eWeek: Cryptography Guru Paul Kocher Speaks Out

[Thor Lancelot Simon]

On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 09:19:23AM +1200, Sidney Markowitz wrote:
> 
> Clearly anyone who would go to the trouble of using five or more players
> to extract the watermark and make an untraceable copy for widespread
> distribution would also not be stopped by having to buy a player for cash
> or steal one or borrow one and sacrifice its eventual ability to play
> movies made after some future date.

I'll note that this is not too different from the problem of unauthorized
duplication of actual film prints of movies -- except that access to good
35mm prints of movies is slightly (but only slightly!) harder to arrange
(it typically involves bribing only a single theater employee, and often
a fairly junior one at that) and that the actual duplication cost might
actually be lower, in an ongoing operation.

Despite some efforts in this area by the Mafia in years past *and* the
semi-widespread availability of 8mm and even 16mm prints of movies no
longer in first-run theatrical release through public libraries for a
few decades, duplication of film prints has not appeared to pose a major
problem for the studios.  This would seem to suggest that raising the
level of investment and technical sophistication required beyond mere
triviality is, in fact, the correct target to shoot for, from the
studios' point of view; and that Kocher is probably really doing a
reasonable job at that with his proposal.


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