Subject: RE: [Asrg] A response to the critique of my anti-spam system

From: "Michael Kaplan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 16:50:56 -0500

> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Paul Lambert wrote:
> 
> > I noticed at the bottom of your web site the 'Patents Pending' text.
> >
> > What part of the proposal do you feel is unique and covered by your
> > patent applications.
> 
> Thank you for noticing, I personally did not look at the page and so did
> not know but for those who don't know ASRG has requirement that if you're
> presenting patented (or patent-panding) technology that you let that be
> known from the very start.
> 
> Since Michael has not done it, I request that the people on this list do
> not review and participate in further discussions or critique of CAPTHA
> on this list as that would be in violation of group policies. I'm sure
> Michael can find some  other place to receive feedback on and where his
> presentation would not violate group charter and when he's done so, he
> can let us know so that those interesed can subscribe there for further
> discussions related to CAPTCHA and its patent-pending technologies.
> 
> Note: For info on ASRG IPR policies see http://asrg.sp.am/about/ipr.shtml
> 
> --
> William Leibzon
> Elan Networks

My web page states this informatiion unambiguously.  I have disclosed this "from the very start."
Also this is not a direct criticism of the technology.  If this group prevented itself from discussing any technology for which there were property issues then there would be very little to talk about.

Michael G. Kaplan
-- 
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---

From: Rex Monty di Bona <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 13:32:38 +1100

Oh, I hate these *%$%&& Software patents. After being burnt by Microsoft 
patenting sender-ID which was aready in use anyway, but who has the 
money to fight Microsofts' lawyers?

So for challenge/response systems let us state, for the record, the list 
of methods that can be used to hide the "secret" challenge.

Visual:
1) skewed and/or broken text in 2d.
2) skewed and or broken text in 3d.
3) representation of an object and you have to enter the name of the object
4) representation of an object and you have to click on a box that holds 
a description of the object
5) representation of an object that is only truly visible in 3d, and the 
representation moves through a technology such as multi-frame GIFs, or 
some other simple movie system (quicktime/mpeg-X etc etc.)
6) any of the above that has an incomplete image and the compliment, 
conclusion, and/or part of the image has to be selected either by point 
and click or mouse over in a sequence, or typing a description.

Aural:
1) Select which of a number of tones is highest,
2) select if the tones go up or down
3) select a well known piece of music (well known may be selected by 
country of origina - national anthem etc.)
4) write down a word that is stated with background noise/music/tones

Time Based
1) select the colours that are flashing in sequence based on a time sequence

Logical
1) simple mathematical aritmetic and select the correct answer from a 
range of answers
2) simple logic puzzle and select the correct answer from a range of answers

Ascii Art
(For der Mouse :-)
Word/image encoded in ascii art - select the image and reply with the 
correct answer

Touch/smell/taste
when we have other sensors give a challenge in a noisy environment 
similar to above and check reply :-)

In any case these are some I thought of in 5 minutes. they are ALL 
obvious to somebody who is familiar in the art. Basically we are looking 
for something that machines are known to be poor at. These all involve 
discriminating something in a human sense that is in a noisy environment.

Allowing a patent for any of these type of things shows that the patent 
office is failing in its duty of care to ensure patents are non trivial 
or obvious.

In anycase when a challenge/response system has a limited sample space 
you can just burn attempts from pirated machines - if only .1% gets 
through then send 100 times as many :-) One of the assumptions that 
anti-spam systems must make is that the spammers can send a virtually 
unlimited number of attempts at no cost to them.

BTW, for the language issue any of the logic/colour puzzles can be used 
in a language independant manner. Any decent symbologist can devise a 
number of these puzzles that can be used with varying answers. Using an 
answerback on the html page itself can remove the requirement to speak 
the language - look at any of the decent IQ tests to see the type of 
puzzles.

					Rex.