Hacker takes bite out of Apple's iTunes

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DVD John and Airport

There are two issues to consider about DVD Jon's latest moves.

1. DVD John's work around of AirPort is important, because it shows that encrypted commercial systems for entertainment are not ready for prime time. If a business is going to base its revenue stream on encrypted sales of entertainment media, and that entertainment media can be compromised so early by an idealistic hacker, then it is not a good risk for those wishing to build a long-term profit base business model.

2. Some business people seem to think that if DVD John is prosecuted then this will greatly lower the odds of others doing this. I do not think this is so, because, if their history of behavior is any indication, idealistic hackers who show the limits of encryption systems will simply work behind the scenes to undermine such commercial encryption. It's better to know who DVD John is (and others like him) so that their talents can stand as "open source" hacking. This would allow industry to continually shore-up the holes in various encryption systems. Something like this is happening for the Windows operating system, and whether done for love or hate, it at least forces fixes to be launched regularly by Microsoft. Give such hacks glory, hire them if you want to, but don't throw the in jail or fine them. They may be irritants, but at least they are indeed irritants in our favor.

Posted by: brinticus   Posted on: 08/13/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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