nicketynick wrote: > I've often wondered about the effectiveness of > 'internet-forum' debate.... has anybody ever made a study of this? I > would think it would make a great post-grad thesis.
One can argue, say whether Ford is better than Chevy, but it is really a question of belief, and you can't argue belief. You can debate, say, are American's safer today than on day X. But that is unlikely to convince many people. If you ask a question, say, are there good reasons for a consumer to like DRM? you can become educated. Whether that will convince you to one side or the other is not clear. You can even say "imagine a perfect DRM, which could be used to deliver added features X, Y, and Z, would consumers accept that?" and perhaps have a decent discussion. But if you say "I have a perfect DRM, because it is easy, and ..." and qualified folks point out the fundamental flaw in the premise, then the rest of the sentence is moot. In serious security discussions, you start with comparing the cost of attack to the value of what is protected. Banks seriously protect their transaction networks because serious money flows over them. Credit cars are protected somewhat, but not very well for many reasons, including the basic fact that most credit card fraud happens in stores and restaurants. And, far more importantly, the average credit card transaction is $50 or $100, so you can make an actuarial assessment of the 'value of what is protected' and act in proportion. While one can argue about a 'fair' price for a CD of music, it is hard to see it going outside a range of about $1 to $20 per CD. If the music is not very good, perhaps a buck is the right price. And $20 is an effective upper bound. So no sane person would apply the same security used to protect a bank wire network to a CD or DVD. And as others have said, in normal professional security discussions, you start with the assumption that the 'trusted' parties have the keys, and the 'bad guys' do not. The idea that the bad guys have the key and won't look at it is a fundamental of DRM for music and video. Most serious folks would say that is a fundamental flaw. But as long as the value being protected is low enough, even that weak security may be enough. Security by Obfuscation works against the trivial attack. -- Pat Farrell http://www.pfarrell.com/ _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
