[Cdn-DMCA] On the Sklyarov case

[Chris Brand]

>Politically, that's exactly what we need. Politicians and lawyers
>aren't technically minded, and therefore can't see the "obvious" truth
>of our arguments. Since we have an agenda, they're not about to trust
>us either. Reviewed articles OTOH are "neutral" and therefoe
>trustworthy.

That's why anything technical discussed in court is done in analogies.
What we need is some good analogies for this stuff. Example - at the
Vancouver meeting, somebody compared possession of anti-circumvention
tools to possession of a hammer. Over lunch, an Industry Canada rep
commented that "but if you're walking down the street carrying a hammer
and crowbar, you can be arrested for possessing the tools for burglary".
My response was "yes, but only if you're out in public, not in the privacy
of your own home".

I'm not sure what the right analogy is for "100% effective DRM". Maybe
it involves jigsaw puzzles - if you've got all the pieces of a jigsaw 
puzzle, you can "decode" the picture. It may take a while, but it
can always be done. If I show you what the resulting picture looks like,
it's even easier. When you own a DVD and a DVD player, you've got all the
pieces of the puzzle. When you play it, you see what the
solved puzzle looks like. The only way to prevent you solving the puzzle
is to withhold a piece, but if you do that, the DVD player can't play
the DVD either. Playing the DVD is like watching somebody solve the
jigsaw puzzle.

Chris
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