consulting question.... (DRM)

[Ray Dillinger]

On Tue, 2009-05-26 at 18:49 -0700, John Gilmore wrote:
> It's a little hard to help without knowing more about the situation.
> I.e. is this a software company?  Hardware?  Music?  Movies?
> Documents?  E-Books?  

It's a software company. 

> Is it trying to prevent access to something, or
> the copying of something?  What's the something?  What's the threat
> model?  Why is the company trying to do that?  Trying to restrain
> customers? 

Its customers would be other software companies that want to produce 
"monitored" applications.  Their product inserts program code into 
existing applications to make those applications monitor and report
their own usage and enforce the terms of their own licenses, for 
example disabling themselves if the central database indicates that 
their licensee's subscription has expired or if they've been used 
for more hours/keystrokes/clicks/users/machines/whatever in the 
current month than licensed for.

The idea is that software developers could use their product instead
of spending time and programming effort developing their own license-
enforcement mechanisms, using it to directly transform on the
executables as the last stage of the build process.

The threat model is that the users and sysadmins of the machines 
where the "monitored" applications are running have a financial 
motive to prevent those applications from reporting their usage.

> What country or countries does the company
> operate in?  What jurisdictions hold its main customer bases?  

They are in the US.  Their potential customers are international.
And their customers' potential clients (the end users of the 
"monitored" applications) are of course everywhere. 

> Why should we bother?  Isn't it a great idea for DRM fanatics to
> throw away their money?  More, more, please!  Bankrupt yourselves
> and drive your customers away.  Please!

You're taking a very polarized view.  These aren't "DRM fanatics"; 
they're business people doing due diligence on a new project, and
likely never to produce any DRM stuff at all if I can successfully
convince them that they are unlikely to profit from it.

			Bear


---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com