Re: Digital Rights Management - An idea (limited lease, renting,

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Wed, 14 May 2003, Dean McEwan wrote:

> Alan Cox <[e-mail]> said :
> > You can set this up with both rsbac and selinux
> >
> Im thinking of much more...

[SNIPPED...]

>
> E.G. a kernel could refuse to work after one year forcing its users
> to upgrade their kernel, preventing exploits being left in place,
> and  creators of the prefab kernels in
> a sticky liable mess.

The worst problem with expiring software is that a
company, operating in good faith, can be forced out
of business because if it.

Lets say that I have a company called BestInTheWorld.
Because I make the best data-base software in the world,
a lot of companies purchase a license to use this
software. The software expires in a year. This is no
problem because The software renewal is cheap. Soon
every company in Silicon Valley uses my software.
The company is going strong and needs to expand. It
issues public stock.

Al Qaeda purchases controlling interest in the company
and closes it. In one year, everybody in Silicon Valley
is out of work because all the company's software
stopped working.

Bad joke? Hell no. Digital thought about short-term
leasing of their software when they introduced LMF,
the license management facility. Once Digtal's lawyers
got involved, a patch was sent to everbody making damn
sure that the "expiration" capability was removed.
Nevertheless, FTP Software, that made TCP/IP to DECNET
sofware, continued to have software that expired.

Basically, in many states in the USA, you can't sell or
lease something that will become worthless or unusable if
the seller or leasor no longer exists. If the renter makes
a good-faith effort to pay the rent, the renter continues
to enjoy use of the leased property. Creating property that
doesn't allow this violates common law.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.