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4C May Back Down On Hard-Disk Copy Protection
ArghBlarg writes: "As reported on the Mercury News' siliconvalley.com website, the 4C group, consisting of IBM, Intel, Matsushita and Toshiba, responsible for the dreaded CPRM rights-management standard for PC storage media,
may be backing down on mandatory implementation of the standard in PC hard disks.
A Linux consultant by the name of Andre Hedrick, who sits on the T.13 protocol committee, apparently confronted them during a recent meeting and got them to consider making an 'opt-out' mechanism if the standard is ever implemented in hard disks.
However, the EFF says that's not good enough, and says that CPRM should never besmirch a PC hard disk's firmware, in any form. The 4C group has been eerily silent about the issue, according to the article, so this isn't over yet.
(According to the Mercury article, the 4C entity promised to release a formal statement here about the 'opt-out' possibility, but no new releases were up at the time of writing.)"
More to the point, why wouldn't they? What do IBM (or any other drive maker) have to gain from CPRM? Sure, CPRM is great for the big content providers, but how does it help sell hard drives? That's the bit that I'm failing to understand. Of the three interested parties (consumers, drive makers and content providers), the only one that will benefit from CPRM is the only one that has no impact on drive sales. I just don't get why this scenario ever got off the drawing board. Can anyone shed any light on this?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
If this is allowed to run it's course, it may very well end up like airbags in cars... "optional", but you need a government permit to even turn them off.
Who broke the story. This is an example of journalism at its best. Of course, the fight isn't over quite yet.
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Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Need some big names with big mouths smacking them down, and a petition or two signed by a few thousand folks using the word "boycott". That _is_ the way to make a difference.
Not only is it OS dependant, but it's file system dependant.
./ discussion on this subject, this could hurt Linux badly in two ways.
However, as I pointed out in the original
1. First off, it is doubtful that CPRM could be implimented in Linux, in such a way as to be compatible with the GPL (which means whatever it is that makes CPRM work would have to be open source).
2. Rogue judges like Judge "MPAA stooge" Kaplan could rule Linux an illegal cirvumvention device. I know the DMCA says that tools intended for other uses CAN circumvent. BUT, Kaplan ruled DeCSS illegal even though the AUTHOR and many others stated on the record that it was intended to allow the creation of a Linux DVD player.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
4C is the official ice tea of the Davis family, last time I checked.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Not to mention all the artsy geeks (e.g., animators) that greatly contribute to the corporate profits of the "content owners."
I wonder how attached to CPRM IBM, Matsushita, Toshiba and Intel would be if all of their Software Engineers, Hardware Engineers, System Administrators, Project Managers, and Helpdesk folk ditched work for a month or two (or even a couple of weeks).
It always surprises me how "of one voice" we can be as a demographic about issues such as this, and yet our actions (or suggestions of action) are so ineffectual compared to those of other segments of the labor force who learned around a century ago how to get large companies to respect their wishes.
GASP!! The commie bastard is talking about <shudder> UNIONS .
I know it probably goes against the capatalist, libertarian grain of my fellow slashdot readers to even suggest such a thing as a geek general strike, but look at it this way: you can talk all you want about boycotts, but though we might like to think otherwise, geeks probably represent a relative minority of technology consumers. Our power & value in this society derive from our being a significant majority of the labor force required to produce technology.
Anyone who thinks that geeks stand an iota of a chance fighting attacks on our liberty from Mega-Corps by appealing to a majority of tech consumers who could't care less if Sony & Time Warner control their hard drive is kidding themselves. We already agree that the bastards need to be forced to grow a clue, why not take advantage of the means of influence of which we are most uniquely capable?
Hrm. First time I read it, I read it 4H. I was gonna say... What do a bunch of animal loving kids have to do with content protection in a hard drive's firmware?!
