Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Parallel Distribution and Non-Copyleft Licenses

cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Parallel Distribution and Non-Copyleft Licenses
  • Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2006 18:49:24 -0500

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




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page