--
On 29 Jul 2002 at 14:25, Duncan Frissell wrote:
> Congressman Wants to Let Entertainment Industry Get Into Your
> Computer
>
> Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Calif., formally proposed
> legislation that would give the industry unprecedented new
> authority to secretly hack into consumers' computers or
> knock them off-line entirely if they are caught
> downloading copyrighted material.
>
> I've been reading things like this for a while but I wonder how
> practical such an attack would be. They won't be able to hack
> into computers with reasonable firewalls and while they might
> try DOS attacks, upstream connectivity suppliers might object.
> Under current P2P software they may be able to do a little
> hacking but the opposition will rewrite the software to block.
> DOS attacks and phony file uploads can be defeated with digital
> signatures and reputation systems (including third party
> certification). Another problem -- Napster had 55 million
> customers. That's a lot of people to attack. I don't think
> Hollywood has the troops.
The plan, already implemented, is to flood file sharing systems
with bogus files or broken files. The solution, not yet
implemented, is to attach digital signatures to files, and have
the file sharing software recognize certain signatures as good or
bad.
This involves scaling problems that have not yet been thought
through or implemented.
As files get copied around, they would accrete ever more digitally
signed blessings. The signatures should be arbitrary nyms, as in
Kong, not true names. The files could also accrete digitally
signed discommendations, though such files would probably
propagate considerably less.
When we approve a file, all the people who approved it already get
added to our trust list, thus helping us select files, and we are
told that so and so got added to our list of people who recommend
good files. This gives people an incentive to rate files, since
rating files gives them the ability to take advantage of other
people's ratings.
If onr discommendd a file, those who discommend it are added to
our trust list, and those who commended it to our distrust list.
If, as will frequently happen, there is a conflict, we are told
that so and so commended so many files we like, and so many files
we dislike, so how should future commendations and
discommendations from him be handled.
--digsig
James A. Donald
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2mpKzWKpHGt5yFiUzlZZD//qHoWgv8n1ZFJzoJ2l9
