Netscape had a monopoly and blew it. When faced with an obvious competitive threat from the bundled and free Explorer, they basically didn't take any effective measures to protect their market share.
Have consumers, in net, been harmed by Microsoft's giving the browser away for free, bundled?
On the harm side, there's the theoretical loss of some unknown benefits of competition, and the hypothetical threat that Microsoft may yet someday use its monopoly to price gouge.
On the benefit side, consumers don't have to buy Explorer separately or download it and install it separately or even think about it very much. It provides some small benefits through tight integration with the Windows interface - radically exaggerated by Microsoft, of course.
So, by Bork's theory of harm to consumers as the standard for application of anti-trust - where's the big net harm to consumers?
All Microsoft did was take reasonable steps to maintain it's market share in the software platform business, in the face of a competitor that publically bragged that they were going to put an end to Microsoft's dominance. If you pull the lion's tail, you shouldn't complain about being mauled and eaten. STUPID!
Netscape could have offered to license their browser to Microsoft on very reasonable terms for bundling with Windows, back when Explorer was just an idea. They could have built up a wall of proprietary technologies that they licensed to web content creators. Fully automatic and invisible browser updates sure wouldn't have hurt their existing market share. They could have done an AOL, and sent free CDs around the country - or joined forces with AOL sooner. They had many options, and again - their egos and greed made them blow it.
Oddly, all three of the things mentioned (Noah's ark, garden of eden, Area 51) seemed like pretty fitting subjects for Indiana. Well, Area 51 is rather out of his domain of expertise, but maybe they could tie it into ancient astronauts and from there to some biblical story.
How about the Cave of Ali Baba? Fabulous lost treasure, exotic locations, etc. Not tied to a bible story, but it's nearly as widely known.
I doubt many will read this, so far down in the forum - but the way to get broadband rolling out faster is really simple, and within the control of the broadband companies - particularly of the cable companies.
They just need to get all the potential customers in their EXISTING coverage areas signed up. With cable especially, that reduces the cost per customer by spreading fixed costs over more customers. They don't promise mega-bps speeds - dial-up customers will be amazed by 100kbps, instant access and the occasional off-peak megabit per second download. They don't need to increase bandwidth much - that can come later as a premium service, AFTER they get the customers on board.
And all they have to do to get there is cut their price and do a little creative marketing - such as offering $20 a month service to an area if 85% of current dialup internet customers in that area will switch over.
With a little prompting, that can easily turn into a community-driven, volunteer door-to-door sales effort. People are far more likely to listen to a neighbor than an advertisement or TV ad, especially if the pressure is on to get everyone signed up.
But this will take some re-thinking - the cable companies have this "vision" of "broadband content" as the future - but are ignoring the idea that a journey of a hundred miles has to start with a single small step.
I could see a robot built to look female. Or a female who could morph. Or a morphing robot.
But the combination makes no sense. Where exactly does her gender lie? Is she only able to morph into women? Does she have a particularly feminine outlook (for a robot)?
His experiment was missing most of the real world basis for capitalism - the ability to accumulate capital, the ability to communicate and reward others for their actions, a cost model (some actions cost little but give little gain, some actions cost a lot but give a much bigger gain), etc.
I'd pit a capitalist robotic team trained on that basis against his egalitarian socialist team any day.
Yeah, but their own charts show that between major conflicts, the smaller wars tend to kill less - and then BOOM! big war, massive deaths, each big war killing more than the previous big war, each century killing a larger fraction of the population.
Their chart on deaths as percent of population per century shows a faily consistent upsweep - and if projected to 2000's, might indicate something like 8% of total population killed.
Well, no, it's little more subtle - if you don't accept whatever measures are labeled "anti-terrorism", you aren't patriotic - and hence can be ignored by all right-thinking patriots.
Their idea of a national "do not call" list for people to opt out of spam and telemarketing is a great reductio ad absurdum argument.
Effectively the list would be a form of voting against spam and telemarketing.
Obviously just about everyone would put their names on such a list, if it is convenient and effective to do so - effectively a majority vote against unsolicited bulk emailing and calling. So why do we even need the list? Just make bulk email/phone solicitation over "personal communications media" illegal.
I think a lot of what people object to in patents like this is that they basically just use obvious and commonly known methods to translate old analog inventions to digital "inventions".
Yeah, there's a small spark of "genius" in being the first to realize digital has advanced far enough to emulate a particular analog device - or at least in thinking of patenting it - but even that is VERY heavily trod ground.
There ought to be a principle established that no patent is granted on inventions that are simply translated from one fundamental technology to another. Once we work out common design principles for quantum technology, let's NOT have a "quantum pause" patent...
