IDs For MO Drives To Counter Copyright Violations

CaptMondo writes: "It seems like HD manufacturers may be feeling the heat about MP3s and MPEGs. Fujitsu has just put out a press release about putting what they are calling 'Media ID' for their hard drives, which will identify each individual hard drive. Applications utilizing this feature can 'prevent reading of copied information.' Ugh!" From the description that link offers, it sounds like media, drives and applications would have to cooperate for this to work as intended, and that it only applies to 3.5" MO storage. Can you say technological tangle? It sure sounds like a good way to sell media though ... hmmm.

Comments

The Right to Read

[bat'ka makhno]

Take a look at Richard Stallman's 1997 text The Right to Read. Very interesting and far-sighted perspective on the things that RMS saw coming three years ago and that are becoming reality much more quickly than even the more paranoid among us had thought.
--
Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
H. Rap Brown

Re:The Right to Read

[NaughtyEddie]

Everyone saw this coming three years ago. Thing is, most of Slashdot is still in denial - just read the posts on this article.

There goes the Chinese nuclear weapons program...

[emac]

Now all those 'misplaced' disks at US research facilities can be tracked down much more easily!

To register Win 2002, may I have your HD ID sir?

[CDF000]

Just imagine if to register a copy Windows you had to call M$, give them your windows registration code and your HD ID. Then you would receive a password needed to install windows. If your hard drive crashed and you bought another, you'd have to call them again for another install password. Now imagine M$ started to require it's OEMs to use this type of drive to get the "best" price. Since most people buy instead of build their machines, next time they buy a new machine their stuck with one.

Re:The applications have to cooperate

[Starselbrg]

Have you scene the sheer size of a LaserDisk? Can you imagine trying to put a drive that size in your computer? I doesn't matter whether someone wants a LaserDisk drive available or not. The fact is, you can't have one! It's too big!

How does this thing work?

[Starselbrg]

I'm surprised no one has asked this yet: How does this thing work? The press release held no valueable information, of course. It just kept saying "this will protect you copyrighted content on the Internet" over and over in different words.

Is it supposed to prevent you from copying information to it? Because that would make one darn useful removable drive, not being able to write to it. How would a program using the Media ID tell if what it's writing is "copyrighted material"?

Is it supposed to prevent you from copying information from it? Because that would make one darn useful removable drive, not being able to read from it. How would a program using Media ID tell if what's being read from the disk is "copyrighted material"?

I can imagine a scheme where a "specially certified application" could write data to the disk with information about how many times the data had been read, but that really doesn't have anything to do with an ID. How the heck does the ID help?

The only answer that I can think of is that all this ID and Copyright Protection BS is going to get in the way, and nothing else. And you know what? It will kill the format. These things will never become popular if people have to jump through hoops to use them.

Besides, how many Evil Pirates do you know swapping Copyrighted Material on Big Floppies? Give me a break. CD-Rs and the Internet, that's the tools of their trade.

CD Rental

[sulli]

Yes, I remember this from my Japan days. In my day (1992) they had big stacks of TDK tapes (conveniently labeled "For CD!") next to the cash register. As I recall the prices were pretty good.

I remember reading in the paper that the US Trade Representative (Carla Hills) wanted CD rental to be shut down as it was contra-copyright. No such luck, apparently.

sulli

the fabled CD-WOM.

[Wakko Warner]

"prevents reading of copied information"...

sounds like the CD-WOM drive I saw once. It was two pieces of wood with no real physical connection to a computer. You placed the CD-WOM media between the two pieces of wood, waited as long as you wanted (or as briefly -- the transfer rate was astounding) and lifted the top board. There was no disputing the data had been written to the disk. Of course, being CD-WOM, there was no way to prove it had been written. But there was no need to. Looks like Hitachi has just updated the mechanical side of things.

- A.P.
--

"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

Re:the fabled CD-WOM.

[_xeno_]

I believe you are refering to the WORN storage technology. WORN is similar to WORM technology; it is only one letter/word different. WORM stands for "Write Once; Read Many" while WORN stands for "Write Once, Read Never." Fortunately, an "M" looks much like an "N" and since you can't return them once the package is open...

