From: Marc Horowitz <marc@Athena.MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 22:29:36 PST
To: Marc.Ringuette@GS80.SP.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Re: Tagging copyrighted text
In-Reply-To: <9302102305.AA29462@toad.com>
Message-ID: <9302110113.AA20486@binkley.MIT.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>> Step 2:  Dow Jones starts changing random whitespace in the text, in an
>> attempt to "tag" the text untraceably to trace which subscriber is
>> leaking the information.  They cancel my subscription.

They don't just cancel your subscription.  They sue your butt into
next week.  You can make it harder for them to find you, but if you're
eating into their profits, they will, and the more effort you've made
them go through, the madder they'll be, and the harder their lawyers
will bite.

There's no way to "tag" a document in such a way that the tag cannot
be removed.  At worst, I read the document out loud, and have my
partner rekey it, while rewriting it slightly.  Unless it's something
like poetry which you can't just rewrite, this will pretty much
sanitize the data against any kind of keying.

The fact is, people copy music and software now.  It Happens, and as
much as they wish it didn't, it does.  And when things become more
electronic, it will still happen.  My guess is that unless such
duplication becomes institutionalized, it's not worth the effort to do
anything about it.  And if you start buying things, copying them, and
giving or selling them to lots of other people in an organized way,
the real owners will find you.

		Marc