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Ask Andre Hedrick About Hard Drive Copy Protection
You've read about it here on Slashdot and elsewhere: How the 4C Entity is developing copy protection mechanisms for removeable drives (floppies, DVDs, etc.) that can also be used on hard drives. But Linux kernel hacker Andre Hedrick, member of both linux-ide.org and the industry-wide Technical Committee T.13 that sets ATA hard drive interface standards, has been raising a ruckus about copy protection on your hard drive, and he, along with EFF and EPIC, is trying to get this idea killed (or at least muted). So post any questions you have for Andre about this whole thing below, and tomorrow we'll shoot 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him by email. We'll post Andre's answers as soon as he has time to get them back to us, which may be a bit because, he warns,"everyone else is hounding me ..."
It pronounces as "Force Entity"...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Is making the CPRM spec a feature that can be turned off truly making it voluntary, given that presumably some content will not be supplied to users who fail to leave CPRM enabled? Would it not end up being as "optional" as DVD CSS encyption and non-zero region encoding?
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If this copy protection were to become mandatory, I can definately imagine the effects that it would cause. But what effects - both long and short term - do you feel this would cause?
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Welcome to the land of the easily amused...
Either way, go get 'em Andre! I hope that you'll keep the Win2K users in mind as well, because no anti-DMCA techie leaves another anti-DMCA techie behind.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Alright, the whole idea of CPRM really does scare me. I'll buy drives from manufacturers that don't support CPRM if I have to.
My question however, is that even if this standard is "beaten down" in ATA, how likely is it that a software-only solution could be devised? Don't hard drives already have unique ID numbers encoded on them?
Are we directing our attention to the wrong problem, where instead we should be clamouring for fair-use protections in general?
Perhaps this is too political a question, but I'd love to hear the thoughts of someone so close to the issue.
-Jason
This proposal is a tragedy to personal liberties and freedoms (and rates pretty high on the Suck-o-Meter), and your efforts thus far are admirable.
So, I want to know, what can we do to help? Letter writing, calls, faxes? Stand around and go "Brrbbrrbb" with our lips?
How can we aid your efforts in the most effective way?
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
As in, is there a >0 probability of this monstrosity NOT making it into the official stardard? (as opposed to merely becoming "optional", which would be the proverbial foot in the door)
If copy protection ever became a nonoptional part of hard drives, would you support potentially illegal efforts to circumvent the copy protection? That is, to what extent will you defend the principle of truly free information, vis-a-vis the copy protection of the MPAA et al?
"Feel a glory in so rolling / on the human heart a stone" --E. A. Poe, "The Bells"
If this is forced through the industry, how would one write a DeCSS-like tool to defeat it? Is it in some way bypassable in software?
sulli
RTFJ.
My question, though, stems from the fact that (like it or not) software companies are within their rights to get paid for software they write, and to set up their own price structure, and to prosecute those who steal their software.
So the question is: If this misguided idea of hardware-based copy protection gets successfully scuttled (and I hope it does), what better solution might there be for proprietary-model software companies that has the benefit of providing them superior protection from pirates without screwing the rest of the world out of the benefits of the currently open hardware model, such as "fair use" under copyright law?
My US$.02: Coming up with such a "third way" solution could go a long way toward killing media-based copy protection - give them an out, and they might take it.
OK,
- B
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http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Wouldn't it make it substantially more difficult to design and run media software? Rights management == high overhead, more bugs, lower reliability, dissatisfied customers, etc. MS like anyone else would want to avoid it at all costs.
sulli
RTFJ.
I don't use my Linux machines to read "entertainment files" (MP3s, DVDs etc) or run any closed source software. I just read Slashdot, send email and hack code. Is there any reason why I wouldn't be able to continue doing this on one of these crippled drives?
To get people to change what their actions, usually requires that you have a stick to beat them with. The stick is usually made up of some sort of power over things that the person cares about. Where does your power to affect change within the standards come from?
It is assumed that certain media conglomerates are responsible for this bug. Where does there power to move the hardware manufacturers come from?
Finally, do the manufacturers even care what Open Source advocates have to say, and if so what is the most effective way for Open Source advocates to provide input?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
John
John
What is the best way for me to prevent this spec from being implemented and help you in your cause?
