June 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: Degrees of Freedom vs. Hollywood Control Freaks
by Trei, Peter 06 Jun '02

06 Jun '02

> Tim May[SMTP:tcmay@got.net] wrote: > > On Monday, June 3, 2002, at 08:40 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: > >> OnThe MPAA does not have to 'will them out of existance', or even make > > them illegal. They plan to change the broadcast standard so they are > > not supported. > > > > At least, this is my interpretation: > > > > The FCC has mandated a change to all-digital formats over the > > next 5 years or so. After that, analog (NTSC) transmission will > > be phased out. > > My strong hunch is that there is essentially no chance of this > happening. For a mix of reasons which I'll just briefly list: > Tim: I'm working on more then 'hunches'. Consider: http://ftp.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/News_Releases/1998/nrmm8003.html - start quote - The FCC reaffirmed its service rules for the conversion by all U.S. broadcasters to digital broadcasting services (DTV), including build-out construction schedules, NTSC and DTV channel simulcasting, and the return of analog channels to the government by 2006. - end quote - That's the official USG position 5 years ago. Note the last clause in particular. Your NTSC set will be a paperweight, at least as far as over-the-air reception is concerned, by 2006. Now, in reality, the trashing of your old TV may be delayed... (I'm quoting from www.digitaltelevision.com here): - start quote - Ending the Transition By Congressional mandate, the transition period ends on December 31, 2006. On that date, NTSC broadcasting should terminate and stations should operate in a DTV mode alone, unless the FCC has granted a waiver. Any extensions beyond the final date will be considered on a market-by-market basis. Under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the Commission is required to grant a station's request for an extension if: One or more stations affiliated with one of the Top-4 networks is not operating digitally, because the Commission has granted the station(s) an extension of time to complete construction; Digital-to-analog converters are not generally available on the market; or Fifteen percent or more of the homes in the market cannot receive a DTV signal either off the air or via cable or do not have either a digital TV set or analog-to-digital converter attached to one NTSC TV set capable of receive DTV signals in their local market. - end quote - ...but it will happen eventually. After the stations are broadcasting digitally, the analog stations are unneeded, and regardless of whether the FCC or the station has the auction rights, they'll want to sell off the old spectrum. Neither the FCC nor the broadcasters will want to forego the money. [...] > Item: Their system, my system, and tens of millions like them, are > already giving so many "degrees of freedom" that the cat is already out > of the bag. An attempt to make future DVDs incompatible with the tens of > millions of existing systems will be met with anger, boycotts, and > seeking of alternatives (e.g., a studio which continues to sell DVDs > will win out over ones which offer only newer and incompatible > versions). Throw in the pissed-off folks who bought HDTV systems in > 1997-2003 and are then told that they'll have to scrap even those > systems! > Well, I'm convinced - I guess that's why every single album today is released on both CD *and* vinyl - can't piss off the tens of millions of turntable owners, after all. [..] > I give the chance that Jack Valenti and his bunch will be able to force > a conversion to a new video standard no chance of happening. > Manufacturers will back off if they see sales trending downward (for the > reasons cited above). > Tim, I think you're missing the point here. Valenti and his ilk would like nothing more than to force you to to rebuy your visual media *again*, but they don't have to. I'll bet dollars to donuts that you've rebought some of your VCR tapes as DVDs. Whey wouldn't the MPAA think they can make you do it over? > > Until these standards are settled one way or the other, anyone > > buying digital video equipment (HDTV or otherwise) runs a > > very substantial risk of finding themselves with a set of expensive > > and otherwise useless doorstops. > > Which is deterring huge numbers of people from even looking at HDTV. And > so they buy more DVDs, which are vastly better than the VHS tapes > they've been watching for years. Most of them apparently see little > compelling reason to upgrade to HDTV. > The BCPG etal are moaning about the 'analog hole' because that's the one they can't easily fix. They've already agreed not to license the marketing of devices with unprotected digital-out (the deCSS case was about this, remember?) So the 'digital hole' is already plugged - as more and more devices recognize and respond to the watermarks, the usability of a ripped digital-to-digital file decreases. > > Progress and innovation in electronics will occur only > > at the whim (and in the interest) of the entertainment industry. > > Actually, I disagree. There are many examples--MP3s, Napster, the system > my friends have that I described, etc.--where the "street" does its own > thing regardless of what the entertainment industry and Jack Valenti > want. > Well, Napster just went Chapter 11. Any future system which requires either vintage or illegally hacked HW will have very limited usage. > Final personal note: About a year ago I saw the absolutely gorgeous, > splendiferous Apple 22-inch "Cinema Display." A huge TFT flat monitor, > with a resolution of about 1600 x 1200. And they've now added a slightly > larger version with an ever higher resolution. I see myself getting one > of these, or the 30-inch version which will probably be available for > the same price in 2 years--and rigging it as my main high-res viewing > system. > I've seen them too - very, very nice! > (Yeah, these systems are not so great for families and for > viewing parties, but, let's face it, when was the last time this kind of > viewing happened to you? Most of my own viewing, and that of nearly > everyone I know, is personal.) > Not everyone is single and living alone. The last time for me was last night - I and the kids watched The Simpsons, and my wife joined us for Malcom in the Middle (very funny, but about a lifestyle alien to you). Saturday night we had 5 people sit through Harry Potter, as did about 8 of the neighbourhood kids on Sunday afternoon. There are a very large number of families-with-kids out there, and family viewing is common. On a side note - the HP movie (which I'm not that fond of) is in itself an example of the publishers being willing to piss people off. The deleted scenes (one of the better things you get on DVDs) where hidden behind a long and very inobvious set of operations in the 'special features' section, essentially as an Easter Egg. Not only that, but the operations neccesary to reach them reliably crashed my DVD player, which less then a year old, due to insufficient memory. My daughter's PS/2 console came to the rescue. > The degrees of freedom will win out over the control freaks. > Let's hope. > --Tim May > "Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little > bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now > racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events > following 9/11/2001 > Peter Trei

