Why new?

Earlier today I was wondering yet again about my idea for copy protection that I call DMESE where the main idea is that if you copy a DVD your copying equipment encrypts that copy.

So now no one else can read it, except your drive, so that copy is of no danger to worrying companies that don't want you to hand it off--though part of the full idea is the use of a flash drive key that can make it readable if you hand it off.

Now I have wondered since I first posted about that idea back in January if there were a better way to do copy protection where someone could make backup copies and cannot think of one, so now I'm wondering how that idea is new to me.

Oh yeah, I read some speculation that the industry might try to use the Internet to authorize copies but how many people will shell out good money for a DVD player and burner that has to be hooked up to the Internet? If that is what the industry tries then we will see.

Now then, how could my self-encryption idea be new to me?

Well, to most people encryption is a way to protect your data from someone else stealing it, so who would think of it as a way to protect data you bought from you stealing it?

Answer is, I did.

So now I'm thinking about another idea of mine which is my Class Viewer program, why is it new?

It is here because I wanted a program that would show me methods, fields and constructors using Java Reflection without all that package information, so I had it strip that off. And I knew that often I'd like to go to javadocs on a method once I found it, so Class Viewer can take you to javadocs.

That's why it works the way it does. Simple.

It is in my mind just a GUI frontend to Java Reflections that takes you to javadocs.

My favorite piece is the free search, which is why demonstrating that is the screenshot for the program.

I love that I can find every method that has any piece of "char" in it within String as then I know I didn't miss anything when wondering how I might handle a char.

Lots of people play with Java Reflection, so why didn't someone else build Class Viewer?

Maybe others built programs like it but thought it not worth putting out there, but I could as open source so I did and I like it, though it is debatable how many other people do based on the site statistics.

But it looks like at least some other people thought it was a good idea, simple as it is.

Fractal digital watermarking

I was thinking about my DMESE idea earlier today while on the bus, and it occurred to me that the concept would allow Original Equipment Manufactured media, which I'll call OEM media from here on out, to be designed to be hard to forge, as digital media equipment would encrypt copies they make only for OEM's that asked for it, so that a person could, for instance, copy their own videos that they made without the copies being forced to be encrypted.

That would put pressure on illegal copiers to counterfeit the OEM's to fool the equipment--or simply get it convinced that they were not copies of OEM media at all.

So digital watermarking would be necessary on data stored on the OEM disks so that, for instance, your DVD drive knew it was dealing with copyrighted material even if other signs said it was not.

And thinking about digital watermarking as the bus rode on got me to considering a fractal based watermarking scheme in the red color zone, where fractal images would be embedded in the red frequency range in such a way that they would be invisible to the human eye (so no you would not see this red thing on your screen).

I thought fractals because mathematically a fractal image could have an infinite number of components while practically there would be a finite but very large number of fractals embedded in the red zone which, for instance, a DVD drive could detect so it would know it had an OEM disk.

It would be very difficult though for a counterfeiter to remove ALL the fractals, and the presence of fractals in the red zone would indicate an OEM media.

So manufacturers would just make equipment that detected fractals in the red zone, which would tell the equipment it was dealing with an OEM, and then some other detail, like holograms on the disk itself would tell it that it had a valid copy, forcing counterfeiters to counterfeit everything or not fool the machine.

Then there could be a continual battle, like with currency, to keep counterfeiters from succeeding with making passable copies of OEM media, while it would be very hard for them to try to simply erase the digital watermark, as every single OEM could have a different fractal watermarking in the red zone, and equipment would assume any fractal in the red zone meant it had an OEM.

Thoughts I had while musing on the subject on the bus this morning.


James Harris

Free to be me

I have exactly three blogs and on those blogs I traverse to me a rather limited space when it comes to the world of ideas but those are the ideas that excite me.

And technology has finally reached a point where I can express myself fairly close to how I wish, and that is freeing.

This blog flows from one project and is my computer science oriented one as it really is all about Class Viewer and what I think about it and what I think about related to it, even the science fiction ideas.

It is so much about our brave, new world, where your ideas can flow around the world and yet in so many ways you can be anonymous and unknown. I wonder to myself if there is any power in that and have concluded there is not.

Ideas have a life of their own and find a way to come forward in their own time.

Those who get to express them are simply vehicles possessed by them, used by them, for their purpose, not our own.

For me, what my blogs give me is some peace, just to let them out, so that they quit bugging me, so that is what I will do.


James Harris