FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

Phil Karn: It's war, folks --- SSSCA formally introduced

------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 08:10:13 -0500 To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>, dcsb@ai.mit.edu, cryptography@wasabisystems.com From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com> Subject: Phil Karn: It's war, folks --- SSSCA formally introduced

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Status: U From: ietf@ka9q.net To: ietf@ietf.org Subject: It's war, folks --- SSSCA formally introduced Reply-to: karn@ka9q.net Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 17:33:36 -0800 Sender: owner-ietf@ietf.org

The story just hit Slashdot -- Senators Hollings, Stevens, Inouye, Breaux, Nelson, and Feinstein have introduced the so-called "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Act of 2002", formerly known to most of us as the SSSCA. The text of Hollings' comments are available here:

http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/hollings.cbdtpa.release.032102. html

The Slashdot article (with links to other coverage) is here:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/21/2344228&mode=thread&tid=10 3

I cannot overstress the awful implications of this bill if it becomes law. The personal computer, as we know it, will be destroyed. The Internet, as we know it, will be destroyed.

Hollings doesn't say that, of course. But all through his statement he claims that there exist technological solutions to the piracy problem. These apparently consist entirely of "do not copy" bits added to copyrighted materials.

The fact that any "do-not-copy-bit" can be trivially cleared on any personal computer that can be programmed by its user does not seem to have registered yet with the authors of this bill. And when it does, the logical next step will then become obvious to them: the licensing of programmers and/or the prohibition of open source software as too easily modified by end users. And when *that* fails, a total ban on any personal computer that can be programmed by its user.

It's time for the IETF, its members and the IAB to react, and react quickly and forcefully. We need to say clearly that there is simply no such thing as an "Internet copy prevention technology" that can actually work in a world with programmable personal computers.

We need to steer policy makers in a different direction, toward watermarking technologies that do not block copies from being made but allows them to be traced after the fact. Yes, effective watermarking is technically difficult, and several have already been broken. But at least it's *possible* to build an effective watermarking scheme without utterly destroying both the personal computer and the Internet.

Phil

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