Digital Battery
A Portable System to Gather
Statistical Utilization
Information for Digital Media
without Compromising
Consumer Anonymity
Timothy A. Budd
Dept of Computer Science
Oregon State University
Artists, Producers
and Consumers
Traditionally, the relationships
between artists, producers and
consumers rested on
• rights
• royalties
• the difficulty of reproduction
The Napster Threat
Peer to peer sharing systems
break all the rules
• Consumers duplicate artifacts
• Producers get no revenue
• Producers cannot measure
popularity
• Artists get no royalties
Protection of
Intellectual Property
Debate over Intellectual property
is not new
Mechanisms such as copyright
or patent always pit the good of
society as a whole against a
return on investment for an
individual
History Lesson
Can you guess the date for the
following quote?
``There is no author who will
consecrate his efforts to the
instruction of his century if
pirating is made legal’’
More History Lesson
The French Enlightenment
thinkers wanted to free
intellectual thought from the
shackles of commercialism
Napsters often make the same
cry
History shows it didn’t work.
Yet More History
When copy centers started being
popular (1970’s) people found
it cheaper to copy a book than
to buy it.
Required a change in laws, and
several high profile lawsuits to
change this behavior.
Even More History
Other intellectual property items
have similar recent history:
• Cassette tapes
• Movies
• Digital Audio Tapes (DAT)
• Software
Why Digital Content?
Digital content has obvious
advantages
• Greater fidelity
• No Degradation
• Ease of duplication
• Infinitely Malleable
Yet all of these can be problems
Threatened Industry
Another quiz. Peer to peer
sharing of digital content
represents a threat to which
of the following industries?
1. Music
2. Video
3. Cross stitch Patterns
If Everybody is a
criminal
Worse, if everybody is
duplicating intellectual
property, how does the
producer obtain damages?
``What kind of damages could
we possibly get from a
grandmother?’’
Is there a future?
Many pessimists have claimed
the future will parallel
eighteenth century France
(I.e., artists will cease creating
new content)
I’m more optimistic
How to Monitor
content
Other (so far unsuccessful)
attempts to solve this problem
focus either on
• Control of Duplication
• Control of Use
All tend to fall apart at some
point
A Solution:
The Digital Battery
Intuition behind the solution:
Consumers don’t like content
that they cannot access or use,
but don’t mind if their walkman
stops when the batteries run
out.
Characteristics of a
Digital Battery
A Digital Battery must have the
following characteristics:
• Inexpensive
• Easy, anonymous to acquire and
use
• Limited Lifetime
• Essential to the operation
• Must allow content provider access
to information on utilization
How to Achieve
these Goals
All these goals can be achieved
using Smart Card technology
combined with cryptology
The battery provides a decoding,
as well as monitoring and
recording utilization.
Battery is exhausted when it can
no longer record
What will it Look
Like?
Will look like a small smart card,
or media card.
The face can even be sold as
advertising property.
Consumers must be convinced
that it is reasonable,
anonymous, and fair.
Public Cryptography
Public Key Cryptography is a
key feature
• Content is encoded (by many
producers) using public key
• Content is decoded (within the
battery) using private key
How to get
utilization statistics?
Most innovative feature -- how to
get utilization statistics back to
content producers?
Two possibilities
• Place Deposit on battery
• Create ATM like recharging
stations.
Balancing Act
Consumers are increasingly
wary of releasing personal
information
How to balance consumer
expectation of anonymity and
the content providers need for
utilization information.
No Exact Statistics
Notice content providers get
large sample statistics, not
precise information
Paranoid consumers can refuse
to return batteries
Nobody knows who is listening to
Nine-inch-nails
Implications of
Digital Battery
Moves the revenue stream from
access to utilization of content
Peer to Peer sharing is not a
threat (its an advantage!)
Can work in autonomous devices
Yields detailed utilization
information, while preserving
consumer anonymity
Attacks
The digital battery is designed to
be a bottleneck, and hence
obvious target for attack
Defenses are technical, legal,
and commercial
Technical Defenses
As processing powers increases
(Moores law) you can put ever
more powerful crypto
algorithms on board
A single break will not then be
permanently catestrophic
Legal Defenses
It will probably still be necessary
to sue people who try to make
a profit from the distribution of
large ticket items (such as
movies)
History shows a few high profile
court cases go a long way
Commercial Defenses
Best defense is commercial.
Napster saga shows us that
consumers do not make moral
choices, but economic ones
It simply must be easier and less
expensive to do the right thing
than to do the wrong thing.
Will it Work?
Technical problems are not the
issue. Will consumers accept
it? They will if the devices are:
• easy to use
• ubiquitous
• and cheap.
Conclusion
Digital Battery addresses:
A way to provide a revenue
stream to content producers
A way to deal with the problem of
reproduction
A way to generate utilization info
Preserving User Anonymity