Status of Cryptography Research in implementation of the EUCD

[Owen Lewis]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Ken Brown
> Sent: 15 August 2002 10:32
> To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> Subject: Re: Status of Cryptography Research in implementation of the
> EUCD
>
>
> Julian T J Midgley wrote:
>
> > If I purchase an engine from you, and take it apart to
> > determine how it works, you cannot prosecute me for the act of doing so;
>
> The logical progression of the new trend in lawmaking is that this will
> have to change.
>
> All over Europe and North America the trend is to allow producers to
> control how the things they produce are used. The most egregious
> examples are probably not so much DRM as the "grey market" rules, which
> our own courts are happy to enforce.  Or perhaps the idea that if
> someone develops a new variety of crop plant, and some of their plants
> mate with some of your plants so that some of the seeds in your crop
> include genes from theirs, then you aren't allowed to plant seeds from
> your own crop.
>
> From a /lawyers/ point of view all these things are quite distinct. But
> for the rest of us they add up to the same thing - producers retain
> control over the use of the goods they produce after they sell them. Its
> not really about "rights" its about politics - who has the most power?
> The law, the market, democracy, are all different ways of exercising
> political power.

I'd guess that your concern is actually in regard to intellectual property
in which there is continuing exponential growth.

IP cannot be treated as are physical goods. I sell you a brass nut. It is
then yours absolutely. You may swallow it, cut it in two, give it away,
vaporise it, share it with their friends or do anything else with it that
takes your fancy.

If I lease you an idea implemented in some fashion that makes it capable of
practical use, I need protection for my idea so that I may also sell it to
others but you may not do likewise. After all, I only charged you for use of
my idea by one person and not 100,000. Since my idea will have cost me a
6/7/8/9 figure sum to conceive and bring to the point of reliable practical
application, I can only do such work if I make a large number of sales and,
like everyone else, I look to the law to help me in preventing thieves
diminishing the worth of my investment by stealing profits from it for
themselves.

The next complaint one often hears is that the profits are so 'obscene' as
to be immoral in themselves and should not be supported by IP law. The truth
is that profit is the reward for risk. The inventor or the company who funds
and inventor) takes risks that the man in the street would never take
(otherwise he would have become an inventor or inventor backer).

Think of it as a million dollar bet on a horse with no form running in a
strong field, but you know its breeding and the jockey :-) And that's just a
very little idea. For ten ideas that are funded through the R&D stage, about
one will make any money and wash its face. Of those that make money, maybe
one in a hundred proves to be an 'application killer'. That application
killer has to pay for all the R&D that went nowhere and similarly fund the
next generation of ideas, both good or useless.

Developing ideas is a very expensive and wasteful business. It is also one
of the key secrets to humanity's greatness. Be grateful that there are those
prepared to bet their shirts so as to do things better/faster/more/unheardof
and that you may benefit at a modest cost from their work without sharing
their risk or possessing their particular talent.

Owen