Even William Goldman would agree that not all recent movies stink.
One of the best is director Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. Based on a book with a similar title, it’s about a master forger in the 1960s, who, if a young hacker today, would be a brilliant social engineer and perhaps a great coder, too.
This teenaged high school dropout didn’t just forge $2.5 milion in checks. He also passed himself off as a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, you name it, including, just as the FBI was trying to arrest him, a Secret Service agent. The feds eventually threw the book at Frank W. Abagnale, pictured below as a middle-aged author, lecturer and fraud-prevention consultant; but he atoned brilliantly through his work for the FBI and the financial services industry.
Abagnale as a reverse social engineer for the good guys?
So here’s the deal for the e-book business. Isn’t it just possible that either pro bono or for much less than he charges international banking empires, Abagnale could help come up with a good nonproprietary system of DRM Lite? No need for Abagnale to do the coding. Rather he could at least help the Open eBook Forum or an equivalent deal with the human factors here. At the same time an e-book organization could set up a focus group of readers and find out just what they would and would not consider convenient. Needless to say, the OeBF could also consult with accomplished hackers and top security experts, such as Bruce Schneier, who has warned against the perils of proprietary encryption, where not as many people can kick the tires. Maybe even Winston Smith, himself a bright high school dropout, who has outsmarted security specialists in an actual e-reader context but without monetary rewards in mind, would show some interest here.
Would the above efforts create a crackproof DRM? No, of course not. We’re talking about DRM with consumer convenience in mind. But at least this approach would be far better than the heavy-handed proprietary ones from the software industry. We already know that DRM systems from Adobe and Microsoft and Palm Digital Media are crackable. So why should e-book publishers pay anything extra for them? Ditto for e-book formats themselves; best to wave good-bye to proprietary standards and go with a refinement of the OeBF’s own Open eBook Publication Structure. With standardization of formats and well-integrated DRM at the consumer level, e-books could actually be more secure–not just because of the kick-the-tires factor, but also because updates would be less of a hassle.
If you want star quality…
Again, let me emphasize that Frank Abagnale would be just one of many people involved, but chances are he could make more than his share of contributions. From a cost-benefit perspective, I doubt he’d be that affordable for individual sellers of e-book software–considering the pathetic $10M in annual sales of actual e-books. But if the OeBF approached him and said, “Look, here’s a good deed you can do for the entire book world, including libraries,” Abagnale just might oblige. What’s more, his efforts might also be useful to the movie and recording businesses, whose DRM efforts the OeBF has been tracking. It’s no small coincidence that I began this item with mention of a movie. Yo, Jack Valenti! If you want star quality in a theft-prevention expert, Frank Abagnale just might be your man.
Just a reminder: I myself am not the biggest fan of DRM, but recognize there are certain situations, such as legal file-sharing or library use, where it could be handy. If nothing else, this would be a nice security blanket for e-book publishers insistent on it. They’d actually be far better off than trusting Adobe, Microsoft and Palm Digital Media–the companies whose flawed and proprietary DRM has given us the costly Tower of eBabel.
If not Abagnale: If he isn’t interested, remember there are other well-known experts in fraud-prevention whose participation would show publishers that the OeBF or a similar group was dead-serious about protection of intellectual property.
Detail: While I’d hope that Abagnale could donate some time or at least discount it heavily, I still believe that techie standard-setters–ordinary folks with gas and groceries and no mega incomes–should be paid a decent amount for their efforts it all possible. Even token payments would help. Ironic, isn’t it? E-book publishers understandably want intellectual proprety protected–under the premise that work has value. Well, the standard setters’ time is worth something, too. If nothing else, this would consideraby speed up the standards process.
A TeleRead angle: Needless to say, well-stocked national digital library systems–with affordable subscription and purchase plans for people outside the countries with such systems–would be one way to help reduce the incentive for e-book piracy. Interestingly, I can see a possible role here for one of Abagnale’s clients, NuTech Solutions, or other companies that specialize in predicting business risks. In the case of TeleRead, the risk is that large but fair payments for best-sellers would be budget budgers without suitable precautions. A NuTech-style company could help refine already-mentioned possiblities, such as publishers paying money up front and along the way to qualify for maximum revenues.
