From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 02:35:47 +0800
To: cryptography@c2.net
Subject: Re: Hughes Markets? (finally some stimulating debate on dcsb)
Message-ID: <v03110710b08a5430e2ef@[139.167.130.248]>
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Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 09:28:21 -0500
To: "R. Jason Cronk" <listmanager@orange.redmans.com>
From: hutchinson@ncri.com (Art Hutchinson)
Subject: Re: Hughes Markets? (finally some stimulating debate on dcsb)
Cc: dcsb@ai.mit.edu
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Reply-To: hutchinson@ncri.com (Art Hutchinson)

I wrote:

>>Whoa!  Hang on here.  Sure, watermarks will tell you who information
>>was stolen from, but they're just a stalking horse... a weak second cousin
>>to *persistent* content control technologies (such as IBM's Cryptolopes
>>and Intertrust's Digiboxes).  These allow rightsholders to manage a wide
>
><SNIP>
>
>>They allow rightsholders, if they so choose, to *continue* being rights-
>>holders in a highly networked, digital world, and in a wide range of new

To which R. Jason Cronk replied:

>"if they so choose"  and here is where I submit the two camps divide.

Yep.  I couldn't agree more.  There will be at *least* two, (and probably
more like 2000) 'camps'.  And here is where I think we diverge....

>Sure, you can decide to try to hold on to the rights, but it is going to be
>market suicide.  Your best bet is to sell it all off, get what you can for
>it and do it again. In other words, a recursive auction market.

With more sophisticated tools for rights management, the market contest
can  move to another level, with content business models *themselves*
vying for attention.  Recursive auctions are merely one of these models.

They may make perfect sense for the kind of content that is going to
decline in value over time anyway (news, for example).  Not all content
works this way though.  Recursive auction markets are exciting because
for the most part, they haven't been possible in 'copyright' industries
until recently.  Its easy to say that they will be more important than they
are today.  They will.  But to say that they are fore-ordained as the only
way for creators to get compensated is much too narrow.

This view would only make sense if detaching copies from usage controls
were easy.  Today it is, and there is a common misconception that this will
continue.  But it won't.  Cryptographers especially should understand this.

The same base technology that makes it extremely
difficult to mint one's own digital coins in someone else's currency will
make it extremely difficult to use someone else's digital content without
complying with their controls (including payment).  It is inconsistent to
say that digital money can have persistent value and digital content cannot.
Both are information.  Both based on a common faith in a 'brand': either
the U.S. Treasury or Disney.  Same idea.

Best,

- Art


Art Hutchinson                                       hutchinson@ncri.com
Northeast Consulting Resources, Inc.     phone: (617) 654-0635
One Liberty Square                                 fax: (617) 654-0654
Boston, MA 02160                                 www.ncri.com
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-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
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experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
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