Can "Honorable Computing" work?

kw: software piracy

In the story "0wnz0red" by Cory Doctorow, the concept of "Honorable Computing" is introduced. A part of the system is a crypto chip in, literally, everything that can compute. Anything you want to download goes through a cryptographic handshaking, so the source knows the identity of the downloader. Once downloaded, and licensed for, say, a certain number of uses (and appropriately paid for), that file works that exact number of times. Suppose it is a music or movie file. It will only "play" on an HC-enabled video or audio system. Not only that, all the crypto attestation that goes on ensures that the computer that is straming the file is not actually an emulator of a computer system that is running on a big UNIX server, which is set up to intercept the bits and retrieve the "clear message" of the licensed product.

All this is supposed to prevent implosion of the $50 Billion entertainment system. Now, that is chump change to the Pentagon, but it is a big deal to the media moguls. Anyway, such a setup would supposedly dry up the supply of pirated material, making peer-to-peer file sharing infeasible. Well, the story is about something else, so this is cool backdrop. But it does bring up the point: how can intellectual property be protected?

To quote Doc Smith of the "Lensman" series: "Whatever technology can create, technology can duplicate." That whole series was based on the "Lens," which was created by Arisians—benevolent, godlike creature—using mind power alone. A Lens attested to the identity of the bearer, so that the galactic police could authenticate one another with 100% reliability. That done, the human-Arisian alliance set about to destroy all the evil races in the galaxy, which lived in Jupiter-like planets. Drat those "poison breathers" anyway!

Just for fun, suppose HC were produced. There is still a bit of wire somewhere, between the last chip and the speaker. A "squid" device can grab the signal via magnetic induction. Appropriately sensitive electronics could even detect the step-levels in the analog reconstruction of the digital signal, and so re-create the digital source with near-perfect reliability. Or, if you are like me, and don't mind speaker-to-air-to-microphone-to-DAT recorder quality, you have a simpler, cheaper solution.

Whether music and video piracy is moral or not, isn't the point. The fact is, there is no way to dry up the source.