[free-sklyarov] Andy Oram: What Do "Intellectual Property" "Own
ers" Want?
proclus at gnu-darwin.org
proclus at gnu-darwin.org
Fri Dec 20 16:03:40 PST 2002
This looks great, except the title. How about what do _so-called_
intellectual property owners want.
Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/
On 20 Dec, Seth Johnson wrote:
>
> (Forwarded from Interesting People list. Article text
> pasted below. -- Seth)
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 11:41:54 -0500
> From: Dave Farber <dave at farber.net>
> To: ip <ip at v2.listbox.com>
>
>
> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: Andy Oram <andyo at oreilly.com>
> Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 10:14:29 -0500 (EST)
> To: dave at farber.net
> Subject: What Do Intellectual Property Owners Want?
>
> (I don't usually bug you with two pieces in one day, but
> this happened to be prepared for publication, and it's
> relevant to current events.)
>
>> http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/ar/ip_owners.html
>
> ...
>
> Why copyright? Why did this obscure branch of "intellectual
> property," this private concern of entertainment and
> software firms, become the most pressing public policy area
> of the computer field?
>
> [The Sklyarov and Jonansen cases] make us suspect that the
> multiple tentacles of the "intellectual property" leviathan
> bears barbed hooks on each end--and that some of the
> critical issues in modern democracy and discourse may be
> snagged by them.
>
> ...
>
> (This article is also currently in print at The American
> Reporter, http://american-reporter.com/)
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Oram O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. email:
> andyo at oreilly.com
> Editor 90 Sherman Street voice:
> 617-499-7479
> Cambridge, MA 02140-3233 fax:
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>> http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/ar/ip_owners.html
>
> WHAT DO INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OWNERS WANT?
>
> by Andy Oram
> American Reporter Correspondent
>
> CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—Researchers around the world were
> stunned. A promising young graduate student, Dmitri
> Sklyarov, came to the United States to deliver his insights
> about weaknesses in a commercial product to a well-known
> computing conference. A few hours after his presentation, he
> was in jail.
>
> I don’t want to belabor this case because it has already
> been aired in the press a great deal, particularly since
> last Tuesday’s startling ruling in favor of the Sklyarov’s
> employer, ElcomSoft, by a jury that was clearly repulsed by
> the idea of punishing people who make software with
> legitimate uses.
>
> But Sklyarov and ElcomSoft start off this article because
> his arrest marked a milestone in modern life—a fulfillment
> of the old prediction that computer hackers used to utter as
> a joke: "Write a program, go to jail." It’s still scandalous
> that Sklyarov spent time in jail for his non-crime.
>
> Sklyarov suffered all this for working on a software
> product that was perfectly legal in his own country, Russia,
> but was called a violation of the Digital Millennium
> Copyright Act in the United States. This software allowed
> people using the popular Adobe eBook software—so long as
> they had a legitimate license to the software—to make copies
> of documents. The Russian software had many legitimate
> applications under the "fair use" doctrine, but could also
> be used to make unauthorized copies—and that brought down
> the vindictive hand of the U.S. Justice Department, which
> insisted on bringing the case to trial even after Adobe
> dropped their charges.
>
> Nor was Sklyarov alone. A fifteen-year-old Norwegian, Jon
> Johansen, was briefly arrested on flimsy charges related to
> his supposed role in creating DeCSS software, a program that
> retrieves movies from their encrypted format on DVD.
> Johansen’s case was in court last week, but I have not heard
> any news of the outcome. Many others have been sued for
> similar causes, although they have not faced criminal
> proceedings.
>
> Civil libertarians and analysts in the computer field have
> long expected legal tensions about computer and Internet use
> to come to a head, but they expected it to happen over
> something overtly political: transmission of censored
> content, or software that could compromise computer
> security, or something related to cryptography. (Computer
> cryptography expert Phil Zimmermann was under investigation
> by the FBI for a while, but he was never indicted.)
>
> Why copyright? Why did this obscure branch of
> "intellectual property," this private concern of
> entertainment and software firms, become the most pressing
> public policy area of the computer field?
>
> These incidents make us suspect that the multiple
> tentacles of the "intellectual property" leviathan bears
> barbed hooks on each end—and that some of the critical
> issues in modern democracy and discourse may be snagged by
> them.
>
> Consider an expose of some powerful institution such as
> the Church of Scientology. Try to cite their religious
> training materials—and they’ll get you for copyright
> infringement.
>
> Reveal hidden flaws in a product’s design? You’ve
> illegally circulated trade secrets. Put up a web site to
> criticize a company? Trademark violation.
>
> The past few years have seen uses of all these stratagems
> to suppress debate and dissent, as well as other cases
> stretching intellectual property laws to protect the
> powerful. Indeed, any meaningful self-expression can be
> construed as trespassing on some right of an intellectual
> property owner.
>
> And that is the new censorship. The ruling class doesn’t
> care what scummy secrets you want to write about your sex
> life. But the moment you touch on anything concerning their
> power, they’ll find a way to put a stop to it.
>
> The first imperative of the new censorship is place limits
> on information; to let out just enough to serve the
> interests of its disseminators and no further. This is the
> premise of the computer field called Digital Rights
> Management (DRM).
