Forwarded From: Robert Hettinga <rahat_private> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents Peter Cassidy Founder, TriArche Research Burning the Jolly Roger: Can Anti-Piracy Technologies Make the Internet a Shrinkage-Free Commercial Platform? Tuesday, October 6, 1998 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA For most of this century, the fusion of intellectual property and media was enough to ensure that its owners could reasonably be expected to profit from its consumption. Most people didn't have the means to lift Ella Fitzgerald's music from her records, so fans of her music would actually have to go out and buy her records. Today, a high proportion of ordinary households have the technical capacity at hand to take recordings, visual or audio artifacts and executables, digitize them if need be, and transmit it to millions of people overnight over the Internet. This state of affairs could signal the demise of the software and entertainment industries. Evolving almost as quickly as the interlopers' sophistication in aquiring and distributing ill-gained wares, however, are technical solutions to foil pirates, technologies of varying potency and adaptability. Standard specifications for license management systems that prevent unauthorized use of software have been drafted by the X/Open Group this summer; watermarking systems and digital wrappers that allow creatives to either mark or encapsulate images and sounds to frustrate infringers have been on the market for the past few years; comprehensive smart wrapper systems like InterTrust and C-dilla promise persistent protection for all digital artifacts; and at least one system TriArche Research Group has reviewed under NDA can prevent the most all non-photographic copying of content presented in a Web browser. Meanwhile, policing technologies like Online Monitoring Service's WebSentry can locate pirated intellectual property on the Web and in Usenet news groups. None of these technologies are perfect but, as they mature, they will make it far more difficult for infringers to take control of intellectual property and to share it with their contemporaries. The Web might never lower its shrinkage rate to that of, say, Wal-Mart but merchants in this medium already have many of the tools they need to clean up this digital Barbary Coast. Peter Cassidy is an IT industry writer and analyst at large: Mr. Cassidy, director of research at his own firm, TriArche Research Group, has engaged consulting clients in North America and the Middle East. As well, Mr. Cassidy contracts as an information technology analyst with other industrial research firms, researching topics as varied as network security, multimedia applications and international telephony markets, among them, Strategy Analytics, Giga Information Group, Decision Resources, Dataquest, Business Research Group, The American Institute for Business Research and CI-InfoCorp. Mr. Cassidy writes under his own name for international business publications and general readership magazines such as WIRED, Covert Action Quarterly, InformationWeek, CIO Magazine, The Economist, Forbes ASAP, Software Developer & Publisher Magazine, Silicon Strategies, The Texas Observer, The Progressive, Telepath Magazine, American Banker, Datamation, Computerworld, World Trade Magazine, and the National Security Institute Advisory. Mr. Cassidy has been interviewed about technology issues on several broadcast radio programs in the United States and, appropriately enough, on C|Net Radio, an international Internet-based audio network. His reportage on national political affairs has been reprinted in college text books and anthologies. He has also contracted as a consultant to syndicated television magazine programs in the United States and Britain. This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, October 6, 1998, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $32.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, various A/V hardware, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have dress code: jackets and ties for men (and no sneakers or jeans), and "appropriate business attire" (whatever that means), for women. Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the price of your lunch if the Club finds you in violation of the dress code. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, October 3rd, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", in the amount of $32.50. Please include your e-mail address, so that we can send you a confirmation If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Upcoming speakers for DCSB are: November Dan Geer TBA December Joseph DeFeo TBA January Ira Heffan Internet Software and Business Process Patents We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, <mailto: rahat_private>. For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to <mailto: majordomoat_private> . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to <mailto: majordomoat_private> . We look forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.5.5 iQEVAwUBNfgqqMUCGwxmWcHhAQELWwf8C0H1jxf2cLeqWywTNKRiPFRMQJ3NnsMN yOlsISeec05pXO1wUfxjNDQhLZcjJ98Ca73FdDroVFzjJdd4D+fInLCfGSAw9EtC saCkTZiz0JVGYoM7SsAvwrfhNAy+lqoV4/eWtOlAUDa204oDlsgQPDTUyLvmzv8Q VJKWpCHyPGBKlVHPNdyWoCOT6e+VS0gZDjsh4s1yIYBVREvGONedDVRC6wSanYEr /+XdEZhh+FMbxdMoHPoYcvd8vDw/jrTuc9ZRF+R1uBzRVNoK/MDelsnse+qC872o F7T6Sm76U3VeAGiIB1ElcTG+qXaiv3H3lGPIBj3a9WeDXU6H2TijhQ== =Pj5e -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rahat_private> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-requestat_private" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rahat_private> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -o- Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn". 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