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Re: Laurie's blinding w/cut and choose?
by Anonymous 05 Jun '02

05 Jun '02

Jason Holt writes: > In his paper on Lucre ("2nd defence" against marking): > http://anoncvs.aldigital.co.uk/lucre/ > > Ben Laurie gives this as a (possibly patent-free) blinding technique, > where h is the message, and g is the public generator: > > r = blind(h) = h^y * g^b (mod p) > > To "sign", > > s = sign(r) = m^h > > To unblind, > > (s/g^k^b)^(1/y) (mod p) > > (where k is the signer's secret exponent. Of course, nobody but the > signer can verify the signature). Unfortunately, this doesn't work with cut > and choose where the signer signs the product of unrevealed documents, since > the 1/y exponent above would distribute to all the internal terms: Boy, you've got a lot of faith asking this question on cypherpunks. It's not exactly the intellectual center of the crypto freedom movement these days, you know. The average IQ is rapidly descending into double digits, even not counting Choate. But let's see what we can do for you. First, let's fix your notation. r = blind(h) = h^y * g^b OK s = sign(r) = r^k, not m^h. unblind(s) = (s/g^k^b)^(1/y) = h^k = sign(h). That's what you want to end up with, h^k, as the pseudo-signature on h. Now for a credential system, you apparently want to create a bunch of values which have some structure, and get a signature on a product of them. Using cut and choose, the client will prepare blinded forms of all of the values, then the server will ask for half of the blinding factors to be revealed. This exposes the raw values to be signed and the server can make sure they are in the right form. If so, it then signs the product of the remaining values, which the client unblinds to get back a good signature on the product of the unblinded values. Done properly, with n values this gives you 2^n security against bogus data in the credenial. The fundamental problem with this is that the blinding factors have to be different for each of the values. If they are all the same, then when they are revealed for some of the values during cut and choose, that will reveal them for all of them, and so none of them will be effectively blinded any more. But if the blinding factors are all different, we can't unblind since we don't have a unique power 1/y to raise to. That's your problem, right? Here are a couple of possible solutions. First, you could do a cut and choose in which all but one of the blinded values are revealed, and only the remaining (unrevealed) one is signed. This has the problem that it has only a 1/n security factor with n values. That is, the client can just guess which one the server won't ask to check, and if it sent say 100 values, it has a 1/100 chance of getting lucky, which might seem too high. However since credential issuing usually occurs in a non-anonymous context, you can afford to penalize people very heavily if they are caught in this manner. (Cutting the connection and refusing to resume with the previous values has to count as cheating.) Another approach is as follows. Go back to the 50-50 cut and choose with signature on the product. However, use the same y blinding factor for all of the values. Now when the client has to reveal during cut and choose, it keeps the y value secret but reveals all of the h and b values. It then proves in zero knowledge that there exists a y such that the h^y equals the required value. This is a standard ZK proof of knowledge of a discrete logarithm. It is similar to the example Ben's paper gives of how the bank can prove it is raising to the right power. Since you don't have to reveal y, you can use the same y for all of them and successfully perform the unblind operation, getting back the signature on the product of the h's as required. But actually another solution is much simpler, which is to do blinding as just h * g^b, without a y factor. That works fine as long as the bank is known not to be misbehaving. Ben's paper shows how the bank can use a ZK proof to show that it is raising to the same power k every time, basically again that same ZK proof regarding discrete logarithms. If the bank uses such a proof then you can use simpler blinding without a y factor, and you can recover the signature on the product of your h values by dividing by g^k^(sum of b's). So there you go. A little technical for cypherpunks, but unfortunately coderpunks, like the little old lady, has fallen and it can't get up.

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Laurie's blinding w/cut and choose?
by Jason Holt 05 Jun '02

05 Jun '02

In his paper on Lucre ("2nd defence" against marking): http://anoncvs.aldigital.co.uk/lucre/ Ben Laurie gives this as a (possibly patent-free) blinding technique, where h is the message, and g is the public generator: r = blind(h) = h^y * g^b (mod p) To "sign", s = sign(r) = m^h To unblind, (s/g^k^b)^(1/y) (mod p) (where k is the signer's secret exponent. Of course, nobody but the signer can verify the signature). Unfortunately, this doesn't work with cut and choose where the signer signs the product of unrevealed documents, since the 1/y exponent above would distribute to all the internal terms: ((r * r * r ...)^k)^(1/y ) 1 2 3 1 ------------------------------ != (h * r * r ...)^k (mod p) (g^k)^b 1 2 3 1 Can anyone see how to get this to work? It doesn't matter for Ben's money system since he doesn't need cut and choose, but I'm working on a patent-free credential system where the issuer needs to cut and choose to keep the user from cheating. Alternatively, is there another way to get some sort of blind mark (that foils the issuer from adding subliminal information that would compromise the blinding) without stepping on Chaum's patent? I hear Chaum mentioned one himself at PET 2002, but I can't find anything about it online. -J

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