IP: DMCA, SSSCA, and the Copy Machine Control Act

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2001 15:59:58 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
>To: dave@farber.net
>Subject: DMCA, SSSCA, and the Copy Machine Control Act
>
>
>Dave,
>
>I'm not being factitious with the Subject line above.  A couple of
>years ago in the PRIVACY Forum, in the issue located within the archive at:
>
>    http://www.vortex.com/privacy/priv.08.18
>
>I reported on "invisible" IDs that are imprinted on a wide variety of
>xerographic copier output, unknown to most users.  The ID is encoded using
>digital watermarking techniques (more broadly an application of
>"steganography").  Many modern digital copiers also contain systems to
>detect attempts at copying currency and taking appropriate preventative
>action.
>
>When I originally reported all of this (even though I had it all straight
>from the mouth of a Xerox spokesman) many people simply refused to
>believe it -- it seemed so far beyond the pale.
>
>Let's look a few years ahead and extrapolate from the current trend of
>criminalizing any activity that attempts to "subvert" any "rights control"
>systems, however defined.  If the "copyright lobby" continues to hit home
>runs in the political system, there's no good reason why they won't move
>onward to copiers and scanners in due course.  The technologies I described
>above could easily be used to define a system that would refuse to copy any
>document, book page, photo, or whatever that included hidden watermarking
>information.  Hell, you could go all the way and even report the attempt to
>a central authority in the case of Internet-connected equipment.  About a
>thousand dollars for "research" and a few million for lobbying and you're
>all set!
>
>Of course, this really is largely our own fault.  We technologists have had a
>dandy time building our equipment, software, and systems, then handing them
>over to the powers-that-be -- the folks who in the copyright arena are on
>their way towards owning everything in the store, the store itself, and the
>ground the store is sitting on.  We moan and complain to each other in
>mailing lists, while the organized big boys chuckle all the way to the bank.
>
>Unless enough of us change our ways of approaching these issues and come down
>from the ivory towers, we'll continue to be squashed like bugs.
>
>--Lauren--
>Lauren Weinstein
>lauren@pfir.org or lauren@vortex.com or lauren@privacyforum.org
>Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
>Co-Founder, Fact Squad - http://www.factsquad.org
>Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
>Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy



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