Zach's MSN Blog

First Posted 28 JUN 2005

The US Court ruling that file sharing software providers can be held accountable if they enable people to exchange copyrighted information without paying for is not surprising.

I think this is another step along the way to how people will eventually consume electronic data.

Eventually (in the next few years) electronic media: audio, video, text, software or whatever will be encapsulated into "Rights Management Blobs". 

The way it works is this:  A "Rights Management Blob" has an associated certificate that keeps it from being used (played/read etc...) if it is determined that it does not belong to the current user/player.  This does require an "Online-All-The-Time" system or failing that a "Online-Every-Once-In-A-While" system.  Given how ubiquitous the Net is these days I do not think this is an issue.  In the case where the player/user goes offline for whatever reason the content still works but with a 'warning' that it will need to be 'synched-up'.  Given how some blobs below are tagged I can imagine an exception in the case of 'unsigned' or 'unrestricted'.  This also requires a "Trusted-Certificate-Chain" to exist and I can imagine that this could be built into the infrastructure of the Net.

Eventually (this will take longer) these "Blobs" can be expanded to encompass everything that is sent around the net; Email, Web Pages, every single packet.

Once you have one of these "Blobs" you can do with it as you please up to the rights associated wiht the blob.  Here is a set of rights that I can see that may work:

[0] Unsigned - This is the content that is typically associated with electronic content today.  Who knows where it came from or who created it?

[1] Unrestricted - The blob basically only has a signature that indicates where it came from and perhaps a trail of signatures that indicates where it came from most recently. You do not have to authenticate yourself to consume the content of the blob.

[2] Sold - The blob is 'keyed' to a unique individual or entity.  When the blob is to be 'consumed' then an authentication event must take place by the individual or entity that is 'keyed' to this blob.

[3] On Loan - Works just like 'Sold' except that the blob will 'decay over time' where 'time' may be calendar time or number of uses.

Here is a link to the book review I wrote about my summer reading choice; http://www.radgrafix.com/~zachcox/2005_Summer_Reading.  This book is really good.

This entry is from the Funky Winkerbean Comic Strip.  The actual content I think is from: Brian Green's "The Fabric of The Cosmos" where on pages 49-50 he explains combined motion through space and time in terms of the speed of light.  When I first read thoes pages I put into the margin of the book, "Fantastic:  The 1st truly simple explanation of relitivity theory I have ever read."

The combined speed of any object's motion through space and its motion through time is always precisely equal to the speed of light.  The speed of an object through time slows down when it diverts some of its motion through time into motion through space. 

The 2005 Edition of "The Tour de Pickle"

This bike ride is the kickoff event for the North Carolina Pickle Festival and is held in the town I grew up in, Mount Olive NC.

I've heard about this ride for many years and have been meaning to do it but always it seemed to slip by without me.

This year I finally made it.  Here is the web page associated with some pictures taken on that day and some text to go with them:  http://www.radgrafix.com/~zachcox/2005_Bike_Rides/2005.04.16.SAT