Copy Protection Galore

Kirk writes: "SecurityFocus is reporting that the cable industry submitted an FCC filing last week indicating that digital cable systems will use a patented, Hollywood-approved copy protection scheme called Dynamic Feedback Arrangement Scrambling Technique (DFAST). Under the scheme, HDTV-compatible recorders will refuse to tape movies, shows and sports events that have a 'don't copy' bit set. Consumer electronics makers fear an end to fair use rights, but cable companies will force compliance with DVD-style licensing agreement and the DMCA." And the Register notes that all hard drives will include copy protection by next year, under a plan put forth by the manufacturers to please the entertainment industry. Alan Cox doesn't like it, but Alan Cox doesn't call the shots here. T13.org has more information, including the specifications and some presentations explaining the system.

Comments

Re:backups

[Desert Raven]

Absolutely, the US consumer has a right to make a backup. Time-shifting and other reasons for copying things have also been declared fair use, and are therefore legal.

However, this does not mean that the manufacturer or content provider is obligated to provide you with the means to do so. And, because of the DMCA, they can put in specific measures to prevent such things, and prosecute us for breaking them. They aren't prosecuting us for making the copy, they're prosecuting us for breaking the copy-protection.

It's called having your cake, and eating it too.

Re:Sorry

[Malc]

Why not? You can't record to CD's, but they became mainstream. I think you're living with your head in the clouds if you don't think DVD's will become mainstream. I would say that in some places they already are mainstream! I presume you don't own a DVD player, but if you did, you might find the difference between them and VHS is similar to that between CD and audio cassette (I have over 200 cassettes, which I've hardly listened to since I bought CDs... I can't stand them). The only reason I can see to have VHS is tape the TV (which I might want to do twice a year, and could live without as the TV is full of shite), or in video cameras.

New exploit; mark all data as 'play once'

[Spoing]

What's the chance some SOB will create a program that marks all data -- or just documents -- so that it can't be backed up, or limits the number of times the data can be read?

Send it around as an email attachment, and we hackers get more undeserved bad press.

Re:New exploit; mark all data as 'play once'

[dietcrack]

Limit the number of times the data can be read? Shit, that's like turning my HD into a Divx disk, which, as we all know, are hewn cold from the bones of the stillborn !

Re:So what ..

[mikethegeek]

"Its also illegal for underage consumption of alchohol. Speeding is illegal. Jaywalking... And now they are going to put people in jail for 25 years for copying a daytime talk show on their VCR so they can watch it after work. Sounds to me like America is becoming owned by coporate interests."

The US is becoming a dictatorial police state in every respect. Government and corporations are larger and more intrusive than ever. And they are becoming indistingushable from each other.

And BOTH parties are in on it. The DMCA, perhaps the worst law passed since Prohibition, was passed UNANIMOUSLY.

To be honest, I can think of no solution. We can try to fight it, and should, but unless some of the people in power act to check the erosion of the Constitution, I'm afraid we are on the way to a slave state, and an eventual revolution.

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[Malcontent]

This will indeed be huge boon for open source software. Right now millions of people all over the world pirate any software they want. Most of these people would never buy ms-office if they actually had to buy it and most of them live in third world countries where they could not afford it even if they wanted to buy it. Right now MS will not pursue them because this pirating prevents cheaper or free alternatives like word-perfect office or staroffice from gaining market share. Lets imagine a world where people are not allowed to pirate software.

1) The rate of adoption of new upgrades declines dramatically. People continue to use older versions that they pirated because it works and is/was free.
2) People switch to lower cost alternative commercial software which provides downward price pressure to ms-office. Office now has to either cost less or assume a lower market share.
3) People switch to open source software.

To me all this is wonderful news. It means that prices of software will drop to almost nothing because there is already plenty of software that costs nothing. The commercial software will either have to be so superior that somebody will be willing to pay big bucks and deal with the headaches or it will have to cost much less.

Re:backups

[mikethegeek]

"However, this does not mean that the manufacturer or content provider is obligated to provide you with the means to do so. And, because of the DMCA, they can put in specific measures to prevent such things, and prosecute us for breaking them. They aren't prosecuting us for making the copy, they're prosecuting us for breaking the copy-protection."

I agree, the corpers are entitled to try to sell us antything they want to. However, their right to dictate what they sold us does (or doesn't do) should end with the money changing hands. The DMCA, as you said, allows them to do this. It's clearly an Unconstitutional law, as "fair use" is derived from the Constitutions's limitations on copyright and patents.

Unfortunately, it will take a case that is better than the 2600/DeCSS one going before some judge who's house, car, and kid's college educations that haven't been paid for by the MPAA/RIAA.

Simple solution: give up on them!

[knarf]

I think there is only one final solution to this: give up on the mass media. Yes, you heard me. No more Hollywood-movies (no great loss). No more Britney Spears (who cares). No more mindboggingly stupid game shows (what a relief!).

Does this mean you can not listen to music anymore? Of course not! People will still make music, and they'll probably still publish that music for wider consumption in 'canned' (or downloadable) formats. They may want to be paid for the privilege, and they will.

But the 'media industry' is on a fast track to extinction they way their heading right now.

Think I am joking?

I'm not. Guess who got rid of his TV set last month? I still have cable, but that's for my modem :-) And if they tighten the thumbscrews on that as well, there's always wireless. Not through some sleazy company, but through a collaborative wireless 'amateur' network like they're building in Seattle.

OK, they can buy some laws to outlaw all this, and we'll find some other means to connect. As long as the true '1984' vision of forced television consumption does not come true, there is a way out. And should such a scheme ever come to pass, well you only have to read Orwell to learn how it will end...

"Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur et non datur, nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est."

Re:Simple solution: give up on them!

[charlesc]

I think there is only one final solution to this: give up on the mass media. Yes, you heard me. No more Hollywood-movies (no great loss). No more Britney Spears (who cares). No more mindboggingly stupid game shows (what a relief!).

In fact, giving up is the final and best solution because it hits the industries the only place it really hurts them - the wallet.

But will enough people be willing to give up on the industries for it to matter? I think that unfortunately a lot of people who don't access forums such as this one which reveal this sort of happening will never find out about it until it is presented to them as making their computer, TV, TiVo, et cetera "safer from hackers" rather than "locked down by the man" or "customized to their tastes and habits" rather than "a conduit for marketing statistics accumulation".

Someone should play the Negativand track "Bite Back" from the Dispepsi CD loud enough for everyone to hear it - the simple solution is to "stop buying what it is they're selling".

Re:Simple solution: give up on them!

[sjames]

That really is the correct solution. But ... I like watching Junkyard Wars.

It all comes down to this: Either give up on the media entirely or bend over, take it like a man, and smile when you say 'thank you sir, may I have another'?

My personal plan is to time shift everything. If it doesn't record, I simply won't see it. If the media won't copy, I won't buy it.

If too much won't copy or record, there's no real point in having a recorder. So I guess I just won't buy one unless the manufacturer promises IN WRITING that it will record anything and everything I tell it to.

Shaking Head In The Sand

[Grendel Drago]

No way:

SCSI is terribly, terribly expensive in comparison. And it's the *principle* of the matter, because once it's been done with ATA, it'll be done with SCSI, it's just a matter of time.

No, this has to be seen for the very, very bad idea that it is. This is about *control*.

And what's to keep them from denying storage of all unsigned/unvalidated media? Let's meditate on why having all media centrally approved is *bad*.

grendel drago

Stock up now

[Evro]

Go buy a couple of ATA 100 7200 RPM 45 gig drives now... they're relatively cheap and they have no copy protection. put 2 of them in any computer and I would hope that would last you a while...

__________________________________________________ ___

Re:Repeat: "Physical security is no security"

[Spoing]

(Oops...that should have been " Lack of Physical security is no security".)

The point is, the Register wants to get us excited

[arete]

Look, things don't work like that article sounds. How does it know it's an MP3? Unless the OS tells it? does it find the file format? In FAT32? How about exfs2? or can't you use multiple formats? A hard drive you can't format would be a new idea of silly, but would have to be where they're going.

Sure, go crazy, but I wouldn't worry to much. A unique ID sucks - but you can't impliment copy protection without the OS, or the backup checker, or whatever. My theory is that INSTALLERs might check that value - to keep count. Backup managers MIGHT... etc. Although MSFT says they won't, which makes it useless.

But the worst-case scenario is enabling things like SDMI to work like they're supposed to more often - i.e. requires your HD to have the right "magic key" or else you can't play the DOWNLOADED music - which doesn't stop you from ripping MP3s. and yes, then you would lose those things when your HD crashed - but it only works for encrypted content that you can't break - and a decrypter that LOOKS for it....

more likely, it'll just be an addition to text books and a few specific pieces of software... and those will be things like SDMI that no sane person would go near, anyway. Don't buy SDMI - that's about the sum of it.

Discussed at K5 + comment by Register story author

[DeeKayWon]

There's a discussion at Kuro5hin about this article, too. In particular, you might want to read these comments by the author of the article at the Register.

Re:Idiotic

[mikethegeek]

"This mechanism would require the cooperation of all hard-drive manufacturers, who could find themselves under increasing pressure for consumers not to cooperate, and even if this were implemented in *all* hard drives (and the fact that the world is already full of hard drives which don't implement it), it only takes one person to break it (a'la DSS), and its all over."

Will consumers cry foul? Remember, most "consumers" are dense enough even about normal politics to allow someone like Jewel Kilcher, or Sarah Jessica Parker influence their thinking.

Techies will cry foul, but I think that the legal departments of Western Digital, Maxtor and Seagate will cave in fear of Sony, AOL Time Warner, et all.

In fact, it won't surprise me to see AOL Time Warner and other RIAA/MPAA affiliated megacorps start buying the hard drive manufacturers.

Re:As long as...

[Gorimek]

What needs to be developed, besides the HDTV equivalent of he VCR, is the TIVO like thing where programs with the 'don't copy' bit set can be recorded locally on the machine but in no way can be pulled to any other device or media.

If it can't be pulled to a TV, it's not of much use, is it? If it can, it can be intercepted on the way.

I guess you could build such a machine with an integrated TV screen...

Re:This is a bad joke, right?

[Zurk]

there is no IC on the DVDs. the DVD drive electronics executes code which loads the encryption keys from disk ..if those are missing i.e. its a dvd that not encrypted properly, the electronics will block the drive access. which means you need to hack the drive electronics.
it basically :
DVD data transfer to drive firmware -> to host.

What happens to products like...

[MrPotatoeHead]

oh say tivo?

will they be put outta business??

will they have to pay crazy royalties to .. what the network stations? cable companies??

Re:This is a bad joke, right?

[Zurk]

argh it got mangled due to slashcode. anyway its :
dvd ... drive electronics ... firmware

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[ilsa]

Actually, they don't need DFAST to screw Joe Sixpack out of taping his PPV WWF Killermatic Funfest. Macrovision already puts copyprotection crap in cable set-top boxes (ohhhh, so that's why they want you to get the digital cable and the converter box bigger than a VCR!). Go digging in thier SEC filings and you will find that very few cable operators use the features and they warn that "consumers may react negatively." Nothing like a good sugar coating, eh?

Re:Well, the gist of the HD article

[mad_clown]

No doubt, man... I hope this goes the way of the DIVX DVD players...stuff like this really makes me want to cry. Having every bit of content you could possibly ever want under the control of someone who's looking out for their "intellectual property" (whatever that's supposed to mean anymore) should scare the living crap out of everyone (and rightly so). Now, I can understand that we live in a pseudo-capitalist society and that everyone is entitled to their profits, but limiting the freedom of the population in order to protect those profits is absolutely wrong, end of story.

The Register understands there is fierce opposition to the plan from Microsoft and its OEM customers.

Interesting... I agree with Microsoft for once... though for obviously different reasons...

-----

A matter of Marking Blocks.

[Christopher B. Brown]

... And if you store data using Ext2 filesystems, or ReiserFS filesystems, or BSD filesystems, or ... ad infinitum, and don't mark blocks as protected, this prevents me from storing data on the disk precisely how?

I will certainly grant that this misfeature provides some wonderful exploits for the nefarious. After all, how long will it be before some hacker constructs a WinTel virus that marks the whole disk as being "copy protected," thereby rendering it into so much chaff from the perspective of anyone that was planning to actually store data on it.

Western Digital, Quantum, Seagate, and friends will be gloriously happy at that one; it's a wonderful opportunity to sell people more disk drives.

But as for the number of ways that this is a Spectacularly Stupid Idea, I'm not sure I have enough fingers and toes to cope with counting it... I'll probably need a Pentium processor, one without the FDIV bug, hopefully!

Re:Hard drives...

[n3bulous]

"One word: Celeron Its probably the worst processor on the market because it lacks cache, but it sells because you can get a 500Mhz processor for the equivalent in price of a 200Mhz PII (even though the PII will perform better)."

Not Really

Tom's Hardware shows that celerons have approximately equal performance and are cheaper.

As to whether people are stupid or not, most of them are sheep. Slashdotters are probably more intelligent on average than the general populace but they still jump early to conclusions, fall for hoaxes, and buy the latest, greatest toy because someone said it was.

Re:Virtualize

[mikethegeek]

Damn I wish I had moderator points for your post. EXCELLENT!!!

Copyright protects them from piracy. Hollywood and Microsoft want more than this... They are convinced that $billions per year are lost ot piracy (a number that has been pulled out of thin air) They can't (in a practical sense) find and prosecute all pirates. So they want it to be hard to pirate, hence copy protection.

However, copy protection doesnt' actually stop anyone from copying who really wants to, so they went and got the DMCA, which gives COPY protection stronger legal protection than the copyright that it protects. This is an end run around the Constitutional limits on copyright protection.

Also, they hope to chill the spread of information on how to defeat copy protection by criminalizing it.

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[QuantumG]

believe it or not, Microsoft actually sells a LOT of their software.. that where all those billions of dollars come from -- what you thought Billy boy just pimps himself? The problem here is that people persist in buying their software even though there is cheaper and (sometimes) better software available. Most people don't even know that their software is bad/expensive or that Free alternatives exist. This is a lack of education and for every dollar of venture capital that this years linux companies spend on programming should be spent on informing the public.

Re:Vote with your wallet / purse / pocketbook

[mikethegeek]

"I'm really getting sick of the Entertainment industry's attempt at a stranglehold over all information and content. In the end, I think or at least can hope, that a no-vote with the wallet/purse/whatever by consumers will put a stop to this nonsense."

You are correct, but I'm more concerned with somehow getting between them and their politicos they have bought. There needs to be some kind of public outrage. But how this can be done, I don't know. We ARE only fighting those who control 99% of the media, that 99%+ of the public consume. It will be a hard case to make, because what they are doing is technical in nature.

Also, Hollywood keeps lobbying for a German-style "RIAA Tax" on all media. In which case, they will get your money whether you buy from them or not, so long as you continue to buy hard drives, PC's, and CD-R media.

Dongle

[Espresso_Boy]

Someone of little consequence once said that there is no such thing as 100% secure software that doesn't use a dongle. Now we have hard disks that do the encryption themselves, kinda like a dongle. Fortunately for us, it is in effect using the same dongle for everything. Thats worse than using the same password for all your accounts. This protection can easily be broken by intercepting the protocol to the hard disk, and telling it a constant "magic cookie" value. We will be free, just a little slower.

Well, the gist of the HD article

[Unknown Poltroon]

seems to say "Dont buy my hard drive, buy my competitiors from overseas"

Re:Well, the gist of the HD article

[jafac]

yes but if *I* break away from the RIAA, buzillions of other idiots out there will not. Trust me on this one.
Get up on your soapbox, and nail that fucker to your feet, because you'll die up there before a statistically noticable portion of the population boycotts RIAA products.

Re:Well, the gist of the HD article

[Kewlwolf]

Speaking as one inside the evil empire (MS), yet I'm part of the rebel alliance(i have penguin love): MS will not go with this stuff. And the several service contracts with vendors (Compaq, dell), I feel safe to assure you that MS considerable muscle will be used to just say no. My 2 cents.

Re:Well, the gist of the HD article

[plague3106]

The problem is if this new copyprotection gets built into all HDs. What do you recommend then, never buy another hard drive? True someone could build HDs that always give the OK to store something, but then its too late. Shortly after will follow a law making noncomplaint HDs illegal. Buisness won't stop upgrading, nor will home users. And can you really work in the tech field without having a computer at home? God knows alot of what i know i learned putting together my own home network.

What really pisses me off is all the money the entertainment industry makes, but no thats not good enough. They want every last penny. Why the fuck do they care if they lose even $1 million if they've made $40 million in one weekend? Jesus christ, enough is enough!

Re:Well, the gist of the HD article

[Rakarra]

However, the blame, really, belongs on the people who let them get away with this, specifically us. Don't like the MPAA? Don't buy their movies. Don't like the RIAA? Don't buy CD's

Unfortunately, that does nothing other than giving yourself a warm fuzzy feeling. A very small percentage of the population dislikes the MPAA, and a somewhat larger percentage dislikes the RIAA. The majority, however, do not, certainly not enough to do anything about it. It takes a fair number of participants to make a boycott work. You either have to find other ways, or else somehow convince the majority to resist, and the majority has shown that it doesn't want to fight, they are willing to hand over freedoms for the new features, new content, etc. How can you win when most people are willing to hand over the freedom that you and I prize so dearly?

Re:Well, the gist of the HD article

[calcfreak901]

pardon my bluntness, but how many slashdotters are us citizens that are fed up with the riaa, mpaa, or both?

i certainly am
my diminutive cd collection will only increase by buying records from artists on indie labels, such as moby.

Re:Well, the gist of the HD article

[Pugget]

The asnswer to your question is, of course, you don't win. ;-) This is the whole problem in America right now isn't it? People don't care and, more often, just don't understand what is happening all around them. It's not through a lack of smarts (well, sometimes it is), but rather peope just don't feel they have the time anymore to keep up with anything but their personal lives.

Enough soapbox for this evening...

Re:Well, the gist of the HD article

[ripicheep]

Ever seen a VCR or Radio/Tape deck that REFUSED to let you record? It's just plain silly. Prosecute criminals but let customers make FULL legal use of content.


taken from an old /. article:

Re:Well, the gist of the HD article

[sickman]

I think that is a very important point, not just. We tend to blame industry execs for every ridiculous leap away from the fairness of balance of the old copyright system to the heavy-handedness on the side of property owners in the new. However, the blame, really, belongs on the people who let them get away with this, specifically us. Don't like the MPAA? Don't buy their movies. Don't like the RIAA? Don't buy CD's. It is not as hard as it seems to break away from these industry's controls. If they saw that there was a limit to how far they could push these types of technologies before people just walk away, you can bet they would calm down. I think most of us get enough EM radiation at work. Go out, go to a bar, get laid, do something else. We got along fine before these industries made us dependent on their technologies, we can get along fine without them. But we don't need to, all we NEED to do is show them that we're willing to get along without them, and the battle will be ours. Until then, they will continue to win.

Workarounds

[10.0.0.1]

I know that this is an oversimplification, but couldn't I just ROT13 the data before I write it to the drive and undo it when I read the data back? That might serve to confuse the detection of "copy protected" data. It should be easy to write drivers that would automatically do this.

Just a thought...

Re:Workarounds

[LiENUS]

Or better yet double rot13 it

Re:So what ..

[mikethegeek]

"Nit: DMCA was passed by a anonymous voice vote. For all practical purposes, it is unanimous, but we have no idea whom the dissenters were because that was not recored."

It was unanimous. I doubt a single Senator or Representative didn't receive some form of "contribution" (bribe) from the MPAA/RIAA to get the DMCA.

If even ONE Senator disagreed with the voice vote procedure, he/she had the right to fillibuster it, and this would have certainly drawn attention to it.

heh...

[enrico_suave]

I bet we can just cover over the tab that sets the "don't copy" bit with scotch tape to overcome the copy protection =P

Rampy

HDTV with copy protection

[11thangel]

One example of why the newest technology is often overrated at first =)

Err.. computer forensics???

[Zemran]

When the spooks grab your PC the first thing they do is image it (it has happened to me) and stuff that image on another PC. I think they may object to not being able to do this anymore. I think the Serious Fraud Squad or the FBI et al.. may defeat this one or the will be the first to release software that circumvents it.

Yeah, right...

[mclove]

You guys are forgetting something about timeshifting - NBC et al want us to be able to timeshift programs, they just want us to watch the commercials along with them. Why would any TV network deliberately prevent some people from being able to watch their shows?

I think (or at least, I hope) that once broadband gets to be more mainstream, the TV networks will start putting their star shows online using some sort of reasonably-restricted streaming format that forces you to watch commercials (which really aren't that bad) but lets you watch any episode you want, any time you want. I'm sure that Fox knows about the Simpsons collections floating around Hotline by now, but if they've got any brains whatsoever they'll realize that instead of shutting this sort of thing down they should try to satisfy the obvious need for on-demand Simpsons reruns with a nice, high-quality, fully legit method.

And as for hard drive encryption, that movement seems to be founded in the mistaken belief that the media somehow controls the computer hardware industry. Software companies do that, and if even Microsoft is smart enough to see the stupidity of hard drive copy protection then I can't imagine it'll find much support (Microsoft's .NET model, while only slightly less evil, makes far more practical sense and is, as an added bonus, much easier to hack). Look at PalmOS shareware registration; early on a few people tried to key their programs to hardware serial numbers, but it was far more trouble than it was worth. And then there's Intel's Processor ID fiasco...

The point is, they have tried this crap before and they've usually failed; the people these systems are designed to hurt most (namely, us) are the ones who are the most willing and the most able to inconvenience themselves slightly to circumvent them. Most of the people who care about import DVD's know where to go for jumper-hacking instructions or region-free players, and most of the people who are so desperate to play Final Fantasy 9 six months early that they're willing to play it in Japanese know exactly where to go to get their mod chips.

Re:Yeah, right...

[mikethegeek]

"You guys are forgetting something about timeshifting - NBC et al want us to be able to timeshift programs, they just want us to watch the commercials along with them. Why would any TV network deliberately prevent some people from being able to watch their shows?"

True. In fact, they are selling devices now that allow you do do just that (TiVio I think).

However, the broadcasters are at best neutral, and did in fact take part in fighting the VCR. You can fast forward the commercials.

The movie and record label industries are the real force behind this.

And DVD does allow them to FORCE you to watch commercials. There are DVD movies out there that won't let you skip or fast forward the previews and commercials. It won't be long until DVD's start interrupting the movie to show you a commercial you can't refuse to watch.

This is all in the future if the MPAA/RIAA are allowed to put their wishes into law (DMCA) and get the government to send goons to enforce it.

Oh No

[SomeOtherGuy]

This will be worse than the "Great SCSI scanner grab of 99'" (Remember when SCSI scanners that were supported in Linux started to dissapear and were replaced at the stores with those evil USB ones?) Now I must stock up on hardrives...

Re:Lauch an anti-trust trial against MPAA/RIAA

[ksheff]

Convince him that the copy protection scheme would cost consumers & businesses billions of dollars and only benefiting the Hollywood entertainment industry, you know, the guys that dump money on the Democrats by the truckload. Then point out that fighting this would help drain the coffers of your opposition's donors and would be backed by large numbers of individuals and businesses. I'm not much of a political hack, but if this could be protrayed as a way to screw the Democrats and look like a hero to consumers, you would have W going for it in a heartbeat.

I agree.

[rebelcool]

Definately, just from all the posts here, there is definate discontent. It's just unorganized.

Re:New file systems

[RickHunter]

Except that holywood's convinced Washington that digital is completely different from analog - witness the DMCA.
-RickHunter

Even MS oppose it

[Qube]

Read the Register article - Microsoft oppose the plans because it would make life extremely difficult for their OEM partners. At the moment, they tend to use drive images to prepare PCs which saves a huge amount of time. This would get completely screwed over if such a scheme was implemented. As well as the OS, all of those pre-installed bits of software would have to be done on a per-PC basis. Best case - adding a few hours on to the build time. Multiplied by how many machines Dell, Compaq, HP, et al churn out and it's going to cost them a lot of money.

Microsoft makes a huge amount from the pre-loaded software that comes with PCs, anything that puts hurdles in the way isn't going to go in their favour. If that copy of Works or Office takes 15 minutes extra to install, the OEM might drop it from their bundle.

Like it or not, Microsoft has an enormous share of the desktop market and if this scheme doesn't meet their approval, it's completely f**ked.

If there's a divide between compliant and non-compliant HD manufacturers, the OEMs will flock to the non-compliant ones. Motherboards and drive controllers will have to keep working with non-compliant drives for backwards compatibility. Any manufacturer who switches to all-compliant drives would find themselves out of business pretty rapidly. Any who carry both would find themselves selling very few of the compliant ones - the levy on them and other issues would make them more expensive than non-compliant ones. If they don't sell, they'll drop them.

I can't actually see this happening, no matter how hard the RIAA, MPAA, etc push for it. In this domain, the manufacturers rule, and as they already run to incredibly tight margins they'll never go for it.

I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over this braindead "idea".

Re:Even MS oppose it

[QuoteMstr]

It'll be fun to watch this corporate cockfight.

Re:As long as...

[RickHunter]

The entertainment industry isn't trying to fight "piracy" at all - they're using it as an excuse for a power grab. Currently, its perfectly legal to record Babylon-5 or the super bowl off cable with your VCR and keep the tapes around as long as you want to watch whenever you want. Of course, this puts a big dent in their profits, as anyone who does this isn't likely to buy the official videos that are almost always sold.

You can bet that, if this goes through, every single show on every station that can get away with it will have this bit set.

I'd argue the exact reverse of who should be allowed to set the bit - cable shouldn't be allowed to, as they've already gotten their money from me. Broadcast should be able to, as I'm getting reception for free.

-RickHunter

Re:Hard drives...

[patter]

Even better, (if those in the know can educate the masses somehow). Don't buy any of these clearly disfunctional drives.

I'm sorry, but if I purchase legally a drive from manufacturer X and it craps out in 3 months, as a consumer who is capable of doing so, I have the **RIGHT** to back any of my data that I can salvage on any spare disc space I happen to have lying around.

If no one purchases these defective units (and purchases only the non-copy protected equivalents) for a period of a year, then whoever came up with this insane scheme will realize that it's clearly wrong.

I'm not concerned with someone successfully stopping software crackers (although anyone will tell you this is a fruitless endeavor), but MY data is mine, dammit!