Forged disks

[Veteran]

One thing this would normally do is spring up a market for disks without serial numbers - made by a manufacturer outside of the consortium. Market forces would cause these disks to sell more, since they would be more versatile and less expensive to manufacture.

In the past there would have been no way to keep a manufacturer from making such disks. HOWEVER: The copy protection part of the DMCA does make it possible to stop the manufacturing of such disks.

All anyone has to do is come up with some sort of utterly lame copy protection scheme involving the serial number on the disk and the DMCA springs into effect with its draconian penalties against a non serial number manufacturer - since they would be circumventing a digital protection means.

This means that one manufacturer of any type of digital media who puts a serial number on their media could force EVERYONE to put serial numbers on their media of the same type. This includes floppies - and it would be a felony to erase a floppy serial number!

Isn't the DMCA just swell?

Re:Forged disks

[WNight]

The stupidity is that they always resist new technologies that would end up helping them. They fought VCRs, they'll fight everything else.

By driving this underground they'll just keep it from ever being profitable for them. They can't stop piracy, they'll just end up keeping it from being easy, by trodding on everyone's freedoms. By doing this they'll alienate the casual pirates, the ones who would pay a small user fee for media.

As it is, they remove all potential good will from every potential customer.

It used to be that I'd buy a movie, not caring about the MPAA. Now, I'll take any means I can to hurt the MPAA as much as I can.

They want to promote their own greedy ends at the expense of everyone else in the world who wants to use digital media. Fuck them.

Only the truly stupid piss off everyone who might potentially pay them any money.

Of course, they're all liars and thieves, they'll simply bribe politicians to enact a media tax, payable by everyone, to compensate them for the piracy they claim is robbing them of their profits.

The rich always win, until the poor have had enough and shoot them. Pushing too far is *never* smart.

Re:Forged disks

[NaughtyEddie]

I don't think the DMCA would apply in this case. It can't stop the sale of blank CDs, why can it stop the sale of media without ID bytes. Removing the ID byte on a disk with one might be a crime, but just making blank disks wouldn't be.

I think you're making too much of this.

Re:Forged disks

[NaughtyEddie]

You can't argue with logic like that.

Re:Forged disks

[Veteran]

Let us see if Hanlon's Razor is applicable to the DMCA. For those who don't know, Hanlon's razor is : "Never ascribe to malice that which may be adequately explained by stupidity."

To see if the DMCA is simply an act of stupidity we need to think about the people who created the DMCA in the first place. If these are generally stupid people we are safe in assuming that the act was the result of stupidity and we may safely discount it as not being malicious. If however, the people who created the act are not generally stupid we need to show how otherwise intelligent people were confused into creating something out of momentary stupidity in orger to judge the DMCA as non malicious.

By far the majority of people in the House of Representatives and the Senate in the US are lawyers. The vast majority of lawyers follow the conventional path of graduating from college with superior scholastic records, then going into a post graduate law program which awards them with a 'Doctor of Laws' (Juris Doctor) degree; which is the equivalent of a Ph.D. in a technical subject. After obtaining this degree the average lawmaker then passed a difficult bar exam to become an attorney. After successfully becoming a lawyer these people engaged in significant networking to build up their political prospects.

Most people who enter the political profession emerge as significantly wealthier when they leave the profession than when they enter into it.

The argument that the DMCA was created by people who are generally stupid appears to lack plausibility. Now let us examine the idea that the act was created by normally intelligent people who were acting in an aberrant stupid fashion.

Reading the DMCA fails to give evidence of misspelling, poor grammatical structure, ill thought out sentence constructs, or other evidence of stupidity which might be brought on by the heavy use of intoxicating drugs or spirits or wide spread occurrences of stroke or other neurological damage. When tested against the standards of writing in other laws passed by these same legislators there does not appear to be any obvious fall off in the quality of expression in the DMCA.

