Jonathan Weinberg on how to create "Net drivers licenses" [priv]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 12:32:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jonathan Weinberg <weinberg () mail msen com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: Re: [Politech] RIAA replies to Politech over "Net drivers licenses"
 [priv][ip]

        But there's nothing so odd about the proposal; its core features
would have been accomplished by Intel's Pentium III architecture back in
1999.  (For more about Intel's Processor Serial Number and its function as
a globally unique ID for Internet-connected computers, see Hardware-Based
ID, Rights Management, & Trusted Systems, 52 Stanford L Rev 1251 (2000),
<http://www.law.wayne.edu/weinberg/newstanford.PDF>).  Current
trusted-systems design has moved from embedded GUIDs to more sophisticated
controls.  See Ross Anderson's FAQ at
<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html>.

Jon


Jonathan Weinberg
Professor of Law, Wayne State University
weinberg () msen com

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Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 11:06:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: batz <batsy () vapour net>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Cc: politech () politechbot com, srh () icomm ca
Subject: Re: [Politech] Record labels want mandatory "Net drivers license?"
 [ip][priv]

While I am not an inside source, I can tell you why and how
this "Net drivers license" would be implemented.

The Internet is unique as far as communications technologies go
in that it is built around a stateless protocol (IP). The
whole notion of a routed store-and-forward vs. a
circuit-switched network, is that the reliability of packet
delivery is based upon the feature of the network that
specifically removes the requirement for and end-to-end
control connection.

The telephone networks and, most notably, cellular networks are
built with this end-to-end control connection in mind. This
is what allows companies to deliver phone services profitably.
They have their infrastructure subsidized through various
incentives, and charge users monthly fees for the connection,
the interface (phone), a base service package rate, usage, and
then leverage that control to be the sole distributor of
services over that media, such as text messaging, voicemail,
long distance, etc. Even if there are competitive service
providers, the user much pay their source provider to access
them.

If you look at it from the perspective of a protocol
stack, they have control of, and therefore profit from, each
layer of physical, data/link, transport, session,
presentation and application layers of the medium.

Businesses that have profited by and based upon distributing
online content (porn, napster) didn't need this kind of control
because what they are distributing was as abundant as water.
Similarly, content in telecoms is as abundant as water, but
they do not control it.

Bandwidth is a measure of the rate at which information can be
transmitted across a channel, not the value of what that
information represents. That is, bandwidth is a relatively
constant quantity, whereas value is dynamic and variable,
thus available for optimization.

MP3 is an excellent example of this, in that it is a
technology that allowed for (high value) music files
to be transmitted efficiently with existing bandwidth
limitations.

To deliver services profitably, the provider must have sufficient
control over the availability of that service. This availability is
facilitated by the medium in the telecom world, as it was by physical
media (CD's) in the recording industry. Therefore, control of the medium
is control of the content. For you network engineers out there,
the DoD or OSI protocol stack evidences that control of a lower
layer of the medium, encapsulates the control of higher ones. The
Internet changed this by abstracting the network layer to function
autonomously from it's lower layers. Control of this abstracted
network layer is only as broad as the control of the lower layers,
which wasn't an issue until this network layer transcended them
to become a ubiquitous layer.

What the RIAA sees, is that profit is a function of control,
and until an end-to-end control connection can be built into
Internet Protocols, they have no means of profiting. ISP's
will move to the cellular phone model, where they will manage
the users device as a means to deliver services to him, as
without value-added service delivery, they are essentually a
fixed-income business that scales linearly with the number of
users added. There is little room for optimization or value-add
in the bandwidth business as it stands. They will recognize this
and build in that control connection to deliver services, which
will in turn, restore the music industrys media control.

This is what the Microsoft Network experiment was. M$ leased
dial pools from major ISP's and tried to get into the Internet
business. They  had spotty control of the desktop, in that they
owned it, but had no access to it to leverage it into delivering
services. It can be considered a failure because of entrenched
ISP's were already offering more user-centric cheaper service
and MSN was doomed. AOL had the right idea from a technology
standpoint, and they hedged their bets on local ISP's dying
out because of not having any real services. The jury is still
out on that one.

What has happened is massive entry into the market by cable
providers, who have a business model that is right in between
cellular companies and ISP's. They have the wire, the network,
the content and the services. With things like bandwidth
caps and proxies, they are slowing closing the loop around
the desktop, while dangling the carrot of integrated services
like pay-per-view as an incentive to get users to give up
control of their desktops.

These alleged "licences" will be little more than phone numbers,
but their value is that, like phone numbers, they provide a control
connection, which the service providers (and law enforcement etc) can
access the user to deliver services to them, and enforce policies
against them as part of the agreements.

I have purposely made ambiguous use of the words "control connection"
as in this context, the meaning of an empirical control, (or known
constant), an out of band link, and political control, all converge.

After all, property is just information, but media is control.

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