-- or maybe I'm over reacting (?!?)

Re:So what ..

[Masem]

Nit: DMCA was passed by a anonymous voice vote. For all practical purposes, it is unanimous, but we have no idea whom the dissenters were because that was not recored.

Re:That is so trivial to defeat

[Lee Cremeans]

1)Bios-wipe the disk clean. Wipe it with a friggin' magnet, if it won't let ya do it through official channels.

One problem with the magnet: Most hard drives made since 1992 (and all voice coil drives ever made, with the possible exception of certain older Quantums) keep servo and tracking information on the disks, as well as extra firmware and things like the drive serial number and defect map. Unless you *really* know what you're doing (and have access to equipment that can talk directly to the heads on the drive; a clean room is helpful too), taking any sort of magnet to a modern drive would cause damage only the factory could fix.

-lee

Re:Open Source on 'Protected' HD's - I think not!

[Your Login Here]

The thing is that the copy protection doesn't need OS support. Basicly, it's a serial number on an unwritable section of the hard drive. I suppose linux could refuse to read that section, but the idea is that a few years after the copy protection is standard, it will be required by software.

The articles I read seemed to imply that the serial number will act as a public decryption key. People who want to use the copy protection will pay your HD maker for the private encryption key. Then you'll download a file that can only be read on you're HD.

I could be wrong, there weren't a lot of technical details...

And so begins a new paradigm...

[supabeast!]

Information wants to be free.

The corporations want to dominate our content, but why do we need them to? Without the huge chunk of profit these corporations take from artisits, why will the artists stick with this?

And why would the people tolerate this? They will not, and the corportations like the idea, because it keeps us trapped in their distributional paradigms.

But we can just push forward with our own.

Free content.

Free music given away on Napster, web sites, etc.
Free stories and novels given away for the masses to enjoy.

What kind of content can we expect? The odd, the fringe, probably not the best. But the people will grow more and more dissatisfied, and the fringe will grow. People will find ways to pay the creators, beyond just advertising support. T-shirts, small print run books, etc.

A perfect example of this new paradigm is web comics. The web comics make money off merchandise, from books to t-shirts to mousepads.

It will be a low start, but eventually quality content will leave the domain of multinational corporations and return to the people.

Re:We need Legislation

[burris]

Too late, the content cabal has already purchased your representitives in Congress.

Burris

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[QuantumG]

so what you're saying is that you dont know of a single person who has bought a computer in the last five years. Where do you live? South central?

Re:It was bound to happen

[Gonoff]

Surely that should have been moderated as a troll?

You mean DivX, not TiVo

[Gorimek]

:-)

All sites with Linux source code will be illegal..

[mikethegeek]

"And if you store data using Ext2 filesystems, or ReiserFS filesystems, or BSD filesystems, or ... ad infinitum, and don't mark blocks as protected, this prevents me from storing data on the disk precisely how?"

Simple... The MPAA/RIAA will go back to their favorite puppet, "Judge" Kaplan and get Linux/BSD and anything else that can use ext2 illegal as a "circumvention device" under the DMCA. Furthermore, the Linux source code, as it contains this "illegal" code.

Scary shit. This demonstrates how dangerous rogue judges are, and why the power of the judiciary needs to be curtailed and accountability increased.

Re:So what ..

[scrytch]

Nit: DMCA was passed by a anonymous voice vote. For all practical purposes, it is unanimous, but we have no idea whom the dissenters were because that was not recored.

Simple way to fix that: ask. Pick up the phone and ask what their vote was on the bill. Mind you DMCA was probably a rider on a totally unrelated bill, probably a disaster-relief bill or Protection Of Children And Puppies act.


--

Re:As long as...

[nebby]

Once again, the whole point is that if you are paying for cable, you should be able to time-shift. Guilty until proven innocent.. this is what corporations want you to think is the correct way to deal with copyright protection.

Re:As long as...

[whistler-z]

"On the other hand the consumer is paying for the content on the cable stations (ehhh, somewhat), and since it's not broadcasted freely to everyone, there is need to copyright protection."

Apparently, I see that a little differently than you do. From my understanding, this means no copying at all of material with the copy bit set, effectively preventing time-shifting at all. If I'm paying for premium content, shouldn't I have the ability (or right?) to time-shift that content? Why can I time-shift content that I don't pay for, but I can't time-shift content that I'm explicitly paying for every month?

It's the content that I'm paying for that I don't want to miss, and therefore it's that content that most needs to be time-shifted.

Bill Gates the Savior?

[Wntrmute]

Gates: "I don't like this new encrypted hard scheme. It's going to cost the OEMs too much money. I'll tell you what, all new Microsoft software will be specificaly designed *not* to work with these copy protected drives."

And that would be then end of that idea.....

-Wintermute

What next? No really, when does the madness end?

[kettch]

What are they going to try to pull next? Hmm.. Let's see, VCR's, Copy machines, video cameras, Pretty much anything that can duplicate something else.

Are they also going to change the current copyright laws that say if you own a music cd, you can make mp3s of it for personal noncommercial use? What about the EULA of most software companies that say you can make a backup of your software.

AAARGHH! It just makes me really angry when companies throw out these insane ideas. But what really makes me mad is when these ideas are actually considered. What is this world coming to when you can throw all common sense, right of fair use, intelligence, and reasonableness right out the door, and still avoid getting thrown in the looney bin?

Re:Cracked

[Hadlock]

wow. sombody mod that one up. I think he nailed the whole argument on the head. I guess in the past governments took a little over a hundred years to start cracking down on original copyright theifs of the gutenberg bible and other books being pressed/printed. their solution of censorship WAS book burning. there's a couple of books of the history of pirating stuff, talk about how the government finally started cracking down on pirated versions of gershwin-type sheet music in the mid 20's and what not. Now comes the internet, and with today's speed of everything, it didn't take 100 or even 50 years to begin censoring things, it's taken them really at best 10 years (6 years if you assume the net went mainstream in '94). Fuck it. I'm buying a copyright enabled HD, and setting up a networked linux jupebox.

Alan Cox

[electricmonk]

Alan Cox doesn't like it, but Alan Cox doesn't call the shots here.

You silly Linux people. Always pulling out your Alan Cox at the last minute.

Re:Evil techies...

[meldroc]

Oops, I posted anonymously by mistake...

Oops 2, I think I just invoked Godwin's Law. ;)

What to do?

[Keepiru]

Wouldn't this pretty much make TiVO unusable?
My question is, what to do about somethign like this. There are a couple of options, Boycott, letter writing to the companies, and writing your congressman.
I'm working on a website to assist with all of those, however I'm not yet very good at figuring who to write and exactly what to say.
If you know who to write or what to say, check out http://openadvocacy.net and email me suggestions.

Get involved

The media is evil, plain and simple.

[Maul]

It is obvious to me that the media is just plain evil. For years they have attempted to control the general population through television, so they could get people to buy and do what they wanted.

Over the past few years, they've stepped up the effort by buying laws that trounce over consumer rights, and promoting technologies that they have sole control over. They have even gained the influence to use law enforcement agencies and the like to their whim.

All the while, America is becoming more and more of a police state where we are being forced to give up many liberties so that these media companies can make more money off of us.

I'm quite afraid that the world of the future will be one where everyone is a meaningless drone of these corporations. We're definately on our way there, it seems, when Hollywood has a say in if or not I can copy a file between computers.

Re:Lauch an anti-trust trial against MPAA/RIAA

[Alatar]

The difference between the recording industry and Microsoft is that when Big Brother Government comes to the record companies with 'antitrust concerns', the record companies listen and take them seriously...unlike Microsoft, who lied to and ignored the government investigators at every turn.

Re:And 10 minutes for a driver hack that disables

[mikethegeek]

"Anyone doubt that less than a day, every open-source operating system will have drivers patched to automagically bypass this?"

No, but that's not the point. There never has or ever will exist a protection or encryption scheme that allows the data to be read at all that will ever not be breakable.

The point is that this will invoke the DMCA, as interpreted by so-called "judge" Kaplan (I prefer MPAA pawn as his title) that allows the RIAA/MPAA et all to sue, prosecute, confiscate, etc any tools that allow this protection to be broken.

Re:As long as...

[Masem]

Make the playback analog. Or remember that most likely the digital communications between devices will be encrypted with keys (and you don't get those keys if you don't promise to honor the copy bit for the hardward markers), which with or without this device, you still have the possiblity of interception and decryption (of course, the latter being illegal by DMCA).

Re:What the F*#*!!

[Stavros42]

I couldn't agree more! It's a shameless way of corporate gits in suits squeezing every last penny possible out of Fred Bloggs at home.

Where will we stand in 2010? Computer chips implanted in our brains to eradicate all memory of a movie you've just seen, as memory is a form of recording, and therefore piracy?

Police raids on houses, and confiscation of VCRs that don't comply with the "no-record bit" system? "Got a VCR here, Sarge. Capable of letting the owner record a programme while he's not in and allowing him to watch it later. You're looking at five years, mate."

I can imagine insanely rich people in suits gathered round a conference table at this very moment.
"Once these measures are in place, we will have even more money than ever, and all out of consumers pockets!"
(Evil laughs echo through conference room)
"Right, any other way we can get even more material gain?"
"We could place a feature in VCRs that put on EXTRA commercials at random times, interrupting the programme. Then we take a cut of the fee paid by the advertiser to the TV network."
"Excellent idea, Ponsenby-Smythe! I'll get on the phone to the boss. He will be pleased! All day we just think of more and more ways of screwing the customers over, and at minimal inconvenience to us corporate types!"

(shudder)

Stavros

The Evils of Planned Obsolescence

[Alien54]

IANAL, etc.

but I wonder what the odds of a class action or other suit would be?

After all, they would not be forcing us to buy *their* hard drives etc. We could always buy someone else's, Right? Except that someone else's also has the same junk. And everyone has conveniently stopped carrying the older technology at the same time. Complete with re-designed controller cards, motherboards, etc. Everything else would be "obsolete"

Further on down the road, can you imagine:

"Sorry, you cannot access the internet at this time. This ISP has detected that you are running hardware that does not meet security standards. These standards are enforced for your protection.

Your name has been forwarded to the Police for your convenience.

They will help you in obtaining a compliant system.

Have a nice Day."

We obviously need to get a law passed ensuring Our property rights, and ensuring our ability to do the things we need to do.

Strangely enough, according to the Register article, even Microsoft is upset with this. Maybe we need to make an alliance with them on this? [shudder]

Agreed, it sounds paranoid now, but who knows about later?

Re:The Evils of Planned Obsolescence

[AtrN]

Strangely enough, according to the Register article, even Microsoft is upset with this.

Microsoft and other producers of bits to put on disks are upset not because of the anti- consumer aspects of the proposals but because it increases their production costs. They don't give a stuff about the consumer's rights.

Re:The Evils of Planned Obsolescence

[QuoteMstr]

The enemy of my enemy...

Re:The Evils of Planned Obsolescence

[bartok]

Maybe we need to make an alliance with them on this? Who exactly are these "we" you're talking about?

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[cougio]

I'm tired of all those "you have the choice" posts... I want to choose what kind of art I want and how I want to watch, listen, ect, it. Not choosing between doing things their way or not at all.

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[mikethegeek]

"Actually, they don't need DFAST to screw Joe Sixpack out of taping his PPV WWF Killermatic Funfest. Macrovision already puts copyprotection crap in cable set-top boxes (ohhhh, so that's why they want you to get the digital cable and the converter box bigger than a VCR!). Go digging in thier SEC filings and you will find that very few cable operators use the features and they warn that "consumers may react negatively." Nothing like a good sugar coating, eh?"

Of course, Macrovision is easily bypassed with a simple video stabilizer, which you could (I think still can) buy at Radio Shack, and certainly thru the net.

But of course, the DMCA (as interpreted by Judge Kaplan) would now make selling, using, plans for such a device, or even POINTING at such a device around illegal.

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[mikethegeek]

"I'm tired of all those "you have the choice" posts... I want to choose what kind of art I want and how I want to watch, listen, ect, it. Not choosing between doing things their way or not at all."

Exactly. And besides, anything that I've bought is my property, and I should have the right to do anything with it that I want to once I've paid my money.

I don't want the MPAA to turn my PC into a CSS controlled device they own and license to me.

I also don't want my hard drive only grudgingly (after checking with Judge Kaplan) allow me to store, read, and copy stuff on it.

Re:backups

[BorgDrone]

Don't know how the law is in the US but in the netherlands consumers have the right to make one backup copy.

so, since they're making DVD's/software copy-protected, aren't the DVD/software producers breaking the law ?
---

Re:Hard drives...

[cabinboy]

You're right people can be fooled easily... Celerons were faster than PII's clock-for-clock in most tasks since their cache runs twice as fast. All PII's and early PIII's had this slow, off-die cache yet they cost atleast twice as much as the Celerons.

And thats before you overclock them..

(Now Celerons are just crippled PIII's, but that wasn't always the case)

Re:Isn't it somewhat ironic that

[Dreadcat]

Hell yeah boyeee!

don't worry too much

[twfry]

OK lets look at this realistically. In order to properly enforce some sort of HD copyright protection, they would need to use some form of public-key encryption scheme. So the HD would have to check with a third party every time it wanted to do something or for that matter anything. This would also mean that no HD could function without a net connection. Somehow I don't see this taking hold. Of course the method they are proposing is crack able. Everything you would need to do so is sitting on the HD. So even if they force this through and force all HD manufactures to comply (which isn't happening), we'll all still get around it. Somehow I think the Linux community will manage. Remember, if I just hear it or saw it, I just copied it.

Re:Wishful thinking

[jafac]

such interception and devices would be outlawed by the DCMA, you're busted dude!

Re:Shaking Head

[jafac]

Basically, HDTV is dead, if this is true.

People will stick with their old analog TV's and VHS recorders when they find out what HDTV takes away from them.

Re:Hard drives...

[jafac]

This will be very alluring to hard drive manufacturers. The Sony's of the world will simply say - "you want us to put your drives in our box that will be sold into 200 million homes worldwide? You put our spiffy little device on it."

Smaller players will be crushed by the bigger players due to the revenue differential.

Re:Re:Most poeple here are making an invalid

[Grumpman]

Ya, move to Norway. The MPAA has NO influence there!

A disturbing trend (read this)

[rebelcool]

From what i've seen of things like hard-drive copy protection, the dmca, lower-power radio being made illegal, copyright protected cable... You the individual no longer have any right to disseminate any kind of information. With broadband increasing in availabilty, software such as COG being made available that allows the average user to run powerful webserving software off their own computer.. i think it wont be long before we see the government requiring a license to run your own webserver. And with us programmers being the ones who are coming up with all the hacks around the copyprotection schemes, i can see it being illegal to program without a license. Think it's far fetched? So is the idea of a corporation having the ability to take away your rights...and we all see how that's turned out.

Re:As long as...

[Masem]

That's what the gist of my arguement is. Since you are paying for that content (as well as millions of others) it's considered to be premium, and therefore has value. And if it has value, there's a good chance of someone taking it and offering it to those on a mass basis without paying for it, thus violating copyright. That needs to be protected. But you also have to protect time shifting, for exactly the reasons you stated. You paid for that programming, you ought to be able to at least time shift it (Keep it, that may be arguable, though $30/month compared with Napster $5/month, is an interesting comparison). Which is why if the HDTV recorders included the ability to store data only on an internal medium with propriatary encryption/storage, you can still do time shifting of said programs but could not distribute the digital copies.

I don't LIKE this idea, but I do have to acknowledge that copyright holders should be able to protect their works to some extent without trampling fair use. And as I stated before, it shouldn't be on the consumer side where they fight this.

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[zoftie]

Its odd to think that IBM is going to be part
of the scheme. There is a thousand reasons anybody
here can generate here for why it is stupid.
Doing stupid things in business does not pay off,
unless you can collect money like govenment sort
of tax. Like us retarted Canadians submitted
ourseleves into paying RIAA tax on every CD of
WAREZ we burn. Its stupid. Stupid. Computer savvy
do not tolerate stupid. Most other people do, thats where the harm is going to come from.

Besides encryption technologies impair last few years of creativity and invention in Harddrive
manufaturing, thus forcing Harddrive building companys swallow the cost of compensating
everyone for the perfomance loss. Also they would
be liable for the loss of data, if they produce a
harddrive that I cannot backup. Making such complex drive will cripple these companies allow
for even least creative competition taking 1 year
old technology and build drives with rival performace.

Then there is other one, what if my computer is
not networked, network is down. I really hate to depend on increasingly unreliable net providers
for my data integrity. It is great idea to chain
everybody together and beat them with a stick for
all the money they have, alas there is no infrastructure.

How about this one. Lets make pay per byte
networked cards! Yay, at least DDoS will be
profitable then! Keep this technorenisance going,
and don't let dark ages to encroach upon us from
the corporate kavalry.
Let there be L16H7 !

this is really fucking bad

[jafac]

really, really fucking bad.

Re:The article DOES mention SCSI...

[Brian Knotts]

March 11, 2002 --

H4X0Rdrives, inc., announces its new line of SuperMFM/166 and ESDIPlus! hard drives.

--

Re:What the F*#*!!

[knight_23]

time shifted (recorded) shows don't count in the ratings, so they don't count for advertising. So what they want is for you to watch somethig that will count towarsd the ratings so they get money for the shows that you are watching. You have to remember not all of the Nelison families use the magic box to monitor what they watch, some/most(?) still use pen and paper and (gasp) mail it in.

Seems to me...

[Jestrzcap]

That perhaps this sort of thing isn't aimed at the "hackerz 'R us" crowd. I try to give big companies at least a little credit for having gotten where they are today, and I definitly try to never underestimate my enimies. However it seems to me that this sort of thing wouldn't be aimed at those of us who are smart enough not to buy it. I think probably what they are trying to do, is to get the goodly number of people who think that they are hot shit just for downloading a song off of napster. These are the people who buy something just because its the "latest and greatest" and completely ignore the number of problems/bugs it has, but buy it just because it's new and supposedly better. Now, the average slashdot reader isn't going to be caught up by this but alot of people would be, the people who dont know any better (and we all know how many of those there are) These are the people who will buy the product, find out that they are screwed, and say "hmm they're too smart for me" and continue to buy products that work with the piece of crap they originally bought and have the same limitations.

Just a thought,

Jester

Never again

[JaguarsRevenge]

Oh well, guess I won't ever be buying a TV, or a DVD player, or a DVD, or one of those new fancy huge Hard drives, or a neat new fangled computer, or CD, or a CPU, or a stereo, or cable access... Or ever get to see a movie, or a television show, or a rock concert... Sigh, too bad for me, I guess... Hmmm, maybe I should spend all my money on some nice wood or something... yeah that'll be nice, I can have some nice wood around. -- Seriously f'ing pissed

Re:New file systems

[Mr_Reaper]

Im sure you can block out this area of the drive. Maybe an electro magnet or put a nice little scratch where the info is on the drive. Then again if you have access to some hd milling equipment and a cleanroom get that extra meg back.

Reality 101

[PrinceKheldar]

I must say that anyone who claims that this kind of standard is or will be absolutely accept is sorely mistaken. This is yet another group of people who's standard is going to sit unused by the majority and who's effort is going to be for naught.

Anyone who has ever worked with in any kind of market where there exists an ANSI/ISO standard or some other regulatory standard knows that standards mean nothing if they affect your product. Customers and your products success come first, strict compliance with standards is not a requirement for most markets (life supporting devices, military applications, etc. are another story). Take SQL for example, there are two SQL standards out right now (SQL, and SQL2) and a third is in the works. Yet, there isn't a single SQL DBMS that completely complies with these standards.

Just because a bunch of engineers and media men say, 'This is how its going to be' doesn't carry any weight. Business are going to do what's going to keep them in business. And nothing short of the tightest government regulations are going to make them do something that might damage their business. Hard drive manufactures are not stupid. They know that the only way they would every sign on to such a standard would be if:

1. Every major competitor signed on to the exact same standard at the same time.
2. Industry regulations prevented foreign interference from companies who might side step them.
3. They were legally protected from any damage they might take from supporting this.
4. They actually have something to gain from taking the time and money to add support.

No company is going to risk support for something as clearly stupid as this if there was nothing to gain. And there is nothing to be gained from this kind of support. None of their customers want this standard, it introduces technical nightmares for end users, it requires changes in manufacturing and testing, and it offers absolutely no competitive advantage.

Look at it this way lets say all the major HD manufactures decided to sign on. But, IBM says no. Now you have a market where companies that were in fierce competition with fairly similar products are now at a disadvantage. IBM would kill them in almost every area. Lets say your company was completely composed of Compaq servers. If you continued to buy Compaq servers you'd buy the most basic storage package, ditch it, and go to IBM for your storage needs. Or you'd do what most companies would do, cut your losses, ditch Compaq and go with IBM. No one in this tight market is going to risk that kind of transition. Of course it doesn't take a company like IBM to undermine this kind of arrangement, a small company with enough capital could get the technology and manufacturing infrastructure within a few months to crush them in the HD market.

They only places you're going to see this sort of thing implemented are proprietary embedded devices like DVD players, portable devices like MP3 players or electronic book devices, etc. Manufactures are not stupid and no one wants to bankrupt their company.

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[mikethegeek]

"Lets imagine a world where people are not allowed to pirate software. "

I think this scenario is the only way the M$ ".NET" rental scheme will succeed. They have to take control of the hard drive, and thru their control of the Windows OS (which will of course fully utilize this "feature") to make piracy impossible to the average user.

You are right, that this could make Linux and other free OS's more popular, because I don't see a SINGLE Linux develper even thinking about implimenting this in ext2.

However, what if some legal genious like Judge Kaplan (of the DeCSS case fame) declares all ext2 file system using OS's illegal as circumvention devices?

I guess if Linux is outlawed than only outlaws will use Linux. And they will take my copy of Red Hat from my cold dead hands.

replacement for SETI

[Anonymous Coward]

heh. Instead of scanning for green aliens, lets use all wasted cycles on computers to crack private keys.

Question

[Weezul]

Dose this effect Linux users? If Alan Cox and Linus never allow this into the kernel then do we need to worry about it?

If they do allow this into the Kernel then we will not be able to recompile our kernels, so I see no way for Linus to allow this into the kernel.

Re:Question

[Skapare]

IMHO, the target market will be consumer oriented products like TiVo. These will have full embedded software that is more difficult to crack into (at least for the average person). If Linux's licensing doesn't allow such embedding, they won't be able to use it, even if a free TiVo clone is there for the taking. As the technology gets better at doing copy protection for these consumer recording devices, it will be harder and harder for open versions of these devices to be safe from being considered violations of the law that requires them to employ copy protection technology.

Re:The point is, the Register wants to get us exci

[Forkenhoppen]

I don't think that PCs are the real target for these drives. I suspect that the real target are devices like TIVO et al, and video toaster-like devices (Amiga Toaster). This sounds like an attempt to keep people from being able to pull out their older TIVO hard drive, and stuff in a new one easily. Or to transfer files from a TIVOesque drive to a regular computer for uploading on the internet.

The fact that they'll try and use these in home computers too is just part of the ploy. There's an old saying in business; never ask for what you want; ask for more first, so that when you do ask for what you really want, you sound generous. Whenever they give up the home computing copy protection, people will relax--but it'll already be too late for TIVOesque devices.

Them businesspeople... they are a sneaky lot, they are..

Re:Cracked

[Sloppy]

DIVX. AFAIK, no one ever cracked it. No one cared enough.

---

Pro Homo Individualis

[Ukab the Great]

I can buy liquor. I could consume it responsibly, or I might drive drunk and kill somebody, But society recognizes my free will as an individual and lets me take whatever action I deem acceptable, along with the consequences that follow that action. I will go to jail if I drive drunk, but I am allowed to drive drunk if I choose. I can buy a gun. I could use it to hunt and feed my family or I could use it go on a shooting spree, but society recognizes my free will as an individual and lets me take whatever acton I deem acceptable, along with the consequences that follow that action. I will go to jail and possibly get executed if I shoot somebody, but I am allowed to go on a shooting spree if I choose. I can't buy a DVD and use DeCSS to decrypt it. I could play my decrypted copy legally or I could become a pirate and start selling it, but society does not recognize my free will as an individual, and prevents me from taking action they deem unacceptable, Whether I choose to take that action and the consequences that go with it is not a choice I am allowed to make. I will not be allowed to decrypt the DVD. One day, I won't be able to a book written by written by Karl Marx and read it. I could read it and study ideas of alternative economies, or I could read it an decide to overthrow the government. But society will not recognize my free will as an individual, and will prevent me from taking action they deem unacceptable. Whether I choose to take that action and the consequences that go with it is not a choice I am allowed to make. I will not be able to buy the book written by Karl Marx.

Re:We need Legislation

[DrEldarion]

Ah, but we have one thing the 'content cabal' doesn't have: votes.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:What the F*#*!!

[LuckyDog]

These DVD thingy's don't seem to be catching on yet do they? Up the mighty VCR! I refuse to purchase any hardware which doesn't comply with my ethics. Incidently I don't use pirated software, why when I can use Debian and choose how much I can pay with a donation? I do also purchased closed source software on occasion from customer orientated companies.

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[DrEldarion]

I suppose the question is, "why did you go into best buy to find a video?"

seriously, don't you have a Suncoast or something like that that's DEDICATED to selling videos? They'd probably have all the videos, not to mention several boxed sets, etc. etc.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:Hard drives...

[thogard]

How about using the legal system aginst anyone that makes these drives. Lets say Segate make a drive with these "features" so you can't make backups. Right now Seagate's liability is limited because they tell you to make backups. If you can't do that because of their new feature, then they waive their imunity to liability. Seagate with full liability for their product is a dead company.

Sadness

[Nullsmack]

Now this is really sad. Of course you know that the 'Dont copy bit' will be set on tons of stuff, including things that it shouldn't be set on.. ("oooh, I can't tape Who wants to be a Millionaire").
Assuming, for a picosecond, that whoever is in charge at these companies would think rationally.. Can't they see that *MOST* copy protected things fail? VHS tapes aren't cp'd.. cd-audio aren't cp'd (and they are still making millions on them, dispite massive mp3 downloads on the Internet), Cassette tapes aren't cp'd.. DAT was, Where is DAT now? (Besides the occasional audio master that is sent to a cd replication plant..), CD-R audio isn't.. but then it has a hefty price tag compared to 'normal' cdr's, DVD's are. DVD's are the only cp'd media that I know of which are doing well. I buy DVD's for a few reasons.. 1) Higher Quality, 2) Longer lifetime, 3) I will be able to preserve them if the format dies (Altho, not legally.. the MPAA would have me buy my entire (13 dvd) collection over again just to have it on HDVD-3 discs (or whatever the flavour of the year is)) 4) every other brainless American idiot is buying them too.

