On 12/29/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Valerie</b> <<a href="mailto:vlecharl@gmail.com">vlecharl@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>Oh yes, I can understand that IP recognition is insecure and privacy-invading.<br><br>
Security and privacy aren't the only problems... As you pointed out in
your emails, another problem is that reliance on IP address for
identity results in creating a larger class of authorized users than
the one you wish to have authorized. Essentially, what is happening
here is that you're being forced to accept "attribute based" or
"qualitative" identity when what you want is numeric or "countable"
identity.<br>
<br>
By pinning licenses to the numerically unique IP address, Wiley is
essentially giving you a license based on the attribute or quality of
"those who use the IP address" -- i.e. employees of the company. They
are then charging you based on the number of people who are in the
class of "users of the IP address." However, what you seem to want is
to identify a group of countable individuals who are a subset of those
who share the attribute "users of the IP address." Undoubtedly, Wiley
will tell you that this would be nice, but due to the vagaries of
computer systems, they simply don't have the ability to be more
granular. This is, of course, a very standard trick to force an
"up-sell" of metered or controlled access services. You end up buying
more than you want but the vendor justifies it by pleading that you
have provided capabilities to a large class.<br>
<br>
This is precisely the sort of silliness that got me into the "Software
licensing" business back in the 80's. That business is now known as
"Digital Rights Management" or DRM. Our initial motivation was to
drastically improve the range of licensing techniques that could be
applied -- in an attempt to better serve our customers' needs (at
Digital). Thus, we built systems that could associate licenses with any
arbitrary numerical or qualitative identifier. However, even though
we've known for almost 20 years now how to build flexible licensing or
DRM systems, most users of such systems have found that clients are so
ignorant of the technical possibilities that it is quite easy to force
them accept licensing and DRM schemes that are not in their interests.<br>
<br>
One positive side effect of improving the "identity" infrastructure may
be that in the future, it will be harder for vendors to force customers
to accept licensing based on qualitative identity when what customers
often want is licensing based on numeric identity.<br>
<br>
bob wyman<br>