The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks Failed

[James A. Donald]

    --
Clay Shirky: 
http://www.shirky.com/writings/riaa_encryption.html

tells us "The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks Failed"

[...]

The Government's failure to get the Clipper implemented came at 
a heady time for advocates of digital privacy -- the NSA was 
losing control of cryptographic products, Phil Zimmerman had 
launched his Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) email program, and the 
Cypherpunks, a merry band of crypto-loving civil libertarians, 
were on the cover of the second issue of Wired. The floodgates 
were opening, leading to...

...pretty much nothing. Even after the death of Clipper and the 
launch of PGP, the Government discovered that for the most 
part, users didn't want to encrypt their communications. [...]

[...]

In response to the RIAA's suits, users who want to share music 
files are adopting tools like WINW and BadBlue, that allow them 
to create encrypted spaces where they can share files and 
converse with one another. [...] Note that the broadening 
adoption of encryption is not because users have become 
libertarians, but because they have become criminals; to a 
first approximation, every PC owner under the age of 35 is now 
a felon.

[...]

And the second effect, of course, is the long-predicted and 
oft-delayed spread of encryption. The RIAA is succeeding where 
the Cypherpunks failed, convincing users to trade a broad but 
penetrable privacy for unbreakable anonymity under their 
personal control. In contrast to the Cypherpunks "eat your 
peas" approach, touting encryption as a first-order service 
users should work to embrace, encryption is now becoming a 
background feature of collaborative workspaces. Because 
encryption is becoming something that must run in the 
background, there is now an incentive to make it's adoption as 
easy and transparent to the user as possible. It's too early to 
say how widely casual encryption use will spread, but it isn't 
too early to see that the shift is both profound and 
irreversible. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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