I think if you reflect on it a moment, you will see the fallacy in assuming that no terrorist - even among those with nothing to lose - can ever be caught before committing suicide.
Again - this kind of loose argument HURTS the pro-crypto position.
Part of the problem in fighting key escrow is that it is already a compromise position, between "no crypto" and "unbreakable crypto for all". That makes attacking it much harder than attacking the pure anti-crypto position.
What worked LAST time, at least in part, was attacking the Clipper algorithm proposed for use with key escrow. The fact that it had flaws, and that the government tried to keep it secret so that such flaws could not be found out before widespread implementation - THOSE were the weaknesses attacked in the arguments that killed the last attempt at key escrow.
Given the current sentiment to outlaw private use of crypto, at least some of the pro-crypto crowd should be arguing against the pure anti-crypto position, by arguing FOR a "verifiably secure key escrow system". Once battle is won, arguments can be made against any specific key escrow proposals based on flaws or excessive secrecy or the issues of "who gets to keep the keys" and "who gets to demand access to keys for international communications, for what reasons", etc.
And hey - IF a key escrow system can be created that doesn't violate rights and lead to greater government snooping - will that really be worse than the current state of affairs, where most communication is done with NO crypto?
You've unwittingly pointed out one reasonable argument against allowing ANY crypto - namely that a terrorist's use of crypto may be more safely be hidden in a massive stream of "innocent" crypto. By your argument, the world would be a safer place if NO crypto were allowed.
But the answer to your question is that I did not assume terrorists would be found by spotting them using illegal crypto. "Alleged" terrorists are being found by back-tracking known terrorists.
Once there is reason to check on someone, the police can check email logs and collect on-going communication. If it is tunneled through legal encryption, they can get the escrowed key and discover any hidden illegal encryption.
And again, you seem to have the attitude that I'm an opponent of crypto. A true opponent of crypto would quietly hope that weak arguments like "crypto is just a tool" or "terrorists won't use legal crypto" give the impression to those in power that all arguments for crypto are equally foolish.
No - you've missed the point of my post. I am not arguing for key escrow. I'm saying that in today's environment, opponents of backdoor schemes need to prove their case - they won't win by default.
Many of the arguments used here against key escrow are weak and unconvincing - and so not only fail to serve their intended purpose, but also set up easy strawmen for key escrow advocates to knock down.
Advocates of unbreakable crypto want to roll back the power of governments to tap into communications. Slashdotters seem to take that as a given - but the rest of society will not.
If slash-dotters want to win the debate over strong crypto, they need to examine their own arguments and eliminate specious ones, lest those weak arguments be considered the best case for strong crypto.
1) Arguments equating unbreakable encryption with various tools or envelopes for private mail are specious. Envelopes are easily opened - and can be opened under a court order. Hammers, pants, airliners, and crypto do all have uses beyond terrorism - but the vast majority of the value of crypto could *theoretically* be retained with well managed (i.e. privately owned and run, paid for by crypto users) key escrow.
2) Terrorists using alternative unbreakable crypto is NOT an argument against key escrow. Requiring all communication using strong encryption to use key escrow has the flip side of making other forms of encrypted communication illegal. Discovery that a suspect is using illegal/unbreakable encryption would be enough to arrest them and detain them indefinitely for contempt of court if they failed to turn over the keys to their crypto.
To defeat any particular "government backdoor crypto scheme", you must
(a) show it damages recognized constitutional rights;
(b) show it could not work because...(?);
(c) get enough people using it and emotionally attached to the protection it provides, that they irrationally tell their law makers to buzz off - or engage in widespread civil disobedience once key escrow is mandated.
>surely anyone outside your country immune to these laws, thus your government would have no power to arrest them
Major countries are starting to get very coordinated on this sort of thing. I would not be surprised to see international standards and extradition agreements.
And even if it only avoided lending the aid of cheap impenetrable commercial encryption hardware to domestic use by terrorists and criminals, that'd be worthwhile. As per my airliner analogy, which you conveniently ignored.
>Ingnoring the fact that it would violate all sorts of freedom of speech stuff and cause up-roar in the US and the rest of the world (like Europe, where we care about our freedoms).
Get real. Your free speech "stuff" would be no more at risk than it is today with the ability of police to do wiretaps of unencrypted lines.
>[encryption]companies will immediately go bankrupt because suddenly no-one wants to use their software anymore.