In short, the evidence that the DMCA is the result of temporary stupidity on the part of otherwise intelligent people is very poor. Perhaps the claim could be made that the authors of the DMCA did not understand the consequences of their actions in writing this law and were thus being stupid. However, that argument fails upon further thought. The consequences of the DMCA appear to be carefully designed - the law appears to accomplish exactly what the authors meant it to achieve.

Here is an example of a stupidly constructed law for comparison. "Anyone who picks his nose in public shall be guilty of an offense. Persons who violate this law will be punished by being forced to have sex with an attractive person of the offenders' choosing."

The conclusion is that the DMCA is not the result of stupidity, and that Hanlon's razor is not applicable to it. We therefore MAY conclude that the DMCA is the result of malice; it is deliberate, it is intentional, and it is no accident that it is written the way that it is.

Re:Forged disks

[Veteran]

As a consequence of the DMCA free operating systems could be required to comply with 'Industry standard' copy protection schemes. For example the DMCA could require an API which furnishes media serial numbers to any program requesting them.

It would be a 'circumvention of digital copy protection methods' to disable or circumvent such an API.

Under the DMCA an act as innocent as formatting a floppy - which results in a change in its serial number could be a serious felony. One of the side effects of this is that older copies of all operating systems which fail to have a copy protection API - or which allow the reformatting of floppies could become illegal. Of course - we all know that Microsoft would simply hate the idea that everyone had to scrap any operating system older than Windows 2001.

Re:Hard Drive "tatoos"

[The Breeze]

And, oh yes, "one license is all you get?" Fine. That's part of the whole model. But I should NOT have to pay extra money if I want to upgrade my harddrive.
With the recovery disks, you can reimage your system. A non-destructive reinstall of Windows is much more difficult.
Obviously, you have the luxury of playing with your own toys. I, on the other hand, have to help consumers who are finding out that their copies of Windows are now useless without some form of hacking if they dare to upgrade their hard drives.

Who cares if he knows about GNUtella?

[FallLine]

He probably does, but gods why should he? There are far more important issues. GNUtella can't scale to support any more than 2k people [and poorly at that], most of which would have access to free sh1t anyways. Napster, on the other hand, is an entirely different animal due to its proven size, scalability, and ease of use.

Re:Hard Drive "tatoos"

[The Breeze]

No kidding. It's a normal HDD, and a normal Asus board but with customized BIOS code. The tatoo is software, written in a sector of the HDD & portion of the BIOS that I cannot remember the address for at the moment. As for where I heard it, perhaps it was my HP Technician training class? Or maybe it was in the HP service center I worked in?
(I am no longer affiliated with HP, thank God. Great high-end stuff, but their low end stuff is crap, and now with the M$ licensing garbage I can no longer recommend ANY HP desktop). I once had the misfortune of supporting the Pavilion
Tell you what. Don't believe? I assume you have a stock Pavilion. Use another HDD, and image your drive to the blank HDD. Then, take a third HDD, from a non-HP computer, and atttempt to boot from the recovery CD in the CD-ROM, selecting the "Full system restore" option. Odds are, it will say something like "This only works on an HP computer." (I say "odds are" because there are a few systems that did not have this "feature".)

When will they learn?

[Inoshiro]

Today I had to flash the firmware on a Pioneer drive so I could watch a DVD at a friend's place (he came back from China with X-Men on DVD, and I wanted to see it. Based on the quality and such, I'm assuming the MPAA didn't see any money from it, so my concience is clear).

I'm sorry that Fujitsu had to do this. Now I either have to stop supporting them (probably what I'll do), or deal with having to work around their silly artificial limitations on my usage of a device (like I did with the region coding). Hopefully they'll learn their lesson and end this madness. Either that, or I buy more Seagate drives :-)
--

Re:When will they learn?

[Inoshiro]

If you live in a city where the police are corrupt, but lie to everyone that they aren't.. a city which also has a mafia which does not lie about what it does.. which would you have a clearer conscience supporting?

It's a Kobayashi Maru situation. You can't win. But this way, I know my money is not going to the bigger, less obvious criminals. If I don't support them, then I'm at least doing more than 99% of the people.
--

A defense of

[Mathonwy]

Maybe it's because I'm an old guy, but why are slashdotters so obsessed about their "right" to be able to steal copyrighted content?

