Comments on: ‘Cultural heritage’ and radical forgeries: Two less-common arguments against digitization http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/cultural-heritage-and-radical-forgeries-two-less-common-arguments-against-digitization/ News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:02:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Garson Poole http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/cultural-heritage-and-radical-forgeries-two-less-common-arguments-against-digitization/comment-page-1/#comment-66490 Garson Poole Sat, 01 Jul 2006 03:19:12 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=5119#comment-66490 KP has the correct idea in my opinion. It is quite useful to use hash functions to create “fingerprints” for documents and files of all sorts. These fingerprints can be used to check the integrity of a file and ascertain whether or not it has been modified. But one should be careful when selecting hash functions. To avoid the fraudulent manipulation of files it is desirable to use <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function" rel="nofollow">“cryptographic hash functions”</A>. Here is what we should be able to do right now in my opinion. “Right click” (or whatever “alternate select” is appropriate for your computer) on any file and a menu should appear. One of the menu choices should be “Identify this file”. When this menu item is selected the computer should compute a cryptographic hash function for the file. Next it should traverse the internet to a database and perform a look-up using the hash information. Next a web page should open up and provide a description of the file. Here are some examples of descriptions: A) This is Slavic research document number 3649347 from the Hilandar Research Library at The Ohio State University. B) This is an ebook of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy version wrnpc11 originally obtained from Project Gutenberg. This text has been reformatted for the Iliad PDA. C) This is the executable file for the WordPad program from Microsoft (for WinXP version 4809 build 09327). D) This is the movie Elephants Dream version 370-8 in avi format. This movie was released under a creative commons license. For more details please visit orange.blender.org. Who will create these descriptions? The creators of the files can create the descriptions. Also, others who are interested in files can create descriptions. There may be more than one description. Each description will contain information about what individual or organization created the description. Who will pay to maintain the hardware and software for the database, and will pay the internet bandwidth costs? The web page containing the description can also contain advertisements. I had this idea years ago. In my opinion there should already be a multimillion dollar company doing this. The advertising revenue should make the founders and investors very wealthy. Has this already been attempted? KP has the correct idea in my opinion. It is quite useful to use hash functions to create “fingerprints” for documents and files of all sorts. These fingerprints can be used to check the integrity of a file and ascertain whether or not it has been modified. But one should be careful when selecting hash functions. To avoid the fraudulent manipulation of files it is desirable to use “cryptographic hash functions”.

Here is what we should be able to do right now in my opinion. “Right click” (or whatever “alternate select” is appropriate for your computer) on any file and a menu should appear. One of the menu choices should be “Identify this file”. When this menu item is selected the computer should compute a cryptographic hash function for the file. Next it should traverse the internet to a database and perform a look-up using the hash information. Next a web page should open up and provide a description of the file. Here are some examples of descriptions:

A) This is Slavic research document number 3649347 from the Hilandar Research Library at The Ohio State University.

B) This is an ebook of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy version wrnpc11 originally obtained from Project Gutenberg. This text has been reformatted for the Iliad PDA.

C) This is the executable file for the WordPad program from Microsoft (for WinXP version 4809 build 09327).

D) This is the movie Elephants Dream version 370-8 in avi format. This movie was released under a creative commons license. For more details please visit orange.blender.org.

Who will create these descriptions? The creators of the files can create the descriptions. Also, others who are interested in files can create descriptions. There may be more than one description. Each description will contain information about what individual or organization created the description.

Who will pay to maintain the hardware and software for the database, and will pay the internet bandwidth costs? The web page containing the description can also contain advertisements.

I had this idea years ago. In my opinion there should already be a multimillion dollar company doing this. The advertising revenue should make the founders and investors very wealthy. Has this already been attempted?

]]> By: KP http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/cultural-heritage-and-radical-forgeries-two-less-common-arguments-against-digitization/comment-page-1/#comment-66377 KP Fri, 30 Jun 2006 05:49:09 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=5119#comment-66377 Digital documents could be stamped with various hashes made of their content, so that the hash could be easily checked against one stored by a trusted digitizer. This way you could verify the document much more easily than you could verify a physical forgery (which would often need advanced analysis of the paper, ink, etc., depending on the skill level of the forger). While a digital forgery would take less time and skill to do, it would equally take less time to verify it as one, provided there is a trusted original copy archived somewhere. Without any such copy, someone can just as well cook up a complete fantasy work roughly based on the original manuscript, as verifying it as one would be difficult in the absence of an a trusted copy. And as verification isn't easy, it has plenty of time to spread and do damage before anyone notices, and by that time, it might be too late; so it would be in the archivist's self interest to provide a digital copy that can be trusted. Digital documents could be stamped with various hashes made of their content, so that the hash could be easily checked against one stored by a trusted digitizer. This way you could verify the document much more easily than you could verify a physical forgery (which would often need advanced analysis of the paper, ink, etc., depending on the skill level of the forger). While a digital forgery would take less time and skill to do, it would equally take less time to verify it as one, provided there is a trusted original copy archived somewhere. Without any such copy, someone can just as well cook up a complete fantasy work roughly based on the original manuscript, as verifying it as one would be difficult in the absence of an a trusted copy. And as verification isn’t easy, it has plenty of time to spread and do damage before anyone notices, and by that time, it might be too late; so it would be in the archivist’s self interest to provide a digital copy that can be trusted.

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