Stardate 20020228.1829

(On Screen): A couple of months ago, details about the proposed Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) were leaked and the main reaction was one of incredulity. Could Fritz Hollings conceivably be so stupid? It was generally expected to be a non-starter.

I'm afraid not. He's completely serious about it, and as head of the Senate Commerce Committee he is now holding hearings. Today top executives from Intel and Disney testified about it; Eisner was in favor and Vadasz was against.

But Eisner must be living in Never-never land, or at least his friend Peter Chernin is:

Chernin said that the entertainment industry is asking for software that can prevent any pirated content from being transmitted digitally online.

Chernin said he is convinced that the high-tech industry could create tools that would prevent even pirated recordings made with digital cameras in movie theaters from being transmitted over the Internet.

He further said he believed that such technology could be implemented without compromising the right of Internet users to transmit non-copyrighted recordings online.

Not possible. The only way to prevent that would be to make it impossible to send any video at all over the Internet. Not only would that prevent "fair use" but it would also prevent people from transmitting material that they themselves own, such as transmitting video of little Sally's birthday party to Granny in Duluth. There isn't any way to differentiate material shot in a movie theater from material shot on a beach, or in someone's own living room.

Vadasz said that there was no technological means to protect copyrighted content that is not somehow encrypted or electronically watermarked in its original, legal form.

Even that isn't a solution. Any watermark which can be detected can also be removed. Security through obscurity is no defense because it is brittle, and once the means of the watermark is known it is vulnerable to attack.

It's not clear that it is even possible to prevent people from transmitting video. Any kind of recognizable fingerprint or watermark or identifying code could be masked by a relatively simple form of encryption. It's hard to see how any kind of filter could detect that a given file is video if the file had been scrambled with a transposition cipher, let alone run through DES.

It can't even be detected based on length. Video files are very large, but so are a lot of other things, and in any case a long video file could be broken up into a large number of shorter pieces which were transmitted separately and reassembled at the other end.

Even the idea of incorporating hardware protection into all devices ignores the fact that there exists now an immense installed base of equipment which does not incorporate such protection. Even if all new computers were equipped in that way, what about the hundred million computers already owned by people in the US which are unprotected?

This is a disgrace. Senator Hollings should be ashamed of himself.