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Old 12-30-2009, 07:58 AM   #391
barnacle
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The big snag with any copy protection system is that sooner or later, the material has to be displayed/heard/viewed in some form. In the case of audio or video, Vista and later MS operating systems go to extreme lengths in the hardware to ensure that you can't access the raw data - but if you can accept a reduced resolution then you can still resample and redistribute the audio or video.

Worst case with an ebook is sitting the reader face-down on a scanner and OCRing the output... whatever you do, you *can't* keep the data hidden if you want someone to be able to use it at all.

The biggest enforcement issue is that you *can't* put a hidden fingerprint in a raw text stream - or rather, you *can*, but you can't guarantee that it will remain there. And even a simple conversion from ascii to e.g. word to e.g. html and back will kill any such fingerprint.

And that means that you can't prove the source of a copy - at best, you *might* be able to prove who posted it, if he doesn't know what he's doing.

And if you can't enforce a law, what's the point having it?
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