Because you won't be able to view their content usinga free viewer under a free OS, since a viewer must ensure the data is not copied once extracted from the drive, just shown on the screen. Thus it can not be Open Source - if it where, anyone could easily change to source to allow that. This is where the problem lies.
I have no problem with you wanting to getting enslaved - but I will fight with my teeths if you want me to go the same way.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Put together, this means that Intel is being blatantly dishonest. Again.
So in fighting CPRM, it is not enough to use logic, reasonableness, or sense. Intel, and others, don't care about such things. They have to be shown that CPRM is not in their best interests. With IBM, this might not be too difficult: IBM just committed a gigadallar to Linux--and they won't want that wasted.
I suppose you can call him that, but Andre Hedrick wrote and maintains the IDE code in the kernel and has for at least 2 years now.
Well there's also an Office for Macintosh...
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
stay on top of this. I hope that it doesn't go anywhere but if the "Working group" falls back into the shadows, it might change it's mind yet again.
Yeah, but how many Regular Joes are going to install a special hd driver which spoofs CPRM just so they can get their software to work?
Plus, would such a driver, even though it doesn't use any actual decryption, be "circumventing" an encryption method which the software company would argue is used to protect their copyrighted material (ie, whatever it is the software is using CPRM for, even if it's just to store its own terms of service, documentation, or something else it can claim copyright over). If so, it's arguably an illegal driver under the DMCA.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Don't belive this for a sec. This is just to get a foot in the door. This is a BAD idea and should die right here.
Everything you ever wanted to know about CPRM, but ZDNet wouldn't tell you...
CNet suckered by CPRM spin
Linux lead slams 'pay per read' disk drive plan
Stealth plan puts copy protection into every hard drive
4C retreats in Copy Protection storm
EFF's Gilmore calls for CPRM hardware boycott
This is a huge issue, and we need to take it seriously. I would go so far as to say it's a "do or die" issue, perhaps more important than cryptography. We need to draw a line in the sand.
When drive manufacturers build hard disks, who are they working for? The owners of intellectual property, or us, the people who buy them? It seems to me that they're working for us. Why don't they act like it? What's going on here?
I don't want to encourage strident or peurile pseudo-political action. And I'm not sure what to do about it. But this just can't be allowed to go through. This is the sort of thing that ought to make us all consider writing checks to the EFF, at the very least.
All of the conventional wisdom about concentrating press power into a few hands, as has been the trend lately, suggests that this story won't get much play. The same dynamic exists in the debate over the giveaway of new HDTV frequencies to the broadcasters. You don't hear much about that, because the people getting the giveaway are the ones who are supposed to be protecting us from such scams.
The bad news is that all of the people who are suppsoed to be protecting us from scams like this current one are also the same people who own all of the intellectual property. Will Time/Warner allow its journalists to talk about this issue?
We have to stay focused on this. We have to tell people we know about it. We have to make noise. And we have to make sure that our lobbyists are well funded.
This is simply totally and utterly unacceptable.
From what I've read, its not that simple and if Alan Cox is worried about it, it will not be easy to defeat. This ain't no MP3 watermarking scheme.
The fact that this has gotten this far pisses me off a great deal, if I buy a HD I should be able to do as I please with it. Its bad enough with DeCSS bullshit, if this gets anywhere near HDs we'll have the same battle: "Sorry Linux, you don't have a licence to read the new HDs and even if a benevolent stranger were to donate a license, you can not write drivers and open the source".
What's that you say? It's only for selective content such as films and music, for now maybe but once the spread of the technology is wide enough, who knows? This is fat cat corporate heaven.
We are no longer living in interesting times but very worrying times. George Orwell seems to have only missed the date by 20 years, maybe he misjudged human nature and thought we would rollover quicker but regardless if "inititives" like this HD shit get implimented I'd say we're half way on our backs already.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
We might not be able to stop the drive manufacturers from adding this unique identifier to storage devices, but there is a clear and simple way of stopping it from becoming mainstream -- pressure Apple Computer Inc. to ensure that the CPRM system is not enablable on their computers. This is an easy way to ensure that the control system doesn't work (or more importantly, CAN'T work) on 99% of consumer computers.