The biggest users of commercial encryption are and will continue to be corporations - secure web sites, transmitting proprietary information, protecting IP, etc. Encrypted cell phones would also be useful for corporate users. Do you really believe corporations will stop using encryption, or break the law in such an unambiguous fashion, merely to avoid the small chance that their government will spy on them? Nope. If anything, the law will stimulate new sales and create barriers to entry of competition, enriching the encryption companies.
Doesn't it give you a warm feeling inside knowing that the biggest beneficiary of impenetrable encryption will be multinational corporations?
>The major military departments also decide that some of their more 'sensitive' communications should be kept away from bush's eyes and they revert to their more secure encryption methods.
You really think military communications wouldn't be exempt from this law? (snicker) Of course they'll continue to use their own encryption!
>Oh, whats this, one of the major software companies that supplies the government has leaked details of the backdoor.
The best scheme would be some form of key escrow. Revealing how that works would not harm the encryption scheme.
Those claiming terrorists and criminals could simply use other encryption or hide their encryption inside legal encryption are overlooking the obvious.
Consider the analogy to jetliners. Sure, terrorists COULD lease their own jet, and no matter how tough we make it for them to take over a commercial jet, they probably could find a way. Does that mean we should throw up our hands and say "let's not do anything to make it tougher for them"? Or worse yet, "Let's make a new generation of easy-to-hijack jetliners!"
If a terrorist used commercial encryption without an escrowed key, or used non-standard encryption, that could be detected via automatic monitoring eqipment - getting them quickly detected, arrested for illegal encryption use, and investigated. Note that under current law, this could only be done for international traffic - domestic traffic would still require a court order even to record it.
Illegal encryption hidden within commercial encryption is slightly harder to detect - the message has to be decoded and filtered. At worst, if a terrorist came under suspicion on any other basis, their encrypted communications could be scanned and they would again be subject to immediate arrest.
Once arrested, a judge could order them to turn over the keys, and if they refuse, slap them in jail on a contempt of court charge while the investigation continues. So even if use of illegal encryption only carried a small fine, the terrorist couldn't just pay it and vanish.
Meanwhile, your innocent email will mostly only get attention from automated analysis software, if anything. The chances of any of your email getting read by a human spy would be maybe once in a lifetime, and they'd quickly dismiss it as uninteresting.
Again - this is NOT to claim that terrorists could not find alternatives - just that we don't have to make life easier for them by providing impenetrable commercial encryption.
There are certainly some checks and balances needed. Court orders for domestic communications should continue to be required. If the government ever extracts your keys from the escrow database, and can't pin anything on you, they should be required to inform you and compensate you for replacement costs, if any.
Yes, we have the balance wrong. If only the flight crews of those four planes had been required to have suitable weapons in the cockpit and been trained to use them against terrorists - well, we might have four smoking craters in four fields.
But we'd still have thousands more people alive, one less critical blow against our economy, and terrorists all of the world would now be thinking "Well, that didn't work" instead of "How do I get past these new security measures - where there's a will, there's always a way."
And I like to think it's likely that we'd have at least two of the four planes safely landed with badly shaken passengers and a few dead or captured terrorists.
Jerry Pournelle has some interesting comments on where we're headed, on his personal web site at www.jerrypournelle.com. He sees the US becoming essentially an empire and ceasing to be a republic in all but name. One symptom of that will be trading our freedoms for security.
Today we accept greater restrictions at the airports, tomorrow we'll let all personal communications be monitored, the day after that we'll willingly start to carry identification papers and clear our travel with authorities in advance.
This is not conspiracy theorizing - there is no secret THEM that will do this to us - we'll do it to ourselves, as a people.
No one will be protesting in front of the airports, against these wise new security measures.
And if the FBI had only been monitoring domestic cell phone calls, they surely would have stumbled upon this plot in time to stop it - and we'll be happy to give them the power to stop the next series of attacks.
Once the need to "know who is a true American" is carefully explained to us, we'll proudly accept our new "national passports" with only a modest amount of ineffectual debate, ending in agreement that "it's best" and "only extremists could oppose such sensible measures - it's really no big deal to call the police to let them know when and where we're planning to travel and just make sure it's safe to go".
Wouldn't it be illegal if I tried to insert something into their web server to spy on what information they're collecting about me while I'm viewing their web page? Is my computer not protected by the same laws that theirs are?
I suppose you could argue that I'm leaving myself open to such invasion if I don't disable scripting - so why doesn't that argument hold when a web site doesn't close known security holes? At least there're valid reasons for wanting to leave scripting enabled!
