[free-sklyarov] An Alternative Line of Argumentation

[Seth David Schoen]

Izel Sulam writes:

> This is the fun part. There is nothing that Adobe can do to make a 
> pdf-based ebook system secure. pdf was originally designed to be an open 
> format. The whole security kit'n'kaboodle piggybacks on what is essentially 
> an unencrypted pdf somewhere in memory. As long as you are reading this 
> "ebook" on hardware that is not tamperproof, you just peek into the RAM and 
> pull out the unencrypted pdf that is sitting there.

Right...

> So, on the one hand, Adobe is selling an unsafe security solution, and on 
> the other hand, as long as they insist on building their ebook strategy on 
> the pdf standard, they can never make it safe. So I'm not worried about 
> consumer rights being taken away anytime soon.	 
> 
> I do understand your main concern, that corporate attitudes need to be 
> changed, and consumers need to be educated about encryption and fair use, 
> and congresscritters need to be convinced of the value of the freedoms of 
> the citizens of this country above the whims of stinking rich special 
> interest groups. (Take a breath now, that was a long sentence.) That is a 
> tall order. The strategy that I am proposing aims for less and is more 
> likely to achieve it than other strategies. The strategy that I am 
> proposing aims to Free Sklyarov and ruin Adobe's PR image. The rest of the 
> domino pieces fall where they may.

The trouble is that the "safety" does nothing to help the people to
whom the protest ought to appeal.  I mean, the C1 group (publishers)
might be grateful to Sklyarov for revealing the insecurity of Adobe's
eBooks, but many of them seem to be content with ignorance of the
risks, or with the "moat filled with litigators instead of alligators"
(to quote again Judge Lewis Kaplan).

The C2 group (the public) doesn't actually gain from having Adobe
"fix" this.  To the extent that Adobe has misled anyone or sold anyone
an inferior or risky product, Adobe has misled publishers and sold
them an inferior or flawed product.  So I'm concerned that your
approach, although it is quite reasonable, is telling the public about
what Adobe did _to publishers_, not _to them_.

Again: the aggrieved group of "consumers" by these design flaws is
C1; the members of C2 actually benefit from the fact that the security
is flawed, because the security was deployed treating them as an
adversary, trying to prevent things that they want to do.

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>  | And do not say, I will study when I
Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/  | have leisure; for perhaps you will
down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF)  | not have leisure.  -- Pirke Avot 2:5