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.
On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, Barney Wolff wrote:
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.
As a business, you want to get paid. As long as you are sure of your money, what the hell business is it of yours where I live, what name I'm currently registered under, or who I'm screwing? When I buy things with cash or silver, if they ask for ID I leave or lie. I think that people should be free to use a pseudo for any non-fraudulent purposes. Bear
On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, Barney Wolff wrote:
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?
When was the last time you had to give your name when you bought a newspaper, CD or a DVD in a non-online/non-mail order store?
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.
That is your choice of course, as it is mine to refuse to disclose my identity for a simple purchase such as a newspaper, CD, or DVD.
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.
Then, you don't understand it at all. The point of DRM is to prevent you, the customer from making copies of CD's and DVD's available to others, skipping over commercials, to limit you from purchasing the same titles from outside your "region" for much less, or slightly different edits, or before they're released in your region, or lend the same to your friends, or transferring the data to other mediums (mp3 players, etc.) Never mind that copyright laws allow such fair use such as making backups and loaning to your friends, transfering CD tracks to your mp3 player, and even selling used DVD's/CD's so long as you destroy all other copies of the same title. In order to enforce these ends, the only way to "protect" the rights of the owner of the copyrighted work, the current proposals deem to remove administrative rights to your own computer. i.e. MSFT Palladin et al. At this point, the owner of the copyright has root on your computer. (Be that computer a DVD player, X-Box, or whatever.) Should you have anything else on that machine, it is accessible surreptitiously by them without your knowledge so long as the device is online, and it would have to be in order to be "registered" and "updated." Hence the complaints of privacy violations.
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.
The number and quality of bits is irrelevant from the point of view of the MPAA and RIA. Street vendors of illegal VHS tapes and DVD's made of movies from a camcorder while in a movie theater have had their asses rightly hauled in. I imagine the quality of their wares is also quite low when compared to legal versions of the same.
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.
Indeed.
On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, Barney Wolff wrote:
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 don't think that privacy (in the sense of having the right to keep private details of your life from being linked for use unauthorized by you) is ever going to happen if merchants have the right to demand true identities. As a merchant, you have the right to be paid and to be sure of your payment. I don't think you have the right to collect data that you can correlate with every public and business record in the universe and build a profile linked to my identity that says what brand of breakfast cereal I eat, how much a month I spend on sex toys, what kind of books I read, and whether I'm in trouble in divorce court. The problem is that there is no way to check what merchants do with the data once they've got it; customers are prevented from getting into the customer databases and finding out what a merchant's got on them. Merchants have no motive whatsoever to police or restrain their actions in invasion of privacy, and they have a financial motive to link data - so there is no reason to believe that DRM stuff on consumer machines is going to apply to their data handling in the least. I just don't see any possible application of DRM that merchants would allow that protects consumer privacy. So yeah, I think that the right to privacy implies the right to use a pseudonym. For any non-fraudulent purpose, including doing business with merchants who don't know it's a pseudonym. And I think that's a constitutional right, whether the merchants happen to like it or not, just like the right to eat in a restaurant even if the manager don't like colored folks, or picket outside a merchant's business on public property seeking redress of grievances, or tell the truth about a merchant even if it's not flattering to him, or otherwise exercising ordinary civil rights the merchant might prefer you didn't. You can't have privacy without the option of pseudonymity, any more than you can have bread without flour.
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.
A few years ago merchants were equally adamant and believed equally in the rightness of maintaining their "right" to not do business with blacks, chicanos, irish, and women. It'll pass as people wake up and smell the coffee. Unfortunately that won't be until after at least a decade of really vicious abuses of private data by merchants who believe in their god-given right to snoop on their customers.
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.
Understand that I don't really give a flying crap about the DVD player; if I want a nice movie, I'll get together with some buddies and make one. And I'll let anybody who wants to watch it download it. What I want is the right to prevent my customer records at the bookstore from being correlated with the customer records at my doctor, my dentist, my insurance agent, my therapist, my attorney, my grocery store, my pharmacist, the comics shop, the sex-toy shop, the car dealership, the art gallery, the stained-glass place, the computer store, the video-rental place, my favorite restaurants, and my travel agent, and sold as a nice totally invasive bundle back to the marketing databases of all of the above. This is not a question about "number of bits". I figure the database will have an efficient, no-nonsense representation of all of these things, and a photo of the screen, if it can be scanned back, is just as good as a binary copy. I don't see any way that DRM addresses the privacy concern of database linking. Especially since I expect database linking to be done using specialized software that doesn't have to get inspected by anybody with a motive to prevent it, on "professional" (Non-DRM) machines if necessary. Bear
On Sat, Jun 29, 2002 at 10:03:33PM -0700, bear wrote:
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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.
A few years ago merchants were equally adamant and believed equally in the rightness of maintaining their "right" to not do business with blacks, chicanos, irish, and women. It'll pass as people wake up and smell the coffee. Unfortunately that won't be until after at least a decade of really vicious abuses of private data by merchants who believe in their god-given right to snoop on their customers.
The trouble I have with this is that I'm not only a consumer, I'm also a merchant, selling my own professional services. And I just will not, ever, perform services for an anonymous client. That's my choice, and the gov't will take it away only when they can pry it from my cold dead fingers. :) It's not that I hate my govt, although I liked it a whole lot better before 1/20/01, but I will not risk aiding and abetting criminality, even if I can pretend I don't know I'm doing it. Oh by the way, last time you visited your favorite kinky sex shop, didn't you notice the surveillance camera in the corner? And didn't you see the cashier at your ${house_of_worship} last ${sabbath}? The right to anonymity seems to be a new one, not a traditional one that we're about to lose. It may be a needed defense against the ever-increasing ability to correlate data. All I'm really railing against is the notion that just because I'm selling something I MUST accept your anonymity.
... I don't see any way that DRM addresses the privacy concern of database linking. Especially since I expect database linking to be done using specialized software that doesn't have to get inspected by anybody with a motive to prevent it,
I certainly agree that DRM cannot protect privacy violation by a user with access rights. The whole issue of database correlation and anonymity was insightfully explored by Heinlein in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" in 1966. -- Barney Wolff I never met a computer I didn't like.
On Sun, 30 Jun 2002, Barney Wolff wrote:
The trouble I have with this is that I'm not only a consumer, I'm also a merchant, selling my own professional services. And I just will not, ever, perform services for an anonymous client. That's my choice, and the gov't will take it away only when they can pry it from my cold dead fingers. :)
Are you one of those who makes no distinction between anonymity and pseudonymity? 'Cause I've been talking about pseudonymity, and all your answers have been talking about anonymity. Bear
participants (3)
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Barney Wolff -
bear -
Sunder