I think you are missing the point that most people are upset about. The issue here isn't that it would prevent you from doing illegal/immoral things. The troubling fact is that someone else, some faceless, nameless division of some company somewhere is the one who would get to decide for YOU what would be moral usages of their device. And that kind of large corperation hasn't been especially renouned recenetly for acting in the best interest of the consumer. (or anyone else but themselves, really...) So you can see how it would make people edgy letting such an organization dictate what is ethical.

The other issue is that this is yet one more step in a fairly disturbing trend that has been going on recently in corperate thinking. As you has doubtlessly often heard quoted in DMCA discussions, originally when you bought a product, it was yours, you could do whatever you wanted to it, since as soon as you purchased it, it was entirely your proprety. However, corperations seem to want to change that, and retain quite a bit more control over their products, even after purchase, and dictate what you can and cannot do with them. For example region codes on DVDs. Region codes allow companies to make arbitrary decisions about what you can do with DVDs you legally purchased, and enforce them. (For example, you can't play them in a country different from the one you bought it in. There is no law to this effect, but Sony effectivly enforces one anyway with their region coding. And there is no apeal to this kind of law.

And lets not forget the ever popular problem of pattern matching errors. Such as the problems that have plagued nearly all "net nanny" software packages since the dawn of time. (or at least "net nannies") While deciding what is "moral and legal use" of a product is ticklish enough, programming the product to recognize the difference and act on this information is even trickier. And judging from the actions of Hasbro & Co, most companies don't seem to even care much if they make mistakes that inconvienence users, as long as they keep the majority of people happy and/or oblivious to the problem. (*cough*hasbro*cough*)

This is what makes people edgy about this kind of thing: This product would give someone else (who's trustworthyness is questionable) the ability to create "laws" governing the useage of their product, with no real apeal. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but that's a little more trust than I'm willing to give them. And judging from the general tone of most of the responses to this artical, I think I'm not the only one.

Sorry if I'm ranting, it's been a weird week.

Re:A defense of

[ackthpt]

From original post It sure sounds like a good way to sell media though ... hmmm.

And a way to hamstring me, as a consumer, in regard to backups, recovery, or whether I install this on a server. I wonder what it has to say about Raid... Thanks, Fujitsu, but no thanks

he troubling fact is that someone else, some faceless, nameless division of some company somewhere is the one who would get to decide for YOU what would be moral usages of their device. And that kind of large corperation[sic] hasn't been especially renouned[sic] recenetly[sic] for acting in the best interest of the consumer. (or anyone else but themselves, really...) So you can see how it would make people edgy letting such an organization dictate what is ethical

What? You mean corporate america isn't writing legislation? Say... you type a lot like Dubya speaks, who are you?

I'm all for people being able to protect what's theirs. If they want to make a profit selling their work, fine. I don't work for charity so my code (at work) belongs to my employer. When the seller gets to the point of making a consumber good difficult to use (beyond an incomprehensible interface or stupidly written manual) I simply steer clear, and much to their chagrin, tell everyone how much it sucks. Bad PR spreads fast, especially on the internet, ask Intel :-)

Vote Naked 2000

This will never catch on (I hope)

[karma_policeman]

As long as there are manufacturers making drives without this "feature", why would anyone buy one that has it? It is adding complexity (and possibly cost) and does nothing except lessen the users ability to use his hardware as he sees fit.

As I see it, Fujitsu is the only manufacturer currently going this route. Just boycott Fujitsu. Problem: solved.

In Japan, the Media is the Market

[Speare]

In Japan, we've heard it said here before, the media is the prime mover in the market. If you buy a music CD, some clerks ask, "Would you like a Sony MiniDisc or two with that?"

And there comes special drivers...

[jmv]

...and there goes the ID. The CPU ID had a chance to work, since it was unsing an actual instruction, bypassing the OS (well, I think, don't flame me). However, this hard drive ID has no chance of success. It will need to ask the OS about the ID of the drive. There's nothing that prevents the OS of always answering the same ID for everybody... and there goes the system. Under Linux, it's quite easy to bybass... you just don't implement the system. Under windows... I'm pretty sure some people will come up with modified disk drivers..

