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.
Michael Kaplan wrote:
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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