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Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
Make sure that Joe Consumer knows that there are folks who DON'T have to pay. If everybody has to pay then dear old Joe will mutter something under his breath about "can't fight city hall" and pay up. But let him get wind that his neighbor doesn't have to, and boy howdy, he will want to know how. Tell him it's like the phone company, and he will go out of his way to screw it. Doesn't matter if he has to spend ten bucks to save a dime. "It's the principle, ya know?"
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
According to whom?? The EFF, the FSF? RMS? ESR? Bruce Perens? Alan Cox? Linus? CmdrTaco? You? Me?
The thing about boycotting anyone/anything is that it is very subjective to the morals and ethics of any given individual. What I find objectionable, you find perfectly acceptable, and vice-versa. And what criteria are used? That it violates your privacy, your freedom, your sense of fair play? Or does it simply have to be 'too expensive' or maybe even the wrong colour. And what about crossover issues? I quite like the UI on Macintosh, but I object to the lack of freedom the OS offers. Is Macintosh on the 'good' list or the 'bad' list? DVD's employ an objectionable region-coding scheme, but I have a region-free player. Is it ok for me to buy Anime? I happen to agree with the EFF - opt-out on CPRM is not enough, but what if the maintainer of the 'good/bad' site doesn't agree?
If I'm going to avoid, say, buying DVDs because I think the MPAA is evil, then I don't need the approval of popular opinion to help me make that decision. The facts are quite sufficient, and those are already available in abundance.
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
Common sense lesson number one: Who's making the specs? Well, IBM for one and they have quite a vested interest in HD sales, do you think they'd leave the door open like this?
Problem number one is that to make hard disks that are compatible with the new specs you will have to license the technology. In that License there will be a little clause that states the whole spec must be implimented which will of course mean you have to include all of the digital rights managements features.
Put this another way: When the price of DVD burners falls there will be a market for blank DVDs that don't have the key code portion of the disk already written, this will enable backups of films. However to produce blank DVDs you need to license the technology, I'll give you one guess on what the license says you're not allowed to do.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
4C = Four Companies, really.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The perfect business opportunity would be to sell disks that comply with the spec, but all of your disks have identical serial info. So if you buy two SloppyDisks, you can install copy-protected software on them, but if you image copy one SloppyDisk to another SloppyDisk, the software doesn't know that it has been moved/copied. SloppyDisks will fly off the shelves. :-)
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
There may be ways around it. So? What you have to understand is that if the ways around it are at all tricky, or require some reverse engineering, they they will be illegal under the DMCA, just like DeCSS.
(note: I am simplifying - it is not clear that DeCSS is actually "illegal". Whatever.)
Just like the MPAA have and will sue anyone who distributes software that allows you to fully control and use a DVD drive, the RIAA and MPAA would like to sue you for distributing software that allows people to fully control and use a hard drive.
So, you are correct - there will be technical ways around this - but it's a hollow victory, because they will all count as "circumvention" to the DMCA. If someone writes a hard disk driver that "emulates" CPRM to software, but disables it, and they put it on a web page, they will probably be sued.
The content industries want to have total control over everything they sell^H^H^H^H license, for all time. They never had that right before, but the combination of weak technological protection and a crappy law to back it up is close to giving it to them.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
I think it's fair to say that for many of us who read Slashdot, and care about our "digital rights", public enemy number one is the MPAA (yup, even more than Microsoft). They're the ones who are pressuring companies to put copy prevention software everywhere. How about trying to get the DOJ involved? Sure, a lot of people who read this don't like government intervention, but they're voted in by the people, for the people, and they did a pretty good job of distracting Microsoft and allowing Linux / Open Source to become a feasible alternative.
