Criminalizing crypto criticism

Alan alan at clueserver.org
Tue Jul 31 00:00:18 PDT 2001


On Friday 27 July 2001 11:13, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> In message <20010727015656.A22910 at cluebot.com>, Declan McCullagh writes:
> >One of those -- and you can thank groups like ACM for this, if my
> >legislative memory is correct -- explicitly permits encryption
> >research. You can argue fairly persuasively that it's not broad
> >enough, and certainly 2600 found in the DeCSS case that the judge
> >wasn't convinced by their arguments, but at least it's a shield of
> >sorts. See below.
>
> It's certainly not broad enough -- it protects "encryption" research,
> and the definition of "encryption" in the law is meant to cover just
> that, not "cryptography".  And the good-faith effort to get permission
> is really an invitation to harrassment, since you don't have to
> actually get permission, merely seek it.

Even worse is if the "encryption" is in bad faith to begin with. (i.e. They 
know it is broken and/or worthless, but don't want the general public to find 
out.)

Imagine some of the usual snake-oil cryto-schemes applied to copyrighted 
material.  Then imagine that they use the same bunch of lawyers as the 
Scientologists. 

This could work out to be a great money-making scam!  Invent a bogus copy 
protection scheme.  Con a bunch of suckers to buy it for their products. Sue 
anyone who breaks it or tries to expose you as a fraud for damages.


I mean if they can go after people for breaking things that use ROT-13 
(eBooks) and 22 bit encryption (or whatever CSS actually uses), then you can 
go after just about anyone who threatens your business model.

I guess we *do* have the best government money can buy.  We just were not the 
ones writing the checks...



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