Re: Ross's TCPA paper

[Lutz Donnerhacke <lutz@iks-jena.de>]

Message-ID: <200206251115.HAA3018467@shell.TheWorld.com>
To: cryptography@wasabisystems.com, cypherpunks@lne.com,
From: Dan Geer <geer@TheWorld.com>

Over the last six months, I'd discovered that Carl Ellison (Intel),
Joan Feigenbaum (Yale) and I agreed on at least one thing: that the
problem statements for "privacy" and for "digital rights management"
were identical, viz., "controlled release of information is yours at
a distance in space or time" and that as such our choices for the
future of digital rights management and privacy are "both or neither"
at least insofar as technology, rather than cultural norms & law,
drive.

Last week at USENIX 2002 I tried this out on Larry Lessig as his
keynote had been a takeoff from his recent _The Future of Ideas_ book.
His response was confirming: "Of course they are the same!" and he
went on to describe that when Mark Stefik (Xerox PARC) had submitted
his patent on DRM in the early '90s it had roughly said "wrap data
such that if you try to abuse it it will self destruct."  Sometime
in the late '90s a Canadian inventor had attempted to patent a
privacy technology with the rough description "wrap data such that
if you try to abuse it it will self destruct."  The USPTO denied
the patent request on the grounds that it duplicated an application
that had already been granted.

Speaking personally, if asked "DRM & privacy, both or neither?"
then I will take "both" --  YMMV.

--dan

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