In all this conversation were missing an important fact.
That is, that there is a serious problem with casual counterfeitting of currency. In the U.S., most currency actually passed is now produced on color printers and copiers. While such copies are easy to identify, they are usually passed in situations where they will not receive much scrutiny. That is, in low light situations where the cashier is in a hurry, like in a bar or at a concert. Usually the cashiers don't care that much, since they aren't the one who's out the money when a fake comes in -- except at places like electronics stores that have more exposure and so train their cashiers better.
By the time the counterfeit is found, the doer is long gone and so the business ends up just getting screwed. They don't have any recourse.
Now, the counterfeitting laws and the whole enforcement system is predicated upon the idea that fakes can't be produced without substantial upfront effort. The print-on-demand nature of this type of counterfeitting makes prosecution tricky. With offset counterfeits, there are multiple people involved. There are resources to get, cameras, plate burners, presses, paper, ink, and all these attract attention. Computer-produced fakes aren't like that. There's no evidence except perhaps what forensic analysis can turn up on the hard drive.
The presence of counterfeits detracts from the widespread acceptance of currency. Since currency is the only practical anonymous means of payment, those of us who value our privacy would do well to support measures that keep currency practical.
Now, the anticopying measures in the printers are, as far as anyone has been able to tell, a voluntary measure on the part of the manufacturers. Good for them. It is one of only two good choke points for the problem, the other being to have cashiers check in detail for things like watermarks.
Is it a form of DRM? Not really, since it is wholly unrelated to copyright law, and since there is no digital distribution of the "content" in the first place.
What are the implications for open source? None. Open source systems could include such measures and may do so in the fullness of time. Just because it can be disabled by the knowledgeable makes no difference. When the day comes when 90% of the desktops have an open source operating system and desktop suite, most of the user base will have no idea how to make such changes.
I believe that the premise is that if you have some sort of ongoing business relationship, that you have a greater degree of influence over their behavior than you would an anonymous nobody.
This doesn't necessarily hold up in practice, though you at least have the choice of which bank, which online service, and so forth you use. Some take their customer's peace and quiet more seriously just as some take privacy issues more seriously than others.
I have believed for some time there are only two ways the spam problem can be solved.
1. Ending the convention of accepting e-mail from unknown sources, that is, anyone not on a whitelist; and requiring authentication.
2. Legal means.
The trouble with California's law is the jurisdictional issues it raises. Regulation of email traffic crossing state lines is arguably soley in the purview of the FCC, so aside from companies in California seeking to spam other Californians, I can't imagine the law will withstand a court challenge.
I learned vi back in the 1970s and have returned to it after some years of using other word processors. In the early days, we used troff(1) to format the output; vi and troff together had a feature set exceeding that of most word processors up until recently.
The article above surprises me, mainly because vi is so difficult to learn. Having once learned it, it's not a half bad editor, but there are better ones that are easier to learn. After all, vi was designed to take advantage of the (then) increasingly ubiquitous terminals with addressable cursors, connected at serial rates between 600 and 9600 bps. Most had only the keys found on a typewriter, with no function keys, arrow keys, or numeric keypad, and certainly no mouse. That made the keyboard-only, modal interface necessary.
With today's PCs, there are so many better choices out there, that it's surprising that vi retains any following at all. But what can I say, I still use it myself.
They are trying very hard to solve a fundamentally unsolvable problem. Indeed, even the hype (that is, the Intel sales presentation in the PDF linked above) acknowleges that copy protection is directed at the casual user attempting to misuse material.
Trouble is, the stakes are too high for the casual user to ignore the technology, and the DMCA is too heavy a hammer to use to beat down people who have a fair use in mind. Others have already pointed out that every copy protection scheme yet devised has failed, and has alienated legitimate users in the process. Recall that it was major corporate buyers whose frustration led to the discontinuance of the use of laser-burned "key disks" for Lotus 123 back in about 1993. This was the end of an era for copy protection, with only a few high-dollar packages utilizing hardware keys and the like.
I attribute the recent resurgence in "activation" and other coercive techniques to control distribution to the DMCA with its criminalization of cracks. This won't last, because the DMCA is too heavy a hammer; as benign cracks multiply, judges just won't permit serious penalties to be applied.
Others have pointed out the possibility of copying the analog media as it is played or projected. This is the "tragic flow" of DRM as applied to entertainment media. There is simply no way to prevent copying any noninteractive media -- if you can see it, read it, or hear it, then you can record it (duh). The details and quality tradeoffs are all things that can be overcome.
This leaves aside the matter of attacking the key exchange mechanism itself, which is not infalliable. It's just not possible to secure a playback device that is in the custody of a third party. And if a nicely packaged hack comes out for a reasonably popular device, what will Hollywood do? Delist all the affected devices, the vast majority of which are owned by noninfringing users? I think not. And that leaves the door open.