Hmm - if I declare my actions in browsing their website - mouse movements other than intentional feedback like clicking on a link - to be copyrighted material, could I get protection from the DMCA? Then that script to spy on me would be a tool designed to crack my copy protection scheme (which would consist of recording all mouse movements to a file with "(C) 2001" at the top and encrypting it by XORing with a 'secret' key). The fact that they intercept it before I record it just means that they have found a technical means of bypassing my protections).
Get them hooked on something interesting in real life - chess isn't a bad idea, music could do it, putting together a play, designing their own game, mock stock market investment, a mock (or real) small business, etc. One good one is learning to fix computers!
Then use the computer to help organize and keep track of that activity. Let them use word processors, music editors, databases for inventory, checking and accounting software, spreadsheet for analysis, paint programs, presentation makers, etc. Let them learn
to program, how to create cool web pages, etc.
Hobbyists will begin posting web sites with their own picks for the coming week, plus edit lists of recent shows.
Some will edit shows to compress them - first knocking out commercials, then dropping bits or fast forwarding through bits that they decide are useful to see but not critical to hear.
With audio processing, they'll add processing to allow some segments to be watched up to 2x faster but with audio frequencies adjusted back down to normal.
Others will use editing and interleaving of programs to create their own satirical productions - the nightly news mixed with political commercials and sit-coms, etc.
Once this sort of capability takes hold for PCs, it'll be replicated into consumer equipment. Then things will probably cycle back and go commercial, as people find that local hobbyists can't be relied on for the long term, and decide to tolerate a few ads in their mix in return for not needing to keep searching for new hobbyists that match their tastes.
Once this gets going strong enough, commercials will be transmitted once or twice a day, your system will record only those likely to target your consumption patterns, and you'll sit through them once or twice because you will often find them entertaining or interesting.
A new stability will form. With a lot more bandwidth for transmitting commercials (by eliminating redundancy), there'll be many minor variations on commercials, professionally edited to appeal to specific groups. "Trekkie In-Joke variation #2", "Upscale edutainment ages 6-8"
Once I've purchased a book that is worth keeping as an occasional reference work, it'd be nice if I could go to the net and look up something from it with nice search, annotation and bookmark capabilities. I don't want to pay much each time I do that - but wouldn't mind if I accumulated a nickle or dime toward a yearly bill.
Works of fiction I'll buy on paper until portable display technology gets a lot better and no more than $50. Of course, if the publisher wanted to sell me "20 top SF novels of 1999" on CD-ROM, I might be tempted to shell out $15.
So a fair use is to "copy to a different format for convenient personal use", correct?
I tend to agree. However, I think it would be reasonable for Adobe to limit printings to the equivalent of 50% more pages than the book contains. After all, you don't get two copies of a book, and there are very few fair uses that require copying a full book.
And there appears to be a DMCA mechanism for review and correction of such fair-use issues - the Librarian of Congress appears to be responsible for such review, if I'm reading it correctly. If that is not happening, perhaps you should complain to your representatives.
Which fair use is it that DMCA is supposed to be interfering with?
DMCA explicitly has written into it a clause that non-infringing use takes precedence over the prohibitions on by-passing technological means of protection. So you should be able to back-up your (encrypted) eBooks, etc.
The problem is that a lot of people want INFRINGING uses to be allowed, so they can get free copies over the internet.
Now maybe Copyright is outmoded and no longer needed - but THAT's a much bigger step than adding DMCA to the current system in an attempt to maintain the status quo.
Generally quotes from the founding fathers are generally used to explicate the reasoning behind something that "got into" the Constitution.
Your example of the French experience is another illustration of how "right" they generally got things, and why we quite reasonably give great respect to the views of those who shaped what went into the Constitution.
Jefferson may have been wrong in not wishing to grant even short term monopolies to creators, but his opposing views are nonetheless useful for understanding why it is a bad idea to grant (effectively) permanent monopolies of any kind. Quite likely without his views counter-balancing the views of those who favored long term monopolies for creators, we would have seen the current abusive extension of copyrights far sooner.
I think we could "get to" payment for content - but we need to go through a phase of tracking costs but not charging, to work out issues.
Long term, I could see something like the following working:
- All sites must provide free entry pages, and free access to charges for non-free pages.
- User permission is required (by default) on transition from free to charge areas. I can also check off "don't bother asking me until the price changes", and even "I'll pay up to X per day for any page or site".
- Web sites only know that "User X" from "Anonymizer Service Y" visited their site and paid so much for the visit.
- If I wish, I can license my Anonymizer Service (AS) to provide anonymous targetted advertising or even some email spam - for a micro-payment, of course.
- My "AS" also watches out for crooked sites trying to scam or over-charge me.
- Sites must provide free access to registered robot-browsers - for research and web-search sites.