Our movies, tvs, harddrives, Music, books, magazines, etc will all be protected from all the evil pirates (You know who you are.. We know you all are.)
If we ever get direct 'cyberlinks' into our brain, under the current system, I fear for the human race. Thought police anyone? How 'bout this? After you go see a movie, the 'Copy protection' will prevent you from telling anyone about it or even remembering what it was about until it is released on video. We almost have something like that in the law books now.. All we need is some kind of bastard child of the DMCA, UCITA and the MPAA.


-since when did 'MTV' stand for Real World Television instead of MUSIC television?

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[Numinak]

Well, if people are all so afraid of losing the abliity to record from their favorite digital media, there is a simple solution for that. At least, the way I do it. Now, I still have my old VHS VCR, runs great, and has no qualms what-so-ever about recording things. I also have a DVD player, and one of those huge digital cable boxes that is bigger than it. Right now, if I remove that cable box, I can still get all 99 channels of the basic service. Not normaly a problem, if what was said above is true. It would be the other 300 pay channels that would cause problems. Well, it's simple. Most people will still have their VCR's, just because they don't want to toss something that cost them money. If it is hooked up after the cable box, (most likely)all they have to do is turn the cable box to the channel they want to record, and start the VCR to recording. Nothing they do can stop this, that I have seen yet. Mainly because if they try to make it unrecordable by that means, they make it unwatchable by anything less then a tv you have to buy direct from them, with it's own little decoder. Now, I admit, I am uninformed about a lot, but this is a simple bit of logic. Divx did so well in the first quarter or two because of sales people pushing them as regular DVD's. I feel they'll try to do that with TV's as well, until the public finds they can use these TV's with anything but a cable box. (Kinda redundent, but you know how those companies like to have us spend money.) Just my two cents.

Re:And 10 minutes for a driver hack that disables

[Skapare]

It won't be needed. Existing drivers won't enable or use the CPRM feature (though the next release or service pack of a certain software product may end up having them included in its drivers). So your Linux boxen will be safe because you can make sure that CPRM usage doesn't get added. I don't know about Macs, but I certainly worry about Windows.

Re:Virtualize

[Skapare]

How do you know that you're really talking to the hard drive, instead of a software emulator that makes all hard drives look the same?

First of all, this whole scheme is intended for media recording devices, such as TiVo, not for computers. The intention is to make it so that a movie recorded on the media cannot be played elsewhere, or copied by means other than what the media recording device permits.

That said, the answer to your question is this. The media recording device will interact by sending a challenge hash to the drive, which encrypts it and sends back the result. This is essentially authenticating that the drive really does have CPRM implemented, enabled, and activated. The software emulator, not having the necessary keys, won't be able to complete the challenge, and the media recording device will know it does not have CPRM media (it may still function at some level without such media, for example to record only movies without copy protection).

CPRM further is intended to prevent taking the hard drive media to a computer and copying individual files or cloning the whole drive to make an uncontrolled copy. The way this is done is via the encryption which will be different for every drive. Although the computer can use the CPRM device commands to access the read/only area, it won't have the recorder keys to make any sense of it.

Swapping an older controller onto a newer drive with the same platter configuration may not work, as the recording of the keys, and possibly of all the data on the platter space, could be done with a totally different low level format which the older controller would not understand. The best you could hope for is being able to use the older controller to low level format the platters, but that would wipe off all the keys, so all you now have in a drive w/o CPRM.

In it's current spec, CPRM is NOT something that interferes with normal computer functions, aside from reducing available capacity by 1 megabyte (get it back by low level formatting with an older controller, if you know how to) and increasing the cost by $0.17 or less. Whatever is written on the drive w/o the use of CPRM will read back the same on any computer. So you can still store "freed" movies on the drive with your BSD or Linux machine, and quite possibly even with Windows.

This copy protection mechanism requires cooperation between the recorder (subject to laws requiring implementation of copy protection logic) and the media (not subject to those laws). The recorder could be implemented to not record copy protected content on media that doesn't implement CPRM, and this would probably be it's way to be compliant with the law. Non-CPRM media can still be made, but may not work in new recorders. Manufacturers of the hard drives will probably be happy to implement this on at least some of their production to sell to the media recorder market. They may also implement it on the entire production line simply to save inventory and production scheduling costs which would likely be more than the patent royalties involved, knowing that normal computer functionality is not impaired.

What crackers will be seeking to do is extract and crack the keys, and probably implement some device that goes between a recorder and the media to completely fake the recorder into believing it has CPRM compliant media. What gets recorded may then be in the clear, or may at least be cloneable. Other potential cracks could be the ability to make a successful clone by emulating a media recorder with 2 interfaces and no copy protection. Whether crackers can crack these keys remains to be seen. Maybe the movie industry has learned and is using larger keys. OTOH, crackers have been way more resourceful than most of us have expected prior to successful cracks.

It was bound to happen

[atrowe]

There's going to be a mad rush of people trying to get their TIVO's before this copy protection scheme is adopted.

Re:It was bound to happen

[h4x0r31337]

There's going to be a mad rush of people trying to get their TIVO's before this copy protection scheme is adopted

This move seems to be a very good one for the RIAA. What this would enable them to do is finally put an end to all to music piracy. Not only would this curtail the illegal mp3 activity, it would help stop the illegal DVD and movie trading.

I'm suprised that they haven't implemented this before. Good move by the RIAA

--------

Re:My response to "Hard drive copy protection"...

[blurzero]

But, does it have to be supported by linux? I think this proposal functions below kernel level. I suppose that using ext2 might make it a little safer, vs. FAT, since FAT is so much more common.

Re:Copy Control and the Industry

[symbolic]

Looking at it another way, the consumer may very well be getting exactly what it's willing to pay for - and THAT'S the key - if consumers are too stupid to understand what they're buying, or too lazy to look for alternatives, they get what they deserve. Any consumer willing to fork out more than $10 for a CD today, for example, IS getting what they deserve. Don't like the price or the "features"? Stop buying, and watch those big bad companies take an about face.

Re:By 2101, these facts will be myths...

[sonofepson]

We do have to do something about it, but I don't think contacting our congress people will do much in the long run. Joe Public tends to view the open source community as 'hackers', and/or semi dangerous. Since there are more Joe Publics than us, the congress people will tend to listen to the silence from them and give credence to the copy protection schemes.

We need to work on convincing the management at the corporations we work for (or with) that this will impact their bottom lines. We need to stress how much more IT support will cost when ghosting is not an option (or at least all new software will be required). Then the companies will complain, and they have a much better chance of being listened to.

Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[AcidMonkey]

I feel so dirty saying this, but "Maybe now it's bad enough".

The DVD thing is pretty bad for those who use them. But DVD players are still not quite mainstream. It's a realm of geeks and the upper-middle classed. Many of them don't even care about region coding because they do their shopping down at the local store.

But start messing with TVs, and the people will care. Of course, that's assuming HDTV really takes off. We've been waiting for that to happen for years. So maybe what I'm really saying is "In 5 or 10 years, when this technology is outdated enough to be mainstream, then it will be bad enough to work up the masses".

I'm not bitter. No sir, not me.

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[fwc]

One word: TiVo (Or in my case, DishPlayer).

Until you have one of these and use it you don't realize how cool and useful these are. These solve all the problems of @(#$* VCR's. Even an idiot can figure out how to record his favorite TV program every week. Just hit the record button.

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[Rakarra]

I feel so dirty saying this, but "Maybe now it's bad enough".

I doubt it. Your average Joe Six-Pack can't even set the time on his VCR. Most likely all he uses it for is to rent movies on VHS, not record shows. That's what my Dad uses his for.

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[Schnedt Microne]

DVD is about to hit the mainstream.

I overheard a clerk at Best Buy a few weeks ago telling somebody that they'll only have one rack of VHS tapes after Christmas season.

The rest of the pre-recorded movies will be DVD.

VHS will be as rare as vinyl within two years.

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[Cederic]

Ah, but what if Joe Sixpack wants digital cable. In fact, what if he wants any cable.

Y'see, the cable companies will only broadcast digital. And they will switch to only broadcasting DFAST. So if Joe wants more choice from his TV, he's going to have to give up being able to record certain things - like PPV movies, major sporting events, etc.

Of course, they'll still let you record the soap operas, the evening news, Friends and all the other shows that people get addicted to - but probably only on a 'one copy' basis. And so most people wont even notice that they don't have the ability to make two copies - most people don't try. And they'll accept that they can't record a PPV movie, because that's a sacrifice worth making if they want cable in the first place.

So this technology can be introduced without upsetting the populace. And it will be.

Don't worry, it'll get hacked. And someone will decide that you can't go to jail for hacking it, and that if you don't mass-copy (or put onto the Internet) your personal copy then you don't owe anybody any more money. And the studios wont like it, but hey, they'll buy a couple more laws to help them out.

If it matters that much to you, then don't get cable, don't pay them the money in the first place, and don't watch any films or sporting events. You have that choice - most people just seem to forget it.

~Cederic

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[RedX]

Just today I was in Best Buy looking endlessly for any classic Clint Eastwood Western on VHS for a gift and came up empty. I even commented to someone how small and empty the once vast Best Buy VHS section was compared to the DVD section, where, of course, I was able to find three different movies that fit my criteria.

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[Striker5]

I'm tired of all those "you have the choice" posts...

It's my contention that there's something fundamentally wrong with the whole idea of television. It doesn't matter how many channels you have at any given there is still at least a 97% probability that there is nothing worth watching on. Depending on which plan you use pay TV is either a waste of money or a grotesque waste of money. Make your choice trash the box.

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[lewp]

"Don't worry, it'll get hacked. And someone will decide that you can't go to jail for hacking it, and that if you don't mass-copy (or put onto the Internet) your personal copy then you don't owe anybody any more money. And the studios wont like it, but hey, they'll buy a couple more laws to help them out."

Isn't this the kind of rational thinking that we've been hoping the courts would start using for a long time now? Personally, I'm through giving them this much credit. At this point I'm more likely to think something like the following:

It'll get hacked. A scapegoat will be found amongst the millions who wanted to see it hacked. He will be humiliated, have all his computers confiscated, and will be brought to trial. Everyone here will remind each other of what we all already know, that this is all stupid, and it won't do any good. In the meantime another breach of our privacy/rights will happen and everyone will think "oh, they'll finally realize how stupid this is." I've noticed the cycle by now, haven't you?

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[hammock]

Ok, what happens if I have an appointment at the local brothel, and I don't want to miss Buffy The Vampire Slayer?

This week I set the VCR to tape it, and I can watch it after I get home from my sexual philanthropy.

What do I do with a glorified CDROM on my entertainment center?

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[calcfreak901]

all that i use cable for is 4 upn shows (7 days, star trek voyager, freedom, and level 9, all of which come through quite well on analog broadcast) and the better content on discovery, tlc, scifi, and history channels, and, when its on, battlebots on comedy central. other than occasionally watching la femme nikita on usa, that's all i use cable for. period. if i could just get those channels, it would be much much harder for them to find stuff to give me excess charges for. as it is, half of the channels listed above aren't part of at&t basic digital cable (comedy central, history channel, and scifi). afaik, the programs listed above aren't likely to be the ones blocked from recording, so it doesn't really apply directly to me, but i still think their idea is not only unconstitutional, but morally wrong. although, corporations have no morals, do they, or else they wouldn't have formed the fascist groups we call the riaa and mpaa. i am an advocate of freedom and opposed to censorship, but even the most conservative person should see the faults in the plans of the evil empires, and this time microsoft is on the side of the good guys.

Re:Don't mess with Joe Sixpack's TV

[calcfreak901]

what about tvs that have video out jacks? could the vcr be hooked up there without interfering with the picture but still getting it recorded?

backups

[dghxc fhgxd]

so, if they make HD copy protected... will it be illegal to make aour own backups?

Re:backups

[griffjon]

Not only illegal--impossible. Even with your own OS/free OS/etc..

This is so incredibly wrong-headed, I can't even begin. It's applying the DivX DVD-pay-per-use system to hard drives. What happens when it goes under? Do we all get 'free' aaccess to our hard drives for a year before they become paperweights with all our data locked on them??

My ass. Time to start stockpiling non-compliant HDs and other devices.

What about firewire drives?

[gimp999]

Will they also have this copy-protection thingamajig on them? I figured they'd replace IDE/SCSI drives anyways. (I've got a bunch of HDs lying around. Maybe I should keep them as an investment..)

Intellectual Property Rights

[the eric conspiracy]

I think that those folks who advocate the elimination of intellectual property rights should think carefully about the results.

A lot of the impetus behind copy protection of this sort is due to the problems that companies are having with out and out piracy on the internet and in countries that do not do anything to enforce IP rights. When the legal systems fail to protect IP, companies are forced to take other measures to protect their businesses.

The unfortunate side effect is the demise of 'fair-use' in the sense of home copying and viewing.

I know that this may not be a popular view on slashdot, but if you were a creative content author, I think you might have a rather different opinion.

This sort of action (and keeping technologies secret) are in fact are a large part of why the Constitution has support for IP laws written into it. The fact that these IP laws are not sufficient to protect IP authors in this day and age is a very real threat to the free flow of information and the economic incentives to create content.

Re:Intellectual Property Rights

[fornix]

Weakness in IP laws is not a threat to the free flow of information at all. Stronger IP laws would be a threat to the free flow of information since, after all, at the heart of the very notion of "intellectual property" lies implied limitations in transmission and reproduction of information. Intellectual property is the antithesis of the free flow of information IMHO.

Re:Intellectual Property Rights

[epcraig]

Read the constitution. Not a word about any concept related to "Intellectual Property". It's not a constitutional principle.

Re:Intellectual Property Rights

[the eric conspiracy]

Read the constitution. Not a word about any concept related to "Intellectual Property". It's not a constitutional principle.

Wrong.

US Constitution Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Re:Intellectual Property Rights

[the eric conspiracy]

Weakness in IP laws is not a threat to the free flow of information at all. Stronger IP laws would be a threat to the free flow of information since, after all, at the heart of the very notion of "intellectual property" lies implied limitations in transmission and reproduction of information. Intellectual property is the antithesis of the free flow of information IMHO.

In the case of patents this is clearly not true. In order to be granted a patent the inventor MUST disclose an invention by filing a description of it with the Patent Office which then makes it available publically via a number of means. The very concept of a patent is a contract between the government and inventor in which the exchange is full disclosure of the invention in exchange for a limited time monopoly on the practice of the invention. The alternative is the trade secret where the inventor keeps the invention secret as long as he can.

In the case of copyrights the situation is somewhat different. A copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. So Einstien can write an article explaining relativity which is copyrighted - this prevents someone from copying the article, but NOT from disseminating the idea of relativity. The basic reason for copyrights dates back to problems authors had in getting paid for their work - most authors don't own printing presses - and without copyrights there is no incentive for a publisher to pay an author one cent.

The problem with weak IP laws is that without legal protection authors and inventors have to resort to other means to ensure that they get paid for their work. In the case of inventors it means keeping their inventions secret through licenses and other contracts, and not disclosing anything in publications. This is the reason that patents were instituted in the first place. Patents are a major factor in opening up the free flow of technical information.

In the case of copyrights were are clearly seeing the effects of the digital age - the failure to have enforceable copyright laws is pushing authors and publishers to use technological methods to limit copying of their work. This unfortunately will have negative effects on the use of copyrighted materials by legitimate owners.

Re:Intellectual Property Rights

[fornix]

While it is true that a patent involves disclosure, the fact remains that the information that has been patented is locked down, only to be used by the "owner" and those licensed. This kind of disclosure is hardly a bargain when you consider the loss of freedom that results.

But this will lead to a whole other argument about whether ideas and patterns should be able to be owned. I don't think it's worth the loss of freedom and privacy to allow/enforce that kind of ownership (IP). Not a good deal for society at large. And there are business models that allow intellectual workers and artists to get paid that do no require "intellectual property" and its intellectual straight jackets. Some business models (eg, novelist) would no longer be viable full time occupations, but that's OK in the grand scheme of things. Some people would still write books for free anyway. The intellectual police state we're heading towards is a step in the wrong direction and isn't jusitified as a means to prop up antiquated business models. But you'll probably disagree with this and we could go round and round forever about it.

Re:Intellectual Property Rights

[the eric conspiracy]

While it is true that a patent involves disclosure, the fact remains that the information that has been patented is locked down, only to be used by the "owner" and those licensed.

It's a bargin considering the alternative which was widely practiced before the development of the patent - no publication, non-disclosure contracts and licenses forbidding any public use.

The truth of the matter is that a good IP legal system actually promotes the free flow of information by insuring that those who create it can disclose their ideas and work without losing it.

Re:Intellectual Property Rights

[fornix]

The only area where I think patents and the resulting disclosure make sense is in pharmaceuticals. And even in that case, the duration should be shortened. In other areas, I would rather have the freedom to independently discover/implement something or reverse engineer it than be fenced off from an idea that is patented. How many programmers have the time and money required comb over all of the "disclosed" patents out there, find all infringing areas in his program, then license each of them? This situation is an unnecessary impediment to intellectual freedom, IMHO. Again, I don't consider ideas to be flowing freely if I am not allowed to apply them.

Re:Intellectual Property Rights

[the eric conspiracy]

Again, I don't consider ideas to be flowing freely if I am not allowed to apply them.

Perhaps, but history has shown quite vividly that without patent protection ideas flow much less freely than they do with patent protection. You may feel that you would rather reinvent something than be restricted in the art you might practice, but I can surely tell you that as a practicing scientist and inventor that we stand on the shoulders of those who came before - thus having to reinvent the work of others is a large impediment to the progress of technology, and a huge waste of resources. Many times in my career I have developed products by starting with documentation in the form of expired patents authored by my competitors, or literature that has been published given the freedom of patent protection of the commercial implementation of the work described - documents that would be unavailable under your proposal.

Personally I do not think that the US administers it's patent program at all well - the European system (higher requirements for originality, no software patents, provisions for protest, publication of applications etc.) seems much better to me. But questioning the need for patents at all is MUCH different than complaining about the implementation of the system.

Re:Intellectual Property Rights

[fornix]

But questioning the need for patents at all is MUCH different than complaining about the implementation of the system

Yes, I agree. I personally do not believe it makes moral or economic sense to allow anyone to "own" ideas or patterns (ie, control what others are allowed to do with ideas and patterns), but I have to be realistic about what can be achieved. And reforming the patent system would be a good first step.

I would rather have knowledge hidden from me than have it put on display in a glass case and not be able to use it. Yes, we do stand on the shoulders of those that came before. But I do not think that the absence of IP would seriously hinder the advancement of public domain knowledge in this age. And if there are occasions where we are forced to reinvent, at least the freedom to do so and the possible insights gained through alternate routes of discovery would outweigh any inconvenience incurred. And it could not be more inconvenient than the burdens imposed by IP, which grants unnatural & anticompetitive monopoly power to first filers (to the exclusion of concurrent investigators), and curbs or own freedoms and privacy in increasingly alarming ways. Intellectual freedom is perhaps more important than physical freedom, yet we seem to be going in the wrong direction in this regard here in the land of the free.

Re:Wishful thinking

[Nightlight3]

See with drugs, they are fairly easy to produce (even the toughest once require little more than a diligent chemist or botanist and a little inginuity - above the ability of the "average man" but not the average "trained chemist")

It takes only one skilful person to crack some protection to have unlimited number of copies. Unlike material contraband, which gets used up and needs to be replinished, the little capture driver and decoder can be copied by anyone, requiring no special skills, once created. The same goes for debugging/cracking tools. You can outlaw it but you can't root it out.

Couple years ago I was contracted to write a content protection software, which would allow viewing/reading (with various types of limitations, depending on payment) but not copying/printing (with graphics driver hooks even the low level screen capture was blocked). It was difficult explaining to the folks who ordered the job that there is no way to protect against a person with a debugger intent on breaking the protection. They kept imagining that some strong encryption and a long key will stop anyone. Unfortunately (for them) the plain data has to be produced at some point. The most they could get were multilayered checks for debuggers, which would slow down hackers a bit. But with enough patience, the hacker could still bypass them after several iterations.

These folks trying to hold onto their monoply on intelectual property are fighting a loosing battle, and they know it. If there was a technical solution for their problem, they wouldn't be buying politicians and laws to help them. Once you need laws to prop up your interests, you are in the same hopless situation as the folks who use laws to keep others from getting high on drugs. It doesn't work, not even in prisons.

So what ..

[Ashran]

Some kid from russia will eventually break it, and you'll be able to get cheap modded recorders from asia :p

/me can't wait till they start selling DVD's for 2$ in asia .. (like VCD's)

Re:So what ..

[Flower]

Of course, someone will break it. But, such a scheme will violate the patent(s). You won't be able to get a modded recorder in the States. Just like you couldn't develop a competing product using the RSA algorithm. Not only would it violate the DMCA but it violate the monopoly granted by patent law. An American developer helping to circumvent this protection scheme is going to totally reamed legally, in my non-laywer opinion.

Using a patented method is a damn smart idea unfortunately. Much better than that lame trade secret they used with CSS. The entertainment industry now has 20 years in which nobody can legally create a recording device without permission. That's 20 years to increase their IP porfolio(sp?)in preparation for the next protection scheme which can again be patented for another 20 years. Maybe more if the laws change.

Re:So what ..

[d0m1n10n]

Simple way to fix that: ask. Pick up the phone and ask what their vote was on the bill. Mind you DMCA was probably a rider on a totally unrelated bill, probably a disaster-relief bill or Protection Of Children And Puppies act

Just how much do you trust that congressman? There is zero evidence that a vote was really placed one way or another, and the only witnesses are the congressmen who were seated next to him/her, if they heard one way or another over their own shouting^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hvoting. This happens a lot when they vote for their own pay raises (I won't touch that one) or term limits for themselves.

Re:So what ..

[scrytch]

> Just how much do you trust that congressman?

Enough to hold them to the vote they claimed to cast when similar motions come up before congress. Congresscritters talk a lot with their fellows about how they're going to vote on bills. A pattern of baldfaced lies to the constituents on their vote wouldn't look terribly good to the ethics committee.

--

Re:All sites with Linux source code will be illega

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. Except that judges are the only thing protecting us from bad laws.

The problem is the people getting bad, corporate-bought or unconstutional laws passed, not the "rogue judges" who enforce those laws. You're absolutely right about what needs to be done, but lets say we do it-- who will protect us from the DMCA (which is "law", even if it is an illegal one) now? The George W. Bush-appointed supreme court?

Face it. Everybody is fucked now. What's happened in the DeCSS cases was just the checkered flag to the corps saying Hey, Guess what, You own the government again.

Welcome to exactly where we were 100 years ago.

Don't record bits.

[Restil]

I'm by no means an electronic or mechanical genious, but I've got a decent general knowledge and I've spent quite a bit of time tinkering around inside VCR's and the like. Given adaquate time and motivation, I could figure out how to bypass something as simple as a "do record/don't record" restriction. Its been done on the Playstation without too much difficulty, and a great many consumers were able to mod their systems.

I don't think this will ever come to pass though. VCR's are used primarily for the purpose of recording television shows and movies so they can be viewed at a later time. This is called fair use. Yes, I know that the term is losing ground quickly, but its not the only thing we have working in our favor. People actually LIKE the ability to record their TV shows and movies. They've grown accustomed to it over the years and to suddenly yank that ability away from them will NOT result in a favorable market response.

Those of you in the "industry" better take notice. Television, movies and the like.... they have a long history and are enjoyed by most of the population. But many people are and/or will find other means to entertain themselves as time goes on. Tactics such as these will NOT help draw them back to you every night, but instead will drive them further away. What is it you're trying to protect? You may have a monopoly on your "product" but if nobody wants it anymore, what good will it do you?

-Restil

That is so trivial to defeat

[Julian Morrison]

1)Bios-wipe the disk clean. Wipe it with a friggin' magnet, if it won't let ya do it through official channels.

2)Partition, install Linux

3)Put a minor hack in your FS that's designed to "escape out" any attept to embed magic disk instructions in files in a way they can't necessarily anticipate and try to trap.

Problem solved, and commercial PoliceStateWare becomes yet more unattractive for Joe Consumer next to free software.

Re:That is so trivial to defeat

[Mr. Hankey]

How 'bout a less-than-official "firmware update"? :-)

Re:That is so trivial to defeat

[Lee Cremeans]

How 'bout a less-than-official "firmware update"? :-)

That'd work. :D

-lee

New file systems

[indole]

How can copy protection possibly be incorporated in hard drives? I can see the gaggle of assembly coders pecking away nightly on the open source file system that will nullify this. What an exercise in futility!

Re:New file systems

[atrowe]

Not only that, but the supreme court has ruled that "time shift" recording is completely legal. The MPAA already got bitchslapped by the supreme court in their suit against VCR manufacturers. This is no different, it's just a digital medium as opposed to an analogue one. I highly doubt we'll ever see this scheme implemented in consumer devices.

Re:New file systems

[Schnedt Microne]

I can see putting all my largeish hard drives in a NetBSD box with Samba on fast ethernet, offloading all but the bare minimum of storage to an OS that doesn't respect 'copy protection' in hard drives.

Re:New file systems

[hrieke]

They will enable it first, and then go to court, in which they will loose. Then they'll either turn off the bit, or replace the hardware.
Now my question is, who the hell are these people, and when will Slashdot interview them?

Pissed off? Join the EFF

[Devil's Avocado]

Realize this: Joe sixpack doesn't care much about this. He only uses his computer to check his e-mail and surf the web occasionally. He doesn't make backups. He's never had a drive fail. He probably keeps every file he's ever downloaded or created in "My Documents" because he doesn't know about subdirectories. He doesn't understand the practical disasters that this "technology" will create.

He won't complain when every hard-drive at Comp-USA is encumbered. He'll just say, "give me the one with the most geebee's, and here's my $50 installation fee."

