Do you really mean that if I'm a business, you can force me to deal with you even though you refuse to supply your real name? Not acceptable. I won't give up the right NOT to do business with anonymous customers, or anyone else with whom I choose not to do business. The point about DRM, if I understand it, is that you could disclose your information to me for certain purposes without my being able to make use of it in ways you have not agreed to. At least in theory. But this debate appears largely to ignore differences in the number of bits involved. To violate your privacy I can always take a picture of my screen with an old camera, or just read it into a tape-recorder. I can't do that effectively with your new DVD without significant loss of quality. I don't see any technical solution that would enable Alice to reveal something to Bob that Bob could not then reveal to Eve. If that's true, then DRM must stand on its own dubious merits. On Wed, Jun 26, 2002 at 10:01:00AM -0700, bear wrote:
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Privacy without DRM means being able to keep and do whatever you want with the records your business creates -- but not being able to force someone to use their real name or linkable identity information to do business with you if that person wants that information to remain private.
-- Barney Wolff I never met a computer I didn't like.