Cryptosmith

Apparently someone in the UK has proposed a sort of “three strikes” law – if your household is accused by a copyright holder of illegal downloading multiple times, then the holder can demand removal of the househ0ld’s Internet connection.

Cory Doctorow, the author, wrote a polemic about how this reflects on the big media firms it tries to help.

He notes how copyright owners now use “takedown notices” as an extrajudicial form of censorship. There is no practical defense against such notices: the ISPs are caught in the middle and aren’t inclined to take on such a legal challenge. The Internet has become such a part of modern life that its removal is tantamount to imprisonment.

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I’ve been reviewing histories of cryptography recently and here’s an interesting thing about pre-computer encryption: it’s almost entirely used for communications security. People encrypted messages, but they rarely encrypted documents.

I’ve finally found a few real-world cases: encrypted diaries. BBC actually did a short segment on them last summer. But I’m still looking – there must be other cases where someone needed to keep some long-term data secret from prying eyes.

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OK, I took the Star Trek quiz, following the suggestion of So Says Green Weaver.

I come out highest as Spock, second as Beverly Crusher, though none are as high a match as Green Weaver got.

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I like the picture!

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