Stardate 20010907.1415 (On Screen): A few days ago
I discussed expense "at the margin" with respect to things like deploying defensive weapons. Copy protection of software is another example of a place where the expense at the margin defeats the defense. Copy protection is a defensive measure used by software companies or record producers to prevent their media from being distributed illicitly. It has to be deployed broadly on every CD sold. Attack consists of programs which can break the copy protection; that's software which can be distributed rapidly (i.e. over the Internet). If a given form of copy protection is broken, then it's broken on every CD which already has been distributed using that form of copy protection and there's no way for the defender to go back and fix them all and improve their protection. A year or two later they may be able to deploy a new form of copy protection which will work until it too is cracked. The expense and speed here favors the attackers.
We're also about to find out whether the law does, too. A woman has filed suit against the producer of a CD which uses copy protection claiming that the company selling it should be required to say so on the product label. Her argument is that she wanted to listen to it on her computer and can't do so because of the copy protection, thus the company didn't provide sufficient information to make it possible for her to determine if the product would serve her needs. If she wins and if all copy-protected CDs have to say so on the label, the record companies will face a boycott of protected titles -- until someone cracks it, and then it will be moot. (discuss)
