Development of Creative Commons licenses

[James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>]

Greg London wrote:
> > If Dave makes an insidiously good DRM system that
> > neither you nor anyone else has reverse engineered,
> > Dave doesn't need the law.
>
> I will defer this issue to Bruce Schneier,
> who on many occaisions has said in his
> books and on his blog and elsewhere that
> no system where content is delivered to
> a piece of hardware owned by individuals
> is ever secure. It will eventually be
> cracked by someone. 

I did not say that Dave's insidious DRM system could not be cracked or 
would go forever without being cracked.  The history of DRM shows that 
that would be a stupid claim to make.  That's why I didn't make it.

I said only that (in the hypo) neither you nor anyone else *has* reverse 
engineered the system.  Systems aren't cracked overnight; it takes time, 
effort, and sometimes expense.  Dave might have a period of time when 
his DRM hasn't been broken.  Depending on how insidiously clever he is, 
and on how much effort people are putting into reverse engineering it, 
that period might last for some time.

> Having had to do a
> bit of reverse engineering during my day job
> as an electrical engineer, I tend to agree
> with his analysis. Someone, somewhere will
> crack it, and once that happens, it will end
> up on the web. Unless something like the DMCA
> makes it illegal to crack.
>
> That you disagree with a basic premise of
> security tends to suggest there may be other
> flaws in your other unstated premises.
>
> > You would be upset at Dave's actions even without
> > the DMCA.  You would prefer the CC-SA license to
> > forbid them even if the DMCA did not exist.
>
> What, your snowglobe thingy again?
> Look, someone could take some CC-SA content
> and put it into a BOOK for cripes sake
> and getting it back into electronic format
> will take some work.
>
> Do I think CC-SA should prohibit books? No.
>
> If you've got a massive snowglobe distribution
> system where hundreds of thousands of works are
> being distributed in ROM snowglobes, do you think
> I want CC-SA to prohibit them? No.
>
> Just put a friggen microphone next to the speaker
> and record it if you want. It'll be about the same
> amount of work if someone starts distributing
> paperback copies of CC-SA books.
>
> You want a foolproof way to one-way encrypt the
> content on your snowglobe? Drop the sample rate
> down to about 3 khz before you burn the prom.
> You'll never be able to get the original quality
> back. But who cares?
>
> Parallel Distribution won't solve that.
>
> Which is yet another reason that ParDist is not
> the same as a Source Code requirement.
>
> parallel distribution will distribute a low res
> version of the music burned in the prom. Wow.
> Congratulations. ParDist Saves the Day.
>
> Not.

I was not making the snowglobe argument here.  This was a point about 
the relationship between DRM and the DMCA.  The law is not the only 
problem here.  DRM would be a problem even without the DMCA, and DRM 
makes DMCA-like laws worse.

James