To Joe, hackers are kind of cool but probably dangerous. The DMCA is probably inconvenient, at worst, in his mind.

My point is that you can't rely on Joe Sixpack to scream if this happens. You've got to act yourself. You understand why this is an outrage. You have to stand up and speak, lest you be silenced. You have to fight this fight, not just stand on the sidelines.

How do you do that? You've got a job, your own life to lead. You don't have time to follow all of the legal challenges and industry struggles that will shape the landscape of freedoms in the digital age.

There are two ways you can help protect your freedoms:
1. Write or call your government representatives to comment on issues that matter.
2. Donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

If you care about the freedoms you're losing, giving to the EFF is the _least_ you can do. They're fighting the good fight to protect your right to access and use the information that you've bought and paid for in the way that you choose. They're fighting against the slide towards a pay-per-use culture.

So how about it? If we all just divert a _fraction_ of what we slashdotters spend on fun gadgets to the EFF we can ensure that there will still _be_ fun gadgets to hack tomorrow. Maybe we can still prevent hacking from becoming a crime.

Devil's Avocado

Today we lay to rest...

[HobophobE]

...the failed technology HDTV. It was short-lived, but the greedmongers got their hands on it, and we all know that when greedmongers have control of anything, it withers and dies.

-HobophobE

Shaking Head

[Interrobang]

The first question that occurs to me is, "Just who do they think they are?" I don't like to see people put the kibosh on Fair Use rights (or even my ability to grab something off the tube so I can watch it when I am home, or something).

I guess it all comes back to corporate control...I always knew there was more to HDTV than met the eye, and I wondered why, ever since I heard about it, alarm bells were going off in my head. Now I know.

Am I ahead of the Weltanschauung, or what?

Interrobang

Re:Shaking Head

[s.a.m]

A funny thing is that there is something in the govt called DFAST. Not sure what this implies but oh well.

haven't heard of that one...

[Danse]

I don't know of a government department called DFAST, but there is one called DFAS (Defense Finance and Accounting Service).

Re:haven't heard of that one...

[s.a.m]

heh, that's what it's called! TMA! (too many acronyms)

Personally, I think this is GREAT. (No, really)

[Hentai]

We're all hardware/firmware/software hackers, code warriors, and kernel/driver sorcerors here, right? And even if we aren't, chances are, one or two "degrees of seperation" down, we know someone who is. Now, imagine what a system like this could do on Linux:

Open-source Linux drivers for the hard drive 'copy protection' firmware which allow root [or any user with sufficient permissions] to said firmware at will. Additional file security based around tracking how often a given file has been accessed. Cryptography algorithms that utilize that same firmware to guarantee that the FBI can't just grab your machine, yank out your hard drive, and try to crack your data.

I don't know how much of this will or won't be possible; but the point is - and this is a VERY important lesson, that EVERY hacker should have wedged firmly in their heart - What Something Was "Designed" To Do Is Not Necessarily The Only Thing It Can Be Used For.

I say, if these things come out at all, we all run out to the store, buy 20 of them (in case they're designed to short-circuit if tampered with, we'll have plenty to play with until we get it right), and see just how much fun we, the Open Source community, can have with the technology.

Can you imagine what a slap-in-the-face it would be if we could turn this entire technology around on them?

Re:Lauch an anti-trust trial against MPAA/RIAA

[thogard]

Maybe someone should point out that this little scheme will help the pr0n industry which currenlty has piracy rates way higer than the record industry. Anyone want to call Rev Farwall or the head of the moral majority?

Please, for the children??

Discussion

[Kwikymart]

there is already a bit of discussion at arstechnica on the message boards

Idea for change

[Anonymous Coward]

What needs to be done is an ammendmant to the constitution, that basically says:
"No person who represents the government shall accept moneys from corporate institutions."

Of course something like this would have a snowballs chance in hell, and probably destroy the government as it is(Since nobody would want to go into government for fear of not getting Phat Lewt)

Or corporations would find a way around it by promising moneys after retirement/prior to being instated.

Re:By 2101, these facts will be myths...

[mikethegeek]

"..and how much of this Orwellian future have we created ourselves ? Just because we can do it is not a reason TO do it. Techies need to really think before implementing. If no-one wrote copy protection schemes they would be really screwed... Steve (can't find my login stuff)"

Excellent point, but keep in mind, that techies are not all of same beliefs. Sure, something like 95% of all /.'ers are against such a thing, but there are techies out there who probably think this is good.

And you can pay certain people to do anything. After all, the Germans had no poblems finding people to gas, shoot, etc, 6 MILLION innocent human beings as employees of the Nazi regeime. Stalin and Mao murdered several times that, and all were comitted by paid servants who willingly did it.

what about the hard drive makers?

[darthpenguin]

A question: what incentive do the hard drive makers have to support the "secure" hard drive format? If anything, it will hurt them because people will be worried about not being able to store "media" on them. Possibly, they may be worried, that "everyone else" will follow the new scheme, and their drives will be incompatible.

Whatever happens, it sucks for us, the consumers. And I won't even go into my complaints about possible licensing for the proprietory technology for the "branding" of the drives.
-mdek.net

Re:what about the hard drive makers?

[griffjon]

To be totally Machievaellian, they might need to pad their Q4 HD sales. What better way to do that than to release information that the next generation of HDs will be unusable?

Re:what about the hard drive makers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its likely that they can tie this in with the CSS copy protection scheme. Didnt it seem weird that they wanted complete and total control of the DVD players? Before DeCSS, they could have licensed the DVD player technology only to companies that made software dvd players that worked only on harddrives with the special copy protection scheme.

This way, if a hard drive manufacturer wanted to make a harddrive that you could watch DVD movies with, he had to conform to the new copy protection scheme. Otherwise, he wont be able to sell his wares. (Kinda like trying to sell a keyboard without the oh-so-important "windows" keys).

Apparently, there is good reason for the movie industry to want to have complete control over the CSS system.