I don't know much about US law (IANAL and IANAA (An American), but are they not a cabel, or something?)
Although some manufacturers will choose to "opt out" of the CPRM stuff, SOFTWARE designers will simply require copy-control enabled hardware as one of the specs, ie:
"This software requires
32 MB RAM
Such-and-such Processor
CPRM-enabled Hard Disk"
it's embrace and extend. If the only way to run the software is w/a CPRM drive, and the software is mission-critical, then you've got no choice.
Of course, it COULD backfire and people would just stop using that software... but a potential (and likely) collaboration between software and hardware designers makes it all the more important that CPRM never get finalized as a standard.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
There is a message in the 21.18 Risks digest which claims that the 4C's CPRM was solely for Compact Flash media, and that John Gilmore over-reacted, that the technology is "neither intended nor licensed for use with PC hard drives", and that this 'issue' is being blown all out of proportion. It was in directly reply to John Gilmore's own Risks submission about the 'issue'.
So, can someone without a flaming streak of extremism or a conflicting interest and with some detailed technical knowledge of the facts please speak up. Is this Risks submission (from a guy from Intel) accurate?
I don't like it when zealots create a big wave and brou-ha-ha over nothing. It wouldn't be the first time.
1. Older ATA controllers will not have this built into their BIOS. Maybe there will be a run on them.
2. How much of the controller code is in flash, and can be updated? What happens if the updates get hacked? "oh, look, now it always returns 00h".
3. From what I could find of the specs, The drive serial number is on the magnetic media somewhere. How long before a "utility" is developed to overwrite/change this? A side note: Wrap this up in an email virus. Send to fifty of your ex-friends. Better than a reformat, and takes less time. I bet drive manufacturer's tech support will love this.
4. The specs also mentioned "Encrypted key space" Are parts of keys stored there? Is there a limit? Generate small encrypted random files. Register and repeat until overflowing. Tech support will love this, too.
5. How about releasing a bunch or really cool freeware, stuff the masses will want to run. Only it won't work on CPRM activated systems, and gives a short message about why not, and then suggests that the consumer return his computer for one that isn't broken.
The list goes on. You just have to think about it creatively. The best arrangement is going to be education, though. Make sure that joe consumer knows he's getting screwed, and that other folks around him aren't.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Did anyone learn anything about the copy-control stuff that had supposedly been added to SCSI and firewire?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Likely as not, the only thing to get these ideas out of their heads is to use their own favourite means; a law-suit. Simply(?) find a few applications (at least more than one, preferably from different, non-opensource manufactors) that breaks so heavily on a CPRM-disk that it corrupts your on-disk data. Best would be if these programs are backup-utilities, scandisk or similar.
However powerful the MPAA/RIAA are, they still won't be as threatening as a class-action law-suit against all the Hard-Disc manufactors...
Then again, I'm not a lawyer...
The 4C have the attitude that, "They will buy whatever we make, all we need is to get are marketing team on it and everything will be fine." It brings back the days of Henry Ford, "You can have any colour car, as long as it black."
The Corporate World think that they will buy whatever we make, and will like it. We are the nitch users in the market, us geeks and gurus. Its John Doe that big business is after, and as far as the Corporate World is concerned John Doe doesn't know his arse from him elbow and will buy whatever is advertised as been the next big think that all the in-people must have.
Its not until us the geeks and gurus start to talk in the language of John Doe will we have any power to stop the Corporate World from controlling all things. John Doe is a sheep being lead to the slaughter, and he has bought the farm his slaughtering knife, he just doesn't realise it yet.
Because in the end us geeks and gurus will know where to turn to get by this copy protection, but John Doe will be the one fuelling the Corporate World. While we salvage parts from are old 468s and Pentiums.
Only when Copy Protection equals Loss of Sales, then 4C will start to think about removing it. So the only way to stop this, is by not buy new products that us CPRM. We just need to stick to your old walk-mans and disk-mans and we'll all be fine. Then the 4C will get the message! And if not, then we should us some C4 on 4C!
