privacy <> digital rights management

Ben Laurie ben at algroup.co.uk
Wed Jun 26 12:09:24 PDT 2002


Donald Eastlake 3rd wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, John S. Denker wrote:
> 
> 
>>Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 22:21:36 -0400
>>From: John S. Denker <jsd at monmouth.com>
>>To: Dan Geer <geer at TheWorld.com>, cryptography at wasabisystems.com,
>>     cypherpunks at lne.com, Ross.Anderson at cl.cam.ac.uk
>>Subject: Re: privacy <> digital rights management
>>
>>Dan Geer wrote:
>>
>>>Over the last six months, I'd discovered that Carl Ellison (Intel),
>>>Joan Feigenbaum (Yale) and I agreed on at least one thing: that the
>>>problem statements for "privacy" and for "digital rights management"
>>>were identical,
>>
>>...
>>
>>>... YMMV.
>>
>>Uhhh, my mileage varies rather considerably.  Perhaps we are using
>>wildly divergent notions of "privacy" -- or wildly divergent
>>notions of "identical".
>>
>>DRM has to do mainly with protecting certain rights to _published_
>>material.  Private material is not "identical" with published
>>material -- it is more opposite than identical.
> 
> 
> The spectrum from 2 people knowing something to 2 billion knowing
> something is pretty smooth and continuous. Both DRM and privacy have to
> do with controlling material after you have released it to someone who
> might wish to pass it on further against your wishes.

No they don't! Privacy has to do with two (or more) parties wishing to 
collaborate to prevent third parties from eavesdropping. DRM has to do 
with one party attempting to control everyone else's ability to reproduce.

If these are related to each other at all, they are what mathematicians 
like to call duals. IMO.

Cheers,

Ben.

-- 
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html       http://www.thebunker.net/

"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff


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