Re:what about the hard drive makers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thought I had--that they would want to induce panic in their target market. That is, the only people buying 70GB+ drives need them for MP3's and war3z. And I guess not enough people have run out of space from the last big downloading binge yet :).

~~~

Re:what about the hard drive makers?

[bonzo]

This is a windfall for hard disk makers. According to the article, the copy protected disks will not be compatible with legacy hard disks, so entire companies will have to upgrade all hard disks at once. I'd expect the disk manufacturers to be pushing this pretty hard. They stand to make a fortune.

-bonzo

and this won't break raid?

[sporty]

or at least raid5 where every block is duplicated and distributed?

---

I have a solution.

[TheFlu]

I've got 100 acres of property that I'm not doing anything with. If any of you guys wanna get together and build an "Open"-minded hardware/software/Internet facility, I'll donate the property to the cause. It's in the middle of nowhere, but it'd give us plenty of room to grow (no light pollution either, so it could double as a decent Observatory :o)

Copy protection schemes simply don't benefit the consumer; until they do, there will be no reason for consumers to support the products that contain these schemes over products that don't. We just need to make sure that consumers do have a choice.

Would you like to pet my Penguin? The Linux Pimp

Re:I have a solution.

[mikethegeek]

"Copy protection schemes simply don't benefit the consumer; until they do, there will be no reason for consumers to support the products that contain these schemes over products that don't. We just need to make sure that consumers do have a choice."

Copy protection schemes will NEVER benefit the consumer. They exist to deny rights and use of your property (and anything that I pay money for is my property no matter what legalise that is attempted).

Sure piracy should be illegal. Pirates should be fined and prosecuted. But corporations and monopoly trade groups should not be allowed to presume guilt upon citizens. Nor should it be illegal to circumvent such attempts at presumption, which is all DeCSS and cracks of this scheme really are.

De[a]DFAST already exists. It's called cfs!

[Terri416]

As I understand it ...

The firmware in a new drive will refuse to store data if it contains a "don't store me" message. Actually, it's a single bit, but I want to generalise the technical issue to allow for more sophisticated (e.g. cryptographic or stegged) signalling.

It seems to me that if the HD firmware never sees the no-copy message because cfs (or PGPdisk) has encrypted it, then the firmware can't do anything but assume that it's okay to store. Treating all data as no-copy by default would be the only counter-measure to this, and that would defeat the whole point of a HD. I can't see any manufacturer (or OEM or anyone else) falling for that.

Do tell me if I've misunderstood the technical issues.

Re:De[a]DFAST already exists. It's called cfs!

[turbod]

This is much higher level than what this standard will propose. Its more like content providers will force their way into proprietary OSs, specifically, their drivers and their filesystems. For these code bases to be DMCA compliant (and therefore not threatened by expensive lawsuits), the kernel API's and drivers will have to be able to trigger the correct control bits to make a block "encrypted" or "hidden". Also, this API will allow the reading of the drive's serial number on read, so that (a) it can verify that you are the owner, and (b) that the upper level user application can encode that serial number into the data when its made publicly accessible.

Another feasible application once drives and other devices are united on uniform intelligent buses, is that the OS need not be aware that the device has negotiated an alert to the media provider that you have attempted to violate copyrighted material. Think I'm paranoid? Well, everything in a computer could be classifed as a system with which a user could use to violate copyrights. In that case, even something as simple as a floppy disk controller on firewire/usb bus could very well trigger a general alert to a DMCA compliant modem or ethernet device that could expedite a warning to the media provider.

TurboD

Re:De[a]DFAST already exists. It's called cfs!

[mikethegeek]

"It seems to me that if the HD firmware never sees the no-copy message because cfs (or PGPdisk) has encrypted it, then the firmware can't do anything but assume that it's okay to store. Treating all data as no-copy by default would be the only counter-measure to this, and that would defeat the whole point of a HD. I can't see any manufacturer (or OEM or anyone else) falling for that."

If true then it would seem to me that all it would take to circumvent this would be to convert the file to some other format, or even as simply as compressing it (.Zip, .tar, etc).

However, I will not buy such a hard drive. The hard drive has one job: to store and retrieve whatever data I choose to put on it. It does what I tell it to do, when I tell it to do it. Even the master drive is a slave in this respect (horrid pun).

This is as bad as someone selling me a PC that won't power on or off when I push the button, but asks Microsoft for permission first...

"consumer rights"

[e_lehman]

Nice post, but you use a disturbing phrase: consumer rights.

In the United States, citizens have rights.

Rights are not earned by consuming a requisite amount of mass-manufactured corporate pabulum.

Corporations want us to act like consumers (of course), not like citizens (of course).

Once we start meekly thinking of ourselves as "consumers" (rather than as entitled citizens) and possessed of rights on that basis (rather than because it is our goddamn country), we're already far, far down the wrong road.

Re:"consumer rights"

[Faulty Dreamer]

Sorry for taking so long, just got back from vacation.

The idea of "consumer rights" is something that is framed in law. It is seperate from citizens rights in that we are all citizens. Once you purchase something, you are trading money for a good. In trade for that money, you have the right to have that good work as promised. That right is being taken away. That is consumer rights, and it is completely different from citizens rights. The two are not equal concepts in my mind. If you begin equating the two, then yes, that is a very disturbing thought.

Balance. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Interesting balance structure going on here. . .

On the one side, we have the mind controled human slave and on the other, we have the wild & free individual.

If, for instance, bovines can be transformed from the proud and wild plains roaming beasts they once were, into the domesticated meat & milk factories they have become, then I don't think we can be at all confident that the human species might not similarly be transformed by such an endlessly striving and massively powerful force as corporate destiny. It's so clearly happening already. This whole hard drive thing is simply further evidence that we're deep into the later stages of the disease.

Perhaps corporate interests WILL eventually succeed in reducing our powers to nothing, so that all we are able to do is suck on the information they want to feed us, (while we pay them for the privilage.). But perhaps there is a chance that the vigilant hacker and the instinctive human societal drive to freely dispense and share in information. . , perhaps these forces will be enough to overcome the evil.

There's a fight on, and I don't feel as though we're winning. But it's still a little early to tell. --The unpredictable not only happens, but happens often. . .

Fantastic Lad --Looks like legacy hardware only for the Lad-Cave!

Hmph.

[crashnbur]

I don't expect such items to sell. Remember, in America, we are a democracy - "by the people, for the people." If we as a people decide that something is unjust and that we do not want it, all we have to do is stand together against it. Our government is arranged so that we are in control, though sometimes it may not seem like it (only because so many people don't believe their opinion means anything in the grand scheme of things).

However, if such a thing were to become a standard, computer sales would go down drastically, not to mention all new methods of cheating and piracy. I would never buy such a hard drive...

It is already too late

[Rubidium]

The content cabal will then just try to attack free media and such. They will say that free software is for circumventing copy and access controls and therefore is illegal under the DMCA. Remember that the judges are very unlikely to overturn the DMCA - they've already been bought. Overall, the current system is completely screwed; the only way to really fix it at this point is to destroy it (literally). The politicians and judges have all been bought, and the other side has armies of lawyers at their disposal. It appears that the only way out may be bombing facilities, torching houses, and hauling the executives and lawyers at the base of this along with all the whoring politicians and judges before the wall. This would be quite bloody and violent - but if it is the only way out then it shall be.

You mean DIVX, not DivX

[iotaborg]

.....yes, DIVX=Cicruit City's failed project, DivX is that new codec you hear about, you know, about the movies...

*Twitch*

[Legion303]

This is the straw that broke the camel's back. Fuck the "entertainment" industry--from now on, I'm going to do everything I can to help circumvent this kind of shit, and to distribute circumvention tools.

Remember when the people owned media?

-Legion

Re:*Twitch*

[GuNgA-DiN]

Ever heard Jello Biafra talk about the media? He said -

"Don't hate the media... become the media"

Maybe this is what is will take. When we all get so sick of the AOL/Microsoft/Sony/IBM/RIAA/MPAA controlled media -- maybe we will form our own form of media?

Re:As long as...

[DarkProphet]

I agree your logic concerning copyright,but... The media is forcing us into a downward spiral. DVD offers the best quality in terms of video media, however, I am forced into buying a DVD player (the only legal DVD player is one licensed by the MPAA).

But,you know, if I can manage to figure out how to build my own DVD player (which would obviously not be MPAA-sanctioned), you better believe I should have the right to use it.

Unfortunately, the US government is far too shortsighted to see what they are doing to us citizens. I would consider building my own DVD player to show that I have some ingenuity and resourcefulness (if not talent). To avoid breaking the law, I can't do much more than just think about building one. So what we learn here is that doing-it-yourself is no longer an option, and there is absolutely no incentive to create, invent, or innovate.

Let the rest of the world rejoice! The United States is heading for an irrevocable decline, its citizens will all become (more) complacent, apathetic and lazy... not because its our nature, but because there are strict laws against being otherwise. Wake up people, YOUR representatives are slitting your throat and raking in the cash. The government is quite literally selling our freedom and liberty to the highest bidder.

I just hope that when the US buckles under its own weight, the country that invades us provides us with a benevolent dictatorship instead of a tyrannical one.

And, as an afterthought, the US government is not THAT old, in the greater scheme of things. Should we be so sure it knows what its doing?

Great News for Open Source

[bsdbigot]

Now draws near the time when the world will truly see the power of the open source community. The entertainment and hardware industries have issued their ultimatum: pay us or be deprived of content and performance. Allowing these Nazis to have control over our purchased equipment is tantamount to martial law.

We have a unique opportunity as a worldwide community to bend these corporations to our will. Do not purchase any hardware that abides by these new standards. We can at the very least send these copy protections the way of the Pentium serial numbers, if not prevent them from being manufactured at all.

Re:All sites with Linux source code will be illega

[Weezul]

Yes, judges should not make new laws, but they need to be able to strike down laws based on contradictions with existing laws which were not explicitly removed when the new law was passed. This is significantly more power then just striking down laws based on constitutional grounds.

Actually, our criminal justice system is totally fucked because judges do not take more power from the executive branch. The courts should have struck down mandatory minimum sentences for violating seperation of powers (note: that is a big leap, but it's the only thing which would have saved us from having laws with mandatory minimum sentences). Anyway, th point of the Judicial branch is to provide a more "academic" side to the government. Yes, academics screw up frequently, especially when their decission have political impact like judges, but I trust (almost) any judge more then I trust (almost) any FBI/DEA officer. It's the executive branch who are the real problems since it is the executive branches power which really gets magnified by all the government agencies which have been created.

Jeff

My response to "Hard drive copy protection"...

[fatboy]

Fuckem' , it won't be supported by Linux anyway.
This along with UCITA just makes Free Software look that much better in the marketplace.

How fast can you say

[bfree]

DeDFAST

Hard drives...

[Yu Suzuki]

How can this be enforced? There's no "hard drive coalition" like the RIAA or MPAA. Anyone who wants to make a hard drive can -- and plenty of manufacturers do. Sure, the big ones will no doubt bow to the entertainment indus^H^H^H^H^Hcabal's demanads, but just as smaller DVD player manufacturers don't include regional coding, smaller hard driver manufacturers probably won't include any copy protection schemes. And there isn't yet a law that can force people to purchase a disabled hard drive; that would be an illegal restraint of free trade.

When people find that their mainstream hard drivers don't have the functionality they want, they'll simply buy hard drivers from smaller manufacturers. No big surprise there -- we already saw the same thing happen to Circuit City's ill-fated TiVo. I don't see how this situation merits such doomsday predictions; it might be inconvenient, but people aren't stupid. They know what to buy, and it won't be copy protected hard drives.

Remember, ultimately, companies are dependent on your dollar to keep them in business. Don't like their products? Don't buy them, and watch everything start to change.

Yu Suzuki

Re:Hard drives...

[jidar]

"One word: Celeron Its probably the worst processor on the market because it lacks cache, but it sells because you can get a 500Mhz processor for the equivalent in price of a 200Mhz PII (even though the PII will perform better)."

This is so much bullshit. You must not pay any attention to the hardware scene at -all- if you believe that.

Here are some good places for you to go and get informed: www.sharkyextreme.com www.hardocp.com www.anandtech.com www.tomshardware.com www.firingsquad.com

Note that celerons have cache these days, only the first few models didn't and those didn't sell well. Every celeron since the slot1 300mhz version has had 128k of cache or more, it makes all of the difference.

Intel has been telling everyone that the celerons are low performance chips so that they don't eat into their p3 market share, but it isn't true. Dollar for Dollar the celerons outperform the p3's by miles. Of course it doesn't hold a candle to the price/performance found in a T-Bird or Duron, but that's another thread...

It's ironic that you are talking about the consumer being stupid and believing advertisers and you fell for just that exact thing yourself.
heh.. yes, very ironic.

Re:Hard drives...

[Cryte]

>Smaller players will be crushed by the bigger >players due to the revenue differential.

I'm sorry, I disagree. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm willing to pay a premium for a non-infested drive... in some cases as much as twice as much.....

Re:Hard drives...

[fireboy1919]

"but people aren't stupid. They know what to buy" One word: Celeron Its probably the worst processor on the market because it lacks cache, but it sells because you can get a 500Mhz processor for the equivalent in price of a 200Mhz PII (even though the PII will perform better).

People really know what to buy, and aren't stupid? Perhaps this is so, but they can sure be fooled easily.

I wonder how many people where fooled by the what stores referred to as an "upgrade" that was put into the I-openers to make them unhackable, or how many will be fooled by a similar "improvement" in the DVD players.

Persons are smart. People are stupid. Still, this offers only risk to hard drive manufacturers. They can only lose business. This will fade unless lawmakers get involved in the regulation of hard drive manufacture and import.

Can you imagine that? The underworld would gain a new group of players - hard drive smugglers. I bet the drug dogs wouldn't be able to find that! I doubt its going to happen, though

Re:Hard drives...

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't be able to run the software or view the data that is protected when using this encryption. So, sure, you can buy a non-encrypted hard drive but you won't be able to use lots of stuff on it :(

Re:Hard drives...

[ckedge]

> but you won't be able to use lots of stuff on it :(

Phhhhttt!!! Then we'll build our own damn stuff to use on it. Leave those sorry SOBs behind.

I was just thinking to myself, "All I really need to quit watching TV and going to movies is a good reason. This would be a damn good reason."

Look at the DVD players

[athmanb]

The first question every customer (especially those in europe) asks when buying a DVD player is "Is is codefree?"
Everyone knows there's some stupid protection in some players that make it refuse to play US movie releases, and noone likes that.
The result: Even ppl who understand absolutely no english and won't ever in their life buy a region 1 DVD _insist_ on codefree players, just because they don't want to spend some 200$ on lobotomized hifi-equipment.

One thing is for sure: If IBM, Maxtor, WD and whoever else is going to implement this standard, customers will specifically ask for nonprotected harddisks, just like (insert Taiwan startup company name) produces, even though they probably are never going to pirate any movies.
--------------------------------------

Re:Look at the DVD players

[Dwonis]

Sadly, not here in the US or Canada. "Everything" is already here, so "nobody" cares.
--------
Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.

Re:Nothin' to it.

[Weezul]

You are absolutly correct, but I would like to clerify a few points you made, i.e. there are very few intelegent post in this discussion, so I'm gona take a min. to improve on one of the few intelegent ones I've found.

Clearly, the second drive attack can be defeated by encrypting the connection between the software and the drive, so that even the OS can not read the data. The above poster is discussing a man in the middle attack, i.e. the OS or hardware pretends to be the drive to the software and the software to the drive, the OS can answer all the challenges correctly since it can just make the identical chalenge to guy with the correct responce. The only difficult part is telling the OS how to find the challenges. This is why the protocoll/algorithm would need to be secret. Now, the Samba guys can tell you that protocoll are *significantly* easier to crack then encryption keys, so we should have no trouble breaking this.

Actually, an encrypted channel between the drive and the software could really be a boon for privacy advocates, so I doubt the NSA/FBI would ever allow the RIAA/MPAA to include it in hard drives. Specifically, it could mean that the NSA/FBI would need to replace your operating system to get the same man-in-the-middle attack, i.e. no lissening to random EM radiation emmited by the drive wires.

Jeff

Re:Gimme a little credit, here!

[Roland Walter Dutton]

Join the club. I posted this - oh it must have been just after 5am GMT on the 21st. The total lack of credit is nice, but the real master's touch came on Friday morning, when the stunning revelation that Serial ATA will start at 150MB/s got a whole entry, and the fact that it will also happen to include hardware-level copy protection went entirely unmentioned.

Two points.

[Rakarra]

• Don't CDs have a "copyright" no-duplicate bit? I know my cdda ripper lets me override it. Just how useful has that copyright bit been?
• I've seen on a few HDTV advocacy sites which claim that converter boxes will be available allowing you to view HDTV broadcasts on regular TV/VCRs. Is this vaporware, or is there anything to this, and if so, wouldn't this allow you to use your VCRs with HDTV? (Albeit in a lower-quality format)

Copy Control and the Industry

[hakker]

This is getting really scary. Everyone seems aligned against the consumer. Governments, the Music and Movie industries, the equipment manufacturers, and right wing activists. What's even more scary is that there isn't a whole lot we can do about it besides complain and even boycot certain devices or industries, but most of us are not hardcore enough to give up the things we've come to enjoy everyday. Also not good is that fact that there are more people abusing the system who are angry about Copy Control than their are legitimate complaints from people who Copy goods resonably or even leagally (ie Ripping their own CD's to MP3 or ogg vorbis or something). I don't know what to do about it. But that's my $0.02.

Re:All sites with Linux source code will be illega

[mikethegeek]

"Heh. Except that judges are the only thing protecting us from bad laws.
The problem is the people getting bad, corporate-bought or unconstutional laws passed, not the "rogue judges" who enforce those laws. You're absolutely right about what needs to be done, but lets say we do it-- who will protect us from the DMCA (which is "law", even if it is an illegal one) now? The George W. Bush-appointed supreme court?"

Kaplan and other judges who refuse to obey the law need to be accountable. The DMCA is clearly illegal based on previous precedent, AND the Constitution (which trumps ANY statutory law). Now only did he find in favor of the DMCA, he EXTENDED it (made more new bad law) by putting a gag order on people's speech, AND making hyperlinks illegal.

ALL government, not just judges need to be reigned in. You can vote out congressmen and presidents, but Federal judges are unelected and serve for life. Therefore, their power should be the MOST limited of the three branches. Their sole role should be in striking down bad laws where it conflicts with the Constitution.

Where's the Problem

[senfman]

The fact about Hollywood-approved copy protections is: they don't work
The interesting thing about this is, how is hollywood going to makre sure that no hacker will release the 'Source' of this protection.
I think there's nothing hollywood could do.

Re:Where's the Problem

[myster0n]

It's so easy to break Hollywood-approved copy protections : just type OVERRIDE at the prompt (if I can believe Hollywood propaganda).

Not just that...

[slackergod]

technically, it's not "illegal",
just "impossible" w/o breaking the DMCA.
It's like someone saying "we can't
legally stop you from reading a book,
but oh, by the way, we've padlocked
all of them."
(i know, the analogie's not that good...
i'm tired).

worse than this though,
something no one seems to have mentioned:
if these new hd's are incompatible
with the old ones, even over a network,
even with "normal" files,
does that mean floppies will have to
be re-done also?
so how does that work?
the way I see it,
either this would make all the old
floppies I have useless....
or they rig something where the keys
are stored on disk...
but that's stupid, as ANYONE
could easily grab them.

Eitherway, the emperor only have clothes
once there are _no_ children around
to say otherwise.
But since there are children now,
and they can't kill all of them...
I don't see how they can truly
protect this datastream,
no matter how scrambled it is.

-Slackergod

Welcome to 1974...

[Dwonis]

... and you know the state of the world in 10 years.
--------
Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.

Open Source on 'Protected' HD's - I think not!

[Bonker]

What a crock of shit!

If 'the industry' isn't willing to give the encryption keys necessary to decode DeCSS to Open Source programmers so that they can decode data protected on a DVD, then they *sure* as hell aren't going to give the keys for this kind of 'protection' to OS hackers so that they can build support for them in their kernels and programs. If they did, another Jon Johansen would just build a DePHD program or device driver to rip hard drives.

This will happen anyway once the 'encryption' is broken, but 'Industry Standard' harddrives won't thrive when there is a market for 'non-standard' and older harddrives. I can get a 20g 7200 Western Dig for about $120. I better stock up and get a few IDE controllers.

Re:Virtualize

[Weezul]

Actually, the TiVo runs Linux, so the Cracker could just implement a man-in-the-middle attack with a kernel modification. Now, the MPAA may modify the TiVo kernel with proprietary code, but there are GPL protections here AND there are lots of people who know the Linux kernel enough to understand changes (and thus the protocol for the challenges). Regardless, the end result is a man-in-the-middle attack which NO ONE can stop. This means it will be *easy* to make Linux copy your copy protected data. I would expect a hack for the new TiVo to be out before all the old TiVo's are sold out. Actually, getting the keys out may be a little more work, but it can still be done.

Jeff

BTW> There is always the free TiVo project too.

Here's an application...

[Polo]

Right now, Tivo and other companies make hard-disk
"vcr's" have onboard hard disk drives used to
copy content off the air or off satellites.

Right now, it's quite easy to find instructions
on the net to upgrade the hard disks for more capacity.

I can see where they could have copy-protected
drives that could only be replaced/removed
by them. This would help "save" the movies from
"escaping" onto the big bad internet.

It would have the side effect of enforcing
prices (you only get the big drive if you pay
$599 for "our special drive", which costs $149
at Fry's).

which would suck.

Re:I really don't understand it..

[buss_error]

I really don't understand this purposal. Are they that naive? it will be hacked within 1 week and there will be Windows/Linux/other-os's patches/firmwares/drivers that will bypass this stupid copy-protection.

I refer you to DMCA. It makes anything to bypass access control a crime to have. Get it? "You can't run LINUX! It's a CRACKER/HACKER tool! Go to jail. BAD computer user. BAD."

Orrin Hatch, while not my favorite pol, does have a clue about fair use. I urge everyone to e-mail him if you happen to live in the land of the (access) fee.

Where are the controllers?

[atrus]

The Register article only mentioned the hard drives themselves - nothing about the hard disk controllers. If I read it right, the extensions placed into the ATA protocol are designed so only autorized data can be stored and forwarded - and it sounds like something will have to decrypt it somewhere, the question is where? Whats next, encrypted memory controllers (Salesperson: sure, memory throughput is down but you'll love the security features.
Intelligent consumer: How slow?
Salesperson: (sheepish) Umm...10Kb/s )
:)

So, these drives will only work with new controllers, and considering the technology to use this feature is proprietary, some major players won't jump in (VIA amoung others).

This whole encryption thing sounds like it belongs in the filesystem, NOT the access protocol. What about backwards compatibility? Throughput? There are too many problems with this whole proposal. Yes, its very scary. Its evil. It should be taken outside and shot. We should have hard disk bon-fires (get those welding torches!) if it passes. Will it pass? If the ANSI commitee has any brains - it won't. But get the word out - this is bad.

Re:We need Legislation

[epcraig]

If we had the votes, Nader would be president-elect.

Re:Virtualize

[drinkypoo]

In it's current spec, CPRM is NOT something that interferes with normal computer functions, aside from reducing available capacity by 1 megabyte (get it back by low level formatting with an older controller, if you know how to) and increasing the cost by $0.17 or less.

The days when you could use an older controller are, for the most part, gone. Unless you mean host adapter, or something. The thing is, these drives are going to work on older host adapters, so all you have between this scheme working and not working on a PC is the driver. Drivers will have to be changed to completely ignore CPRM.

Of course, as the article says:

Three possible paths lie ahead. CPRM may be bounced out of the T.x committees. Or manufacturers may choose not to implement it, and opt for an incomplete ATA or SCSI specification. This is deemed unlikely. Or thirdly, manufacturers may choose to implement the new command set, but not activate it.

I don't know why the manufacturers opting for an "incomplete" spec is supposed to be unlikely. Consumers won't want this "feature" included in the drives they buy for their computers, if they are granted just a little bit of education from us clueful types. However, I think the third solution sounds most reasonable/likely.

As it is, I haven't heard that anyone has managed to copy the MPEG 2 stream off a Tivo's disk onto something else and then play it somewhere else, convert it to DivX, or what have you. Has anyone successfully done this now?

Which year was the VCR court case taken place?

[Taco Cowboy]

May I know, which year was that when the MPAA took their case to the Supreme Court against the VCR manufacturers?

You gotta remember that the time may have changed - as witnessed the willingness of the Justices of the Supreme Court to intervene in the Bush vs.Gore presidential bid and there lies a GREAT possibilities that the Supreme Court of today may have VERY DIFFERENT thought on many matters.

Lest we forget, many recent Justice appointed to the Supreme Court are not necessarily of the Top Quality kind, and when the "peer-level" of the Supreme Court Justices is lowered, who know what kind of decision they will make on many other cases.

I am not watching the US Supreme Court close enough to render the truthfulness or falsity of my own thesis, they're all based on my personal hunch, that's all.

Re:And another thing...

[ocie]

I like the term collusion rather than participation. Just like any oligopoly, if one party is missing, it loses its power.

Re:You really thought HDTV was for *your* benefit?

[RiffRafff]

It grieves me just how accurate your post probably is...

:-/

[Dwonis]

Slashdotters are probably more intelligent on
average than the general populace</I>

<P>Yeah... sure...

--------
Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.

Re:As long as...

[Masem]

I realize that as this article states, there will be NO way to record it. And thus if a court heard a case that the consumers priveledge to time-shift was taken away by this, the cable industry would be screwed. Instead, I'm suggesting the alternative means that if the cable industry was smart, they would work on implementing so that EVERY show could be time-shift, just preventing some from being stored permanently.

Re:The harder you tighten your grip, Tarkin...

[peterwayner]

Sorry for the confusion.

Re:The harder you tighten your grip, Tarkin...

[Assistant Madman]

so, the original poster writes a well thought out, informative post but gets a minor detail wrong. You then take the time to pounce on this minor detail with all of your intellectual might. Hmmm....who really is the dumbass in that situation.

Usually, I follow 'if you can't say something nice...' but the large amount of rude, ignorant bastards on slashdot these days disheartens and disgusts me (I'm sure I'm not alone).

FOAD, HAND

Re:As long as...

[whistler-z]

According to the article: "HDTV-compatible recorders will refuse to tape movies, shows and sports events that have a 'don't copy' bit set."

What you're suggesting is completely contrary to what that quote says. Regardless of the ability to transfer the data from one device to another, this says you will never be able to record the signal to the device in the first place. This makes no mention of "internal medium" vs. removeable, instead the device just will not record.

Re:Wishful thinking

[Nightlight3]

would be outlawed

So are speeding, underage drinking and smoking, drugs,... Authorities can't even stop the drug use in prisons. And no matter how bought the politicians are, they know there is a limit how far one can push the vast masses around before the backlash.

Guess I'd better...

[sconeu]

... go out and buy that stack of 60 and 70 Gig drives now...

Re:Guess I'd better...

[superyooser]

Now you know how gun rights supporters feel. CPRM reminds me of the government's push for trigger locks on guns. Gun owners embarked on huge firearm buying sprees and the NRA's membership went through the roof.

In the name of protection, legal products are again being crippled with invasive and cumbersome "features". This is an intrusion of property rights, because it prevents you from controlling what you have paid for and own. The right to private property is fundamental to capitalism and democracy.

The 14th Amendment prevents states from "depriv[ing] any person of life, liberty, or property." Why should businesses be allowed to inflict this deprivation of rights?

It just doesn't make any sense at all.

[Pig Hogger]

It just doesn't make any sense at all.

How do you tag files as being copiable/non-copiable without patching the OS?

Like if *ALL* OS manufacturers will patch their OSes for that. Like if *ALL* OS manufacturers will patch their OSes for that in countries that are rabid supporter of "fair use" (i look in the general direction of Deutshland).

This means that you have to seed the data with a particular bit pattern that would be recognized as a go/nogo signal by the drive, as the data is broken up in OS-sized sectors.

And what if you have a "driver" that intercepts those particular bit patterns and turns it in a go signal all the time?

This must be a troll or a hoax of a higher order, I just can't believe how this could be implemented worldwide. Maybe in the US, but certainly not worldwide.

--
Game over, 2000!

changes in TV..?

[maarten_delft]

Compare a TV from 15 years ago with one of today and you will notice the wider screen (which isn't useful because it can't be used properly) and perhaps a greater sharpness, but that's all. There is no need to innovate so there isn't any real innovation.

Perhaps that's because the present day system suffices for most people. (with the 4-6 hour daily usage people are not unhappy with the somwhat lacking image quality)

And PAL has 800 or so scan lines, which turns out favourably compared to standard DVD's.

Repeat after me: Hooooleee Shitttttt!!!!

[crovira]

This is about to throw RAID, backup and encryption software into a cocked hat along with OS support for these drives.

M$ now has every other OS by the short and curlies? You can't reverse engineer it. That's now illegal. All M$ have to do is pay the manufacturers to NOT write drivers for any other OSs and they competition is dead.

Sun and Solaris? Never heard of 'em!
Apple OS X, BSD? Hunh?
All those x86 machines running Linux software? Wha..?

And this is to protect ephemera. Face it, is anything as dead as "Rugrats, the movie" or "Tarzan and the Green Godess"?

But you'll be carrying a few megs of crap on your hard drive to ensure that the wrong solution is applied to protecting it, from you. Oh yeah... And your OS better be able to decrypt it.

The next millenium is starting off really lousy.
Somebody shoot me.

They should call it ADFAST

[Proud Geek]

Then we could call the decoder DeADFAST. Because that's what it's going to be.

Still, I wish they wouldn't do this. Sure, we geeks can get around it pretty easily, but what about all the other people in the world?

Copy Protection Galore

[vmarkwart]

Would this make it impossible for the government to determine the content of hard disks?

I really don't understand it..

[HeUnique]

I really don't understand how can they make it work at all..

by blocking *.mp3 to be copied? so we'll call it *.mpeg3. by not letting you copy DivX movies? rename it. These format doesn't add some "copy protections" on the files...

What else? Windows Media files? bullshit. I can immitate today a "windows player" which is actually a script file that pulls the data and identify itself as a WMA player. It's not that hard..

I really don't understand this purposal. Are they that naive? it will be hacked within 1 week and there will be Windows/Linux/other-os's patches/firmwares/drivers that will bypass this stupid copy-protection.

Then why bother?

They tried it in the 80's (copy protection on 5.25" floppies), in the 90's (remember Dongles?) and it was hacked all over and appeared then on BBS's, and now with the net it will take much shorter time - all you need is 1 or 2 15 years old bored kid and he'll hack it...

lame corps.. go figure

Entertainment... sheesh...

[Ender Ryan]

Why does the entertainment industry like to rape it's own loyal customers so much? It is absolutely incredible the shit we have to put up with these days. Why can't we decide when/how we view products that we legally purchase?

Here's the funny thing... The fact that it's such a pain in the ass makes pirating stuff more worth the time. DVDs for example, I can't play them in Linux, however, I CAN play DivX movies in Linux... If I'm going to have to pirate it to use it how I want, why is it worth the money to buy it in the first place?

It will be the same with SDMI. It's not going to allow me the freedom to use it how I want, so I will instead download pirated mp3s and use those.

But, as always, if you can see it/hear it, you can copy it. Fuck them. They use the legal system to force us to support them(blank media), well FUCK THEM! Fight back, don't play the game.

Mount through loopback, use XOR

[Halo-]

Does it sound plausible that if the drive has to find the copy bit, that simply "pre-encryption" of the input stream will FUBAR the algo? Plus, with my ph3arsome DVD style XOR encryption, they'll never prove I have all those stolen Backstreet Boy's CD's on my harddrive

Re:ATA drives

[Detritus]

Almost no hard drives, IDE or SCSI, do a true low level fomat these days. This is due to the way that servo information is embedded in each track on the disk. You need a special piece of equipment to do a true low level format.

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[cameleon]

So what you're saying is that software piracy is GOOD for the large players whose software is pirated? That if software could not be pirated, people would start using free alternatives, I can see, although I doubt it will happen on a large scale. But nobody was making any money off these pirated copies. Businesses and schools (universities) will still buy expensive large scale licenses, and so will middle-class families. I cannot see how this will cost MS any money...

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[Malcontent]

Most computers come with windows preinstalled but not office pre-installed.

What's in it for the Disk manufacturers?