I think this move is more meant to look like they're doing something to prevent copyright violations. And if the MPAA believed there CSS was secure, they'll probably believe the hard disk ID will be too!

Re:And there comes special drivers...

[kevlar]

Well here's the kicker. They could combine the "ID" of the drive with cryptography to make it harder to bypass. Encrypting the program or what not.... BUT this will never ever prevent people from copying ISO's, etc. All they're doing is making a "universal" method of encrypting data and making it harder to copy... Games like Quake have been doing this forever, and people are still getting around it. This is dead fish in the water.

Re:And there comes special drivers...

[Tester]

I'd just like to point out that those are not hard disks but Magneto-Optical removable disks. It feels like IDs on floppys. Btw, I think IDE hard disks and maybe floppies too have serial numbers. But I dont know if they can be changed. At least I get one by doing "dir c:" or "dir a:" in MS-DOS...
I'm not sure if I can get them in Linux...

Re:And there comes special drivers...

[DreamMaster]

But I dont know if they can be changed.

They could be. The serial number of a floppy is stored (if memory serves) in the boot sector (#1). So, not only could it be changed, but a simple diskette copy would also duplicate the original disk's serial number.

I'm not so sure about serial numbers on CD's, but I suspect the same to be true. After all, game companies have had to turn to defective copy protection schemes like Safedisc to protect games, which relies on trying to place ID information outside the area a standard CD can be read.

erm

[Blymie]

Erm. Are you all on drugs? ;) The purpose of this technology with REMOVABLE MAGNETIC OPTICAL DISKS only (that's all fujitsu has designed it for) is to prevent piracy. Each FO disk (not drive, disk) will have a specific ID, so that when you buy copyrighted software or what not, they can do a check on the disk to make sure that you are using the original, and not a backup.

This is NOT about identifying you.

This is NOT about mp3's or anything you are going to put on the equivilant of a floppy.

This is NOT about hard drives at ALL!

I wonder how many people actually read the article that was linked, and how many people just read the summary? Apparently not many...

Hard Drive "tatoos"

[The Breeze]

This sounds similar to the practice that HP & some otehr vendors have been following for years, and which is now REQUIRED by Microsoft if you're one of the top ten or so OEM's.
An HP Pavilion HDD has a "tatoo" in a section of the hard drive that can only be reached by debug scripts and the like. FDISK can't touch it. "Recovery" disks look for the HDD tatoo & and the BIOS tatoo and if they don't find it, they will not install. This means if you have one of these types of systems, you need to take your system to an OEM-approved "service center" and they will run the script to make your new hard drive able to function with the recovery disk should you buy a new hard drive.
Some OEM's (notably HP) used to foist this travesty on consumers in return for cheaper licensing for their protection payments to Microsoft for Windows. Now, this is REQUIRED by M$ on all new system.
The solution, of course, is refusing to by OEM systems that have "recovery disks". Use Linux, BSD, ANYTHING, or if you MUST use Windows, by from a smaller OEM which will still give you a genuine Windows OEM CD - the big boys are now PROHIBITED by M$ from distributing Windows CD's, they can only distribute "image" CD's.
I'm sure there's disgruntled techs out there somewhere who have the debug routines to duplicate the tatoos, or a good assembly language hacker can do it. Of course, who wants all the crap the major OEM's load up anyways?

Re:Hard Drive "tatoos"

[GrenDel Fuego]

I think he was talking software, not hardware.

A lot of OEMs will include a bunch of random software they developed to "help" the operating system. Things like a resolution changer in the system tray, or awnsering machine software that starts on bootup.

Yawn.

[Bilestoad]

I don't see how this is a big deal at all. First, MO is kind of marginal in it's usefulness. Expensive media, slow data rates, drivers required. We all burn CDs now don't we? What's so compelling about 1.3G MO drives if DVD-RAM is around the corner?

If anything the use of large media is in decline, with the advent of online drive websites, faster internet access and even home LANs becoming more common. I burn CDs to share photos. For backing up data I slot in another hard drive, or copy it over the net to somewhere else.

