cryptoanarchy.wiki

Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

1997-12-04 - Re: Superdistribution development/release

Header Data

From: stewarts@ix.netcom.com
To: “Brian W. Buchanan” <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Message Hash: 0eda752928e8d06e6f594ee8cdfbc46bcf88a02856b9e4b4d69c075041e3440d
Message ID: <3.0.3.32.19971204140118.007527dc@popd.ix.netcom.com>
Reply To: <v03007800b0abc492abcc@[168.161.105.216]>
UTC Datetime: 1997-12-04 23:13:36 UTC
Raw Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 07:13:36 +0800

Raw message

From: stewarts@ix.netcom.com
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 07:13:36 +0800
To: "Brian W. Buchanan" <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Superdistribution development/release
In-Reply-To: <v03007800b0abc492abcc@[168.161.105.216]>
Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19971204140118.007527dc@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 07:03 PM 12/03/1997 -0800, Brian W. Buchanan wrote:
>Should be relatively trivial to break the encryption, since it can't be
>over 40-bit (or 56-bit if the company joined the kiss-ass alliance).

Ahem.  Notice the dateline on the article.  Calgary.
Not a problem, eh?  Plenty of Canadian content in that one,
so they could even show it on TV if they wanted to.

>Probably just as easy or easier to disassemble the software or do some
>creative tweaking of Windows DLLs to intercept data.  

Sounds likely - they're not only planning to run it on machines
without vaguely secure hardware, they're planning to run it
on machines without operating systems - they'll probably use Win95.
With NT, you'd at least need to look for bugs or design flaws
or other ways to lie to the operating system, since there _is_ one :-)
95 may not be as fragile as Win3.1, but it's still no protection.

On the other hand, if they can inhibit mass piracy, they're
ahead of the game, probably far enough to rack up some sales.

And even if their solution is a total technical crock,
it's a crock a bunch of people are trying to develop,
and it can be used as an argument to lawmakers that they don't
need to introduce draconian new legislation to "solve" the
copyright problems because we're doing it technically -
though of course lawmakers have figured out that this gives them
the choice between being visibly obsolete or writing
clueless legislation to regulate the new technology as well as the old....

				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com
Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

Thread