[jcr]

I just don't see where the benefit is to the Maxtors, Quantums and IBMs of the world in going along with this hare-brained scheme to end the interchangeability of disk drive.

Are they going to get a cut of RIAA royalties in exchange for rendering their products unuseable?

Seems to me that this is a time for whatever storage industry groups exist to set aside a few mil to litigate against the music and film industry.

Let's not forget the Betamax case, where the court basically told the film industry that they couldn't outlaw VCRs.

Remind me, if I ever meet Jack Valenti, to punch him out.

-jcr

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[Malcontent]

They sell a lot but for every one they sell there are 10 pirated copies. A minute percentage of the people in china, africa, middle east, south america etc actually pay for windows or office. The same with most home users. If all of a sudden these people cound not pirate their software most would switch to something else. That would be great! Almost overnight the market share of smartsuite, word perfect office and staroffice would skyrocket. MS would have to reply by either eliminating copy protection and encouraging people to pirate their own software rather then to use the competition or drop the price of office to nothing (or next to nothing).
Either way another cash cow for MS gone! It would be a better world because people would not be stealing anymore and ms would not be gauging the consumers anymore.

Foolish foolish content producers!

[xigxag]

What the movie studios and record companies fail to understand is that these efforts to get us to cough up more for their IP will fail. Individuals have only a limited amount of money and a limited amount of time to spend on non-essential items. If your media budget for the year is $5000 and 1000 hours/yr., then the media companies will find themselves unable to squeeze you for any more cash or time once you reach this plateau. So if they find a way to charge you up the wazoo for time-shifted programs, you will find a way to shift your purchases away from other items, maybe buying fewer CDs or DVDs. This means, in the end, less profit for the content producers because they wind up with the same revenue, yet they have to pay additional costs for all these encryption schemes. And let's not forget DIVX. It is possible to alienate the public's goodwill so much that people will refuse to accept your new technology, no matter how inexpensive it is. After all, what's to stop manufacturers from reverting back to the current ATA standard?

Corporate perspective

[Sinsterian]

I don't think many "consumers" will be up in arms against this kind of thing. They don't think twice when they are told that they are denied access to data on their own machine. (Try deleting certain cookies files under windows 95)

Now the corporate market is another question. I am not talking about desktops but small-scale (intel) server roleouts. In another life, I worked for a company that had a couple thousand rackmounts. They did the following:

1.They quite often used NFS, rcp, ghost and just about anything else they could to keep these things running.

2.To make matters worse, many of these machines would pull info from RS6000/Sun/HP/SGI machines.

3. Some rackmounts used strifing or mirroring.

I can guarantee that the people that run things at this place won't even pay attention until problems crop up. That's when things will get interesting.

Merry Christmass!!!

So we'll adapt our home pcs

[dmaxwell]

So take a disposable Celeron box and stuff in video capture hardware and an appropriate load of software. Techies can roll their own Tivo if push comes to shove.

Say how is this for a workaround? Build a board to extract the video directly from the circuit board that plugs into the back of the tube. It shouldn't be a big deal to get blanking, sync, luma, RGB and friends. Add some buffering circuitry and record the result with hardware that has zero respect for embedded watermarks or control bits that escape this process. If they really want to get nasty and Gloopstick every bit of electronics they can find in the monitor then we can counter this as well.

How difficult would it be to extract this information from the monitor itself? I think a really good DSP engineer might be able to sync up a camera pointed right at a monitor. Sure the video quality will suffer a little but if the camera scanning and blanking can be synced up to the monitor's scanning and blanking then we have them nailed.....no matter what they do.

Problem is that the 15 year old will be arrested

[crovira]

This won't stop the professional bootleggers who get their copies even before the studio (I've seen bootleg daylies!)

Its going to screw that bored 15 year old though. Every drive will carry several tracks full of encryption code (including who owns it and what's on it?) Catching the kid may be as simple as a simple database lookup.

ATA drives

[The Mgt]

I note that only ATA drives are mentioned. SCSI would seem to have been overlooked for the moment.

Re:ATA drives

[Cryte]

yup. most of the adaptec 29XX and 39XX series to be precise...

Re:ATA drives

[mabinogi]

The article does mention SCSI a little further down, under 'How it Works'

Today, CPRM is implemented on DVD and removable SD disks. But the SCSI and ATA/ATAPI proposals incorporate an extension of the scheme to allow the encryption to be used on hard drives, in addition to removable drives and ATAPI devices such as CD-ROMs and DVD drives.

Re:ATA drives

[digitalmind]

I assume that would be because in about 99% of scsi adapter cards, there is a bios function to low-level format the drives. Assuming that the key is actually on the drive itself (not a disk on chip of sorts), it would be easily formatted at the lowest level and removed. However should a technology like this be implemented, the hard drive would probably sprout legs and run down to the local police station to bust your ass for hard disk abuse.



Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net

Perhaps it is time for another "modem tax" alert?

[anwyn]

Perhaps an alert should be prepared that describes the negative effects of this CPRM in the ATA standard proposed by CTIS. The alert could describe in a stark way the negative effects of the proposal on end users. It could include the email addresses, fax numbers, and phone numbers of decision makers at the various hard drive manufactures. It could suggest that these people be contacted telling them that drives implementeding the proposal for hard drive sabotage are objected to, and will not be purchased! What do other people think?

Hardly!

[browser_war_pow]

The RIAA/MPAA would be hard pressed to argue that an entire operating system is a circumvention device. That would be political suicide for them because they would lose any popular support they have. The real solution is just to ban copy protection schemes. You don't need them to "protect" copyrighted materials, that's why we have copyright laws!!!

Re:Hardly!

[acb]

The RIAA/MPAA would be hard pressed to argue that an entire operating system is a circumvention device. That would be political suicide for them because they would lose any popular support they have.

...from the penguinhead geeks who already have a rather low opinion of them, and make up 0.1% of the population. The general public, knowing that the PC2002 or whatever spec, along with the latest and greatest version of Windows, turns their computer into a kick-arse entertainment system, won't see the problem with that.

Though outlawing Linux is unlikely to be upheld; we could perhaps see the GPL overruled and binary-only "trusted Linux" becoming the standard, with source code to be available only to certified security professionals.

Some points:

[CapeDoryBob]

It doesn't mattter if geeks develop workarounds, as long as they are not accessible by the mass of users, and with DMCA, it will be illegal to mass-produce workarounds. As long as it is **illegal** to produce workarounds the MPAA has won, because the moment the work-around becomes profitable on a mass level, they'll sue the profit out of it. What they really want to do is remove the profit from it - that's all. :-} The overall goal of the MPAA et al is to institute a pay per view model. This is implicit in the nature of our data networks where data is directed from node to node, not broadcasted. And why not-if you want to see a movie, you go to a theater and pay X$. If you want to read a newspaper, you buy one, and throw it out later. How is that immoral? After dateX, importation of drives without the protection will become illegal. Look at the cellphone/scanner situation. Sure, some people smuggle in unblocked scanners, but over time, most of the scanners around will be compliant. As long as they prevent a mass phenomenon from occurring, it doesn't matter what geeks do. The MPAA et. al are playing a different game. The way to defeat this may be to concentrate on the way it will increase costs and complexity for the computer hardware industry. However, as the computer and entertainment industries merge, hardware decisions at the corporate level will be driven by the desire to secure intellectual property. i.e. design decisions in Netscape 10, (if not v7) will be driven by AOL-TW's desire to protect its Looney-Tunes. Just think of the vast new market for authentication servers! Think of the bandwith they'll soak up! - By the way, if you plan to sell into that market, Im sure that you realize that that the purchasers of the servers would find it ... ahem.... difficult to justify the decision if your PC division isn't delivering "supportive" hardware to the mass market.

Unwritable section of the HDD?

[Mr. Flibble]

From the register article it mentions that one meg of the hard drive (similar to the MBR?) that is not "normally" user accesable would contain the encryption ID and keys. I don't know about the rest of the people out there, but if this takes hold I wonder how long it is before a hack comes along that disables this "feature". I am not talking about disabling this "feature" for the purposes of pirating software/movies/MP3's I am reffering to the fact that these drives won't be compatible with current non-protected drives.

Are people going to buy these things? Hell, even Microsoft opposes the idea (and I don't even want to think about the tech-support issues involved).

The Register always has interesting information but I will believe that the industry is going this way when I see it. And if it does happen, a hack is not far behind.

Re:Unwritable section of the HDD?

[aozilla]

Good thing I have my FreeBSD drive in dangerously dedicated mode, and don't use any of those standard partitioning mechanisms.

80GB EIDE drives...

[LocalH]

...on Pricewatch for $259... load up now while you can.
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT

What the F*#*!!

[Faulty Dreamer]

At what point did consumer rights just completely disappear? What happened to the idea that you try to please your customer? Where did that mentallity disappear to?

I do not understand how this kind of garbage keeps happening. We used to have, under "fair use", the right to "time-shift" any publicly accessible media. Television and radio shows, broadcast movies and sporting events were allowed to be recorded by law. So, how do the media companies propose to remove the capabilities that the legal systems says are perfectly allowable? By introducing a "no record bit" in the signal. These proposals (well, they are more than proposals now aren't they? But I refuse to call them "standards") are seriously just another attempt to gather more money.

But the thing that the industries involved here don't understand is that they are only going to hurt themselves in the end. Now, all of the people that have to work during their favorite shows will not only not be able to record those shows to watch them later, but they won't be able to watch them at all. How does that improve viewership of the shows that these companies claim are so important to their livelihood? If we have an evening where we are busy and we can't watch our favorite show, we can't watch that show at all. Forget about recording it because the industry says that's piracy. Be a good little consumer and sit in front of your TV when we tell you to. Well, what if we have lives beyond our television, but we still want to watch our favorite shows? Sorry, that's no longer allowed.

It just seems utterly ridiculous to me that companies keep thinking that by "getting tighter control" of their media they are going to make more money. All they are doing is wasting a lot of money on things that are going to garauntee lower viewership, alienating viewers, and pissing people off in droves. The electronics market will suffer. The consumers will suffer. And eventually, when people get so sick of trying to find ways to watch their favorite shows that they stop watching altogether, the media companies themselves will suffer.

Well, that doesn't really hurt my feelings too much. But it is amazing to see so much money wasted on something that is so utterly stupid. But, it seems stupidity is the only thing these companies are good at anymore. Once a business hits a certain size, that's it. You cannot be big and still play smart. It just doesn't seem to work.

Now, having said all of that, is it possible that the FCC will reject this? It would be nice if there were that much common sense in a government agency. The whole intention of agencies like the FCC is supposedly to uphold the law of the land. The law of the land says that time-shifting is allowable. But the law of the green (as in the green of the money of the kickbacks the FCC is bound to be getting from the industries involved) says that time-shifting is just another way of sayhing "piracy". However this turns out, I'm sure it will be another "consumers are evil, business is good" turn of events.

At what point will business realize that people are not evil just for being consumers? Legally, at least in the US, you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. But when it comes to business anymore it is automatically assumed that anyone that purchases any good is guilty of the most evil and vile crime that is possible with that good (or broadcast). It is not even thought, even for a moment, that a "consumer" may just be using something as it was intended, or if not exactly as intended, it isn't the evil and disgusting nature of the person causing them to do something "different" (Oh, that's a naughty word now isn't it?). It is just that they need to do it differently or they can't do it at all (especially in the case of recording a show because you aren't home at that time).

But let them do it. Once a few million consumers are pissed off and stop watching/recording their shows every day while they are working, maybe these people will finally wake up. But I doubt it. They will probably just assume that we are illegally tapping into someone else's feed.

Re:What the F*#*!!

[fornix]

At what point did consumer rights just completely disappear? What happened to the idea that you try to please your customer? Where did that mentallity disappear to?

Unfortunately, they think that controlling the customer is more effective. And they've learned how to sugar coat this insidious erosion of our freedoms so that the poison goes unnoticed by most. I've never been one for biblical prophecies, but that part about everyone having to have a number to buy or sell is dead on. It's happening and it's not a good thing for people who care about freedom or privacy.

Re:What the F*#*!!

[ahodgson]

>Now, all of the people that have to work during >their favorite shows will not only not be able to >record those shows to watch them later, but they >won't be able to watch them at all. How does that >improve viewership of the shows that these >companies claim are so important to their >livelihood?

The companies are not selling shows to you. They are selling you to advertisers. They don't care if you watch the shows. They only care if you watch the advertising (ppv is different of course).

Time-shifters don't watch the ads. Well, at least I don't. So what do they care if we can't do it any more?

Re:What the F*#*!!

[Faulty Dreamer]

The less people watching, the less "viewers" they have. Sure, they are selling to advertisers, but they are selling "market mindshare". They do that with statistics. And statistics about "how many are watching" do not necissarily filter out time-shifters. So, remove the time-shifters from the equation and you will have less, perhaps a lot less, to sell (as a media outlet) the the advertisers.

Any way that you look at it they are going to hurt themselves with this move in some way. Whether it be alienating users (which means less advertising money), or losing viewership because it can't be time-shifted (which also means less advertising money), or just pissing people off so much that they quit caring about TV at all (which also means less advertising money), they are hurting themselves with this just as much as they are hurting the consumers, er I mean stopping us nasty damn pirates.

And why are they doing this?

[Dante333]

Since when did the concerns of the entertainment industry become such a big factor in setting standards? One would think that the needs and wants of the consumers would take presidence since they are the ones shelling out the money for these products.

Re:And why are they doing this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but didn't you realize? The new economy is about getting money from corporations. Whether it be bribes, patent lawsuits, or just generally bullying them around, consumers seem to be irrelevant.

Most poeple here are making an invalid asumption

[Grumpman]

I read several peoples rants about how "I'd just go out and buy non-encrypted hard drives" and other such crap. What happens when a law get quietly passed REQUIRING ALL hard drives/OS to support this encryption? Seem a little over the top or unlikely? What would we have/did we say about the DMCA just 5 years ago? It coming and they've gotten smarter about how to get it done. They're not smart, but DeCSS (and WE by opposing them openly) has taught them how to get this kind of thing done. Ask yourself:

If I were a Movie or Recording mogul, what would I want the industry to look like in 10 years? Think about this for a moment.

Isn't it what's already happening?

How?

Because of verbal Congressional votes and lack of education. Don't bitch about the dark. Go light a candle. Ask your Congressman how he voted on this issue. I'm gonna write a descent flyer and start handing them out at movie theaters. I'd ask each of you to do the equivalent.

That's just my opinion.

A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotection

[peterwayner]

[John Gilmore wrote about this topic yesterday on several lists. Here's my reaction. I'm curious to hear what others think.]

I'm glad that John spent the time and energy to write a good summary of what is going on in the hard disk area. He's spot on about the dangers to our liberties.

But I was quite worried until I began to see the dangers for IBM and Intel in the scheme. This is not an easy play for them because it threatens much of the entire industry in these ways:

1) This is going to increase the cost of using PCs dramatically. Hard disk crashes are going to go from major disasters to utter catastrophes. When the disks go bad, you'll need to buy all new copies of the software, images, movies, and what not. Backing up? Well, that will be another headache that won't be possible without the right permissions. They can wave their hands, but there's no getting around the fact that installing software is going to have plenty of new red tape.

I don't see how they will be able to distinguish between the truth and a lie when a guy calls up and say, "uh, my hard disk crashed. I need to install it on a new machine." They either authorize it or they don't. In fact, they'll probably have to automate the process because it's so expensive to have an actual human on the other end.

My mean time between hard disk failures is about 2 years, but I'm a heavy user. Can we really afford to create a new class of technicians who do special hard disk replacement for 20% of America each year?

2) This really changes the nature of the business. Right now the PC and software manufacturers sell you a box, wave good bye and say, "Good luck." Support is a joke. Actually fixing the machines costs too much money. Anything worth under $400 is essentially disposable.

If they put trusted hard disks in place, then there needs to be someone to care for these disks. They can't just keep waving good bye when you walk out the door. The business model needs to change to be something like cable television. That means hiring thousands if not millions of technicians who will come to your house and fix your hard drive.

3) This is really going to slow innovation and that's really going to hurt IBM and Intel. Already the hardware guys depend heavily on upgrades to keep people buying machines. If people can't move their software to a new zippier computer, then they're not going to buy a new zippier computer. Take a look at the cable television world. Most people are still using 1970's era technology. It just takes too long for the service technicians to go to each house and replace things. But that's the only way you can run the world when you have trusted corrals for special data. You can't just let any schmoe upgrade their hard disk or any schmoe is going to be able to pirate Hollywood movies. Gosh, that's all us proles do all day long you know. Pirate content.

4) This is another opportunity for the open source community to come in and steal market share. If the press reports in Slashdot and other places are to believed, it was only a few months ago that Microsoft marched into the offices at Virginia Beach and asked them to produce the certificates for their copies of Windows. You know, those neat hologram embossed slips of paper. They didn't have one for each PC so they had to pay more than $129,000. (http://slashdot.org/articles/00/12/01/0532206.sht ml)

This is another opportunity for Red Hat or some other Linux box company to walk into companies and say, "Use Red Hat, Mozilla, and Star Office and you'll never have license problems again. The hardware guys claim that they can take care of rights management issues for you. So can we and we cost alot less."

I think this may be the greatest thing that's come along for open source OSs yet. As Princess Leia said in the Hollywood content "Star Wars", "The harder you squeeze your fingers Vader, the more planets slip through the fingers." Do those content wrangling lawyers down there ever look at the content they protect?

http://www.wayner.org/books/ffa/ for information on my book on open source software.

p3@wayner.org

A conspiracy against SysAdmins? (long)

[Peter H.S.]

Oh why, oh why, does the the software, and now the hardware industry too, seem to be engaged in a conspiracy to make the lifes of Sysadmins, consultants and legitimate buisness users, miserably beyond belief?

Any kind of low level hardware copy protection, is a recipe for distress and disaster, especially in real life enviroments, with mixed legacy hardware and software, upgrades, and hardware failures.

I don't care whether such protection schemes can be broken more or less easily; I deal (and have dealt) with buisness who actually tries to be legal licensvice. Installing modded harddisks, or cracking software, is not really an option on a server, where an hour of downtime, cost more than 10.000$.

And hardware do break down; Sure, the reliability of harddisks have increased tremendously over the years, few people experience hd-failures (and therefore don't do backups), on their own private pc's. But with everything computer related, the perspective changes dramatically with size: with 100 pc's, a hd-failures is something one has do deal with once in a while. With 1000 pc's you might as well have some spare hd's lying around.

Some experiences where copy protection may have been a major hindrance:

1. A lawyer came to us in distress: his laptop was broken and wouldn't boot Windows. The problem was, that he had more than 6 years of bills, bankstatements, accounts, letters, etc on it, without a backup of course. The hd was making funny clanking noises, so speed was of essence, and failure not an option. We managed to transfer the _whole_ content of the hd to another machine, and from there, we could begin to manually recover the data.

2. A server was brought to us in a civil court case; there was suspecion, that someone had tampered with the data on it. Since the machine could wind up in court as materiel evidence, one could not muck around on the hd. So the entire hd, was Ghosted (now a Symantec product) to another machine, and from there we could inspect the data, without compromizing the evidence.

3. Upgrades: An upgrade from WinNT to NT SB edition, or to a new edition of MS Exchange, may go well, or it may not. We have had a few cases of corruption of MS Exchange data when upgrading.
If the costumer has RAID, then one can make an easy rollback in case the upgrade goes wrong (breaking the mirror before upgrading), but if not, having a Ghosted image of the disk system may be a nice substitute. Reinstalling the OS, and restoring data from tape backup, is really the very last option, since it is very slow and errorprone. (We have encountered several instances of "Write only backup tapes" = The log says everything is fine, but it just won't restore).

4. Everyday maintance; employees come and go, pc's break down, Windows get corrupted and must be reinstalled, new pc's are bought, and old ones are handed down the company food chain.
The only sane way of dealing with this, is with some kind hd-image copying software. Not only does it speed up the process, but it ensures some kind of homegenity of the installations.
Installing a pc from scratch (and in the right way) may be trivial for /.'ers, but not for ordinary employees. And it is time consuming; Windows, drivers, getting it networked, Service Packs, hot-patches, Explorer, MS-office, accounting software or whatever, and the extremely annoying reboots in between, not to mention the registration numbers from hell.
Since small (and smart) companies rely on extern consultantfirms, the cost and time savings from using Ghost, is significant. If this copyprotection scheme renders such hd imaging software useless, their IT-expenses for mundane tasks like this, may easily trippel.

5. Restoring an entire office from scratch: One of our costumers had their servers (2) and client pc's stolen (25). We managed not only to get new hardware the very same day, but restoring the entire office to functionality during the night. Only one day of downtime. Totally impossible to do without Ghost.

Just interferring with such a fundamental thing as copying is wrong. And how will this copy protection scheme function? What about; Hardware and software RAID, servers with two disk systems; one with, and one without cp-protection. Performance; checking every read and write, even if done in hardware, much incur some overhead. Theft or failure of hardware, then what about keys etc. What about viruses; could one set a permanent "don't copy" bit on a system. What about expanding a logical volume on a server (when adding new disks etc); will this "trivial" task come to a grinding halt, and crash the process. Even if it don't, will bought and paid software, suddenly stop working, just because the disklayout is changed. When called to a computerdisaster, how can one determine, whether the system will allow copying of essential files? Etc., etc.

Maybe some of my fears are ungrounded. Maybe this copy protection scheme will actually work most of the time. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It _will_ mean, that the _entire_ IT-industry around the globe, and everyone involved in it, will have to read up, maintain long extra list of what is doable or not, and how this scheme work or not. Not to mention the gazzillions line of code that (perhaps) would have to be changed. This is the "dreadfull dongle-problem" on a truly massive scale.
This scheme means an entire new class of serious IT-problems, suddenly have appeared. And this without any gain for the costumers. This is a guarantee for higher IT-cost, without any productivity added, not exactly what people need.

Unbelieable in the past

[gallir]

Nobody would believe this history if it were told few years ago...

And it's impressive how a bunch of well paid managers and pseudo-artists can change the digital landscape in the whole world.

Obviously they have a well formed and powerful lobby. Are American senators aware of how they are affecting (negatively) the future of not only technology, but every basic principle achieved in the last century?

These kind of things should, although they didn't, decide who are your representatives and president. W. Gates III looks naive compared to the Hollywood lobby.

--ricardo

Re:Unbelieable in the past

[Don Symes]

Of _course_ the senators know what they're doing - the bidding of their owners!

Relax on the hard drive thing, folks...

[mrdisco99]

The OEMs aren't going to bow down to any of this. Microsoft doesn't want this either. They can easily kill this by not supporting it in their OS. The OEMs can easily kill this by not buying copy-protected hard drives. This gives the hard drive manufacturers no incentive to make these devices. And if the hard drive manufacturers simply refuse to do it (which they can do, by the way), then the entertainment industry won't have a leg to stand on.

Relax, folks. We have powerful allies on this one.

+++

Black Market

[jo2y]

Will this create a blackmarket of current style drives that geeks will pay top dollar for? I should stock up now.

Distributed Computing

[jasonrobinson]

I'm sure someone has already thought of this, but couldn't we just create something like the SETI@home screensaver to crack this encryption? If SETI can get 500,000 years of computing done, couldn't the Open Source community pull this off? Or could they just lengthen the keys and strengthen the encryption to prevent it?

Copy from RAM disk to HD

[EvilTofu]

Copy the contents to a RAM disk and then copy from the RAM disk to the HD? Or are they going to outlaw RAM disks?

Copy "protection"?

[chrylis]

Write the self-appointed standards body and communicate your viewpoint about the latest utterly asinine development! ncits@itic.org

Lauch an anti-trust trial against MPAA/RIAA

[Quietti]

Now seems like a good time to consider the entertainment industry's giants as a big cartel and launch an anti-trust trial at least twice as big as the one we just saw against Microsoft.

May all Actors and Musicians who have been shagged by those industries please take a stand now and help their audience put an end to the industry's disgusting monopoly and their influence on politicians, police and other industries!

--

Re:Virtualize

[vaginux]

that sounds like a great reason for TiVo to stop using Linux, doesn't it? ;)

:::

Why are they complying?

[Big Torque]

Why would a industry support something that will be one more thing to fail and piss off their customers? Did the MPAA cut some kind of deal with these industries and if so what do they get? No lawsuits, cheaper cost on programming, Sex form their Hollywood star of choice? I mean why listen to them anyway. They should say if you want you movie seen shut up. I am very amazed of the ability of these people to get others to do what they want with their tech. The sadist thing is in the end the same tech that helped clean up Hubbell space telescope's fuzzy images can and will correct non-digital signals to they original digital quality with only a few samples. In the end it is not 1 and 0 that goes into your ears and eyes it is light and sound. In the end they will make every ones life more difficult for something they cant stop and will not stop. The bullshit of it all amazes me!!

Re:Wishful thinking

[TheCarp]

Unfortunaly I have to disagree here. This can and will work. For several reasons actually. This isn't like drugs.

See with drugs, they are fairly easy to produce (even the toughest once require little more than a diligent chemist or botanist and a little inginuity - above the ability of the "average man" but not the average "trained chemist")

This means you have laws aimed at stopping the supply and distribution. That never works. You simply can not stop people from obtaining goods that exist, or can be made in sufficient quantities from distributing them.

However, in this case its different, only slightly, but still different. It is a long term process to be done in stages see...because this isn't the law stopping distribution, its the producers.

This is just the first step. They start with little copy protections things. They seem "token" and silly. Easy to bypass, hardly a threat.

Next thing you know, VCRs are a thing of the past, noone makes them. DVDs and DVD recorders replace them. The same for hard drives without copy protection etc.

As time goes on, the switch to HDTV, your VCR dies out, VCRs are no longer produced etc etc. Next thing you know, the majority of devices automagically respect the copy protect bits. You can't even find hardware that doesn't. Old hardware that doesn't is no longer produced...and so supplies will begin to dwindle.

its a stepwise process...eventually it leaves the producer in control. Fair use is gone, not by law but by media control. Check mate, in fact thats a good analogy, cuz its alot like chess....

You can move around, but slowly, your world gets smaller and smaller, they move in, and the next thing you know, your trapped, check mate.

The ONLY things that can stop this are renegade hardware manafacturers. Individuals doing things like "fixing" their own hardware will always be far and few between, wont even show up on the radar.

If they do it slowly enough, then they win, because people will just get used to it, and will just accept the limitations...slowly. People tend to be accepting of slow changes and react violently to fast ones.

-Steve

The article doesn't mention SCSI...

[elmegil]

Everything I saw in that article was talking about ATA/ATAPI drives. So what? My next generation PC will be SCSI then. Let's see them put copy protection on every damn scsi drive on the planet (and there's a lot more of them than there are ATA drives).

I always wanted an excuse to go SCSI

[dilvish_the_damned]

Ive cracked there encryption, use SCSI!
Quick! Mirror this before they close me down and th

Cracked

[Shocker69]

Can someone give me one copy protection scheme that actually has worked?

Re:Cracked

[dR.fuZZo]

Can someone give me one copy protection scheme that actually has worked?

It's called book burning.

Re:Cracked

[Zurk]

ASPs. since they host your data on their servers and you run the application on their servers you cant possibly break their copy protection scheme. this is the model M$'s .NET is moving to. loads of people use ASPs. for example, hotmail is an ASP service as is any webmail provider. slashdot is an ASP service..you cant get the slashdot db although they have released the source...even if they didnt have to.

Re:Cracked

[Shocker69]

Even with book burning, it is near impossible to get every copy, which is what they would have to do. There are always copies being bought and sold in the underground, even if it is burned, banned, or whatever.

Spirit of Christmas, and of ideals...

[noz]

Hopefully, after the ACCC sorts things out here with DVD zoning (recent /. article), then they'll move on to this also. However, despite this recent idea to attack the DVD zoning regulations, no action has been taking.

We must pray this Christmas season that free ideals in communication prevail, and not the inability to record Charles Dickins' A Christmas Carol at midday whilst you're having Christmas lunch so that the kids can watch it later.

Copy-protecting HD's??

[kennylives]

Hang on... I don't get it. How is the harddrive alone supposed to prevent copying of 'protected' content? Surely they're assuming the cooperation of the OS 'manufacturer' in this scheme? The HD is merely storage space. It can keep all the keys and certificates it wants, but if nothing is referencing them, what good does it do anyone? Hell, the first time the drive is partitioned, they're little slice for key management goes away. Then what?

Something just doesn't seem right here... It's not April again is it??

Re:Copy-protecting HD's??

[Betcour]

Eventually, the threat of lawsits and jail time will force us to stop doing what we want to with our own PC's

Humm yeah, like the threat of lawsuits and jail has forced everybody to stop pirating software and music and pay all required licences...

Every computer enthousiast has broken copyrights law at one time or another (even Open Source zealots sometimes download an MP3 file). Breaking the DMCA won't be much of a problem for anyone (especially people like me, who don't live in the US :).

Re:Copy-protecting HD's??

[mikethegeek]

"Humm yeah, like the threat of lawsuits and jail has forced everybody to stop pirating software and music and pay all required licences...
Every computer enthousiast has broken copyrights law at one time or another (even Open Source zealots sometimes download an MP3 file). Breaking the DMCA won't be much of a problem for anyone (especially people like me, who don't live in the US :)."

Don't be so sure of that. Norway, which last time I checked, was a soverign country and not a US territory, bent over and let the MPAA have it's way with one of it's citizens, the kid who wrote DeCSS. Norway didn't have a DMCA, and what he did there (reverse engineering) was perfectly legal under Norweigin law. What the MPAA branch of the FBI did was lie to some Norweigin cops and they acted.

How does that make you feel, /.'ers who live in other countries other than the USA? I'm from the US, and it makes me sick to think of my country doing stuff like this.

Re:Copy-protecting HD's??

[mikethegeek]

"It's like a DVD. It stores the data encrypted. You have to have a valid decoder (issued by the encryption autority) to decode the data. There is the possibility of something like DeCSS being created, but only is the encryption scheme is as stupid as CSS."

All copy protection schemes are weak and stupid, and are breakable. Especially when the device has to have built into it the mans to decrypt it, or else it's useless. This means that it is relatively easy to reverse-engineer or circumvent it.

The point is, that the DMCA adds the threat of prosecutorial action to the strength of CSS or any other protection scheme. In other words, modify your hard drive to let you copy, move, rename, open, etc, ANY file you want (which every hard drive sold before 2001 presumably would allow you to do) carries with it criminal activity.

Sure the crack for this will be out before the hard drive lands in some unsuspecting Joe-Schmo's new Presario, but it will be illegal. The addition of ANY type of copy protection scheme (even if they used 2-bit encryption) invokes the DMCA.

But only we techies will be able to use these cracks, and we are a small minority of the "consumer" public.

Eventually, the threat of lawsits and jail time will force us to stop doing what we want to with our own PC's, and as a consequence, will stifle the grassroots innovation that created the whole electronics and computer industry to begin with.

There never would have been a technology boom in the 90's if not for all of us who embraced computers in the 70's and 80's for the love of it. Now control over the PC is being taken away.

Need to get at the source

[mssymrvn]