--Bill 'EvilBill' Adams
How will (or will) consumer rights to fair use of content be protected through all this?
... climb out and hang ...
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Put your feet out and stop
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
I gain the impression that compliant (presumably closed source) software encrypts data as it flows on and off the drive using keys which are specific to each drive. So, if the file is moved to a different drive it won't decrypt any longer? Have I got the right idea? If so, its only applicable to those prepared to run closed source software, right?
To be honest I'm leary here. When I look at the officers for the T13 (Maxim/Quantum personel), and add that to the locations the meetings take place: Microsoft, Dell, Seagate, Western Digital, etc. I can't help but to think that the end result is going to be business interests ahead of consumer interests.
What is the mood of the T13 on the issue? Are you part of a minority, or part of the majority on this issue? Do you think you will win on this issue?
How would the drive know that something is 'legal'? Would it really have to contact a server somewhere to validate the software or file? What happens if you need to get the system operating to the point that you get a network connection to validate the OS, but can't get the system up to that point without validating that the OS is legal? I have no doubt that if CPRM is on a drive, that entities such as MS will require it be used.
Say that the 'go key' for the OS is stored on the drive in such a manner that it can access it without validating it with an external source. Would the same hold true for other files? What would prevent someone from developing an application that could generate a valid key, and either 'trick' the drive into accepting it, or in fact giving an 'a okay' signal itself without checking the drive in the first place?
It just seems to me that this is a no-win situation for everyone, as the less technically inclined will suffer greviously for the actions of a few, and the technically astitute will find ways around CPRM in short order, thus invalidating it's reason for existing.
Are there any possible beneficial uses for this technology, like implementing some sort of improved filesystem security model under Linux (or *BSD or Windows) that would be helpful to the BOFH?
Excuse me for breaking into the screaming and hyterics and all, but whats so bad about CPRM?
From what I understand, CPRM relies on not just a CPRM compliant drive, but also CPRM compliant software & CPRM compliant data. All CPRM does is allow CPRM data to be stored on a CPRM area of a CPRM protected hard drive with CPRM software.
Now, this doesn't actually stop anyone using the non-CPRM portion of the drive. In fact, the non-CPRM section of the drive operates as a normal harddrive. It doesn't stop me storing my MP3's that I downloaded from Napster, or that DivX;-) I leeched from Usenet. In short, it doesn't stop me doing anything I do now.
It seems that CPRM is the only way that these companies are ever going to accept the Internet as a viable distribution channel for their movies, music etc. Thats not to say that when CPRM becomes a standard, that people will stop trading non-CPRM media the same way they did before by ripping the CD, DVD etc.
So surely, if CPRM means that we can finally download those films & MP3's legitimatly, thats got to be a good thing? Those who still want to pirate their stuff can do so, CPRM doesn't stop them using the old piracy methods. The only possible downside to this is that 4C may exclude Open Source from implementing CPRM, but then surely they want CPRM to be accepted industry wide, so why would they do that?
Really, my question is, why are you so against CPRM? What does it stop us from doing that we don't do already, & why6 can't we just ignore it?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
With all these new laws, napster/DeCSS scares, etc, are companies choosing to ignore educational fair use, or do they just not care anymore? Basically, as a university, we have the right to use copyrighted materials in certain ways (such as taking a video file and copying it to all the machines in a classroom for temporary educational use) for educational purposes. Would this new hard drive standard take this into consideration or would we no longer be able to exercise our fair use rights as an educational institution?
Very good point. Has anyone pointed out to 4C that CPRM could cause a user in the UK to be in breach of our Oh-So-Wonderful RIP law?
"Sorry Mr. Judge, I cannot supply the data that was on the drive, as it is CPRM compliant and I do not have the keys to decrypt it any more."
Syllable : It's an Operating System
How can copy protection of data be maintained on hard disks and other media if the operating system has the ability to use partition types that encrypt? Wouldn't a layer in an OS kernel be able to circumvent a good portion of the measures if the data does not reach the drive in its original form?
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Will the 4C attempt to be like congress and pull a pork barrel trick? For example, they could make this new copy protection part of the next ATA stanard. While companies could 'opt' not to use the copy protection, they would also not be able to make hard drives with the newest ATA standard, pretty much forcing them to go with the new copy protection. Do you see the 4C doing something like this?
