Re: Hughes Markets? (finally some stimulating debate on dcsb)
--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: hutchinson@click.ncri.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 09:28:21 -0500 To: "R. Jason Cronk" <listmanager@orange.redmans.com> From: hutchinson@ncri.com (Art Hutchinson) Subject: Re: Hughes Markets? (finally some stimulating debate on dcsb) Cc: dcsb@ai.mit.edu Sender: bounce-dcsb@ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: hutchinson@ncri.com (Art Hutchinson) I wrote:
Whoa! Hang on here. Sure, watermarks will tell you who information was stolen from, but they're just a stalking horse... a weak second cousin to *persistent* content control technologies (such as IBM's Cryptolopes and Intertrust's Digiboxes). These allow rightsholders to manage a wide
<SNIP>
They allow rightsholders, if they so choose, to *continue* being rights- holders in a highly networked, digital world, and in a wide range of new
To which R. Jason Cronk replied:
"if they so choose" and here is where I submit the two camps divide.
Yep. I couldn't agree more. There will be at *least* two, (and probably more like 2000) 'camps'. And here is where I think we diverge....
Sure, you can decide to try to hold on to the rights, but it is going to be market suicide. Your best bet is to sell it all off, get what you can for it and do it again. In other words, a recursive auction market.
With more sophisticated tools for rights management, the market contest can move to another level, with content business models *themselves* vying for attention. Recursive auctions are merely one of these models. They may make perfect sense for the kind of content that is going to decline in value over time anyway (news, for example). Not all content works this way though. Recursive auction markets are exciting because for the most part, they haven't been possible in 'copyright' industries until recently. Its easy to say that they will be more important than they are today. They will. But to say that they are fore-ordained as the only way for creators to get compensated is much too narrow. This view would only make sense if detaching copies from usage controls were easy. Today it is, and there is a common misconception that this will continue. But it won't. Cryptographers especially should understand this. The same base technology that makes it extremely difficult to mint one's own digital coins in someone else's currency will make it extremely difficult to use someone else's digital content without complying with their controls (including payment). It is inconsistent to say that digital money can have persistent value and digital content cannot. Both are information. Both based on a common faith in a 'brand': either the U.S. Treasury or Disney. Same idea. Best, - Art Art Hutchinson hutchinson@ncri.com Northeast Consulting Resources, Inc. phone: (617) 654-0635 One Liberty Square fax: (617) 654-0654 Boston, MA 02160 www.ncri.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Working at the intersection of business and IT strategy to help organizations embrace electronic commerce opportunities" For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request@ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <v03110710b08a5430e2ef@[139.167.130.248]>, on 11/08/97 at 12:39 PM, Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com> said:
--- begin forwarded text
X-Sender: hutchinson@click.ncri.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 09:28:21 -0500 To: "R. Jason Cronk" <listmanager@orange.redmans.com> From: hutchinson@ncri.com (Art Hutchinson) Subject: Re: Hughes Markets? (finally some stimulating debate on dcsb) Cc: dcsb@ai.mit.edu Sender: bounce-dcsb@ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: hutchinson@ncri.com (Art Hutchinson)
I wrote:
Whoa! Hang on here. Sure, watermarks will tell you who information was stolen from, but they're just a stalking horse... a weak second cousin to *persistent* content control technologies (such as IBM's Cryptolopes and Intertrust's Digiboxes). These allow rightsholders to manage a wide
<SNIP>
They allow rightsholders, if they so choose, to *continue* being rights- holders in a highly networked, digital world, and in a wide range of new
To which R. Jason Cronk replied:
"if they so choose" and here is where I submit the two camps divide.
Yep. I couldn't agree more. There will be at *least* two, (and probably more like 2000) 'camps'. And here is where I think we diverge....
Sure, you can decide to try to hold on to the rights, but it is going to be market suicide. Your best bet is to sell it all off, get what you can for it and do it again. In other words, a recursive auction market.
With more sophisticated tools for rights management, the market contest can move to another level, with content business models *themselves* vying for attention. Recursive auctions are merely one of these models.
They may make perfect sense for the kind of content that is going to decline in value over time anyway (news, for example). Not all content works this way though. Recursive auction markets are exciting because for the most part, they haven't been possible in 'copyright' industries until recently. Its easy to say that they will be more important than they are today. They will. But to say that they are fore-ordained as the only way for creators to get compensated is much too narrow.
This view would only make sense if detaching copies from usage controls were easy. Today it is, and there is a common misconception that this will continue. But it won't. Cryptographers especially should understand this.
You can use various "tricks" to make it more complicated but the fact remains that at some point in time you have to present the data to the user. Once you make this step the data can be snatched and seperated from it's controls. Wether the effort to do this is worthwhile will depend on the value of the data.
The same base technology that makes it extremely difficult to mint one's own digital coins in someone else's currency will make it extremely difficult to use someone else's digital content without complying with their controls (including payment). It is inconsistent to say that digital money can have persistent value and digital content cannot. Both are information. Both based on a common faith in a 'brand': either the U.S. Treasury or Disney. Same idea.
Hogwash, you are compairing apples to oranges. The value of money is that you can use it to purchase thing with it. A forged copy of money is worthless because if the forgery is detected you can buy anything with it. On the other hand a movie's value is in it's entertainment from viewing it. I can just as easily be entertained by an "forged" copy of snow white as well as an "official" copy. The fact that it is a copy has not dimished it's value. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBNGTW8o9Co1n+aLhhAQFoUQP/WnsOpoCWCTROdcQ6Qf882ItTRdEVRmRc YXEAfQpCyLmUewvOq1VobJDaIhvgI3gZPwQFEUuGRTDR18f9oLNbLFeY5DGB8VSO fsDFanst/etOojx6k3w5cbQE0K/jNTTYRUUVW45UCFpwEvhP/x94dKqCMUxAMQZd i251OO8Lraw= =ud3e -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (2)
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Robert Hettinga -
William H. Geiger III