Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>]

On 11 Aug 2006, at 22:06, Greg London wrote:

> On 8/11/06, rob AT robmyers.org <rob AT robmyers.org> wrote:
> > Any system where Charlie cannot make an iSuck
> > version himself is not free,
>
> I'm trying to think of how this would look.
> If someone took some FLOSS source code,
> ran it through a proprietary compiler,
> and released the executable and source
> code, but not the compiler, then it's
> a subtle problem.

Oh by an iSuck version I mean an iSuck-ified music file, not a  
version of the iSuck software.

Sorry, I was unclear there.

So what I should have said is:

If only SuckCorp (or SuckCorp's restricted licencees) can encode  
iSuck files, iSuck files are not free.

> But I don't understand DRM enough to know
> if a "FLOSS-to-DRM" converter is like a compiler
> or not. I.E. is it hard to implement or reverse engineer?

You may be able to reverse engineer some current DRM. iTunes DRM is  
typically cracked as soon as it is upgraded. But to do so is illegal  
because of the DMCA, and when Trusted Computing comes in you won't be  
physically able to analyse it.

For good (anti-)DRM/TP overviews see:

http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

- Rob.