Ross's TCPA paper

[Barney Wolff]

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:
> ...
> 
> 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.