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List:       cryptography
Subject:    Re: What's Wrong With Content Protection
From:       Jaap-Henk Hoepman <hoepman () cs ! utwente ! nl>
Date:       2001-01-23 7:49:27
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On Sat, 20 Jan 2001 10:41:52 -0800 hal@finney.org writes:
> I will make a partial rebuttal to John Gilmore's article on the problems
> with content protection schemes.
>
> [..snip..]
>
> I understand that John and others worry that consumers will not actually
> be able to make choices and decisions, because all products available
> to them will have content protection built in.  But this amounts to the
> belief that industry will form a cartel which seeks to sell products
> which make consumers unhappy, intentionally delivering devices which
> consumers dislike, smug in their belief that their cartel is 100%
> effective and that no competition is possible.
> 
> Without the enforcement of laws like the DMCA, such a situation is
> highly unstable.  There is a huge incentive to produce devices which
> don't observe the restrictions and which give consumers more power.
> These devices will be popular with consumers and the cartel will be
> broken.

Not necessarily...

The problem is that the CPSA (Content Protection System Architecture) proposes
to encrypt all content (by the content producers). Player manufacturers will
require a license on the decryption function, which they'll only get if they
also implement copy protection. So devices without copy protection cannot
legally decrypt the content, and therefore cannot play any of the popular
content out there. These products will not sell on the market.

Jaap-Henk

-- 
Jaap-Henk Hoepman             | Come sail your ships around me
Dept. of Computer Science     | And burn your bridges down
University of Twente          |       Nick Cave - "Ship Song"
Email: hoepman@cs.utwente.nl === WWW: www.cs.utwente.nl/~hoepman
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