Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] short short anti-tpm

cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] short short anti-tpm
  • Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2006 16:56:03 -0500

Greg London wrote:
Parallel distribution does not solve the monopoly. It allows Dave to
maintain the monopoly, and only requires Dave to distribute a
parallel copy that will not play on the platform.

IOW, he has to offer to give you the same ink in a regular bottle. Which is nice, but totally useless on the platform, because the DMCA makes filling your own cartridges illegal!

The anti-TPM clause prevents this monopoly because it prevents Dave
from using DRM to restrict the rights to the work.

But dave can still sell you an empty cartridge and a refill kit so you *can* fill your cartridges with regularly-bottled ink, if he wants to.

In fact, he can sell you the bottle of ink and the refillable cartridge in a nifty package where the process of opening the package fills the bottle (at your discretion). This eliminates the complaint that only die-hard do-it-yourselfers could use this system.

The reason this is important is that, if you are so-motivated, you can take the ink out, mix it with your cool new "metallic effect" mix-in, and pump *that* into the cartridge, thus improving on the original product. That's what the FSF calls "freedom 1".

The unfortunate truth is that this breaks down a bit, because Dave can probably design his cartridge so that it will only accept the original ink mixture (this is hard to imagine for the ink, but in software, it just means the TPM wrapper recognizes a hash-signature on the content). OTOH, this is probably a lot more work for Dave than producing a generic wrapper, so maybe it's enough of a deterrant.

Not a bad metaphor.

Cheers,
Terry


--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page