Slashdot Mirror
Netscape had a monopoly and blew it. When faced with an obvious competitive threat from the bundled and free Explorer, they basically didn't take any effective measures to protect their market share.
Have consumers, in net, been harmed by Microsoft's giving the browser away for free, bundled?
On the harm side, there's the theoretical loss of some unknown benefits of competition, and the hypothetical threat that Microsoft may yet someday use its monopoly to price gouge.
On the benefit side, consumers don't have to buy Explorer separately or download it and install it separately or even think about it very much. It provides some small benefits through tight integration with the Windows interface - radically exaggerated by Microsoft, of course.
So, by Bork's theory of harm to consumers as the standard for application of anti-trust - where's the big net harm to consumers?
All Microsoft did was take reasonable steps to maintain it's market share in the software platform business, in the face of a competitor that publically bragged that they were going to put an end to Microsoft's dominance. If you pull the lion's tail, you shouldn't complain about being mauled and eaten. STUPID!
Netscape could have offered to license their browser to Microsoft on very reasonable terms for bundling with Windows, back when Explorer was just an idea. They could have built up a wall of proprietary technologies that they licensed to web content creators. Fully automatic and invisible browser updates sure wouldn't have hurt their existing market share. They could have done an AOL, and sent free CDs around the country - or joined forces with AOL sooner. They had many options, and again - their egos and greed made them blow it.
Oddly, all three of the things mentioned (Noah's ark, garden of eden, Area 51) seemed like pretty fitting subjects for Indiana. Well, Area 51 is rather out of his domain of expertise, but maybe they could tie it into ancient astronauts and from there to some biblical story.
How about the Cave of Ali Baba? Fabulous lost treasure, exotic locations, etc. Not tied to a bible story, but it's nearly as widely known.
I doubt many will read this, so far down in the forum - but the way to get broadband rolling out faster is really simple, and within the control of the broadband companies - particularly of the cable companies.
They just need to get all the potential customers in their EXISTING coverage areas signed up. With cable especially, that reduces the cost per customer by spreading fixed costs over more customers. They don't promise mega-bps speeds - dial-up customers will be amazed by 100kbps, instant access and the occasional off-peak megabit per second download. They don't need to increase bandwidth much - that can come later as a premium service, AFTER they get the customers on board.
And all they have to do to get there is cut their price and do a little creative marketing - such as offering $20 a month service to an area if 85% of current dialup internet customers in that area will switch over.
With a little prompting, that can easily turn into a community-driven, volunteer door-to-door sales effort. People are far more likely to listen to a neighbor than an advertisement or TV ad, especially if the pressure is on to get everyone signed up.
But this will take some re-thinking - the cable companies have this "vision" of "broadband content" as the future - but are ignoring the idea that a journey of a hundred miles has to start with a single small step.
I could see a robot built to look female. Or a female who could morph. Or a morphing robot.
But the combination makes no sense. Where exactly does her gender lie? Is she only able to morph into women? Does she have a particularly feminine outlook (for a robot)?
His experiment was missing most of the real world basis for capitalism - the ability to accumulate capital, the ability to communicate and reward others for their actions, a cost model (some actions cost little but give little gain, some actions cost a lot but give a much bigger gain), etc.
I'd pit a capitalist robotic team trained on that basis against his egalitarian socialist team any day.
Yeah, but their own charts show that between major conflicts, the smaller wars tend to kill less - and then BOOM! big war, massive deaths, each big war killing more than the previous big war, each century killing a larger fraction of the population.
Their chart on deaths as percent of population per century shows a faily consistent upsweep - and if projected to 2000's, might indicate something like 8% of total population killed.
Well, no, it's little more subtle - if you don't accept whatever measures are labeled "anti-terrorism", you aren't patriotic - and hence can be ignored by all right-thinking patriots.
You don't sound very patriotic to me...
Their idea of a national "do not call" list for people to opt out of spam and telemarketing is a great reductio ad absurdum argument.
Effectively the list would be a form of voting against spam and telemarketing.
Obviously just about everyone would put their names on such a list, if it is convenient and effective to do so - effectively a majority vote against unsolicited bulk emailing and calling. So why do we even need the list? Just make bulk email/phone solicitation over "personal communications media" illegal.
I think a lot of what people object to in patents like this is that they basically just use obvious and commonly known methods to translate old analog inventions to digital "inventions".
Yeah, there's a small spark of "genius" in being the first to realize digital has advanced far enough to emulate a particular analog device - or at least in thinking of patenting it - but even that is VERY heavily trod ground.
