Clay Shirky: RIAA Succeeds Where Cypherpunks Fail

scubacuda writes "Clay Shirky has an interesting take on encryption: 'The RIAA is succeeding where the Cypherpunks failed, convincing users to trade a broad but penetrable privacy for unbreakable anonymity under their personal control. In contrast to the Cypherpunks "eat your peas" approach, touting encryption as a first-order service users should work to embrace, encryption is now becoming a background feature of collaborative workspaces. Because encryption is becoming something that must run in the background, there is now an incentive to make its adoption as easy and transparent to the user as possible. It's too early to say how widely casual encryption use will spread, but it isn't too early to see that the shift is both profound and irreversible.'"

Comments

Re:snake oil

[Frizzle Fry]

and encryption isn't, to coin the phrase, like a hand grenade;

Believe me, you didn't just coin the phrase "like a hand grenade" to refer to something for which close is good enough, although I'm impressed that you have the audacity to pretend that you did. Or have you really just never heard that phrase before? I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that that's the case, but find it hard to believe.