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More About Copy Control on Hard Drives
ErikSev writes "I know there's already been one /. story about this, but The Register is running a few more that might be of interest regarding the whole scheme to put copy protection on hdds. First is the proposal, then Alan Cox and RMS' responses, and finally the IBM spin on the whole deal. This is definately something we need to be afraid of."
I still don't understand what's in this for the HD manufacturers. What incentive do they really have? How is it going to benefit their business? Why should they cut a deal with anyone? Furthermore, why should they all cut a deal together, and who's going to force them to do it? I just don't see it.
What if I choose to use an encrypted filesystem? Not only is the filesystem meta-information encrypted, so is (naturally) all of the data. How is this thing going to determine what I am writing to the disk and what if some of my encryption sets that "do not copy" bit someplece?
... or ... could only store content marked with the "Fooland Approved" bit.
While I have not read the new specification in detail, it would appear to rely on data being sent to the drive in a very specific manner so that it can be verified by the hardware. Seems to me that this is a serious privacy issue.
What is to prevent governments from adding different kinds of tags to other kinds of data. What if the government of Fooland decided that disk drives should not be able to store content marked with the "no Fooland" bit
It isn't going to work. It relies on data being written "in the clear" to the disk drive. Not everyone does that.
Change the term "copy protection" to "copy prevention". The latter is much more accurate and doesn't have the connotation that copying is inherently bad.
"nobody liked the region coding in DVDs"
That's not really true. It was a non-issue to 99.5% of DVD buyers.
Now DivX on the other hand created a lot of questions with consumers. It failed in the market place because consumers could see no benefit from all the restrictions.
I don't quite understand this harddrive thing. What possible benefit would I get? What restrictions is this going to impose?
On the surface it doesn't seem to be a particularly good idea, and the consumers will very likely reject it.
It is only illegal to * create or distribute* such software.
It's also illegal to "import" (and there goes our offshore developer defense) or "otherwise traffic in" such software. Now maybe "downloading an (illegally distributed) copy for personal use" doesn't fit that final catch-all category, but do you want to be one of the defendants in the test case?
One argument here is that even if geeks band together and don't buy these drives, Ma and Pa will because they won't know any better.
.. this will be pretty effective once the MS Windows dialog "Sorry you can't copy that file here because MegaCorp B said so" becomes as common as the BSOD and the "Goodbye" AOL voice.
Well, one thing worth noting, is all it would take is a single smart CEO of a hardware or computer company to realize that this standard is a bad thing, and then launch an advertising campaign hinged on the fact that their hard drives don't hinder what you can copy. "Dell computers won't keep you from copying files! No wonder they're number one!"
--
Of course you can buy a chinese drive. But you won't be able to install the software your company needs on it, so you can keep your job. And you want to buy that piece of music you like so much. And you need that book for college. And you heard a lot of good critiques about that book.
The point is that although people can prevent you from downloading a certain book, no one can prevent you from spreading a book!
We still have some time before Fahrenheit 451 kicks in.
No sir. Don't like it.
I'm not entirely clear on why the NCTIS has the right or ability to force the industry to do it, although more than likely that's because I don't know very much about the NCTIS.
From the article:
However, what's likely to create a firestorm of industry protest is that the proposed mechanism introduces problems to moving data between compliant and non-compliant hard drives. Modifications to existing backup programs, imaging software, RAID arrays and logical volume managers will be required to cope with the new drives, The Register has discovered.
It seems to me that the industry response to the technical difficulties imposed by the "standard" make it far less likely to actually happen.
Also from the article:
The proposal makes use of around a megabyte of read-only storage on each hard drive that isn't usually accessed by the end user for a "Media Key Block".
Although this seems like a pissant technicality, we might be able to raise a fuss over that one meg of space.
And from the article again:
The Register understands there is fierce opposition to the plan from Microsoft and its OEM customers. Generating hundreds of thousands of images each week, the PC industry relies on data going from one master to many reliably and smoothly. Imaging programs face the same problem as restore software: the target disk isn't the same as the originator disk. Microsoft Redmond already has put in a counter-proposal that eschews low-level hardware calls.
As much as most Slashdotters hate Microsoft, they may be helpful in stopping this (at least, for now). RMS' response is also quite interesting.