There ought to be a principle established that no patent is granted on inventions that are simply translated from one fundamental technology to another. Once we work out common design principles for quantum technology, let's NOT have a "quantum pause" patent...
I think if you reflect on it a moment, you will see the fallacy in assuming that no terrorist - even among those with nothing to lose - can ever be caught before committing suicide.
Again - this kind of loose argument HURTS the pro-crypto position.
Part of the problem in fighting key escrow is that it is already a compromise position, between "no crypto" and "unbreakable crypto for all". That makes attacking it much harder than attacking the pure anti-crypto position.
What worked LAST time, at least in part, was attacking the Clipper algorithm proposed for use with key escrow. The fact that it had flaws, and that the government tried to keep it secret so that such flaws could not be found out before widespread implementation - THOSE were the weaknesses attacked in the arguments that killed the last attempt at key escrow.
Given the current sentiment to outlaw private use of crypto, at least some of the pro-crypto crowd should be arguing against the pure anti-crypto position, by arguing FOR a "verifiably secure key escrow system". Once battle is won, arguments can be made against any specific key escrow proposals based on flaws or excessive secrecy or the issues of "who gets to keep the keys" and "who gets to demand access to keys for international communications, for what reasons", etc.
And hey - IF a key escrow system can be created that doesn't violate rights and lead to greater government snooping - will that really be worse than the current state of affairs, where most communication is done with NO crypto?
You've unwittingly pointed out one reasonable argument against allowing ANY crypto - namely that a terrorist's use of crypto may be more safely be hidden in a massive stream of "innocent" crypto. By your argument, the world would be a safer place if NO crypto were allowed.
But the answer to your question is that I did not assume terrorists would be found by spotting them using illegal crypto. "Alleged" terrorists are being found by back-tracking known terrorists.
Once there is reason to check on someone, the police can check email logs and collect on-going communication. If it is tunneled through legal encryption, they can get the escrowed key and discover any hidden illegal encryption.
And again, you seem to have the attitude that I'm an opponent of crypto. A true opponent of crypto would quietly hope that weak arguments like "crypto is just a tool" or "terrorists won't use legal crypto" give the impression to those in power that all arguments for crypto are equally foolish.
No - you've missed the point of my post. I am not arguing for key escrow. I'm saying that in today's environment, opponents of backdoor schemes need to prove their case - they won't win by default.
Many of the arguments used here against key escrow are weak and unconvincing - and so not only fail to serve their intended purpose, but also set up easy strawmen for key escrow advocates to knock down.
Advocates of unbreakable crypto want to roll back the power of governments to tap into communications. Slashdotters seem to take that as a given - but the rest of society will not.
If slash-dotters want to win the debate over strong crypto, they need to examine their own arguments and eliminate specious ones, lest those weak arguments be considered the best case for strong crypto.
1) Arguments equating unbreakable encryption with various tools or envelopes for private mail are specious. Envelopes are easily opened - and can be opened under a court order. Hammers, pants, airliners, and crypto do all have uses beyond terrorism - but the vast majority of the value of crypto could *theoretically* be retained with well managed (i.e. privately owned and run, paid for by crypto users) key escrow.
2) Terrorists using alternative unbreakable crypto is NOT an argument against key escrow. Requiring all communication using strong encryption to use key escrow has the flip side of making other forms of encrypted communication illegal. Discovery that a suspect is using illegal/unbreakable encryption would be enough to arrest them and detain them indefinitely for contempt of court if they failed to turn over the keys to their crypto.
To defeat any particular "government backdoor crypto scheme", you must
(a) show it damages recognized constitutional rights;
(b) show it could not work because...(?);
(c) get enough people using it and emotionally attached to the protection it provides, that they irrationally tell their law makers to buzz off - or engage in widespread civil disobedience once key escrow is mandated.
>surely anyone outside your country immune to these laws, thus your government would have no power to arrest them
Major countries are starting to get very coordinated on this sort of thing. I would not be surprised to see international standards and extradition agreements.
And even if it only avoided lending the aid of cheap impenetrable commercial encryption hardware to domestic use by terrorists and criminals, that'd be worthwhile. As per my airliner analogy, which you conveniently ignored.
>Ingnoring the fact that it would violate all sorts of freedom of speech stuff and cause up-roar in the US and the rest of the world (like Europe, where we care about our freedoms).
Get real. Your free speech "stuff" would be no more at risk than it is today with the ability of police to do wiretaps of unencrypted lines.
>[encryption]companies will immediately go bankrupt because suddenly no-one wants to use their software anymore.
