This sort of thing always makes me chuckle. If recent tech-industry headlines have shown anything, it's that any software-based digital rights management initiative will ultimately fail.
Once you digitize something and send it to someone, you had better trust that recipient not to violate your copyright or IP, because they can make as many perfect copies of it as they choose. Software solutions can make it more inconvenient to do this, by wrapping the data in a format that only an "approved" reader program can decode. This approved reader can then prevent copying, modification, etc. from it's user interface. But such reading software can be modified by a reasonably skilled programmer to allow the original uuencoded digital data's extraction, because the encoded data must eventually be decrypted in order to be displayed in human-recognizable form. The only secure alternative is tamperproof hardware display/playback devices, which are expensive, and (as DirecTV has discovered) not all that tamperproof. This is why hackers and security researchers have quickly circumvented the digital rights management software for Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Media and Reader, SDMI, DVD CSS, etc. in recent years. It's also important to realize that 99.9% of the population doesn't even need the skill set to create a hacked reader program - they simply have to download it. DeCSS was written by one guy, but thousands (maybe millions?) now use it to illegally extract MPEG data from DVD disks. So you don't want someone to copy, forward, or print your message? Either trust them completely, don't send it at all, or be prepared to sue. Regards, :::Ryan Malayter :::Network Engineer :::Bank Administration Institute :::Chicago, Illinois, USA :::PGP Key: http://www.malayter.com/pgp-public.txt -----Original Message----- From: Doug Hampshire [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 12:44 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Prevent the forwarding of an email message. Mail Recall from Authentica. It can prevent forwarding, copying, printing (even blocks most screen captures), change access permissions on the fly, expiration of messages, etc. Even prevents others from seeing the content of the messages that might have permission on the mailbox since it uses a separate key system. It's even easy enough to use that C-Level exec's can use it. www.authentica.com _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
