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Bodysurf writes "After DVD-Video's CSS encryption was broken in 1999, the music industry chose a much more secure copy-protection method for DVD-Audio called Copy Protection for PreRecorded Media (CPPM). This protection scheme has remained publicly uncracked, but it was circumvented recently, providing the ability to save the unencrypted digital audio data. CDFreaks has the details."

CBNobi writes: "The National Committee on Information Technology Standards (NCITS) has rejected 4C Entity's proposal of the CPRM, a copy-protection that can be placed on future hard drives. While this may be a win for us, many other organizations are attempting the same thing. Full article at ZDNet." This is only a very temporary victory - there is nothing to prevent this addition to the ATA standard from being proposed again, or to prevent Intel, IBM, Toshiba and Matsushita from figuring out another way to implement it. Another submitter notes: "According to The Register, Apple, Adaptec, ST Micro, Western Digital, Maxtor, LSI Logic and Hale Landis voted against "Generic Functionality" in ATA devices for content control. Voting in favor of content control were IBM, Toshiba (4C members), Hitachi, Iomega, Microsoft, Phoenix, Absolute Software, and Circuit Assembly."

You've read about it here on Slashdot and elsewhere: How the 4C Entity is developing copy protection mechanisms for removeable drives (floppies, DVDs, etc.) that can also be used on hard drives. But Linux kernel hacker Andre Hedrick, member of both linux-ide.org and the industry-wide Technical Committee T.13 that sets ATA hard drive interface standards, has been raising a ruckus about copy protection on your hard drive, and he, along with EFF and EPIC, is trying to get this idea killed (or at least muted). So post any questions you have for Andre about this whole thing below, and tomorrow we'll shoot 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him by email. We'll post Andre's answers as soon as he has time to get them back to us, which may be a bit because, he warns,"everyone else is hounding me ..."

ArghBlarg writes: "As reported on the Mercury News' siliconvalley.com website, the 4C group, consisting of IBM, Intel, Matsushita and Toshiba, responsible for the dreaded CPRM rights-management standard for PC storage media, may be backing down on mandatory implementation of the standard in PC hard disks. A Linux consultant by the name of Andre Hedrick, who sits on the T.13 protocol committee, apparently confronted them during a recent meeting and got them to consider making an 'opt-out' mechanism if the standard is ever implemented in hard disks. However, the EFF says that's not good enough, and says that CPRM should never besmirch a PC hard disk's firmware, in any form. The 4C group has been eerily silent about the issue, according to the article, so this isn't over yet. (According to the Mercury article, the 4C entity promised to release a formal statement here about the 'opt-out' possibility, but no new releases were up at the time of writing.)"