- From: Steven Rowat <steven_rowat@sunshine.net>
- Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:44:25 -0700
- To: public-webpayments@w3.org
Greetings <public-webpayments> Listers, Manu Sporny asked me to "kick-start" (his words; I'll do my best) a discussion here resulting from emails I sent him over the last three or four days. He and I have agreed I can just quote from the last part of the exchange so as not to repeat the material. I'll start with this (to me) fundamental question: On 08/17/11 22:27, Steven Rowat wrote: > I'm excited to see PaySwarm, but still would like to know: how will > PaySwarm deal with the inevitable problem of somebody using it to sell > works that they don't own the copyright to? Manu Sporny replied: I don't believe that there is a quick and easy solution to this problem because the system is decentralized by design. It would require some level of coordination between PaySwarm Authorities (the people that process payments in the system). For example, you may have to generate a hash of the digital content being sold in some way, and those hashes are easy to corrupt. The semantic description of the content is another place where you could detect if two people are trying to sell the same work. The up-side is that the Web doesn't currently have a clean way of listing content that is for sale. So, at least PaySwarm is a step in the right direction. Steven Rowat wrote: > If ODRL is not hard-coded > in, then the browser has no way to determine if the person selling the > work has a right to do so -- is this correct? Manu Sporny replied: How does ODRL ensure that the person selling the content has the right to do so? Why doesn't the thief just lie about the content being sold in the semantic description? Steven Rowat wrote: > If so, then PaySwarm potentially will make the intellectual property > problem on the Net, already bad, worse. At this point people can only > easily give other people's things away; with PaySwarm they'll be able to > easily sell them. Manu Sporny replied: Yes, that is a concern. However, there will be a great pressure on PaySwarm Authorities to stop this sort of behavior and there will be a great pressure on people to not do this because it will turn a civil case (sharing for free) into a criminal case (seeking profit from copyright violations). I have never seen a technological solution to this problem that is air-tight. That is not to say that PaySwarm can't express things like the license associated with the work - it absolutely can. However, the problem becomes people that just want to steal the work... and in that case, why are they using PaySwarm to do that? There are plenty of other P2P networks that they can use for free that allow them to do so. Steven Rowat wrote: > I'm hoping you have an answer to this; but if not, then CCN remains the > best hope for widespread creator-sold digital works, in my opinion. Manu Sporny replied: Could you send something to the Web Payments mailing list about this?... OK, now I (Steven Rowat) am adding fresh content to this. First, to answer Manu's question about how ODRL could help with preventing fraudulent sales: I don't know if it could. Perhaps those actively involved in ODRL could answer here on this list. My guess, if it could, would be that it would require a secure database where works are registered and also the places they are allowed to be sold are registered; and ODRL would access that. However as Manu indicates with his hash suggestion, it will be difficult to prevent people from selling similar works (marginally changed copies). Perhaps impossible. And in fact that's one conclusion the people working on CCN (content centered networking) have come to; which, among other major advantages, is why they are working on it. I spent several weeks on this issue in 2009 and summarized the issues in a document which I submitted to the TAG of the W3c, that gives 10 use-cases of independent creators and how their copyright and digital sale of their work was being impacted by HTML5. I concluded that CCN was necessary, and included a brief summary of how it operates. Here's that document: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2009Sep/0055.html Having gone back and read that document again, I see no reason why PaySwarm will improve more than marginally on what HTML4 and 5 have not yet been able to do, which is provide a secure, scalable, and transparent mechanism for individuals (without deep pockets) to engage in commerce in their own digital works. It still looks like CCN is the best idea (http://www.parc.com/work/focus-area/content-centric-networking/). In CCN the packet is secure (like a letter, with an address and a cancelled stamp) rather than the points of origin and arrival now used in TCP/IP (like an old analog telephone call from switch to switch). Achieving this architecture change on top of TCP/IP is possible incrementally we are told by the PARC people, but still it will be a fundamental change in the way the Net operates, and especially in how commerce operates. If this is indeed coming, then perhaps PaySwarm can still work within it -- but not likely in the way that it is being developed at the moment. So perhaps if a huge amount of work is done on PaySwarm in the next year or two, ignoring the coming of CCN, then all that work will be for nothing. Or, perhaps I'm quite wrong and some combination of something like PaySwarm and something like ODRL, working together, can do the job. If so this list seems like the place for that discussion. Anybody? Best regards, Steven Rowat
Received on Friday, 19 August 2011 22:44:57 UTC