Text tracking

[Black Unicorn]

On Mon, 11 Sep 1995 owner-cypherpunks at toad.com wrote:

>   Hal Finney wrote:
> 
> > I'm not sure how to do it for software, but for novels it
> > should be easy to fingerprint.  Every couple of pages the
> > author writes a sentence twice in different forms.  This would
> > not take a great deal of extra effort on the part of the
> > author.
> 
>   Perhaps.  Some authors might be offended by the idea that
> using a different form of a sentence doesn't affect the work.

Examples of "text tracking" in documents where language specificity is 
important (legal, scientific) are typically marked with changes in the 
justification scheme, i.e. the number of spaces to the right, number of 
lines to a page, number of pages total, etc. etc.

Clearly it is much more difficult to apply in digital schemes, but 
consider that in order to modify the scheme to avoid traceback to the 
distributer, one of two conditions must exist.

1>  The distributer must be close to the initial release point.

  (If not, then all documents ABOVE the distributer in the chain will be 
   text tracked, and all the documents BELOW the distributer will not.  
   Clearly this will brand the distributer).

2>  The distributer must be entirely outside the 'legal' distribution scheme.

Remember also that uniform modification of text tracking methods is 
itself identifying unless several 'illegal' distributers are using the 
same sanitizing method.

The same way you can get surgery to have fingerprints removed, but the 
resulting scars make you all the more identifiable.