Criminalizing crypto criticism
Alan
alan at clueserver.org
Tue Jul 31 03:00:18 EDT 2001
On Friday 27 July 2001 11:13, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> In message <20010727015656.A22910 at cluebot.com>, Declan McCullagh writes:
> >One of those -- and you can thank groups like ACM for this, if my
> >legislative memory is correct -- explicitly permits encryption
> >research. You can argue fairly persuasively that it's not broad
> >enough, and certainly 2600 found in the DeCSS case that the judge
> >wasn't convinced by their arguments, but at least it's a shield of
> >sorts. See below.
>
> It's certainly not broad enough -- it protects "encryption" research,
> and the definition of "encryption" in the law is meant to cover just
> that, not "cryptography". And the good-faith effort to get permission
> is really an invitation to harrassment, since you don't have to
> actually get permission, merely seek it.
Even worse is if the "encryption" is in bad faith to begin with. (i.e. They
know it is broken and/or worthless, but don't want the general public to find
out.)
Imagine some of the usual snake-oil cryto-schemes applied to copyrighted
material. Then imagine that they use the same bunch of lawyers as the
Scientologists.
This could work out to be a great money-making scam! Invent a bogus copy
protection scheme. Con a bunch of suckers to buy it for their products. Sue
anyone who breaks it or tries to expose you as a fraud for damages.
I mean if they can go after people for breaking things that use ROT-13
(eBooks) and 22 bit encryption (or whatever CSS actually uses), then you can
go after just about anyone who threatens your business model.
I guess we *do* have the best government money can buy. We just were not the
ones writing the checks...
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