Wizartar.
I think what the original poster was trying to say was that even though Rambus was garanteed by Intel that it would be the standard, due to bad technology it's still floundering. The whole lawsuit patent issue is a seperate matter.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
At school, I asked a professor to borrow a CD of Jazz music. He asked why, because I am not in any of his jazz classes, and I replied that I wanted to put it on Napster (because I did). Eventually, I went through his sizable collection of rare CDs, creating redundant copies so that the recording will be less likely to disappear.
The point is, distributing information to reduce the likelihood of its disappearance is generally good, as it reduces redundant research and creation, which takes more time than simple duplication. The modern study of Science depends on research being shared and experiments repeated. Nobody is trying to figure out how to clone sheep, because it is already done. They may be trying to figure out how to clone humans, but that's an entirely different topic.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
I don't know about anyone else, but I plan to buy a few pre-CPRM hard drives, if this standard is implemented. I'll just keep my existing system for as long as it holds up.
What's the cost of a drive now? $100? I could buy a few that would last a while...
(off topic opinion) Given how the music industry killed consumer DAT with copy protection in the hardware, the PC will probably go the same way. The PC market as it exists has reached saturation point and has one foot in the grave already. CPRM will put the consumer multimedia PC market totally into the grave.
Guess those greedy record company bastards who give you $18 CDs (remember when those lying bastards said "oh yes, when we ramp up production, CDs will cost the same as LPs"). Now they're playing hardball with file sharing technology to keep their obscenely fat profits.
Copy control is lame, no doubt, but is it on the right track? Would it really be so bad for unauthorized copying to be hard (in the strict computer science sense of the word) or even impossible? Every time someone "pirates" a piece of software because it is too expensive, the economic system crumbles. If people were required to actually pay (like we are for material possessions) then wouldn't there be demand for lower priced software? Even, free software? The most common thing I hear when people are bitching about the quality of Free Software is "you can't complain about something that is free". Well people do complain.. they still compare Free Software to Commerical software because they can get Commercial software for free. Copy control is definitely not the solution but perhaps some solution is still needed?
Maybe this is just a social issue. Maybe the people who say "violating proprietory copyright is wrong" the loudest should be the Free Software community. After all, they have just as much to loose as the commercial software companies. Is this about education? Do people need to be told (again) about network effects? Even if you didn't pay for the (commercial) software, you are contributing to the popularity of the software and the standards and formats that it uses. It is ironic that, even without buying copy controlled harddrives, unauthorized copying gives control to the copyright holder. Just by using the product you are giving the copyright holder a little more control over the market and by not paying for it you are relinquishing your (consumer) control over prices and indeed, quality.
So to go out on a limb. I say that the elimination of piracy would help Free Software. Surely there's a way that it can be done that is fair and not so Orwellian as copy control.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Let the "4C" do whatever they want, I'll just buy my harddrives elsewhere, ie: maxtor, seagate, and whole other bunch of manufacturers. It sounds like a waste of the 4C's time, really. They could make drives with copy protection and loose business, or they could make both drives, regular and copy protected, which is a waste of time and resources because no one will buy them.
-kidlinux.
While we should continue to fight this fight in the current standards bodies, I am forced to wonder if an "Open Hardware Standards" or "Free Hardware Standards" process shouldn't be created (perhaps using the successful IETF collaboration/contribution model), in which existing open standards could be rubber stamped as Open Hardware compliant, new standards could be created, and standards which are detrimental to Free Software, Open Source, and Open Hardware (such as DVD CSS and the proposed monstrosity this thread deals with) would be condemned as non-Open compliant.