The biggest issue here is that enforcement will be done with the DMCA. What's really needed is a concerted effort, with a very high profile, to post a constitutional challenge to the DMCA. Not like the DeCSS case, but an actual challenge by a _HUGE_ number of organizations (so that the media won't be able to cover it up) like the ACLU and EFF (among others). It's the DMCA that's the problem. And with that fetid pile of crap being held as law ridiculous copy protection schemes are just going to proliferate.

Humans to have copy protection by 3Q2001

[Saint Aardvark]

NEW YORK (AP) -- In a surprise move, a coalition of hard drive manufacturers anounced that, beginning in the third quarter of 2001, all new humans would have copy protection implemented at the genetic level. The copy protection scheme would prohibit unauthorized reproduction of humans by parents, or "genome hackers" as they are known in the industry.

"It's quite simple," said a spokeswoman for the group. "The Human Genome Project was in some financial difficulty, so we stepped in and cut a deal. By leveraging the techonology already in place in hard drive copy protection, we will be preventing unauthorized duplication of humans."

Unauthorized human reproduction -- also known as "childbearing" to hackers -- has been estimated to cost content producers over $3 billion per year. Implementing copy protection at the genome level, the Holy Grail of the industry, is predicted to prevent up to 97% of "childbearing".

But not all industry figures are thought to be onside. Microsoft in particular has been vociferous in its opposition to the plan, saying that it would effectively eliminate the potential market for its software rental scheme.

"We demand the freedom to innovate," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently. "And that means being free to innovate for lots and lots of paying customers."

Free Software Foundation guru Richard M. Stallman was unavailable for comment. A source close to the programmer said he was "scanning the personal ads frantically."

DFAST ATA copy protection

[Paracelcus]

We need to learn more about this (gain access to the hardware) to find out a way to disable this threat to liberty. From the article that I just read it seems that the encryptation information is stored on the media itself on "hidden tracks". Am I ignorant or would an unconditional low level format wipe the offending tracks? It'll be fun to try!

Re:This is the last straw.

[Paracelcus]

Bravo! Let's boycott the bastards until we find a way to defeat this shitty technology!

Re:Virtualize

[defile]

What you're describing sounds like basic public/secret key cryptography.

Player/recorder stores public keys from all compliant manufacturers. Disk has it's secret key.

The player/recorder wants to be sure that the drive is a friend. It computes a random value and sends it to the drive. The drive uses it's private key on the random value and sends the ciphertext back to the player/recorder. The player/recorder uses the corresponding public key to decrypt the ciphertext into plaintext, which should match it's random value. Secure communication/storage can now occur.

The first thing that comes to mind is MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE-ATTACK!

To protect against MITMA, each device would need a recognized host key that is never revealed in the clear.

This will always be flawed though. You have full physical control over these devices when they're in your possession. You can layer encryption scheme upon encryption scheme, but it all has to start somewhere with a key stored in the clear -- and once you get at that, the entire system collapses.

Why don't they just rot13 all of their media? They can apply the same law (w/ DMCA) against someone cracking that as they can to people who can break their elaborate multi-million dollar encryption schemes.

Re:All sites with Linux source code will be illega

[fornix]

[i]Simple... The MPAA/RIAA will go back to their favorite puppet, "Judge" Kaplan and get Linux/BSD and anything else that can use ext2 illegal as a "circumvention device" under the DMCA. Furthermore, the Linux source code, as it contains this "illegal" code.[/i] But the DMCA doesn't have teeth if there are significant noninfringing uses, right? Or am I confusing this clause with another law? Anybody know more about the "significant noninfriging use" clause?

Re:I'm looking for the Man in the Middle...

[calcfreak901]

Therefore, a version that can be loaded from a floppy will probably be quite popular.

...as will having a powerful magnet in a nearby desk drawer in case the thought police show up...


just my two magnetic cents

Re:Securely signed DLLs

[jeffry_smith]

As Bruce Schneier (sp?) pointed out, at some point, the data is converted to clear, at which point it can be sniffed / copied. Once again, industry is trying to tackle a legal problem (rights to create new copies of data) with a technical solution (copy protection). The better solution is to tackle the legal problem - go after those who make illegal copies. Unfortunately:
a) that's hard, and costs money
b) it means recognizing there are legal copies
c) admitting they don't control the world.

Linux will NEVER support binary takeover of the kernel. Also, there is a legal DVD driver for Linux - part of the LiViD program, based on deCSS. Just because the DVDCCA says it's illegal doesn't make it so.

Folks in the US - WRITE your congrescritter (hard copy, not e-mail), let them know you oppose the takeovers via DMCA et al. Enough people feedback, they will start to listen.

YAYYYYYYYY! Faux-Presidente Bush! Viva!

[innermind]

All I can say is more power to em!

This is the best news Ive heard all week *laugh*

(just kidding, but I'm trying to make a point)

Maybe Ralph Nader was right when he said the best thing that could happen to America is a Bush presidency. This will radicalize everybody.. even mainstream computer users, and ensure a rapid changeover to Free Software..Nobody will want to buy a new computer or new software..

Used equipment will soar in value, and of course, selling used software will also be criminalized.. And when all the software companies start laying off thousands, they will outlaw that....and then..

Does anyone know the address of the Passport Office?

Re:I'm looking for the Man in the Middle...

[The Monster]

This means anyone with a driver using the "generic key" will be able to use the file.

I thought of that, but it won't work. The paranoid app will know that it's a "generic key", and refuse to write to that device. It wants to see a unique key (and you can bet your butt the *AA boys will make sure there's a secure channel back to their servers to test uniqueness) before it agrees to use that drive. Hence the double-up dodge: You let the drive report the non-generic key, and give all of the appropriate signals that it's done its job (because it has). You just give it an additional assignment, which it is designed to perform equally well.

How will hard drive copy protection work?

[swm]

I've read the article, and the comments, and a followed a bunch of the links, and (forgive me for being clueless) I do not understand how they intend to implement copy protection on hard drives.

The logical interface to a hard drive is

• store(int blockNumber, char *pcBlock)
• fetch(int blockNumber, char *pcBlock)

If the drive supports this interface, then I can copy data on and off of it at will; if the drive doesn't support this interface, then what interface will it provide???

Even MS is against it

[WildBeast]

Even MS is against copy protection in hard drives. It doesn't get any worst. And to think that Intel, Toshiba and especially IBM are behind that copy protection crap. let me put it à la Stone Cold Steve Austin "Don't Trust Anyone".

Man, this is some _serious_ crap

[Jarnis]

I actually browsed thru the agreement they submitted to FCC.

Man, it has some scary shit in it. They seem to have learned something from the DVD fiasco, and are making sure anyone who is manufacturing these consumer devices actually protect their stuff. No jumpers, traces, eproms.. everything 'easily' hackable is a big no-no. This means your Friendly Modchip Maker may be in trouble.

In my opinion this kind of bullshit has to be killed by FCC and/or courts. Hollywood is trying to waltz in, take away fair use rights, and they actually expect to get away with it!

Granted, they still have the issue of pushing this down the consumer throats, but guess what; Freebie Digital Cable Descramber Boxes with Extra Channels that you can't get without one are usually effective way to get random TV viewers interested. Hollywood studios will surely subsidize the boxes if they can that way turn TV into one huge pay-per-view-fest. If they put enough icing on the cake, they might just get people to give up their rights to tape stuff off the TV.

This time they definitely went too far...

Re:Man, this is some _serious_ crap

[bellings]

I actually browsed thru the agreement they submitted to FCC.

Good god man... how could you read that stuff? It was a piss-poor scan of a low-quailty, 43 page FAX. My eyeballs nearly fell out of my head just looking at the first page. It would probably take me two or three hours to read that thing if I printed it out; it would take me a week if I tried to read it off the monitor. (I won't say anything about the abysmal typesetting -- I understand the reasons why people have convinced themselves that Microsoft Word produces documents that look "Good Enough", even if those reasons are all just a crock of shit.)

On the other hand, look on the bright side. If this is any indication of the technical compentency of the cable companies, we can look forward to plenty of ugly, poorly implemented and badly documented content protection schemes that will have more holes than swiss cheese, break randomly, and just generally annoy the piss out of everyone without doing anything they were meant to do.

hard drive protection timetable

[MoNsTeR]

By next year? HAHAHAHAHAH!!!

From what I understand of this technology, market acceptance is nearly impossible. But if all the big bad corporations get together and cram it down our throats, it'll take absolutely YEARS to make the transition. For example, the first article I read about this indicated that a protected disk and a real disk wouldn't be able to interoperate at all, ie: you couldn't copy a file from one to the other, in either direction.

And at any rate, I can't imagine anything at that low of a level actually working in a meaningful way. An HD processor hardly has the spare cycle to do the heuristics to see if I'm writing an MP3. And it wouldn't know how to read through the filesystem layer anyway.

Call me overly optimistic, but I don't think this will ever happen.

MoNsTeR

I'm looking for the Man in the Middle...

[The Monster]

...attack, that is. Since the whole thing is based on the INT 13H interface, it seems to me that a kernel module (or a .DLL for the OS-challenged) can mediate between the application requesting "secure" storage and the drive allocating it.

The easiest thing to do is simply open two files on the drive, one secured and one insecure. Then, whenever the paranoid app asks to write to the secure file, send that block of data to the insecure file, and send the same block to the secure one. Let the challenge/response mechanism built into the drive satisfy the app's desire to assure that it's talking to the Real McCoy, returning the status codes that come back from the secure file to the app.

As an added bonus, throw in the old BBS download quota bypass, and when the last block of data is written, return an error code to the app, indicating that the file is not correctly committed to disk. Also, you can have the app tell the drive to delete the secure file, releasing one "lock" (some supported schemes allow you to make 3 "portable" copies at a time, requiring verified deletion of a copy before another can be made).

Since the interface to the device has to be well-specified, this sort of approach is how the security will be circumvented. Having a copy of the .DLL will be a violation of the DMCA, of course, but so is having pirate copies of movies. Therefore, a version that can be loaded from a floppy will probably be quite popular.

Re:I'm looking for the Man in the Middle...

[Now15]

Easier still -- just get the device drivers to intercept any calls to inspect the key section, and replace it with a "generic key". This means anyone with a driver using the "generic key" will be able to use the file.

--

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[drsoran]

Yea, but there's no such thing as a free lunch. You're paying for Windows when you buy that box. You may be getting a drastically reduced price, but you're paying for it. If you're not paying for it then you're buying it from some small Russian clone builder who is just pirating Windows to install on it which is illegal.

Re:When there's a will, there's a way

[calcfreak901]

the problem with this country is that it was founded by rebels, revolutionaries, and smugglers (not that there's anything wrong with those views/careers...), but is now run by beaurocrats who (and i'm speaking very generally here) wouldn't know which end of a gun to point at the enemy if they were drafted by a militia without the time for training (pathetic isn't it?). any government that claims to be constitutional, but then openly and blatantly rapes that constitution in the manner that congress did when it passed the dmca.

its pretty sad when something that is almost guaranteed to be lucrative for corporations is denounced by microsoft. i actually openly applaud microsoft for this. right here, on slashdot, antimicrosoft-central.

the purpose of the constitution, and in particular, the bill of rights, was to keep the government from becoming corrupted. whatever happened to the fifth freedom of the first amendment: the freedom to petition government for redress of grievances? LET'S QUIT DENOUNCING THESE THINGS IN LITTLE RANTLETS AND EXERCISE OUR FIFTH FREEDOM, PEOPLE!

i think i saw a link farther up on this board for a site already doing something along these lines, but don't remember it. the important thing is we need to exercise the right, no matter where or in what format we organize it. i would do a site and online petition form for it, but i don't have the resources or knowledge for such a task, and do not have the time and money available for it, regardless of how much i would like to. after all, i'm still in high school.

Re:Agreements are fine, what about law

[squiggleslash]

Probably the DMCA. The DMCA criminalises anyone who possesses, within the US, equipment that circumvents digital copy protection. You're not going to be able to buy the equipment legally, and you wont be able to import it legally. In short, you're screwed. If someone encrypts data somewhere along the line for a digital television system in an attempt to prevent copying, you wont be able to circumvent it.

What a great law. What a fine bunch of people Americans choose to make their Representatives and Congressmen. What intelligence. Oh how wonderful.
--

Re:Idiotic

[fornix]

Techies will cry foul, but I think that the legal departments of Western Digital, Maxtor and Seagate will cave in fear of Sony, AOL Time Warner, et all.


You're absolutely right. People who love their freedom and privacy will have no voice until they organize themselves into something big enough to compete with the influence of the megacorps. Something as powerful as the NRA. Maybe it will be the EFF. But how log is it going to take us to do this? And will it come too late?

Re:Wishful thinking

[Mike1024]

Hey,

Individuals doing things like "fixing" their own hardware will always be far and few between, wont even show up on the radar.

They might. Pleanty of people have thier Playstaions chipped.

Michael

...another comment from Michael Tandy.

When they came for my...

[localroger]

When they came for the drug users, I said nothing because I don't use drugs.

When they came for the third-strikers who had stolen two bicycles and a pizza, I said nothing, for I don't steal either bicycles or pizza.

When they came for the cable descramblers I said nothing, because I don't watch cable.

When they came for the DeCSS sites I said nothing, because I have VHS and don't need DVDs.

When they came for my hard drive I said nothing, because my computer wouldn't let me.

1984, Fareignheight 451, Brave New World, et al

[Grahf666]

You know what the scary thing is? George Orwell was right. A few years too early, but he was right. Ignorance is Bliss, Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery, and all that. Perhaps that should read "Slavery is Freedom." It's almost as if the masses want to be controlled; people will take this utter bullshit in stride because it was marketed as a new "feature," perhaps one to protect you against those evil hackers. They'll take away our free music, then our recorded TV shows, then ALL the media that Jack Valenti doesn't want us to see, then our books, and then, well, who knows? Our thoughts? The FBI's Carnivore crap has already proven that our communiucations are not private. And, unfortunately, The Framers of our Constitution got one thing wrong that could cost us everything: privacy is not a right or a liberty in the Constitution, because to them, the thought of privacy being violated in the ways that it can be today was totally alien to them. Perhaps one could argue that your thoughts are your property, and therefore protected by the Constitution, but the Judge Kaplan's of the world won't let that get too far.

So the Judiciary branch won't stop this downward spiral, and Congress sure as hell won't, they're the ones that set it in motion, after all. How about the Executive? Unfortunately, George Dubya hardly has a brain in his head, and the Roe v. Wade opposing conservative justices he appoints certainly won't help matters. Where does the burden fall on, then? The people, of course. I believe it was John Locke who said that if a government was not doing a sufficient job of protecting the peoples rights, the people have a right to replace that government. Let's see some action, people. The John Q. Public's of the world far outnumber the slimy politicians and corporate executives. The masses just have to be educated about how they're being assraped, and I garauntee you, no politician can remain in office if the vast majority of the people don't want him there. Hope lies in the proles, after all.

When there's a will, there's a way

[Taco Cowboy]

Yes, they can "copy protect" anything they want, and yes, they can patent any silly idea they want, but THAT WILL NOT stop us who are determined to preserve OUR OWN RIGHTS to find ways in BREAKING their copy protection.

This world function on the basis on SUPPLY AND DEMAND, and if there is ENOUGH DEMAND for a product which BREAKS the so-called "copy protection", there WILL BE people supplying the gadgets to do it.

Nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING is unbreakable.

Law? Legality?

Hey, who cares about legality when the law itself is UNJUST?

Peole who will argue for "obey the law" ought to take a GOOD LOOK at the "Declaration of Independence" signed by the founding fathers of the United States of America, in which, there is - am I am paraphrasing here - something akin to "if the government turns tyrannic, it's the DUTY for the people to TOPPLE it".

So, if the LAW itself is TYRANNICAL, then, it's the DUTY for us, the FREEDOM LOVING PEOPLE, to DO SOMETHING to make that LAW invalid.

If not through legal means, then, by hell, through ILLEGAL MENAS.

After all, the American people who revolt against the British rule over them were deemed by the British as "illegals", and see how America has regain her LEGALITY today?

Everything is relative, LEGALITY is also relative. Something that onces were "LEGAL" may not be legal anymore at another era - things such as slavery were once legal, but now, do you think slavery is legal?

Same thing with the "copy protection" and the "patent" thing - they (the hollywood bigshots) can say that they have the "legal backing" right now, but then, a year, 2 years, 5 years or 10 years from now, who can say if their "current stand" can still be valid or not?

Keep on fighting for our freedom, and DO NOT STOP FIGHTING !

If they want to put stuffs INTO our hard drives, in order to BLOCK US from record something, then, they have infringed on OUR RIGHT TO DO WHATEVER WE WANT with the things WE HAVE SPENT MONEY TO PURCHASE !

THis is THE CRUX of the matter - if we don't stand up for our rights now, sooner or later, those power-hungry monsters will tag on with some other LOUSY SCHEME to further limit our freedom, and who knows what else they will come up with next?

Unfuckingbelievable

[The Dev]

The hard drive copy protection is the most invasive and unfucking believably stupid idea yet.

First of all it issues massive, unprecedented prior restraint. Who says I'm ever going to write copyright protected content on it.

Second, it's a technological heinous crime. You should not ever introduce unnecessary complexity, latency, incompatilbility and additional failure modes to existing technology. Maybe I'm missing something here, but would you even be able to put Linux on such a hard drive? Would the kernel need a license key? It couldn't possibly be that bad. I must be reading it wrong.

I can't imaginge that hardware manufacturers would go along with this. If they are forced by new laws, that would be legislating a bad technology solution to a business model problem. How dumb!

Re:Copying the MPEG stream from Tivo

[drinkypoo]

I think it has been done, but in most Tivo-hacking circles, it's taboo.

That's silly. Just because I can copy some data off of my Tivo and store it doesn't mean I'm going to send it to anyone.

In any case, I did notice you can rsync the files off of the Tivo, so at least you can save them and then put them back again later when you want to watch them, ostensibly, if you know enough about which files do what.

This is a bad joke, right?

[petard]

Here's how to get the keys:

1. Go purchase hard drive of your choice from one of the participating manufacturers, before this technology is implemented
2. Go purchase an identical drive after the technology is implemented. I'd lay 10 to 1 odds that the only difference between the 2 will be the controller boards.
3. Use dd or something similar to dump the "protected" sectors (containing the keys in the factory set non-usable portion of the drive) from the "compliant" drive to a "non-compliant" one.

There. Now you have the keys. Modify your driver to copy no matter what. No HD can come with an EULA, and you run a Free OS, right? Then it's legal too :-)
IANAL. YMMV!

--
petard

Re:This is a bad joke, right?

[petard]

Oops. There should have been a step between 2 and 3:

Put the controller board from the old drive onto the new drive!

--
petard

Re:This is a bad joke, right?

[la1n]

Another step missing

1. The DCMA folks write-up a new law banning alternative disk access schemes.

Re:This is a bad joke, right?

[Zurk]

the controller board will have to authenticate to the drive to allow you to read. your method will fail and dd wont be able to read shit. remember this is two way authentication just like DVDs...the DVD *drive* has to authenticate itself to the *disc* and then the software has to authenticate to the disc before it can be read. very nasty.

Re:Virtualize

[Skapare]

You can still take a controller and put a new set of platters on it. But you have to low level format it so the controller knows the characteristics of the platters. And this inly for a similar platter surface. For unlike surfaces, the controller probably won't be able to work with it. And you'll need the low level software and data, which are probably not in the controller firmware.

Buying a CPRM drive, at this spec level (not sure about any future changes) for my computer won't bother me as long as I have control over the driver to make sure it doesn't use CPRM on me for something (e.g. I'll use BSD or Linux).

Re:Wishful thinking

[steveha]

There is no way, even in principle, to get kind of protection they're looking for. The data has to be descrambled on the local machine, decompressed and sent off to the video and audio subsystems.

You think too small. The media guys already want to make digital monitors have builtin encryption! They noticed that it doesn't matter how good CSS is if a nice clean digital signal is being sent from the computer to the monitor; someone could tap it, so it needs to be encrypted. It's also easy to imagine digital speakers that take an encrypted bitstream.

It's all nonsense anyway. Even if no one cracked the encryption in the usual way, you could always take apart the digital monitor and digital speakers. There has to be some point at which there is a decrypted signal to record! (E.g. in the speakers, you could tap in to the amplifier stage.)

The cyberpunk solution: we must all get implants that decrypt video and sound. This does have its good side: when your boss walks in and finds you playing Quake VI, all she will see and hear is static.

steveh

contest

[dR.fuZZo]

Restoring personal backups to a different physical drive - a common enough occurrence when a disk has failed - will require authentication with a central server.

Ten thousand brownie points to the first script kiddie to crash that server.

And another thing...

[kennylives]

Putting copyright protection on the HD, presumably requiring the participation of the OS (not likely in the case of Free software anyway), essentially means that the PC must become a trusted client when running software.

Bruce Schneier (the very same) speaks to the idea of trusted clients in the 15 May 2000 Crypto-Gram. Here he says:

Other companies claim to sell rights-management software: audio and video files that can't be copied or redistributed, data that can be read but cannot be printed, software that can't be copied. The common thread in all of these "solutions" is that they postulate a situation where the owner of a file can control what happens to that file after it is sent to someone else.

It's complete nonsense.

Controlling what the client can do with a piece of data assumes a trusted (from the point of view of the initial owner of the file) piece of software running on the client. Such a thing does not exist, so these solutions don't work.

Besides, such a thing would put such a damper on PC sales as to make the last quarter look like a windfall...

Re:And another thing...

[mikethegeek]

"Besides, such a thing would put such a damper on PC sales as to make the last quarter look like a windfall... "

I think this is exactly what Hollywood INTENDS. After all, the PC is the most powerful recording device and multimedia player ever invented that they never had any control over.

What to do?

[cr0sh]

Boycott and educate! Create your own content (if you can - even if it is only a web-based comic strip, drawn and scanned)! Educate those around you (your friends, family, fellow employees) - especially anybody who doesn't read /.

Talk to people - let them know your feelings, the possible scenarios, where all of this could go, and seems to be going to. Ask them if they want a pay-per-view/listen/read/taste/think world.

Make your voice loud about the issue, especially at places you buy from, so that other customers hear you. Heck, walk up to strangers who are buying DVDs, ask them for a moment of their time, and educate them. Give them a business card with some info (URLs, etc) pointing to what they need - pass them out (business cards are cheap to have made)...

Get involved in some way - any way. Help is much needed.

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

Sorry

[Shocker69]

Dvds will NOT become completely mainstream until you can record them, and then of course download them off of Napster.

Seems simple

[girth]

walk away from the TV.

Isn't it somewhat ironic that

[enjar]

"Burn Hollywood Burn" by Public Enemy came up randomly from my Napster playlist when I read this discussion?

Might as well try and stop the sun from coming up in the morning -- the burden of keeping track of all this information will be a bit high, don't you think?

We need Legislation

[drivers]

Fight fire with fire. We need to push for legislation that forbids the sale of technology whose primary purpose is access control and which also has the effect of denying fair use rights. I wish I had more to say about it, but that pretty much sums it up.

Re:We need Legislation

[mikethegeek]

"Fight fire with fire. We need to push for legislation that forbids the sale of technology whose primary purpose is access control and which also has the effect of denying fair use rights. I wish I had more to say about it, but that pretty much sums it up."

I agree with you. The "Fair Use" principle is in fact, gleaned from the Constitution, and there is no legal way for any statutory law, or a consensual contact can deprive you of those rights.

Hardware that is being sold for the express purpose of circumventing Constitutional rights should be illegal, or at least, it should be perfectly legal for the OWNER of said hardware to modify it in any means necessary to do for himself what is actually legal in the first place.

Maybe a good idea

[KevinMS]

My first reaction is, of course, this is terrible, but then I realized, the more they push me away from tv, the more of a favor they are doing me.

Re:Virtualize

[Skapare]

Since CPRM was not available when TiVo came out, Linux was an option (and a good one for quick cheap delivery to market). Clearly, to implement strong protections against hacking, the system will have to be made unhackable somehow. Whether that is possible or not is a valid question. Today I'd say most people don't have the ability to hack a system entirely integrated onto a single chip, so for now that would be a safe way. In the future that may not be the case when "Mr Chip Cloner" comes on the market in about 10 years.

Re:Virtualize

[Skapare]

The media can give the recorder 2 keys. One is its unique public key signed by the media manufacturer. The other is the media manufacturer public key signed by MPAA. The recorder verifies this by having the MPAA public key, verifying the media manufacturer key, then verifying the media key. The same takes place in reverse. Both devices have each other's public key. These keys are now used to conduct a randomized key exchange that man-in-the-middle cannot participate in. That results in a unique session key. If this session key is a strong 256 bit AES key, then I don't see an easy way to crack it with this approach. But I don't know if they actually do this or not.

Don't expand government, fight the DMCA!

[medworth]

Fair use "rights" are only limitations to the legal powers granted to the record companies. They have nothing to do with what the companies can and cannot do with their own property outside the legislative sphere. The copy protection stuff is outside the law, so it is not and should not be governed by fair use laws.

It is actually legislation (DMCA) that got us into this situation. More laws would just make this situation worse. Ok, today the government would only be regulating certain hated record companies, but experience tells us that government action rarely confines itself to what we originally intended it for. Tomorrow, the power we gave to the politicians will be used for something that hurts us; just look at the DMCA and UCITA for perfect examples. The fact is that corporations have more resources and political clout with which to subvert the law than we do, so increases in government power always benefit such entities. We can clearly see this trend developing as government has become bigger and bigger in America.

We hate it when corporations corrupt the law, and rightly so, because we've seen what can happen. But why is it any more right for us to control the law? And even if it were morally right, would it do what we intend in the long run?

History tells us that the answers are "no" and "no" respectively.

You've then got the moral problem of whether you can force companies to do stuff with their property that they don't want to do. If they sponsor a record or show, then they should have property rights over what they have created, and if you don't like what they do with their rights, then tough! You'd hate it if someone told you what you could and could not do with your property, so why should we have the right to tell the record companies what they can and can't do with theirs?

Experience tells us that the record companies learn best from pain. The way to fix this is to vote with your feet. Don't buy copy protected stuff, don't buy hard drives with the copy protection code on. We shouldn't deal with this by expansions of the power of politicians, which may benefit us today but might choke us tomorrow.

If you want to effect change in government, try and get the DMCA repealed. Show the politicians that the DMCA undermines fair use rights, and that as such it is unconstitutional. Remember that fair use rights are intended to limit the power granted to copyright holders. The DMCA totally goes against that. Destroy the DMCA, and you destroy most of this mess. The record companies will then find that they cannot sustain their tactics. They've tried it before, with video and dual cassette recorders. They'll be just as unsuccessful this time, if the law doesn't help them.

We want less government in this situation, not more.

Securely signed DLLs

[acb]

Future versions of Windows will only accept drivers which are cryptographically signed, in order to placate the MPAA/RIAA. This is already in the pipeline (if not in WinME) for audio device drivers, to ensure that drivers refuse to write protected content to a file when playing it.

This is another reason why there will never be legal software DVD/LiquidAudio/WindowsMedia for Linux; until somebody writes an API for letting a binary-only user process take over part of the kernel to ensure its integrity. After all, the basic assumption of copy protection is that the customer is a potential thief.

Welcome to the 21st century; your next computer will be less capable than your old one.

What have we come to?

[Dawn Keyhotie]

This is what happens when the all the giant content providers, i.e. Hollywood, have bought up all of, or a big chunk of, the content distribution infrastructure, i.e. consumer electronics manufacturers (DVD/CSS) and cable TV. They are all in bed together, one big money-lubricated orgy of consumer abuse.

This is why the FCC, FTC, or any other alleged 'consumer protection' agency, should never have let those mega-mergers go through. Now that the content providers have a lock on distribution, they can dictate the terms of any entertainment transaction. Soon everything will by copy protected and/or encrypted, and of course it will be illegal to even think about breaking that encryption, under the DMCA. As others have noted, even general purpose PC hard drives will have built-in copy protection, with no recourse, alternative, or consumer choice. Every 'view' will be a 'pay-per-view'. Every use will be metered and billed. All in the name of protecting the poor little media companies from the big bad hackers and pirates.

You won't be able to format a drive, because you might be erasing someone's copyrighted content. You won't be able to replace a failed hard drive, because it will be licensed to one PC. You won't be able to copy a file from one PC to another, because it might possibly contain copyrighted material. You won't be able to make a backup, because making a backup would violate the copyright holders license. All software usage will be monitored and metered and billed, pay-per-use.

Welcome to the new world of digital convergence, where nothing will be digital unless it is encrypted and copy-protected. Where every playback device has 'content protection' built into the hardware below the level where any possible hacking could take place. Where the rights of the so-called innocent are sacrificed in an effort to punish the always-presumed guilty.

Welcome to the new world of digital content.

&lt RANT MODE=STILL_ON &gt

Congratulations. You are now a criminal.

[acb]

One day someone will tip the authorities off, the police will show up at your door with a warrant, and next thing you know, you're Bubba's new playmate.

Welcome to the Digital Millennium.

Re:Congratulations. You are now a criminal.

[Deanasc]

No the law as written on macrovision descramblers is against selling not using. The law against 800mhz scanners is in listening. Merely possessing is not a crime. They have to prove that I'm using the illegal frequencies. IANAL yet but I'm pretty sure I'm grandfathered and am free to own both those objects.

Re:The point is, the Register wants to get us exci

[acb]

The way I understand it, the new-ATAPI hard drives will not be compatible with old-ATAPI drives. You will actually need an "trusted client" OS which has support for the encryption built in (i.e., licensed). And that excludes open-source OSes.

How long 'till read-only hard drives?

[jmv]

I'm guessing this will be the next step, the only totally sure way of preventing copying is to ban all read-write drives. Soon, you're going to buy a read-only HD with windows pre-installed and that's going to be it.

Of course, you'll also need copy-protected RAM and registers, and ...

What the f... let's get back to our good ol' typewriter/wax cylinder...

Not just American

[acb]

The cartel is international; it includes companies such as Sony (remember their hastily-retracted statement about how they will block file sharing at your telco/ISP/in your PC? Well, I'd bet that Sony's engineers have contributed to the copy-protected hard disk standard, or other things still under wraps). The elegant (from their POV) thing about this proposal is that it is independent of US laws, and can be imposed anywhere where PCs are in use.

A pointless(?) move...

[brogdon]

This is both stupid and intelligent. I don't see this mattering right now except to those too stupid or unwordly to purchase an HDTV receiver from a non-US source, but it's a step in the wrong direction. Look at DVD. They put those nasty region codes on the discs to cut down on "piracy", with the end result that it hassled those of us who liked to buy import movies and shows. I wanted to watch my copies of the Friends DVD's sold by WB overseas, so I just bought a region-free DVD player made in some random Southeast Asian country where the DVD-CCA has no pull. It's going to be the same thing with this crap. Unfortunately, this is only pointless in the short term. Most people won't care and/or won't know how to get ahold of a "renegade" receiver and will simply play by the rules of the networks and TW-AOL. They'll get used to these new infringements and accept them as the norm. Then, a few years down the road when the providers want to do something even more outrageous (and have expanded their legal powers to reach the entire globe), we'll all have forgotten how it used to be in the old days when you could tape things to watch later when you weren't home, and the new user-tracking scheme that monitors what we watch and when we watch it won't seem like such a big leap. Freedom's stolen in little steps. This is one of them. I understand the people who make entertainment deserve to be paid, but there's a limit.


--Brogdon

Hard drives

[Frijoles]

So on the subject of the hard drives, why would people buy these hard drives? The article makes it sound like all the HD manufacturers are going to support it, but what to stop some company from springing up that doesn't support it?

For that matter, what's to stop a company outside of the US from creating non-compliant HDs that doesn't support this copy protection? I'd pay more money for one that doesn't have the copy protection on it... quite a bit more, actually. And I'm sure others would too.

