Ed Felten points to this paper about trusted computing. Seems to be required reading for anyone who thinks that trusted computing might help copyright owners. If that paper is right, and I agree with Felten that the authors seem to be right, it's exactly the other way round. Trusted computing will help the P2P networks defend against attacks by the copyright holders.
And Felten also points out the most important aspect. Tracability.
If copyright holders can trace the exact location of a P2P client and attach some user's name to it, they can sue that user. That can increase per-copy distribution cost (d in the article's model) enough to prevent illegal copies.
Actually copyright holders don't really have to be able to trace everybody. It's enough if they can prove that they will be able to get some names and remove the users' trust in the protection against tracing.
DRM helps only with extraction costs, raising them over the level of the casual user, as opposed to the dedicated pirate. And if the call for wide-spread trusted computing succeeds, that might actually lead to lower per-copy distribution costs. Those matter the most.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at June 3, 2003 10:14 PM | TrackBack