The biggest users of commercial encryption are and will continue to be corporations - secure web sites, transmitting proprietary information, protecting IP, etc. Encrypted cell phones would also be useful for corporate users. Do you really believe corporations will stop using encryption, or break the law in such an unambiguous fashion, merely to avoid the small chance that their government will spy on them? Nope. If anything, the law will stimulate new sales and create barriers to entry of competition, enriching the encryption companies.
Doesn't it give you a warm feeling inside knowing that the biggest beneficiary of impenetrable encryption will be multinational corporations?
>The major military departments also decide that some of their more 'sensitive' communications should be kept away from bush's eyes and they revert to their more secure encryption methods.
You really think military communications wouldn't be exempt from this law? (snicker) Of course they'll continue to use their own encryption!
>Oh, whats this, one of the major software companies that supplies the government has leaked details of the backdoor.
The best scheme would be some form of key escrow. Revealing how that works would not harm the encryption scheme.
Those claiming terrorists and criminals could simply use other encryption or hide their encryption inside legal encryption are overlooking the obvious.
Consider the analogy to jetliners. Sure, terrorists COULD lease their own jet, and no matter how tough we make it for them to take over a commercial jet, they probably could find a way. Does that mean we should throw up our hands and say "let's not do anything to make it tougher for them"? Or worse yet, "Let's make a new generation of easy-to-hijack jetliners!"
If a terrorist used commercial encryption without an escrowed key, or used non-standard encryption, that could be detected via automatic monitoring eqipment - getting them quickly detected, arrested for illegal encryption use, and investigated. Note that under current law, this could only be done for international traffic - domestic traffic would still require a court order even to record it.
Illegal encryption hidden within commercial encryption is slightly harder to detect - the message has to be decoded and filtered. At worst, if a terrorist came under suspicion on any other basis, their encrypted communications could be scanned and they would again be subject to immediate arrest.
Once arrested, a judge could order them to turn over the keys, and if they refuse, slap them in jail on a contempt of court charge while the investigation continues. So even if use of illegal encryption only carried a small fine, the terrorist couldn't just pay it and vanish.
Meanwhile, your innocent email will mostly only get attention from automated analysis software, if anything. The chances of any of your email getting read by a human spy would be maybe once in a lifetime, and they'd quickly dismiss it as uninteresting.
Again - this is NOT to claim that terrorists could not find alternatives - just that we don't have to make life easier for them by providing impenetrable commercial encryption.
There are certainly some checks and balances needed. Court orders for domestic communications should continue to be required. If the government ever extracts your keys from the escrow database, and can't pin anything on you, they should be required to inform you and compensate you for replacement costs, if any.
Yes, we have the balance wrong. If only the flight crews of those four planes had been required to have suitable weapons in the cockpit and been trained to use them against terrorists - well, we might have four smoking craters in four fields.
But we'd still have thousands more people alive, one less critical blow against our economy, and terrorists all of the world would now be thinking "Well, that didn't work" instead of "How do I get past these new security measures - where there's a will, there's always a way."
And I like to think it's likely that we'd have at least two of the four planes safely landed with badly shaken passengers and a few dead or captured terrorists.
Jerry Pournelle has some interesting comments on where we're headed, on his personal web site at www.jerrypournelle.com. He sees the US becoming essentially an empire and ceasing to be a republic in all but name. One symptom of that will be trading our freedoms for security.
Today we accept greater restrictions at the airports, tomorrow we'll let all personal communications be monitored, the day after that we'll willingly start to carry identification papers and clear our travel with authorities in advance.
This is not conspiracy theorizing - there is no secret THEM that will do this to us - we'll do it to ourselves, as a people.
No one will be protesting in front of the airports, against these wise new security measures.
And if the FBI had only been monitoring domestic cell phone calls, they surely would have stumbled upon this plot in time to stop it - and we'll be happy to give them the power to stop the next series of attacks.
Once the need to "know who is a true American" is carefully explained to us, we'll proudly accept our new "national passports" with only a modest amount of ineffectual debate, ending in agreement that "it's best" and "only extremists could oppose such sensible measures - it's really no big deal to call the police to let them know when and where we're planning to travel and just make sure it's safe to go".
Wouldn't it be illegal if I tried to insert something into their web server to spy on what information they're collecting about me while I'm viewing their web page? Is my computer not protected by the same laws that theirs are?
I suppose you could argue that I'm leaving myself open to such invasion if I don't disable scripting - so why doesn't that argument hold when a web site doesn't close known security holes? At least there're valid reasons for wanting to leave scripting enabled!
