[free-sklyarov] Open Letter to Jack Valenti and Michael Eisner (fwd)

[Jei]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 23:05:24 -0500
From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson at REALMEASURES.DYNDNS.ORG>
Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L at LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: CYBERIA-L at LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Subject: Open Letter to Jack Valenti and Michael Eisner

(An angry yet entirely on-the-money piece from Kevin Marks.
-- Seth)

-------- Original Message --------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 09:47:23 -0800
From: Kevin Marks <kevinmarks at mac.com>
To: jvalenti at mpaa.org, michael.eisner at disney.com
CC: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson at realmeasures.dyndns.org>,
David Farber <dave at farber.net>

A Open letter to Jack Valenti and Michael Eisner

Jack, in your sneering Washington Post piece about copy
protection, you refer to professors for whom '"innovation"
is legalizing the breaking of protection codes'. Michael, in
your testimony to congress you badgered an Intel exec until
he told you that file copying can't be prevented, then told
him he must prevent it anyway.

As you are evidently impervious to logical discussion, let
me tell you a story.

This is the story of a rebel, a war hero, a persecuted
homosexual, and a deep thinker. His life reads like the plot
of a far-fetched movie, but if anyone fits your bogeyman
image of professors who break code, it is Alan Turing.

In 1936 Turing published a paper on theoretical mathematics,
in which he described the Universal Turing machine. It was a
simple mechanism that could read symbols from a tape, and
write back different symbols or change the tape's direction.
He showed that with this general purpose  machine, you could
simulate any special purpose computing machine. He had
invented the idea of the programmable computer.

Between 1938 and 1945, Turing worked in great secrecy on
computing machines that broke codes. These were the first
real computers ever made, and the codes they broke were
those used by the German Wehrmacht.  Without his work, it is
very likely that Britain would have lost the War in Europe
before Pearl Harbour.

After the war, in 1950 Turing published other famous papers
that laid the foundation for modern computing, and hence all
the digital gadgetry that you would like to outlaw for us
(though presumably you'd keep the computers you use to edit
and create effects for your movies). Turing died in 1954 by
biting into an apple he had previously poisoned.

What does this story have to do with you?

Turing's Universal Machine means that you cannot have a
software or hardware protection scheme that is secure.
Whatever scheme you come up with can be simulated by another
computer. The computer industry are not opposing your bill
because they want to encourage copying, or because they are
bloody-minded, they are not opposing you because of your
self serving rhetoric about rewarding artists (remember
Peggy Lee, Michael?), they are opposing you because what you
want is provably impossible. You can only succeed by making
all Turing machines illegal.

If Alan Turing had made an animated film involving a
poisoned apple in 1936, it would still have copyright
protection. He chose a different path, and gave the world
the idea of the digital computer. I know whom I respect
more.

http://epeus.blogspot.com

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