Once I had a full and complete realization that all information is exchangable and the represenation of such is completely arbitrary, I realized that all attemps at DRM would fail. As I stated earlier, Attemping to come up with a functional DRM system is computationally equivalent to coming up with an encryption system that allows bob to recieve a message, but prevents him from sharing that message with Eve, even if he wishes to. If you understand cryptoology at all, you’d recognize that such a problem is really quite absurd and no reasonable cryptologist would begine to attempt it. You’d be laughed at if you tried to get cryptographers to undertake such a task, but that’s exactly what Hollywood, Microsoft, and all kinds of other folks have been trying to do. They’be been somewhat succesfull at it in the sense that if you’re an ‘average joe’ and don’t have a technogolically inclined friend to ask, it might be kind of difficult for you to copy the latest linkin park CD onto your .mp3 player, but as long as you know someone who is technogically inclined and ‘in the know’ it’s fairly easy to find someone who knows how to circumvent whatever kind of copy protection has got you down.
Because I’m lazy, I’ll just copy and paste the boingboing text about this article: Hollywood has fielded a shockingly ambitious piece of “Analog Hole” legislation while everyone was out partying in costume. Under a new proposed Analog Hole bill, it will be illegal to make anything capable of digitizing video unless it either has all its outputs approved by the Hollywood studios, or is closed-source, proprietary and tamper-resistant. The idea is to make it impossible to create an MPEG from a video signal unless Hollywood approves it.
I must point out another computational equivalency here: Taking a video signal and turning it into an MPEG is a form of “open encryption” – the result is a peice of information, significantly smaller than the original signal, which can be used to reconstruct an approxmation of the original signal. The RIAA is saying they ought to have a software patent on the MPEG format, as well as any other format which could concievably be used to compress video. What they don’t realize (or else what they’re not bothering to tell anyone) is that the MPEG format is a member of a broad class of Discrete Cosine Transformation based algorithms which use mathematical theories regaring a class for Fourier Transformations to create a simplified approxmation of a complicated signal. For the RIAA to say they ought to be the arbiters of the use of such algorithms to prevent piracy is the same as for the police to say that no one should be allowed to build anything using a rotating lathe, becuase if they were allowed to build things, they might build sharp objects which could be used to stab people. I exaggerate, but the point is the same. The RIAA is trying to abrogate control over some well-understood (and public domain) information because said information could be used to do something counter to their efforts. Even if you ignore the ridiculous equation of stabbing someone with copying a CD that you bought to your hard drive, you have to concede that it’s absurd to grant a body control over technology that might be used to infringe upon the rights granted them by law.
The RIAA has come to the realiztion (of which I have been aware for several years) that a choice must be made. They’ve been trying to construct their computationally ridiculous form of encryption for years now, and now they finnaly get that it can’t be done; it’s an impossible task to undertake unless you use the law to prevent people from using well understood (if only by mathematically inclinded individuals) mathematical operations on input signals. Unforunately, I think there’s a rather low probability that there are too many members of congress with a good solid grasp on Fourier Transformations and their Application to reduction of Information Entropy in a digitized representation of a video signal. So we’ll see how this plays out.
I know said I’d make this blog apolitical and I guess i could see how this could maybe be considered politics, so if i’ve offended you thenI’m sorry etc etc.