If handled correctly, and able to garner sufficient mindshare, a condemnation from such a group could nip bad standards such as these in the bud. Hardware manufacturers whose products were "Open Hardware" compliant would almost certainly sell more than non-compliant products, particularly when it comes to fundamental components such as hard drives, cdroms, CPUs, and memory.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Its a cryptography scheme that tries to use your hard-drive to store cryptography keys that protect the data. Basically it doesn't work. No hardware can be tamperproof enough. The scheme has more holes than swiss cheese.
;-). The users will buy it because it helps them 'back up their software'.
This is similar, but more complex scheme than that that was used with the DVD. But as we've seen with DVD players, it doesn't work their either. You can copy DVD discs and play them.
The big problem with all these kinds of scheme is that they are only as good as the protection on the keys. You are trying to protect keys when the owner of the machine is able to take it to pieces and has the incentive to do so.
You can make it very difficult to do this, but given enough time it's usually possible to get at the keys.
And all it needs is ONE hard-drive anywhere in the world to be subverted (i.e. have a way to read the keys off of it) and then it is possible to mass produce copies of it. Then you can copy the software between these clones as much as you want.
The thing is the hard-drive manufacture that makes cloneable drives will produce them because they sell nicely
Finally, in order for the data to be used on the PC it must be the case that the data has had the cryptography removed. At that point the data is wide open.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Oh no, software vendors may only release to systems they feel are secure!
Okay, I'm not exactly a fan of CPRM, but as long as software vendors make it clear that their software will not work without CPRM, I wouldn't call it unscrupulous. Stupid, given how many people won't have the drives, but not unscrupulous.
On top of which, the main purpose for this appears to be protecting digital music/video from being copied; even if they are only made available to people with CPRM hard-drives, it's not exactly as if you can buy legal MP3s of your favourite group, at the moment, is it (I know there are exceptions, I'm talking about the majority of cases).
What I mean is, if CPRM is implemented, and music/video is only made available to those with CPRM harddrives, those without aren't going to actually lose anything.
From my perspective, I actually don't want people to copy stuff from the copyright industries, that is, the MPAA, the RCAA, and the BSA.
If people can freely copy this stuff, this putrid cancer of proprietary crock products may very well continue to spread through society.
So, if these copyright industries want to prevent people from accessing their crocks, I'm all for it. It can only accelerate the adoption of free music, free film and free software. In my opinion, pirated content, not proprietary content, is the strongest competitor to free content; and slows the adoption of, for example, Linux, especially in the third world.
That's why I am willing to put up with copy prevention schemes. It can only shield us further from proprietary crocks.
The best way for free software to defeat proprietary software, is to make it impossible to pirate proprietary software.
Exactly. So what if the copy protection features are optional? Like the parent post says, the MPAA (or whoever else) can simply release the next popular, ground-breaking movie or media in a form that requires you to turn on the copy-protect features. Then since everyone (read, enough to make a difference) wants to see those movies or hear the music, etc., eventually the opt-out feature will fall out of use and vendors will just stop including it in newer HD's.
No, CPRM must be discarded entirely. No compromises will suffice, because MPAA/RIAA has enough clueless customer base to generate enough demand that any compromising features such as opting-out will fall out of common use, and vendors will stop including them.
OTOH I don't see how this battle can be won, though. The MPAA/RIAA has clearly decided to fight against copy-protection using this (flawed) way. *Sigh* How greed can blind people. Even Micros~1 knows enough to leave places like Taiwan or China alone when it comes to pirating Windows -- they know very well that even a pirate installation of Windows is more to their advantage than a non-pirate, non-Windows installation. Why can't MPAA/RIAA get a clue and just leave things be? It's not like they aren't already making a fortune in spite of the current rampant music/movie piracy.
The only problem with this analogy is that there is no viable alternative to MPAA/RIAA -- nothing comparable to Linux vs. Windows, if you will. Perhaps somebody should get the DoJ to go after the MPAA/RIAA after they're done with MS :-)
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mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
Every time you encounter an employee from one of these companies (IBM, Intel, Matsushita, Toshiba), spit on him. When he flies into a rage and demands an explanation, tell him that his company is trying to enslave consumers everywhere. Pretty soon, no one will work for these companies.