This probably doesn't pose a big threat to our freedom to copy anything at all, just a threat to the appeal of these MO drives.

isn't part of the new MS distribution scheme?

[small_dick]

I thought MS was focused on eliminating CDs in the near future -- that is, the OS comes on the 'puter you buy, and only licensed depots have CDs.

This way, you send in your bad hard drive to get an exchange or repair.

Obviously, for this to work, HDs have to have some type of individual id, to prevent DD 'duping.

The "Disappearing Information Paradox"

[Some Id10t]

sigh Once again we have someone trying to capitolize on what I call the disappearing information paradox.

You can't give someone access to information without giving her the ability to manipulate that information in some way. (Aside from terminating the recepient, which would definitely affect your customer loyalty factor, not to mention squelching any repeat business.)

DVDs failed at this with CSS
Sony failed at this with the Minidisk "Do not copy" bit.
DIVX... well, 'nough said.
VHS Macrovision

The list goes on and on, from movies and music, to email and "read once and destroy" messages. If you present information to someone, they can recreate it. Period. Preventing that is not within the realm of current technology, no matter what type of encryption/timestamping/client-side security you put on it. It will be reverse engineered and automated within hours.

As we say in the south- "You can't un-ring a bell!"

Copyright protection function

[Animats]

Anyone know more about "the copyright protection function that Microsoft Corporation will add to its forthcoming Windows Millennium Edition?" That might shed some light on the subject.

Unless Fujitsu magneto-optical disks get a lot cheaper, nobody is going to use them as a distribution medium for content. CD-ROMs cost about $0.50 in volume. So what's the point? We're missing something here.

A good way to sell? no.

[MattW]

It may be a good way to placate the Prime Evils (RIAA, MPAA, but Baal escaped), but "this media will stop you from copying things that you aren't authorized to copy" won't have a lot of appeal to any user, average or saavy. A good example is definitely the Intel chip ID fiasco. This may be fine for people who don't know better, since they may not care one way or another, but those are the people that the technology would be for anyhow. Let them repulse consumers if they want.

Re:If it makes them happy...

[sjames]

Much as I'd love to have the MPAA and RIAA Go Away, it would be nice if they could be convinced this was secure.

The problem is, if you see that your MO disk is about ti fail, and wisely copy it's contents to another disk knowing that the stupid serial# thing won't affect you (because of your hacked dirver), you commit a felony in the U.S. every time you access the songs you PAID FOR!

Personally, I'd rather NEVER listen to a disc from an RIAA label again (even if it means nothing but off key gar(b)age bands) than deal with media that is ACTIVELY hostile to me.

At this point, I'll buy a DVD IFF I can flash new firmware that does not refuse to do what I tell it to when I want to read a 'secured' sector on the disk. One of the reasons I dumped Pascal for C and Windows for Linux was that the former would refuse to perform simple tasks I told them to (for my own good) and the latter never do that.

History Repeats...

[SEWilco]

I remember various copy-protected floppy schemes. People stopped buying copy protected programs because they failed in various ways.

The difference here is that hard drives do tend to last longer than floppy disks. On the other hand, they're also awfully inexpensive now -- can't someone who wants to copy just sell stuff on preinstalled hard drives?

Oh, and as for the other comments about Microsoft requiring this...I did say that programs failed in various ways... :-)

News Release!

[friartux]

[Merrimack, New Hampshire] 14 Sept 2000 -- Linux user friartux, never impressed by Fujitsu storage products, has announced a personal resolution to avoid buying any Fujitsu media.

"This shouldn't be difficult," he said. "Compared to Maxtor and IBM hard drives, in my opinion, Fujitsu sucks anyway. Their capacities are low, and their buffers small in comparison. And who uses MO drives these days, anyway?"

Backup media such as CD-R have become more popular than MO in recent times, and DVD-style storage promises more than either.

Friartux looks forward to the first DVD-writable solution certified compatible with Linux -- without any corrupt tracking schemes, and with large buffers and good speeds.

