AARG!Anonymous writes:
I could go on and on, but the basic idea is always the same, and hopefully once people see the pattern they will come up with their own ideas. Being able to write software that trusts other computers allows for an entirely new approach to security software design. TCPA can enhance freedom and privacy by closing off possibilities for surveillance and interference. The same technology that protects Sony's music content in a DRM application can protect the data exchanged by a P2P system. As Seth Schoen of the EFF paraphrases Microsoft, "So the protection of privacy was the same technical problem as the protection of copyright, because in each case bits owned by one party were being entrusted to another party and there was an attempt to enforce a policy." (http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/2002-07-05.html, 3rd bullet point)
I would just like to point out that the view that "the protection of privacy [is] the same technical problem as the protection of copyright" is Microsoft's and not mine. I don't agree that these problems are the same. An old WinHEC presentation by Microsoft's Peter Biddle says that computer security, copyright enforcement, and privacy are the same problem. I've argued with Peter about that claim before, and I'm going to keep arguing about it. For one thing, facts are not copyrightable -- copyright law in the U.S. has an "idea/expression dichotomy", which, while it might be ultimately incoherent, suggests that copyright is not violated when factual information is reproduced or retransmitted without permission. So, for example, giving a detailed summary of the plot of a novel or a movie -- even revealing what happens in the ending! -- is not an infringement of copyright. It's also not something a DRM system can control. But privacy is frequently violated when "mere" facts are redistributed. It often doesn't matter that no bits, bytes, words, or sentences were copied verbatim. In some cases (sexual orientation, medical history, criminal history, religious or political belief, substance abuse), the actual informational content of a "privacy-sensitive" assertion is extremely tiny, and would probably not be enough to be "copyrightable subject matter". Sentences like "X is gay", "Y has had an abortion", "Z has AIDS", etc., are not even copyrightable, but their dissemination in certain contexts will have tremendous privacy implications. "Technical enforcement of policies for the use of a file within a computer system" is a pretty poor proxy for privacy. This is not to say that trusted computing systems don't have interesting advantages (and disadvantages) for privacy. -- Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> | Reading is a right, not a feature! http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | -- Kathryn Myronuk http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/ |