On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 08:48, Soren Harward wrote: > This question is inspired by the thread on encrypted filesystems, but > merits its own thread. Everyone knows about keeping unauthorized users > out of data they shouldn't have access to. But what about granting > authorized users access to data they should be able to access, but not > permitting them to redistribute it? Say, for instance, I'm a nuclear > weapons engineer at Los Alamos. Obviously, I need to be able to access > my own and others' research data. But just as obvious is that you don't > want me taking that data home or selling it to North Korea in exchange > for a new Ferrari. > > Now I know this is the whole point of DRM, and I don't know if there's > another way to do it. I don't think there is; hence, I think that DRM > in and of itself is a very good and very timely idea. I just don't > trust MS or any other closed-source system to do the M of my DR's.
You make a good point. I think there has been a lot of anti-DRM talk because of certain implementations that have been put forth by the likes of MS, but in general it seems like it could be a very needed and useful tool. And not just for Nuclear engineers, but even the Church distributing sensitive data to Bishops, or family members doing geneology (hey, that sounds familiar). No matter how it's implemented there is a lot of potential for using DRM for nefarious purposes, but that hasn't stopped a lot of other good tools (like TV or digital imaging) from being brought to light. It seems rather inevitable. It'd be nice to have a wholesome open source solution, one that doesn't require DRM for _all_ data and software on a give piece of hardware. Bryan ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