Our main hope is that industry and consumer opposition will blow this piece of crap out of the water. The two less likely hopes are that (a) the standards committee will realize what an asinine action (and, probably, invasion of privacy) this would be, and (b) that manufacturers will give the finger to the standards body.
inigima
Arguments like "Nah, he only has a couple ounces, it must be for personal use" won't stand up in the digital age. You can't sector-by-sector replicate a gram of coke.
The DMCA may not state you can be persecu-- er, prosecuted for owning one copy of DeCSS, but they may certainly tell the judge that "He's got it, and most likely distributes it to all his friends."
[
now from an unposted thought from earlier, I wonder if there's a connection with the following :
. .
The International Herald Tribune has a piece which suggests that new software may be used to monitor for stolen music on your PC.
The company in question, EMusic, proposes to use the DMCA to shoehorn its software into a policing role for Napster users, as well as, no doubt, any other user of digital media, on behalf of the rights of copyright owners. Their chief, Gene Hoffman, baldly states, "Privacy is not the issue, Piracy is."
His statement implies that the trade for using the technologies which have themselves created an era of stunning growth for media companies, is a blunt, painful, surgical implant into our private equipment and facilities.
Whilst, In a update yesterday, Wired reports that the DMCA is said not to impact the rights of customers under first sale doctrine, an aggressive, "policing" stance such as the one proposed by EMusic, appears it would infringe that.
At a blunt guess, EMusic would effectively be placing a toll gate on the legitimate transfer of a legally purchased work. Under its plans to hoop up ISPs into blocking "infringing" accounts, it creates a lopsided penalty for alleged infirngement.
It is not stated how EMusic's system is or could be audited. If a legitimate owner of a work wished to sell or trade, in an error, trust could be reduced, impeding a sale. If the vendor's ISP account were incorrectly blocked, it is conceivable that the action might be a restraint of trade.
Either way EMusic wants to introduce a burden of proof on your ownerwhip of digital media. The company may be bandwagon jumping, or monkeying on the back of the "great fear" promulgated around Napster, but EMusic looks hawkish, and copyright lawers are becoming increasingly aggressive.
. .
Dear Slashdotters, I think the corporate wagons are circling. Are you up to the argument? Or have we left things too late?
- Yeah, well you do know that you wont be able to copy mp3s on that disk don't you? Nooowwww, we have this other disk, which is just slightly more expensive...
Haven't you ever thought of the fact that salesmen always have this "slightly more expensive" model that has just the right things? They also don't want to be part of the support disaster.
- Hey, yes is this customer support? Yes, hello, I get an error message when I try to use my programs. Oh, err, it sends files over the internet, uh, yes, ok... what? Not Possible?!?
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
"Afraid of a little contempt charge, are we? Many times reporters have been jailed for contempt but have been released without naming their sources. If your assertion is correct, then all the reporters that refuse to name their sources would be in jail right now. Imagine the outcry if that were true!"
Judges should never be allowed to jail ANYONE for contempt. That is unlawful imprisonment and a violation of the Constitution. It's one of those powers that the courts have "assumed" as it's part of British Common Law, even though it does not actually exist in the Constitution. There have been statutory limits placed on how long someone can be jailed for contempt.
If there is cause to jail someone there should be charges then a trial. Until then, no judge should be allowed to sentance. I know of a lowly district judge (county) who abuses his power to jail people for contempt.
"Maybe if stopped relying on White Power advocates like Rush Limburger for your "political wisdom" and took Political Science 101"
Woah there! I had PolySci 101, and thankfully it wasn't taught by a neo-Marxist. White power? How did THAT get into my comments? Sure the Brown vs the Board of Education decision was a great one. It struck down Jim Crowe segregation laws as Unconstitutional, as the ARE. I can name a slew of BAD court decisions, going AGAINST the law and the Constitution, that CAUSED segregation to begin with. For example, the Dred Scott decision, etc. That Supreme Court MADE a law (ie, blacks are not humans) that stood as an abomination that required the bloodiest war ever fought in this country's history to right.
And that court was packed by partisan DEMOCRAT appointees too. Lest we forget, it was the REPUBLICAN party that freed the slaves, and it because of REPUBLICAN senators that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. Senator Al Gore Sr. BTW, was one who voted against it.
All factual, and all can be checked in the history books.
Simply put, the courts are the way to get illegal things into law. And yes, judges DO make these "speeches" all over the place for obscene sums of money. And where do you think the money comes from? You guessed it, huge corps like Time Warner, and other MPAA affiliates.
