without P2P networks.

    Rafal



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