"If you didn't pay for it, you've stolen it!"

Steve Schear s.schear at comcast.net
Fri Oct 24 07:43:02 PDT 2003


At 06:28 AM 10/24/2003 -0400, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
> > Someone else must have thought up this idea, but I don't recall seeing
> > it.  Please inform me nicely if you have seen it proposed before.
>
>This sounds a lot like the SunnComm DRM system that got so much publicity
>recently.  (the one that relies on Windows' CD Autorun "feature") That system
>allows the user of a protected CD to make expiring copies of some tracks to
>share.
>
>The problem with the central premise, of course, is that without some Big
>(Brother) Central Server, there's just no way to track simultaneous usage, so
>there's no way to assure that the number of users <= the number of owners.

Why not have each individual's PC which offered to lend do the 
accounting.  This means their PC must be on-line whenever someone who 
didn't pay wants to listen, limiting the number of copies available, but it 
could be fully decentralized.

>You can be sure that [MP|RI]AA will accept nothing less than perfect
>accounting. And if the system relies on my destroying my physical CDs to
>share the MP3 copies, forget it.

This is a possible problem.  If the tracks were originally purchased as 
.mp3 then this might not be a problem.

steve 





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