...I'm not sure whether or not I'm kidding.
--Lenny
So, disks will in the future have some way to store data on them that won't be readable if the data is copied to another disk. Obviously this won't apply to all the data on the disk. It will only be applied when the software specifically says "make this file non-portable". I don't see why this bothers free software people. Just because it gives the media companies a way to prevent people from copying their content? So what? It's their music and video - if they don't want me to copy it then maybe I won't view it at all. Or maybe I will - depends on whether I like their terms. But how does that affect my running linux and other free software?
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Wouldn't be a good move for some hard drive company to specialize in selling "non" copy protected hard disks, then? Sure, it'd be tough going up against the big guys, but you might create yourself a niche market...
While it's nice that the outrage among us techies bout CPRM has apparently been noticed, making it "optional" is not accaptable.
It does not need to be in there at all. If it is, even if "optional" that will still give the MPAA/RIAA and unscrupulous software vendors the ability to REQUIRE you have it or enable it for their software/media, that you BOUGHT to work.
I really believe the way to beat CPRM to death is to drive home the point that it breaks the ability to use imaging programs like Ghost. How many enterprises right now are using Ghost to maintain and deploy PC's? Tons. Breaking it with CPRM hard drives will cost firms tons and tons of money spent in needless manual setup/maitenance on individual PC's.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
This sounds alot like Intel's Processor ID scheme on the early PII's... I remember reading last week that alot of manufacturers we considering making this an *optional* feature (much the same as being able to disable Intel's ID...) Not sure where I saw that though... Anyone read similar?
um.. I done, you can stop reading...
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
bah.. the most obvious flaw is sumed up in two words "compliant software". This compliant software is protected by licenses and NDA's.. nothing technical! Any moron can reverse engine "windows secure media player" and get the keys to access the data off the drive. Once you have the data you can resave it without the copy control. Trivial. Getting around it is hardly what we're talking about here.
How we know is more important than what we know.
RAMBUS is the WRONG comparison to make here. You know what happened with RAMBUS? They got patents granted by the USPTO as well as patent offices for a larger number of other countries. These patents applies to SDRAM and DDR SDRAM. So, with patents in hand, RAMBUS has been strong-arming all SDRAM manufacturers to license both the SDRAM and the RAMBUS patents with the SDRAM patents costing significantly more than the RAMBUS patents - they've also said that if any manufacturer disputes them, the fees for RAMBUS and any other patents that they hold will be much higher for the disputer. All Asian SDRAM manufacturers except one have already caved to RAMBUS. The American manufacturers are putting up a fight, but who knows how it will turn out.
So, if the CPRM were to really go the way of RAMBUS expect to see 4C sue everybody in sight who offers a CPRM-disabled product. You can bet the entertainment industry would be 100% behind such suits too. They killed DAT and Beta, and are trying their hardest to kill anything else useful.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Perhaps someone with some familiarity with hard drive engineering can help out with this:
As I understand it, a hard drive is magnetic media on glass, plus support circuitry to translate "high-level" digital signals (i.e. write this block of 1024 bytes to cylinder 27, track 855, sector 27), to "low-level" analog signals (i.e. spin drive, toggle head 5 stepper motors, toggle write head on, now off, etc.)
A fab to make magnetic media in the Foul Year of Our Lord 2001 is a major project in terms of cost and technical expertise required, probably comparable in size and scope to a silicon fab. How hard is it to make the support circuitry though? I suspect it's a little more than an undergraduate EE project, but certainly within the realm of a garage in Hsinchu (or Santa Clara for that matter).
Retrofitted copy-protection-free drives anyone?
j.
>It was never mandatory, it has always been optional.