>
> But the hardest thing in computing (hard enough to be
> considered formally insoluble) is to display something for
> the limited edification or entertainment of one person
> without allowing him to do more. If you want to digitally
> give a person a movie for just a day, or keep him from
> transferring it to a different playback device, or keep him
> friends from watching it after she does—you have one hell of
> a tough technical challenge.
>
> This pursuit has led large copyright holders, their hired
> hands in technology industries, and their minions in
> government on a wild goose chase. Here is the logical chain
> that DRM twists tighter and tighter:
>
> - Because you might copy content for some unauthorized
> purpose, the content must be cryptographically scrambled.
> And because cryptographic systems eventually get cracked,
> laws must be passed to prevent the sale and dissemination of
> software that can do the cracking. (This was the germ of the
> Sklyarov case, and the motivation behind the Johansen case
> even though the actual crime he was charge with was barely
> related).
>
> - Because the scrambled content is to be unscrambled only
> by those given authorization, each user must be given a
> digital identity—and thus comes to an end one’s right to
> read, listen, or watch in privacy.
>
> - Because you might disguise your identity to obtain
> unauthorized access, identity must be built right into the
> computer hardware—every piece of computer hardware ever
> sold.
>
> By this point, it should be obvious to any reasonable
> reader that the search for perfect copyright control will
> flounder. But powerful forces are still at it! A fine saga
> of their quest can be found in an article titled
> "Hollywood’s Legislative Agenda" by technology commentator
> Cory Doctorow. (You can find a number of other fascinating
> articles on related topics in the same online journal.)
>
> Is the goal of perfect control so sinister? Aren’t the
> copyright owners fighting for their very existence against
> the scourge of rampant commercial piracy, particularly in
> underdeveloped nations?
>
> No, the goal of DRM is precisely to hamper the individual
> user. One can no longer doubt that after a Disney
> representative says, "There is no right to fair use."
> (Quoted in Wired News.) And when the industry underlines the
> statement by using DRM to remove that right, along with the
> right of first sale and other hitherto unregulated uses.
> This means:
>
> - You will not make a back-up copy of a work, to preserve
> it in case the distributor will eventually go out of
> business and your current copy will wear out or be damaged.
>
> - You will not excerpt a bit of the work for review or
> educational purposes.
>
> - You will not play a work that pleases or disturbs you
> for your friends in order to get their reaction.
>
> For the social implications of this new regime, see my
> article "Never again to validate one’s experience"
> (http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/1022).
>
> Unlicensed copying on a commercial scale has been taking
> place since the spread of the printing press, and can be
> tracked down through conventional means. The people that the
> big copyright holders have in their sites now are you and
> me.
>
> But in this I am an optimist. First, the goal of perfect
> control cannot be achieved. People are used to their rights
> and will continue to find ways to do the everyday,
> reasonable things they’ve done. Large-scale outfits will
> break DRM systems and will provide alternative sources.
>
> There’s something funny about encryption and access
> control systems. Beneficent ones tend to work and malicious
> ones tend to fail.
>
> You see, these systems are so complex, so subtle, so
> fragilly based on multiple levels of mathematics understood
> by only a handful of people, that they must be developed
> through open review processes. All successful encryption
> systems—the ones we use to encrypt files, to order goods
> over the Web, to tunnel into corporate offices—have been
> developed that way.
>
> Open development does not guarantee correctness, of
> course. Some real clunkers have emerged from open processes;
> a recent well-known example is the system used to protect
> wireless LANs. But without exception, all closed systems are
> clunkers.
>
> The cracking effort at the basis of DeCSS, which allows
> every DVD in the world to be cracked, was almost trivial to
> figure out. The developers of the CSS, which was supposed to
> protect the DVDs, didn’t even try hard. Their design was
> amateurish and sloppy. The job of cracking CSS was even
> easier because one of the movie companies left its secret
> key on a DVD in plain text—the kind of bone-headed user
> error that is often the bane of access control systems.
>
> Why don’t DRM developers use open review to create their
> systems? One reason is that the process takes a long time;
> another is probably the urge to seek a competitive advantage
> through trade secrets. But the main reason, in my opinion,
> is that the security community wouldn’t cooperate. The
> people who best understand security and access control have
> an inborn aversion to the use of those systems to impede
> people’s rights.
>
> So perfect control will fail. That’s the first grounds for
> optimism.
>
> The second is that people will get bored of controlled
> content and will turn to open systems that are intrinsically
> more exciting and engrossing; see my article "Stop the
> Copying and Start a Media Revolution"
> (http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2002/03/08/media.html)
>
> The third is that the public fights back. The ElcomSoft
> case shows that the public can understand the issues and
> stand up for its rights when given a voice. Among the first
> cracks were a modest bill introduced by Representatives Rick
> Boucher and John Doolittle last October to force companies
> to label CDs encumbered with DRM controls.
>
> Civil liberties have always come up against the standard
> practices of entrenched forces as well as against the
> current law. The attempt of these forces to paint the battle
> as one of simple revenue streams and author’s rights must be
> rejected. The fight is a moral one, and the moral imperative
> lies with those who wish to examine, discuss, and criticize
> freely.
>
>
>
> Member, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
> Editor, O’Reilly & Associates
>
>
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