I guess we'll see how it works out. From the article, it sounds like there are going to be a lot of problems in the IT field because of this. I just can't see IT people switching to it because of the herd mentality (their managers is another story).

What angle to work, and our Radar Failure...

[clyons]

First of all, I'd like to ask, how in the HELL did something this big manage to be slipped completely under our radar? Why did we hear about it only after implementation has been worked out? Don't like the RIAA? Don't buy CD's. It is not as hard as it seems to break away from these industry's controls. If they saw that there was a limit to how far they could push these types of technologies before people just walk away, you can bet they would calm down. I think most of us get enough EM radiation at work. Go out, go to a bar, get laid, do something else.

How about the fact that the RIAA, the recording industry, the movie industry, and the software industry have way too much power (and way too many acronyms)?

Fair Use isn't dead yet, but it's on life support during a power failure, and the backup batteries are running low. We have many old movies whose celluloid is rotting away as we speak. A recording of many cultures, social attitudes,--things that could someday be considered historical treasures--are rotting away because certain companies own the rights to them, aren't using them, aren't preserving them, and aren't letting anyone preserve and restore them.

We really need to make the public more informed on these issues, and put some public pressure on Congress to pass some legislation that will protect us, protect Fair Use, and protect the buried treasure that would otherwise fade away in Hollywood film vaults.

--

Agreements are fine, what about law

[cwhicks]

Explain the danger here to me. The industry has fought fair use forever and it never wins. Explain to me why some Korean electronics company isn't going to make a billion dollars producing a VCR that ignores the bit and tapes any and everything?
Agreements between the big whores is one thing, changing a solidly set law is another.

Re:Agreements are fine, what about law

[cwhicks]

But see thats what I'm saying. What law says you can't tape broadcast or cable programs? Every law saws we can. DMCA comes into effect when you illegally copy something by circumventing the copy protection. Copying tv broadcast has been shown to be legal under fair use many times. They have zero chance of overturning that.

Re:Agreements are fine, what about law

[squiggleslash]

I'm trying to come up with an interpretation of your comments that makes sense, and the only things I can think of are that you feel analog copying is still legal, which it may be but that's irrelevent to the thread for reasons I'll outline, or that fair use is legal it's just the things surrounding fair use that aren't. If so, I'll disagree with you, and I'll explain why:

The DMCA outlaws the circumvention of copy protection, be it for a DVD, a digital cable TV feed, or anything else. That's what the DMCA is. That's why it exists. Your comment about copying TV broadcasts is ultimately irrelevent - the entire reason why the industry lobbied for the DMCA was to get around the fact that, without it, fair use would apply.

You cannot, legally, digitally record, within the US, a copy protected digital television program. (You can make an analog recording, but that will become harder as analog output capabilities disappear from more modern equipment.) It is not the "making a recording" that is the illegal part, it is the circumventing of copy protection that is illegal, which is a necessary part of making a recording.

To give an analogy, within the UK prostitution is legal. However, soliciting is not. Neither is owning/running a brothel, or pimping. So while someone can take money for sex, they can't get to the point that they'd be having sex and/or taking that money without breaking the law along the way. As a result, if you engage in prostitution in the UK, you are breaking the law. Were you to ask me to show you what law says you can't engage in prostitution, I'd have to show you the "disorderly house", "living off immoral earnings", and other statutes that make prostitution in practice illegal. The DMCA criminalises "fair use" in much the same way - "fair use" still exists, but in order to get to a stage whereby you'd be exercising "fair use", you'd break the law in the process.

I wonder what, ultimately, the solution is to ditching the DMCA. If the opponents would stop supporting Napster and similar technologies, and accept that content producers have a right to earn a living too, the fight against this slimy and repulsive bit of legislation might stand a chance of succeeding, but even so it will be a hard fight.
--

Re:Agreements are fine, what about law

[cwhicks]

Ok. What I see is that there is going to be an addition signal added to the digital tv signal that all digital video recorder producers agree to recognize and put into their recorders, so when that signal says "Record Never", they won't record.
I see nothing about scrambling anywhere except in the title of the Security Focus article. What everything else says is that a license to use the technology you need to make the recorders will not be granted to anyone who doesn't agree to put this extra "record never" crap in their machine. There is no DMCA element in there unless you take one of the official machines, open it up and fuck with it.
I'm saying someone will make a machine that does not use their license, and records. There is no descrambling or circumvention involved. All they are doing is making a receiver for signal sent on public frequencies.
This will all go round and round for several years, but the difference here compared to DVD's is that the studios own their material, they do not own the airwaves, the public does. If they put their material out in a public forum, it falls under all the laws that cover that forum, including fair use.

Re:Agreements are fine, what about law

[CaptJay]

Nothing, but you will most likely be violating your cable company's terms of agreement (which they will I'm sure modify to account for this) and get your account cancelled.

Now if you're like me, you only have one company serving cable in your area, so you're stuck.

As long as...

[Masem]

I knew the copy bit was coming -- the fight's been set for a long time, and it's not over, since thise was mainly a filing of the method with teh FTC. And one can start to argue fair use, etc etc. First, we're still not at a point where we know what HDTV format will be used to send out info; sets and equipment for recieving are STILL too expensive, and the TV broadcasters are dragging their heels: the complete switch is to be done by 2006, and we're nowhere close.

But all that aside, I do agree that this bit is necessary particularly for cable and premium channel -- broadcast channels should NOT be allowed to set this bit at all because they don't make their money sending data out ot the consumer, they make it in commercials. On the other hand the consumer is paying for the content on the cable stations (ehhh, somewhat), and since it's not broadcasted freely to everyone, there is need to copyright protection. Particularly in the case of premium stations like HBO, etc. However, there should be significant penalties for abusing the don't set bit -- Nick at Nite, for example, has no reason to use it.

What needs to be developed, besides the HDTV equivalent of he VCR, is the TIVO like thing where programs with the 'don't copy' bit set can be recorded locally on the machine but in no way can be pulled to any other device or media. Yes, that means propriatary hardware, but this would take care of fair use time shifting problems for the cable people.

But this is going to the Supreme Court at some point. I'm hoping someone follows the Aussie lead and take DVD region encoding to the Court, and the deCSS case will be taken there as well. The entertainment industry is trying to fight piracy from the wrong end, and instead should be looking more to the problem of offshore data pirates. Once the implications of these 'restrictions' hit JQ Public, there is going to be a major outroar on this.

I doubt it will be that easy.

[J.C.B.]

If you can get this to work, It'll only work once (or twice if your lucky.) *If* this becomes widespread, then it'll be pretty hard to find unencumbered hds. Second, I got the impression that the key was going to be stored on a ROM chip in the drive, so you'll need that particular controller board to get at your stuff.

Finally, I'm sure HDs can and will ship with EULAs if the manufactures deam them neccissary. If this is a big success for them you might start getting HD with little squares of paper saying what you can and can't do with the drive. If this whole copy protection thing just causes pain for the HD makers, they'll want to wash their hands of the whole thing and the next generation of drives won't have this implemented.

This is good news

[pac4854]

In a year from now, I won't have a computer that works. In two years, I won't have a TV set that I can watch.

I can finally get back to working on the HO train layout in the basement, and maybe read a good book occasionally.

THAT DOES IT!!!!!

[zooz]

OK, this policing, everyoe's guilty until proven innocent, lock down crap has got to stop. They have no roight to force any copy protection crap on Hard drives, cable boxes, Digital VCR;sm, etc. I am sick and tired of seeing one right after another being lost in this country (this so-called Land of the Free we call the USA is the worlds largest master jailer). This bull shit has to stop. I refuse to buy any product that has this crap built in (I won't be needing 30+gb for a while, and an older hard drive will suit me fine). I really think it's time to "clean house", and throw certain people's buts out of office and other high places.

New life for old computers

[Deanasc]

When they outlawed 800mhz scanners I went out and bought one. Just to have it in case I ever needed it. When they outlawed macrovision descramblers I got 2. Looks like I'll have to go and buy a ton of old computer hardware, drives, super-vhs vcr's etc. It's a good thing I have some technical skills to keep these kind of things running.

Perhaps I'll learn how to paint or play piano instead of watching HDTV that I have have no fair use of.

If I don't pay for it I won't have to watch it.

Sounds fishy to me too...

[Betcour]

I'm asking myself the same question - this copy-protection scheme look useless without the active cooperation of the OS. How can the hard drive know that the next 1000 bytes to save or copyrighted or not ? If the OS doesn't tell him anything - then the hard drive will have to save and read like a good little puppy... Copyright protection is as strong as the weakest link of the digital system - if the OS doesn't care about what datas are moving around, then no copyright can be enforced.

And since Microsoft doesn't seem to like the whole concept, I don't think there's anything to worry about either. So our hard drives will have keys and built-in encryption - a feature that will never be used by 99.9% of the population... big deal.

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[mikethegeek]

I do agree that the more onerous copy protection becomes, the more likely people are to stop buying software all together, or switch to something else.

However, I see it as probably ending the PC as we know it, as anything other than a corporate workstation, or a techies toy. The general public will switch to internet/network appliances.

Either way, this is NOT good for Microsoft.

Failures

[Veteran]

Copy protection schemes failed the first time around because they made the hardware less reliable and more of a hassle to work with; all copy protection schemes work by 'breaking' the hardware under certain circumstances. Designing a computer so that it works properly is a very difficult thing to do; a computer which works is right at the limit of what humans are able to do. Deliberately sabotaging the equipment makes that job way harder.

However the situation has changed since then (the 1980's). Several factors have come into play which did not exist back then. The first is in the pre Windows days people expected computers to work more or less correctly, and they noticed when copy protection broke their machines. Most computer users raised on Windows 9X don't have any expectation that computers work reliably ; Windows 9X crashes so often that most people accept computer crashes as a fact of life . Most people have never operated a machine which will run for months without a reboot - and don't believe that such a machine can be built.

Secondly Windows has conditioned people to expect that doing anything with a computer involves a fight with the computer to get it to do what the person wants; in the simplistic MSDOS days one gave commands to the computer - and the computer did what it was told without argument - so people noticed when the machine failed to do as told - this made copy protection hassles stand out like a sore thumb.

Under Windows everything you do is a hassle, and people are used to wrestling with their machines to get something done.

Example:

• DOS - copy *.doc a:
• Windows: launch explorer click on the proper directory in the tree - re-sort the directory on file type - holding down the shift key click and drag cursor across all .doc files (assuming you have 'display file types' turned on in Explorer) once the files are selected - right click on one of them - select copy from the pull down menu - go to the other section of Explorer - find the A: drive icon - right click on the drive icon - select 'paste' from the menu - and you are done!

That is what I mean by 'wrestling with the computer'. Because everything in Windows is a hassle adding more hassle to the process is not very noticeable . Don't expect the average person who never does backups anyway to notice that he now can't do backups. Most businesses don't even do backups.

The third factor that has changed is the DMCA. Because most people just obey laws without questioning them - the DMCA has the effect of causing most people to just blindly go along with it; sheep don't mind being herded.

By the way - under the DMCA any hard drive that doesn't have the copy protection scheme is a piece of hardware for circumventing copy protection and thus illegal. That is what the IBM spokesman meant when he said that the scheme would be on all hard drives by next summer - the manufacturers have no choice in the matter.

Don't count on consumer outrage to stop this mess - it won't be like it was in the 80's. This is going to happen the same way that DVD region coding happened - it will be a fait acompli before most people realize what is going on.

What next?

[jo42]

Well bugger me with a rubber duck!

What will they think of next? A waste disposal fee every time you pinch of a loaf or take a tinkle? Clean air in a bottle? People already pay money to drink water from a plastic bottle (that ends up in a garbage dump, further polluting ground water).

I know! Since you read these creative words of high knowledge as extruded by my wee braine, you owe me $0.01 US.

This copyright in a hard drive brain phart sounds really practical...

direct hardware control has gone

[pdundas]

"This is as bad as someone selling me a PC that won't power on or off when I push the button, but asks Microsoft for permission first..."

That's more or less what happens on most PCs now, actually - the on/off switch sends a signal to the machine, rather than actually cutting the power.

Typically, if you hold the button in, it will eventually do a "hard" power down though...

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you :)

By 2101, these facts will be myths...

[mikethegeek]

The fact that books were once freely available in libraries.

The fact that there ever WAS legal means to copy or record ANYTHING.

That there ever was such thing as a personal computer, where you could install or use any OS, or program you bought, copied, or were given.

That you were ever sold software, music, or videos instead of renting them.

That you ever could OWN a copy of software, music, or video.

It's time to wake up, folks. Yes, we techies will be immune to crap like this because we have the knowhow and the chutspa to do it, as there will be a break discovered in this "secure" protection, just as there always is with ANY "secure" protection.

But what is different now is that it is ILLEGAL to even try to do such a thing, or even have the tools in your posession to do this. What is most scary is not what the DMCA is now, but what it will become in 10 years, 25 years, 50 years, or a century from now if it is allowed to stand.

It's time to get out there and vote. Call and write your politicos. Contribute to candidates who support your positions. IT people could be a very powerful lobby if we'd just get out heads out of our servers every now and then and do something.

For one, I will NOT buy a hard drive with this shit on it. I encourage everyone else not to as well. I will not pay for something meant to store data on it that is going to second-guess every copy, move, and open command I send it.

If the market refuses to buy these things, they will stop making them.

DMCA, the MPAA, and the RIAA HAVE to be stopped. The future of our profession, our country(s), and our livelyhoods depend on it. If the DMCA is allowed to trample the individual's right to innovate, then the whole IT industry will fail.

Crack anyone?

[thorazine]

In this age of hacks and cracks, I tend not to fear "the man" getting overly zealous. Everything that anyone has come out with up to this point, there has been a way around it. Whether is it DeCSS, using Linux and ext2, or simply buying a DVD player from a manufacturer who does not add the regional encoding, everything has a breaking point so to speak. Someone somewhere will find a way to circumvent the entire process of hard drive manufacturers bowing to the media tyrants. We have already seen it in so many things, in so many ways. If it were not for pressure from security watch dog groups, intel would know where and what everyone with a pIII were doing.

I have faith in my techie brethern that someone will find a way to undo everything that the evil empires try to do to us.

Re:top secret

[Mr. Flibble]

I agree. MS dislikes piracy because it chokes a stream of their revenue, and, lets face it, like MS or not pirating their software is hardly "right". Still, at the same time piracy helps MS get thier products into markets just like you said. If support or legit work, or, if MS decides to audit your buisness, you need a real copy.

MS would like to get $$$ from each person who pirated thier software, but ultimately, the pirates who (often claim they do it because they hate MS, yet still use the products.... (???)) So, I agree, MS factors piracy in as a segment of the marketing machine. Every pirate of MS software is still USING MS software.

It disgusts me that a corporation (film/music industry) can become so powerful as to place limits on me that I _MAY_ break, but have not yet. I agree on the principle of copywrite and protection, but not on this method. Not at all.

Idiotic

[Sanity]

When will these people see that trying to place this type of limitation on how people share information just won't work - it is akin to having a bank with no security, but then trying to chop off everyone's hands so that they can't steal anything. This mechanism would require the cooperation of all hard-drive manufacturers, who could find themselves under increasing pressure for consumers not to cooperate, and even if this were implemented in *all* hard drives (and the fact that the world is already full of hard drives which don't implement it), it only takes one person to break it (a'la DSS), and its all over.

This is a total exercise in futility and those who participate deserve to waste all of the money that will be wasted on this.

--

This is the last straw.

[Blackheart2]

Of all the stories I have read on Slashdot in the last few years, this story about CPRM has incensed me the most. I am not the sort of person who gets up in arms about personal privacy issues, or entertains paranoid illusions about corporate superstates, but this is the straw that broke the camel's back!

If the movie companies want to put copy protection on their DVDs, fine; I don't really care. If the music companies want to copy protect their music, fine; I can live with that. But when IBM, Toshiba, Intel and Matsushita start putting restrictions on how I can use my own data, and when and where, just because the RIAA and other media producers want to protect their own data, which I don't use anyway, I have a big problem with it! This is not an improvement for the consumer, even if it stimulates the development and distribution of digitally-converted analog media; this is blatant cow-towing, and these companies want to force consumers to follow their agenda.

The beauty of capitalism was that it was supposed to give both freedom of choice and high-quality goods to the consumer, by encouraging and rewarding suppliers who successfully compete on those standards. But if I can't choose what I want to buy because some industrial oligarchy has already decided that only certain things are allowed to reach the average consumer, I can't make an effective vote for what I consider the best product.

I am sick and tired of this irresponsible, condescending behavior and collusional tactics. If I have to pay three times as much, I am going to get my storage devices from a source that does not try to control the manner in which I opt to use it. I hold IBM, Toshiba, Intel and Matushita responsible for trying curtail my freedom as a consumer, and I will not spend a cent on a hard drive, processor, CD player or any other goods from any of these corporations until they recant and this outrageous CPRM idea is dead and buried never to return.

*** How to Break It ***

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading the documentation it appears that Int13h interface is still used to access the drive. Simply intercept the Int13h protocol - grab the request for the "magic cookie" and return a constant or "magic cookie value". This way information can be copied fairly easily. I wouldn't be suprised to see this "magic cookie" value be included as an extension to a vxd driver for windows ( having the vxd driver lie to Winblows would be easy ).

Something similair on Linux would be a piece of cake.

One way encryptions be damned if you can simulate who you are and still gain access to the file.

You probably will still be able to record...

[singularity]

I think that Hollywood's big objection is to digital recordings of the digital signal (not through an D/A converter).

Since the technology is in place, though, for a "copy once" bit, I would think that a "no copy" bit would be found illegal, since it would limit free use.

"Copy once" on the other hand, would not really stifle free use, but would still give viewers the chance to record and later watch a digital show.

However, I think that you will always be able to record using a VCR (since it has already passed through a D/A converter).

My opinion: I am more than willing to put up with a "copy once" bit. But give me that one digital copy.

Who wants to be a Millionaire

[ManDude]

Why doesn't some rogue company come out with a system that will allow you to copy the signal? The moment just before it goes to your screen must make it vulnerable to capturing. That same company could make a bundle by selling hard drives that don't have the signature system. Why must we all bend over for these media tyrants?

Re:Hard drives - applies to ATA drives...BUY SCSI!

[ayden]

The plan is to incorporate copy protection into the ATA specifications and build into every hard drive by next summer.

If you buy any ATA drive made to the new ATA specification, they will have the copy protection.

From the article: The proposals are already at an advanced stage: three drafts have already been discussed for incorporating CPRM (Content Protection for Recordable Media) into the ATA specification by the NCTIS T.13 committee. The committee next meets in February. If, as expected, the CPRM extensions become part of the ATA specification, copyright protection will be in every industry-standard hard disk by next summer, according to IBM.

The best solution is to use SCSI drives!

History Repeats Itself

[Greyfox]

If the MPAA was paying attention they'd have noticed that we went through a copy protection phase back in the '80's. A lot of those companies went out of business. If your content is not conviently accessable, people will go elsewhere. And that's before we get the anti-monopoly laws in gear, or do you really think the courts will support legislation which makes it impossible for you to express yourself without the express approval of some media company somewhere? No one ever seems to realize that these controls will make it next to impossible to generate free content outside the corporate infrastructure. Which is a rather convienent side effect. If you're a corporation.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Vulcana]

Thank You!!!

I was hoping someone would say this. When people start learning that they can't make backups anymore they will buy equipment elsewhere. It happened to copy protected software it can happen to hardware.

And it will happen much faster this time because they will be trying to go from no copy protection to full protection. With software they more or less started out copy protected.

what a bunch of shit

[Pheersum]

How am i suppossed to move all my pr0n when I geta new hard drive! 30 gigs isn't enough!

Ashes of Empires and bodies of kings,

Now tell me...

[niekze]

how are they gonna fuck my shit if i just get a 20 gig cluster of nfs exported ram disks on gigabit ethernet? (and a whole lot of UPS action ;))

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[QuantumG]

I'd be more likely to think that if copy protection actually becomes practical then the added revenues received by software companies like Microsoft will be pumped straight into making it hard or impossible for people to switch to free alternatives.

Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio

[QuantumG]

why do people persist in saying stupid crap like "stealing software".. you're supposed to be more educated than the average joe on the street. Surely you understand that copying != stealing. Last time I looked stealing was a criminal offense too, whereas violating copyright is a civil matter.

A nifty little defeat

[lie as cliche]

Yes, they're forming a new protocol. If they don't manage to get this one into place, they will continue until they do. Finding technological defeats is oodles of fun, but I see it as a quick-fix for a symptom rather than a cure for the actual problem: what to do with an increasingly seller's market which applies strategic pressure on a government to change the rules in its favor. It's now beyond Monopoly... a successful corporate entity can and will terraform its environment to become more favorable to it, rather than adapting to said environment, and as it becomes more and more successful will alter things even more to its liking, in a system of beneficial feedback. Beneficial to it that is... at the expense of all other entities (resembling the model of what the human race has done with "its" environment at the expense of other species).

In this instance, buying foreign alternatives is also a quick-fix, albeit one that will serve up to a certain point and then run out of steam, as the problem isn't exclusive to the United States. Eventually it will no longer be an option, and what then?

I offer a permanent defeat. It isn't strictly technological per se, but there is a way to render all legislation harmless to oneself. For those that haven't heard yet, it's sovereign citizenship, a way to opt-out of federal and what most people think of as state government. It's an individual option, not requiring voting for a certain candidate or lobbying for a cause (which means you don't have to wait for a statistically significant portion of the lemmings to wise up). You just opt out, with the appropriate paperwork. You then are able to lawfully live in the united States, but are out of jurisdiction in terms of legislation and so-called income (actually excise) taxes. Nothing is illegal for you. If someone challenges you on that, you're welcome to sue them in court; courts have been consistently backing sovereign citizenship up against johnny-come-latelies such as the IRS. Personally, I'd like to see the outcome of a soveriegn citizen's lawsuit against these people for intentionally crippling a drive to be compliant with legislation of the federal United States, which the courts have declared to be "a legal fiction" with no sound basis in law.

There are also a few crafty offensive weapons here for anybody who feels like going on the offense. One that springs to mind is a commercial lien against the people setting this attrocity into motion. A commercial lien was designed to give merchants an equitable way to reach justice... it's done out of court, and involves filing papers against specific individuals which damage their credit rating.

I think the most effective weapon is propogating awareness of sovereign citizenship itself. The mainstream media is too well-heeled to touch it, but as awareness of it continues to snowball, a lot of the assumptions we've previously had about the way things are run and exactly who is working for whom will become challenged. Legislation like this wouldn't even be seriously considered if the majority of people understood that federal legislation binds only entities who admit to engaging in interstate commerce (and most Americans are tricked into it via fraudulent wording in common forms). This also means that n a business not engaged in interstate commerce isn't subject to the legislation either; any sovereign citizen who wants to start churning out non-compliant hard drives is welcome to do so... and depending on the wording of the proposal, all they'd need to do is sell them to a third-party who would distribute them coast-to-coast. It works for every legislation one wants to circumvent... and allows a company in this country to do things which are simple legally impossible for other companies to do. As government contnues to encroach, I imagine that will make the prospect increasingly profitable.

For more on sovereignty, have a look at my write-up. Antishyster has more detailed info on commercial liens, among other things.


"I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce."
-- J. Edgar Hoover

this is a relatively minor issue really

[davonds]

actually, almost a non issue, it just means that the almost non existant market for digital vcr's will go away. When the FCC eventually puts a halt to NTSC broadcasts, digital tuners with analog outputs for conventional tv's, vcr's, and dvd recorders will be readily available.

Re:All sites with Linux source code will be illega

[lie as cliche]

The problem as I see it is the Emergency War Powers act, which suspends the Constitution and the checks and balances in the federal government in the event of a national crisis or state of emergency... and has been in effect since the 1930's.

It was designed to give the country a faster cornering speed during a national disaster, by making the Prez the undisputed de facto ruler of the country rather than having to worry about everyone's rights. The ocuntry was schnookered into a state of national emergency in the Depression due to the run on the banks (people stubbornly wanting access to the gold in their accounts. Shame on them, pesky citizens) and since then the only person in the country with the authority to take back that ruling has been the Prez himself.. and none has done so yet.

Fortunately, opting out of the whole damn thing is done easily enough. Hit my homepage and click on Sovereign Citizenship for more info.

"I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce."
-- J. Edgar Hoover

who wants a check...

[jasonu]

...if you have to slit your own throat to get it?

Time for a free alternative...

[bero-rh]

It's probably time to show them they can't get away with this sort of stuff - by making a free and better alternative (just as Linux is to proprietary OSes).
Anyone with good connections to hardware makers...?

Repeat: "Physical security is no security"

[Spoing]

I haven't seen this comment yet, though it seems to be one way to combat the hard drive encryption idea with minimal effort.

1. Use a hard drive emulation layer that fully respects the copy protection scheme.
2. Map a file to this emulation layer and mount it.

Once this is done, backing up the data is trivial; just copy the file. It could even be placed on a CDR or DVDROM and played from there instead of from a 'real' hard drive.

Hell,

1. if you can create the encrypted data with this emulation layer, the data may as well remain decrypted.

To prevent the data from remaining unencrypted, the software in the content itself would have to check to see if it is encrypted. Yet, there are multiple problems with this once the software is running under the emulatior. For example: Just like copy protection of old didn't work very long, tools could be used to automatically identify what the software is looking for and jmp over it or patch it.

If, for some reason, the unencrypted data doesn't "work"...re-encrypt it on the fly through the emulator.

The only thing that would make this impractical is if the software needed to descramble/rescramble the information would require an absurd amount of CPU overhead...though I can't see that being a problem with +2ghz CPUs.

The only recourse to this is to sue everyone in sight who even thinks of using these hard disk emulators. That's what the MPAA has done with DeCSS, and let's face it...they have so far suceeded in supressing DeCSS.

Wishful thinking

[Nightlight3]

There is no way, even in principle, to get kind of protection they're looking for. The data has to be descrambled on the local machine, decompressed and sent off to the video and audio subsystems. User can have an intercept module sitting anywhere along that path to capture the data, re-compress them and save them to the disk or send them to a network card.

They keep calling these schemes encryption, when in fact in this situation it cannot be anything but fancy, CPU hungry, data scrambling. You don't have the encryption situation when your key and the "encrypted" data both reside at some point in the hostile hands.

American west to become vast prison..

[zooz]

December 4, 2003 WASHINGTON(AP) - The United States government has officialy declared today that it will turn a large part of the western United States into an Ultramax prison, and send all of it's citizens there until they can prove they are innocent. "We believe this is the right thing to do, because everyone is a potential criminal. Prevention is the best medicine.". Congresswoman Cecelia T. Steinway commented in an interview. Citing an example of the huge rise in crime, and that criminals of all ages, races, and walks of life are lurking everywhere, she says that organisations such as the MPAA have been furiously urging hard drive, VCR, and even toy manufactures who create toys able to record and playback sound to install copy protection chips. Even though the companies complied, people are still using these devices to record copywrited material. "And that is just the tip of the iceburg of our out of control crime problem!" Steinway snapped. Even though the government has not yet released any information on exactly how someone would prove them selves innocent, the wall has already started going up. When completed. The wall will stretch up the eastern border of California, completley encircle Origon, down the Californa coastline (but go aound Hollywood on the east side), and parallel to the border between the United States and Mexico. The first batch of prisoners will be sent in shortly after the wall is completed in 2012. The first prisoners will most likelty be from the federal prison system, which hit 4 million in Feburary. Those already living in the areas designated to become the new Ultramax prison are forbidden to leave, and a temporary wall of concertina wire which is guarded by armed troops and land mines was completed last week. "I think this is a step in the right direction. The crime problem is sure to drop" Steinway concluded. [note: This is a completely fictional news story (atleast for now). Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidential).

Why copy-protected hard drives are doomed.

[MAXOMENOS]

Lemme just make sure we're on the same page here....

You want me to buy a hard drive that is copy protected, so I can't back anything up.

You also want to make it difficult to virtually impossible for me to recover in case my hard drive crashed.

And you want me to pay more money for the privalege of using this technology.

OK, so now I think I'm going to buy my reliable, copyable, recoverable, cheaper hard drives from a non-American manufacturer, thank you very much.

I swear to God, these arrogant, clueless suits and politicians are going to strangle the United States of America until all the innovative spirit we have is gone, gone, gone.

ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

Re:top secret

[Bonker]

What a hoot! MS leverages their vast industry power against the entertainment industry, in effect becoming the hacker's guardian.

It's the Borg vs. The Empire, and I've got a hacked DSS card to watch the PPV Cage Match!

wrong solution

[31:]

what they need to do is embed an evil bit on the hardware of people who would use it for piracy...

---
I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age, nerds are in.
They're still in, aren't they?

Virtualize

[Sloppy]

How do you know that you're really talking to the hard drive, instead of a software emulator that makes all hard drives look the same?

This will only work in absolutely closed systems, where 3rd parties never have the ability to write drivers, and where the CPU doesn't have the ability to trap on I/O. Even MS Windows (as we currently know it, at least) running on x86 is waaay too open and functional for this to ever work.

Pet Peeve: This is not copyright protection. It's copy protection. The bad guys' goal is to make the public think that these two wildly different terms are synonymous.

Copyright protection is something that protects copyright. An example of this would be a watermark that identifies who a copy has been sold to, so that if it ever turns up in the public, the copyright infringer can be prosecuted. I don't have any objections to copyright protection.

Copy protection is a completely different beast: it makes it difficult for people to make copies, even copies that do not infringe copyright. I have objections to copy protection.

When people (innocently or otherwise) confuse these two terms, they should be corrected.

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broadcast too

[eostrom]

Note that the National Association of Broadcasters wants to get in on the encryption action too.

This Variety article describes a letter from the NAB president about how "it would be a betrayal of the public interest to protect digital TV programs shown on cable from being recorded by consumers, but to not protect those broadcast over the airwaves."

Apparently it's in the public interest to prevent people from recording cable programs for home viewing... as long as you prevent them from recording broadcast TV, too!

I wouldn't worry

[QuantumG]

using proprietary technology originating from the 4C Entity. They're the people who brought you CSS2: IBM, Toshiba Intel and Matsushita.

So a fifteen year old kid will go to court for cracking it. Big deal, just remember, don't like to it!