DRM Helmets For Everyone

[R. A. Hettinga]

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Status:  U
From: "Gordon Mohr" <gojomo at usa.net>
To: <fork at xent.com>
Subject: DRM Helmets For Everyone
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 11:07:58 -0700
Sender: fork-admin at xent.com

I'm especially proud of this piece I just posted to OReillyNet, so I
figured I'd share it here too:

   http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/1540

# DRM Helmets: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
# by Gordon Mohr
# Jun. 7, 2002
#
# The proposed CBDTPA law[1] could require billions of individual "digital
# media devices" -- every TV, stereo, speaker, PC, walkman, hard drive,
# monitor, and scanner -- to carry enforcement circuitry -- but there
# are only 300 million people in the country. Mathematically astute
# readers will note that's less than 600 million each of eyes and ears.
#
# Further, a single economical helmet can cover four of these analog
# holes[2] at once!
#
# I humbly suggest the most cost-effective and reliable solution to the
# copyright industries' troubles will be DRM helmets, bolted onto each
# dutiful consumer at the neck. When these helmets sense watermarked
# audio or video within earshot/eyeshot, they check their local license
# manager and instantly "fog up"[3] if payment has not been delivered.
#
# This will especially teach people not to listen to unauthorized copies
# of music while driving.
#
# By fastening suitably-small DRM helmets onto children at an
# appropriately-early age, the citizenry's consumptive habits can be
# "arrested" (along with cranial volume) at a revenue-maximizing
# developmental stage. I'd guess this is around age 13, but I'm open to
# the latest research. Give and take is what policymaking is all about.
#
# So step up to the plate, senators, lobbyists, and titans of industry.
# Write this into the next rev of the CBDTPA. We can call it the
# SNEHNEA: "See No Evil, Hear No Evil Act". Why try to haphazardly plug
# billions of analog holes, when you can just cap the problem at its far
# fewer human endpoints? (The end-to-end design principle[4] is your
# friend!)
#
# If we can put a man on the moon, then surely we can cage every
# American's mind.
#
# [Intellectual Property Disclosure: The "DRM Helmet" and the "Cranial
# Arrest Adolescent DRM Helmet" may be covered by patents granted or
# applied for by Gordon Mohr. Licensing will be available on
# unreasonable and discriminatory[5] terms.]
#
# --
# Gordon Mohr is the founder and Chief Technology Officer of Bitzi, a
# cooperative, universal metadata catalog for all kinds of discrete
# files. Gordon's personal page is at http://xavvy.com.
#
# [1] http://www.digitalconsumer.org/cbdtpa/
# [2] http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000113.html
# [3] http://www.polytronix.com/pdlc.htm
# [4] http://www.reed.com/Papers/EndtoEnd.html
# [5] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#RAND





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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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