Re:Won't work always

[bgalehouse]

When did you last try to copy a commercial program from one system to another? Quite a few really require re-installing the software.

Now, if they required online registration as part of install (before activation) and if this linked your CD-key to your hard drive identifier... then we'd be in buissiness.

Actually though, the hard drive is a pretty lousy place for this. Would be comparativly easy to patch the OS to change it (see the standard work-around for software region checking of DVDs).

CPU would be harder to patch universally.

Fortunatly though, Intel got burnt trying to add unique chip ids for privacy reasons. No software vendor will require ID'd processors untill they are ubiquitious (can't risk loosing market share). No hardware vendor wants the privacy loss uproar.

Be interesting to see how long this 'hard drive id' idea lasts.

The applications have to cooperate

[Raetsel]

After reading the recent article about Tom's Hardware, FlaskMPEG and DVDs, I think I notice a chink in the armor.

The applications have to make use of this technology. If they don't, the Media ID doesn't mean a damn thing.

(Tangent mode for a moment here...)

• Look at what's happening with piracy in the DVD market -- the pirated works aren't being distributed as DVDs. It's even a point of pride that they are in a different format with different encoding! The people doing this are using a perfectly legal copy, and extracting the information. Once it's in the new format (whatever it ends up being), there is no CSS, no Macrovision, no region coding...
• nothing. You can copy it all you want now, it's not a DVD anymore!

  It seems that there are enough incredibly talented people out there, and they're willing and able to write software capable of doing things like this. As long as the media is designed to be used in conjunction with computers, people are going to find ways to use it that the authors did not intend... and probably aren't going to like. LaserDiscs have phenomenal data volume, but when was the last time you saw a LaserDisc drive for your computer?

  Remember how long Macrovision lasted when it first came out on Back to the Future? (At least, that was the first movie I saw it used on...) It was just a matter of months before Macrovision filter boxes showed up -- end of problem! We had control of our movies back!

(Okay, back on topic now...)

This Media ID thing really isn't going to cause any problems, I think. People are going to attack the "don't copy me" bit instead of the Media ID. People are going to use different software that ignores the ID #. I think this will be about as effective as region codes. Heck, I can even think of interesting uses for it, like as a holder for encryption keys. Imagine this:

• Include the (encrypted) Media ID as part of your key. Use that in conjunction with SSH to access your systems from... wherever. If someone tries to copy your client key, it's signature won't validate because they don't have the original disk. You also have a convenient place to store a whole bunch of portable data. (MP3 collection?)

• On the down side, you could lose it just like your keys.

Now back to earth. Why would these things be popular? The largest one is 1.3 GB. I can get a 10 GB hard drive for just over $50 -- why do I want one of these? What is the price-per-gig going to compete with?

Reminds me of something I saw years ago.

[shippo]

Some time ago I deal with very specialised hardware, long since out of production. Semi-PC compatable, but for some strange reason it required all SCSI hard-drives to be supplied from the manufacturer.

The drives were normal full-height SCSI drives, but had some form of 'signature' written somewhere. Using normal drives of the same model just wouldn't work, as filesystems could not be made on the partitions. Of course the charge for these drives was around 3 times the normal cost.

I eventually discovered how to sign any drive, using the in-built diagnostics program and an undocumented password. I never had the chance to dump the contents of the disk via dd to determine what the signature was, or where it was written.

If it makes them happy...

[Requiem Aristos]

Much as I'd love to have the MPAA and RIAA Go Away, it would be nice if they could be convinced this was secure. They aren't all that swift anyway, and if nobody told them, they likely never would have heard of mp3. My bet is Valenti doesn't even know what Gnutella is.

If it's not widespread, I won't buy the media.
If it is widespread, someone will write the drivers.

No circumventing here

[xant]

I'm not sure exactly what his paradox means, but by his examples I take it to mean no one will buy this technology and it will fail in the marketplace. History has shown this to be true, and it doesn't matter how hard it is to circumvent it - it will be circumvented by default, because no one will use it. Why would you pay more for a hard drive that just made life more difficult for you? Given the equally-priced choice of a hard drive that makes life difficult and one that doesn't, which one would you buy?