How else can you explain Kaplan's decision in the 2600 case? The DMCA at BEST has parts of it that have problems with the 9th, 10th, 5th, 4th, 1st, and 14th amendments, not to mention the articles regarding patent and copyright. At least SOME of it IS illegal.
Kaplan either expressed
1. Extreme ignorance of the law (and he's supposedly been educated in this, this is assumed if one is a judge)
2. Extreme prejustice/bias.
Nothing else can explain his decision. There is no basis for it except in relying on an untested law, and he refused to perform the required Constitutional test. Also, he MADE A NEW LAW out of thin air by ruling on hyperlinks.
Explain for me please, how any of this is justified?
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
If the unique chip identifying code could be used to track you around the net, so can the unique code on these hard drives.
There is no privacy if anything is unique on the computer, chip or drives.
Anyone can write the software to query it.
The "if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear" argument that you seem to be using is a dangerous one, becuase it can be used (and has been used) to justify taking away rights. Hitler used that argument, as did Lenin. As, no doubt, did Caesar (since you mention him) against the Christians.
It is also a meaningless argument. I have no contraband or drugs in my pocket. So do I object to being searched at every corner by a policeman? Or to being strip-searched when entering the country? YES!!
Let's look in practice. I have a lot of software. Probably 100 apps. For Windows as well as for Linux. But let's concentrate on the Windows apps. Yes, I paid for them! But here's the problem: Every time I switch PCs (I am on my fourth laptop this year, and have 8 PCs at home that I frequently switch around) I need to be able to move the app to the now-current PC. That is my RIGHT. And anything that prevents me from doing that is not a good thing. Call a 1-800 number? I spend half the year in Hong Kong and apart from the fact we do not have 1-800 numbers there, it is also 12 hours later there. Forget calling.
Remembering passwords? I ever forget where I wrote them down.
DVD regions? This means I have to buy TWO players (one for Canada and one for Hong Kong) an d I have to buy each movie TWICE. This is obviously insane! I should have the right to buy one portable player and one of each movie, and them to watch it whether I am in Hong Kong or in Toronto.
This kind of initiative is a slippery slope. We had copy protection once and it failed, because users them were vocal and clever. Users now are not (AOL is the world's largest provider...). Please, try to be a clever, vocal user and do not accept loss of rights, and inconveience, to do these corporations a favour!
Michael
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BDOS ERR ON A:>
As i see it they are making a very calculated step around your rights.
We have the 'fair use' right because we can purchase equipment that allows us to make copies of digital content.
So the Entertainment Industry (EI) can't break/challenge the courts ruling that allows consumers to have 'fair use' (personal use, archiving, time shifting, etc). So what does the EI do? Lobby the hardware standards bodies to create a method to control content in the hardware that consumers use to copy content (for whatever reason). Bingo, they neatly bypass any 'fair use' problems. Sure you have the RIGHT to make copies of content, but you do not have the RIGHT to equipment that will make copies of content. Once they remove the equipment that anyone can use for copying, the EI neatly excises the 'fair use' thorn that has been in it's side for the last 20 years, neatly putting any/all control back in their hands.
Modify the hardware to make copies of content that has been marked 'do not copy' or 'copy once'? Oops, that falls under the DMCA.
A nice, calculated one-two punch to give the control of 'content' back to the media houses. Stop and take the long term view of the situation. The EI is doing everything that they can to become big brother to all the consumers in the world.
Repeat ad infinitum: Educate the consumers, educate the consumers...
Let people know the following: 1. These new hard drives may break their old software and data. 2. The new drives will not be defragable and will degrade in performance over time. 3. The new drives will be inherently more prone to become corrupted and/or require expensive repairs. 4. They are being presumed dihonest and are being asked to pay the freight for piracy in a way that will inconvenience them far more than a hard drive tax would.
Consumers will say "NO" in the market place and the tech will be DOA. Remember too, a "consumer" is not just joe sixpack shopping at Best Buy. Consumers are: RAID solution providers, OEMs, IT departments who might have to buy all new equipment and software.
If enough large corporate consumers sign some sort of statement to the effect that they won't tolerate this, they can kill it.
