From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 14:56:00 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: DCSB: Burning the Jolly Roger; Internet Anti-Piracy Technology
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Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 15:38:33 -0400
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From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Subject: DCSB: Burning the Jolly Roger; Internet Anti-Piracy Technology
Cc: Peter F Cassidy <pcassidy@world.std.com>, Dan Geer <geer@world.std.com>,
        Terry Symula <symula@ma.ultranet.com>, "Heffan, Ira" <HEFFAN@tht.com>
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             The Digital Commerce Society of Boston

                          Presents

                       Peter Cassidy
                          Founder,
                     TriArche Research

                  Burning the Jolly Roger:
         Can Anti-Piracy Technologies Make the Internet
            a Shrinkage-Free Commercial Platform?

                    Tuesday, October 6, 1998
                           12 - 2 PM
              The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston
                One Federal Street, Boston, MA




For most of this century, the fusion of intellectual property and media
was enough to ensure that its owners could reasonably be expected to
profit from its consumption.  Most people didn't have the means to lift
Ella Fitzgerald's music from her records, so fans of her music would
actually have to go out and buy her records.  Today, a high proportion of
ordinary households have the technical capacity at hand to take
recordings, visual or audio artifacts and executables, digitize them if
need be, and transmit it to millions of people overnight over the
Internet.  This state of affairs could signal the demise of the software
and entertainment industries.  Evolving almost as quickly as the
interlopers' sophistication in aquiring and distributing ill-gained wares,
however, are technical solutions to foil pirates, technologies of varying
potency and adaptability.

	Standard specifications for license management systems that
prevent unauthorized use of software have been drafted by the X/Open Group
this summer; watermarking systems and digital wrappers that allow
creatives to either mark or encapsulate images and sounds to frustrate
infringers have been on the market for the past few years; comprehensive
smart wrapper systems like InterTrust and C-dilla promise persistent
protection for all digital artifacts; and at least one system TriArche
Research Group has reviewed under NDA can prevent the most all
non-photographic copying of content presented in a Web browser.
Meanwhile, policing technologies like Online Monitoring Service's
WebSentry can locate pirated intellectual property on the Web and in
Usenet news groups.  None of these technologies are perfect but, as they
mature, they will make it far more difficult for infringers to take
control of intellectual property and to share it with their
contemporaries.  The Web might never lower its shrinkage rate to that of,
say, Wal-Mart but merchants in this medium already have many of the tools
they need to clean up this digital Barbary Coast.

Peter Cassidy is an IT industry writer and analyst at large:  Mr. Cassidy,
director of research at his own firm, TriArche Research Group, has engaged
consulting clients in North America and the Middle East.  As well, Mr.
Cassidy contracts as an information technology analyst with other
industrial research firms, researching topics as varied as network
security, multimedia applications and international telephony markets,
among them, Strategy Analytics, Giga Information Group, Decision
Resources, Dataquest, Business Research Group, The American Institute for
Business Research and CI-InfoCorp.  Mr. Cassidy writes under his own name
for international business publications and general readership magazines
such as  WIRED, Covert Action Quarterly, InformationWeek, CIO Magazine,
The Economist, Forbes ASAP, Software Developer & Publisher Magazine,
Silicon Strategies, The Texas Observer, The Progressive, Telepath
Magazine, American Banker, Datamation, Computerworld, World Trade
Magazine, and the National Security Institute Advisory.  Mr. Cassidy has
been interviewed about technology issues on several broadcast radio
programs in the United States and, appropriately enough, on C|Net Radio,
an international Internet-based audio network. His reportage on national
political affairs has been reprinted in college text books and
anthologies. He has also contracted as a consultant to syndicated
television magazine programs in the United States and Britain.


This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on
Tuesday, October 6, 1998, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of
the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch
is $32.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, various A/V hardware,
and the speaker's lunch. ;-).  The Harvard Club *does* have dress code:
jackets and ties for men (and no sneakers or jeans), and "appropriate
business attire" (whatever that means), for women.  Fair warning: since
we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the
price of your lunch if the Club finds you in violation of the dress
code.


We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we
*really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of
Boston", by Saturday, October 3rd, or you won't be on the list for
lunch.  Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston
will have to be sent back.

Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston,
Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The
Harvard Club of Boston", in the amount of $32.50. Please include your
e-mail address, so that we can send you a confirmation

If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements
(We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for
instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work
something out.


Upcoming speakers for DCSB are:

November   Dan Geer       TBA
December   Joseph DeFeo   TBA
January    Ira Heffan     Internet Software and Business Process Patents

We are actively searching for future speakers.  If you are in Boston
on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a
presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program
Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, <mailto: rah@shipwright.com>.


For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston,
send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to <mailto:
majordomo@ai.mit.edu> . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail
list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to <mailto:
majordomo@ai.mit.edu> .

We look forward to seeing you there!

Cheers,
Robert Hettinga
Moderator,
The Digital Commerce Society of Boston


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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to
"dcsb-request@ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help".

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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'