[Coco] [Color Computer] Need to know if I'm in safe waters here

[James Diffendaffer]

If the encryption method used has no exploits and the key is large
enough it will take more silicon than is on this planet to make enough
chips to crack it through brute force before the copyrights expire.
And since each file is encrypted with a different key... good luck
with that.

Most original Coco owners will be dead before the copyrights expire
and nobody will care if something didn't get released.
Even if any Coco is still running by that time and any of us are still
alive... we'd probably decrypt the last file and say "this is crap!"

The point was to protect the copyrights but allow programs to be
released once permission was granted.  And if nobody is left around to
care by the time all the keys are released... who cares.  At least the
stuff would be preserved just in case anyone cared.
The actual media for the disks will probably degrade long before the
copyrights expire.


--- In ColorComputer at yahoogroups.com, shadow at ... wrote:
> You *do* realize that under current law, the earliest any of those 
> copyrights will expire in 2050? And that's only for stuff where a 
> company owns the copyright and it was copyright 1980.
> 
> Current rules are that for stuff copyright to an author or authors, 
> the copyright expires 70 years after the *last* one of the authors 
> dies. 
> 
> Copyright to a company, it's 70 years from date of copyright.
> 
> And it may well be extended again before then. You see, Disney corp 
> doesn't want the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons to go out of 
> copyright, so they lobby Congress every time it gets close...
> 
> > I wouldn't use names that make sense either so people don't even know
> > that the files are for each encrypted archive until the key is
> > released for it.
> 
> Strong encryption now will be easy to break in a few years. Computers 
> keep getting more powerful.
> 
> --
> Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
> shadow at shadowgard dot com
>