Even as a long time defender of intellectual property rights, I am firmly opposed to this technology. It places an undue burden on the innocent in order to punish the guilty (already a disturbing trend in other aspects of society). It will create a lot of uneccessary problems for a lot of people. Efforts can be (and are) better spent going after people in Asia who illegally mass produce copyrighted materials. Don't make my life inconvenient just because of what some overseas criminals and teenagers are doing.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In the "IBM spin" the IBM rep notes that "These [backups, etc] are good points, these issues will have to be addressed in the marketplace and you're absolutely right - but these have not even been discussed yet." It sounds like they don't really even give a shit about what appear to be fairly serious problems and they are going to resolve them in the "marketplace". So just leave it up to the backup software to take care of it? We'll just create this giant mess and dump it in someone else's lap, as long as hollywood is happy.....or am I reading this wrong?
You now have the means to use a piece of "unapproved" software to view your DVD's and * IT IS LEGAL.*
It is only illegal to * create or distribute* such software.
Anything you can leagally do with your IP you may still do with DeCSS without breaking the law. Only your SOURCE of the software has broken the law.
Read the DMCA very carefully, as well as the decisions handed down by the judges and you will find that this is true. If fact, note that the MPAA and the DVD consortium have not ONCE prosecuted for possesion and/or use, even though they have charged people who both possess and use said software with its distribution.
The law is VERY specific, and again, ONLY its distribution has been, so far, banned.
Maybe there is no compromise between free and proprietary software, or perhaps between free and proprietary information in general. This proposal is just one more indication that the proprietary side simply wants total control over what you can read or see or hear and when you can do it.
Will free software become extinct through judicial order soon? Will Linux become an circumvention device?
I would *think* not since it should be easy to prove that Linux's sole reason for being is not to circumvent this protection scheme, but who knows these days... :(
I can't see any reason why a hardware manufacturer would be stupid enough to implement this. Hardware makers want to sell units. Anything that ticks of customers is not going to sell units.
What's going to happen is IBM and others will make these drives, meanwhile overseas companies like in China will continue to make non-compliant drives and everyone will just buy them instead.
Frankly, I think if I was a stockholder in any company that makes hard drives, I think I'd want to make it very clear that caving to SOFTWARE interests is finacially a stupid move.
It's like 3COM implementing dongles for the PalmPilot to appease software developers. A) it costs 3Com a lot of money B) makes the devices more expensive C) pisses off customers who now have to deal with it and. So, if 3COM did it anyway, their shareholders could sue them for it.
Hardware manufacturers should be like backbone providers and common carriers. It isn't their jobs to regulate or restrict content.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
The real differences here are that everyone will be affected, and that the coding won't be easy to circumvent. You see, the hard disks will be made with the coding, well, hard-coded into them. And the principles behind the idea are outragous. It's like telling a person "Yeah, you paid for the book, but you'll have to send us an extra $5 every time you want to read it again." Tell me that doesn't piss you off.
The concept behind Pay Per Read (PPR) is that the people you pay have to have access to your computer. Ergo, companies will gain complete and total control over your computer. Once your can give direct signals to the hardisk, you can do anything you want!
So, if you disagree with anything I've said above, please reply to this comment. I'd really like to hear why having to pay to read a book every time doesn't piss you off.
Now, to take a different view, hardisks aren't licsensed in the way that DVDs are. That means that hardisk makers aren't bound to follow the coding standard. That means that you'll likely end up with 2 standards: encoded (E) and (N) not encoded. However, the E manufacturers will probably want software to recognize that their drive is an E drive. Uh-oh. That means game/software makers can keep their software from being installed on your computer! So now we're back to the "it's-a-problem-again-dept."
So, if that prophecy comes true, what will happen then? Well, you'll end up with a lot of consumers who are even more pissed off. There are 2 solutions to that (for the companies). 1) Team up and beat down the revolt (which, surpriseingly enough happens often), or 2) Give up and go home.
Obviously, you've got to get a lot of people already using the E drives to implement that strategy and be able to use solution 2. So, as long as an initial uprising happens, we'll be OK, right? Probably. And it most likely will happen (everyone, admit it or not, breaks at least one copyright law a week. It's like speeding. Everyone does it, most people do it often, some don't do it often, but everyone does it.) So, since none of what I said above is going to happen, I've needlessly spent 20 minutes pondering and pecking at my keyboard...:(
Conclusion: Make sure you go against copyright protecting drives!
It's all about the Karma Points...
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