Re: Content Provider Problem?

Fisher Mark (FisherM@is3.indy.tce.com)
Fri, 16 Sep 1994 22:52:57 +0200

Chris Lilley wrote in <94091615144771@cguv5.cgu.mcc.ac.uk>:
>In message <2E799D96@MSMAIL.INDY.TCE.COM> Mark Fisher said:
>
>> "Passive information" just doesn't have a chance.
>
>No, Of course not - kindly tell me the plain text of this passive message.
>
>Xcuzoaidloftzmcvlvq
>
>Like shooting fish in a barrel, eh? Trivial!

I see I should have added the sentence I had thought about adding on making
the extraction of the plain text arbitrarily hard...

What I was trying to convey was that no scheme will be 100% effective.
However, I expect schemes that require "large" amounts of computing power
to overcome will be acceptable to most publishers. "rot13" is unlikely to
be used by serious publishers; some kind of public-key system will work
quite well until the factoring problem is solved (if it can be solved at
all).

It will take careful program design to create readers/browsers that cannot
easily be made to save away the now-decrypted data. "Arbitrarily hard",
once again...
======================================================================
Mark Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@indy.tce.com Indianapolis, IN

"Just as you should not underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon
traveling 65 mph filled with 8mm tapes, you should not overestimate
the bandwidth of FTP by mail."