Hmm - if I declare my actions in browsing their website - mouse movements other than intentional feedback like clicking on a link - to be copyrighted material, could I get protection from the DMCA? Then that script to spy on me would be a tool designed to crack my copy protection scheme (which would consist of recording all mouse movements to a file with "(C) 2001" at the top and encrypting it by XORing with a 'secret' key). The fact that they intercept it before I record it just means that they have found a technical means of bypassing my protections).
Get them hooked on something interesting in real life - chess isn't a bad idea, music could do it, putting together a play, designing their own game, mock stock market investment, a mock (or real) small business, etc. One good one is learning to fix computers!
Then use the computer to help organize and keep track of that activity. Let them use word processors, music editors, databases for inventory, checking and accounting software, spreadsheet for analysis, paint programs, presentation makers, etc. Let them learn
to program, how to create cool web pages, etc.
Hobbyists will begin posting web sites with their own picks for the coming week, plus edit lists of recent shows.
Some will edit shows to compress them - first knocking out commercials, then dropping bits or fast forwarding through bits that they decide are useful to see but not critical to hear.
With audio processing, they'll add processing to allow some segments to be watched up to 2x faster but with audio frequencies adjusted back down to normal.
Others will use editing and interleaving of programs to create their own satirical productions - the nightly news mixed with political commercials and sit-coms, etc.
Once this sort of capability takes hold for PCs, it'll be replicated into consumer equipment. Then things will probably cycle back and go commercial, as people find that local hobbyists can't be relied on for the long term, and decide to tolerate a few ads in their mix in return for not needing to keep searching for new hobbyists that match their tastes.
Once this gets going strong enough, commercials will be transmitted once or twice a day, your system will record only those likely to target your consumption patterns, and you'll sit through them once or twice because you will often find them entertaining or interesting.
A new stability will form. With a lot more bandwidth for transmitting commercials (by eliminating redundancy), there'll be many minor variations on commercials, professionally edited to appeal to specific groups. "Trekkie In-Joke variation #2", "Upscale edutainment ages 6-8"
Once I've purchased a book that is worth keeping as an occasional reference work, it'd be nice if I could go to the net and look up something from it with nice search, annotation and bookmark capabilities. I don't want to pay much each time I do that - but wouldn't mind if I accumulated a nickle or dime toward a yearly bill.
Works of fiction I'll buy on paper until portable display technology gets a lot better and no more than $50. Of course, if the publisher wanted to sell me "20 top SF novels of 1999" on CD-ROM, I might be tempted to shell out $15.
So a fair use is to "copy to a different format for convenient personal use", correct? I tend to agree. However, I think it would be reasonable for Adobe to limit printings to the equivalent of 50% more pages than the book contains. After all, you don't get two copies of a book, and there are very few fair uses that require copying a full book. And there appears to be a DMCA mechanism for review and correction of such fair-use issues - the Librarian of Congress appears to be responsible for such review, if I'm reading it correctly. If that is not happening, perhaps you should complain to your representatives.
Which fair use is it that DMCA is supposed to be interfering with? DMCA explicitly has written into it a clause that non-infringing use takes precedence over the prohibitions on by-passing technological means of protection. So you should be able to back-up your (encrypted) eBooks, etc. The problem is that a lot of people want INFRINGING uses to be allowed, so they can get free copies over the internet. Now maybe Copyright is outmoded and no longer needed - but THAT's a much bigger step than adding DMCA to the current system in an attempt to maintain the status quo.
Generally quotes from the founding fathers are generally used to explicate the reasoning behind something that "got into" the Constitution.
Your example of the French experience is another illustration of how "right" they generally got things, and why we quite reasonably give great respect to the views of those who shaped what went into the Constitution.
Jefferson may have been wrong in not wishing to grant even short term monopolies to creators, but his opposing views are nonetheless useful for understanding why it is a bad idea to grant (effectively) permanent monopolies of any kind. Quite likely without his views counter-balancing the views of those who favored long term monopolies for creators, we would have seen the current abusive extension of copyrights far sooner.
I think we could "get to" payment for content - but we need to go through a phase of tracking costs but not charging, to work out issues. Long term, I could see something like the following working: - All sites must provide free entry pages, and free access to charges for non-free pages. - User permission is required (by default) on transition from free to charge areas. I can also check off "don't bother asking me until the price changes", and even "I'll pay up to X per day for any page or site". - Web sites only know that "User X" from "Anonymizer Service Y" visited their site and paid so much for the visit. - If I wish, I can license my Anonymizer Service (AS) to provide anonymous targetted advertising or even some email spam - for a micro-payment, of course. - My "AS" also watches out for crooked sites trying to scam or over-charge me. - Sites must provide free access to registered robot-browsers - for research and web-search sites.