Encryption and copyright

Cryptography seems to be the basis for implementing copyright and access authorisation in cyberspace. However, the software market rejected copy protection in most cases. Same will probably happen to many of the upcoming efforts to use cryptography-based protection schemes [Sam95].

Obvious problem with encryption as a global solution is that once something has been decrypted by an authorised user, it may be available to massive reproduction. In some products this is not a problem, since the information degrades rapidly in value with time.

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mtu@cs.hut.fi - 04 DEC 95