On Mon, 10 Sep 2001, Ian BROWN wrote:
>Titles I and II of the draft are a truly bizarre mix. I provides the horrible
>DMCA-on-crack that has mostly been discussed so far; but II is all
>sweetness and light on encouraging the development of security systems and
>training of personnel, including the appropriation of $135m annually by 2006 for
>infosec R&D and training. Trying buy off certain industry and university sectors?
>Somehow I think several magnitudes more pork would be required ;)
You can also read title II as creating a "guild" of people who are
allowed to know this stuff or practice it. I don't like that idea,
myself. I think that any time you have a class of people who are
the only ones allowed to make a living on certain information, you
wind up in a situation where there is an effective prohibition on
anyone else *knowing* the information. And, let's face it, if knowing
how to program becomes a guilded profession, we're going to lose about
90% of our programming talent -- 'cause the really good ones are doing
stuff a long time before they get actually trained. If they're not
allowed to mess with computers when they're fifteen and manic, and if
they're not allowed to get over, around, and all through the system
software the way they do, they'll never develop the interest and
become CS majors and then the really good programmers they become
now.
Reading title I as outlawing general-purpose computers, title II
appears to outlaw members of the general non-guilded public knowing
how to program them.
Bear
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