And ultimately, a backlash will come as home users realize that they are putting up with inconvenience and expense because of a system that is doing little to prevent piracy.
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In all this conversation were missing an important fact. That is, that there is a serious problem with casual counterfeitting of currency. In the U.S., most currency actually passed is now produced on color printers and copiers. While such copies are easy to identify, they are usually passed in situations where they will not receive much scrutiny. That is, in low light situations where the cashier is in a hurry, like in a bar or at a concert. Usually the cashiers don't care that much, since they aren't the one who's out the money when a fake comes in -- except at places like electronics stores that have more exposure and so train their cashiers better. By the time the counterfeit is found, the doer is long gone and so the business ends up just getting screwed. They don't have any recourse. Now, the counterfeitting laws and the whole enforcement system is predicated upon the idea that fakes can't be produced without substantial upfront effort. The print-on-demand nature of this type of counterfeitting makes prosecution tricky. With offset counterfeits, there are multiple people involved. There are resources to get, cameras, plate burners, presses, paper, ink, and all these attract attention. Computer-produced fakes aren't like that. There's no evidence except perhaps what forensic analysis can turn up on the hard drive. The presence of counterfeits detracts from the widespread acceptance of currency. Since currency is the only practical anonymous means of payment, those of us who value our privacy would do well to support measures that keep currency practical. Now, the anticopying measures in the printers are, as far as anyone has been able to tell, a voluntary measure on the part of the manufacturers. Good for them. It is one of only two good choke points for the problem, the other being to have cashiers check in detail for things like watermarks. Is it a form of DRM? Not really, since it is wholly unrelated to copyright law, and since there is no digital distribution of the "content" in the first place. What are the implications for open source? None. Open source systems could include such measures and may do so in the fullness of time. Just because it can be disabled by the knowledgeable makes no difference. When the day comes when 90% of the desktops have an open source operating system and desktop suite, most of the user base will have no idea how to make such changes.
This doesn't necessarily hold up in practice, though you at least have the choice of which bank, which online service, and so forth you use. Some take their customer's peace and quiet more seriously just as some take privacy issues more seriously than others.
I have believed for some time there are only two ways the spam problem can be solved. 1. Ending the convention of accepting e-mail from unknown sources, that is, anyone not on a whitelist; and requiring authentication. 2. Legal means. The trouble with California's law is the jurisdictional issues it raises. Regulation of email traffic crossing state lines is arguably soley in the purview of the FCC, so aside from companies in California seeking to spam other Californians, I can't imagine the law will withstand a court challenge.
The article above surprises me, mainly because vi is so difficult to learn. Having once learned it, it's not a half bad editor, but there are better ones that are easier to learn. After all, vi was designed to take advantage of the (then) increasingly ubiquitous terminals with addressable cursors, connected at serial rates between 600 and 9600 bps. Most had only the keys found on a typewriter, with no function keys, arrow keys, or numeric keypad, and certainly no mouse. That made the keyboard-only, modal interface necessary.
With today's PCs, there are so many better choices out there, that it's surprising that vi retains any following at all. But what can I say, I still use it myself.
They are trying very hard to solve a fundamentally unsolvable problem. Indeed, even the hype (that is, the Intel sales presentation in the PDF linked above) acknowleges that copy protection is directed at the casual user attempting to misuse material.
Trouble is, the stakes are too high for the casual user to ignore the technology, and the DMCA is too heavy a hammer to use to beat down people who have a fair use in mind. Others have already pointed out that every copy protection scheme yet devised has failed, and has alienated legitimate users in the process. Recall that it was major corporate buyers whose frustration led to the discontinuance of the use of laser-burned "key disks" for Lotus 123 back in about 1993. This was the end of an era for copy protection, with only a few high-dollar packages utilizing hardware keys and the like.
I attribute the recent resurgence in "activation" and other coercive techniques to control distribution to the DMCA with its criminalization of cracks. This won't last, because the DMCA is too heavy a hammer; as benign cracks multiply, judges just won't permit serious penalties to be applied.
Others have pointed out the possibility of copying the analog media as it is played or projected. This is the "tragic flow" of DRM as applied to entertainment media. There is simply no way to prevent copying any noninteractive media -- if you can see it, read it, or hear it, then you can record it (duh). The details and quality tradeoffs are all things that can be overcome.
This leaves aside the matter of attacking the key exchange mechanism itself, which is not infalliable. It's just not possible to secure a playback device that is in the custody of a third party. And if a nicely packaged hack comes out for a reasonably popular device, what will Hollywood do? Delist all the affected devices, the vast majority of which are owned by noninfringing users? I think not. And that leaves the door open.
And ultimately, a backlash will come as home users realize that they are putting up with inconvenience and expense because of a system that is doing little to prevent piracy.