:-)
You too could benefit from the research you advocate. There is quite a difference between what their spin doctors try to persuade ("optional"), and what is really in the actual spec itself. The Register reporter seemed to get quite pissed off at their blatent distortions.
"Mandatory" is a more accurate description. It's "Optional" in the same sense that Microsoft is "Innovative"
Hello,
I am writing to you as an owner of several IBM disk drives and as an IBM investor.
I've been following recent media reports about CPRM with alarm. The proposed standard for control over information would present problems for many applications (such as free software, which I use almost exclusively) while having dubious benefits.
Please consider retracting support for CPRM. If IBM continues to support it, I'll likely boycott IBM products -- and I don't want to do that (my Deskstars and Ultrastars are working great). Also I'll divest my IBM stock.
IBM made great contributions to open source community recently, and I'd hate to see that relationship affected by the policy of the storage division.
I wonder if more feedback like this will influence their actions...
This CPRM code is part of the ATA specification.
Hence for it to be required in hardware (and for all those sneaky sector-based things they want to do), it must be implemented in the chipset with the ATA interface.
Sure, Intel's in 4C, but they don't make the only chipsets out there. What about AMD? What about VIA? What about Apple, whose machines also use ATA?
I see no reason, if CPRM were ever to be enforced, that these other chipset manufacturers would refrain from splintering off and making their own standard, which would prove much more popular to consumer demand. After all, what happened with RAMBUS?
Fross
yer.. cause those 15 minutes on google searching for " nocd crack" is just so time consuming that no-one would ever copy your game. Wake up and smell the coffee.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Of course any website will be the product of the mind(s) behind it. Of course some boycots will be suggested that you or I or Linux or Dubya or someone won't agree with. Of course boycots are the products of personal ethical choices. And of course there is always the possibility that some dumbfuck really will take seriously the straw men you threw up: MacOS UI vs. MacOS limitatations, for example, or expensive or tackily coloured equipment.
But what I found valuable in the original post was the idea that one website, replete with information about and reasons to avoid dangerous technology like this -- one central and focussed source of information, not approval (another straw man) -- would be a good and useful and potentially very valuable thing.
Carousel is a lie!
if the people at 4C even use the computers that they make...
It is nice to see that they *may* be backing down, but it is a wonder that someone actually thought this might be a good idea to begin with. I can understand the fears about piracy (though many of them are unfounded), but it should be up to the user to decide what to use a device for, be it a hard drive or a steak knife. It is up to the user to break the law with it.
[sarcasm]Of course, anyone could be a criminal, so the big industries should treat everyone as if they are.[/sarcasm]
I'm sorry, but this kind of logic really gets me angry. Logic like this just takes the world (or at least the US) one step closer to 1984.
Not to mention taking the Massive Money Makers one step closer to making users pay per use and gouge even more money out of our pockets. GRRRRR!!!!
ok...enough from me...out.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
The reason it failed is simply that other companies would have made non-protected drives. Given the choice between protected and non-protected drives, I'd take the non-protected - even if all else wasn't exactly equal. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't. Guess they must have realized that.
CAP THAT KARMA!
Moderators: -1, nested, oldest first!
SIG: HUP
t.
"I wonder if more feedback like this will influence their actions..."
I don't know if it would. You wrote a very reasoned response, though it may be better to mail it to them, since I doubt anyone above level F marketdrones ever read website feedback forms.
That sort of feedback IS what we need to give IBM and every HD mandufacturer. All it will take to break CPRM is to convince one company to not play the game, or to sell non-defective (CPRM free) hard drives.
This really is a case where the whole industry HAS to play ball for this to succeed. If only one or two manufacturers impliment CPRM, they could find themselves out on the proverbial ledge, while their competition is busy taking over their market share.
I shudder to think what will happen in a year or two, at the rate things are merging, when we only have 2-3 hard drive makers, instead of 6-7 like we have now... Competition is how you keep this kind of anti-consumer crap from suceeding in the market.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance