Corporations using bitcoin's cryptography model for copyright protection?

[JanusHom]

Hi

Not that I'm voting for it, but wouldn't it be possible to use the models from bitcoin to copyright protection of for example movies: avoiding 'double-spending' (copying) of a file and encrypting the transaction history (download/transfer history)?

I'm new to the technicalities of bitcoins, but after reading a bit it struck me that the model could be used to create scarcity on other markets than a financial one. Correct?

Janus

[Foxpup]

Incorrect. Aside from the fact that Bitcoin's transaction history isn't encrypted (and can't be, since preventing double-spends requires that everyone is able to read it), double-spending is not the same as copying a file. A double-spend is a transaction sending coins to a different person than they were originally sent to, that is, it is a maliciously modified version of the original transaction. A copy of a Bitcoin transaction would simply send coins to the same person - the same coins that they already have, and therefore would have no effect. In fact, Bitcoin transactions are routinely copied and redistributed in exactly this manner. Also note that since Bitcoin transactions are cryptographically signed, they cannot be modified by anyone other than the person who created them without the modification being detected (most software already uses a similar system to prevent modified versions of the software from being passed off as the original, but this does nothing to prevent exact copies from being redistributed).

[odolvlobo]

You could come up with some distributed system that would be more like namecoin than bitcoin. The major difficulty is preventing people from copying an unencrypted version.