The USB Implementor's forum has defined some Content Security standards, evidently using a slightly different technical approach (different group of companies pushing it).
I'd be interested in comments from Andre about (a) whether this indicates fragmentation among advocates of copy controls, confusion, or perhaps something sinister; (b) how creators of USB-to-ATAPI style bridge products (usb storage devices) would decide which style copy control scheme to implement, assuming they really wanted to do so, (c) the degree having different copy control systems may be defensive efforts to make hardware products stop being commodities.
On issue (c), I just want to point out that consumers benefit from commodity products as much as they benefit from commodity data formats for the information they've acquired ... while vendors
of both hardware and digitized data can see both of those as
significant threats to business strategies that
rely on vendor control rather than
providing customer value.
It seems that in the name of stopping copyright infringement in the way of piracy, we have lost our right to make archival copies of whatever media we purchase.
This right never seems to be mentioned in the debates that I've seen, and yet it is something that is extremely important to the individual, especially when you are looking at software packages beomcing more and more expensive every year. If we've paid several thousand dollars for an Enterprise package like, say, Visual InterDev, having an archival copy of it is extremely important.
It doesn't appear as though the schemes for hard drive copy protection have any such concerns, much like all of the current pushes to reform copyright law.
We're living in an age when individual rights are being thrown over left and right in the name of profit margins, and it's projects like this that are eroding them.
This isn't a question but it will help if /. and other sources of news use a term like "copy control" or "access control", depending on how it works, instead of the meaningless "copy protection". RMS has written on the subject and I tend to agree that the word "protection" lends a false air of credibility and necessity to these technological control schemes.
Imagine hearing a debate against "protection". Who in their right mind except a bunch of evil hackers would want to take away protection? Now imagine a debate against "control". Well that's good! Americans don't like to be controlled!
If they can use spin and propaganda to further their needs, I think we should too. Like when talking about "censorware", that word is really spin we use to make our message clearer.
I don't understand why drive manufacturers would want to impose copy protection on their customers. How does a company like IBM benefit from cooperating with this scheme?
I don't think that there are many customers who would prefer a copy protected drive. Why would a rational company ignore the desires of its customers in order to satisfy the desires of the companies who will benefit from these crippled drives?
Are they afraid of lawsuits? Legistlation? Are they being paid? Are they simply standing in solidarity with other multi-national corporations?
I don't understand why drive manufacturers are on board, and it seems to me that knowing why they're doing what they're doing would help us to think of effective strategies to comabat this noxiouis proposal.
Directed at the 4C group: What sort of legal resources do you intend to devote towards defending yourselves as businesses and consumers start suffering damage from being unable to use drives that have been intentionally engineered this way.
In order for the current copy-protection scheme used by DVD-producing movie studios to work, they must have control not only over the discs that have the movies on them, but the players as well. They accomplish this by maintaining copyright and patent control of the DVD format, making it illegal to produce a reader that works with the DVD format unless you obtain a license from them and agree to play by their rules. This has proved a fairly effective scheme, with only a few exceptions. How will a scheme to add this "copy protection" to hard drives be enforced universally? What's to prevent smaller companies from trying to get into the market by producing rogue drives much like many businesses have carved a niche for themselves by selling cable decoding boxes and the like? Is there going to be a controlling group like the DVD-CCA? Will I have to get another bumper sticker that says "Fuck the Hard Drive Control Authority" to go along with my "Fuck the MPAA" sticker?
--Brogdon
This tagline is umop apisdn.
As the IDE subsystem developer for Linux, how will you deal with this misfeature? Will you merely work around it in software, or will you stay true to the SPECS and implement the copy protect feature? Or perhaps have the copy protect a CONFIG option? Or will this be a layer below the kernel(in the chipset) and in such case, hack around that too(XORing the file as it goes to disk obscuring any goofy signatures and reversing the operation on the way back?).
Aaron
How can it work, anyway? Data goes to the disk, Data comes out of the disk, and can be grabbed. Encrypted data goes to the disk, comes out decrypted, and can be grabbed. If nothing else, someone can simulate a display/sound card on a virtual machine, and grab the data at that point. Once *one* person has extracted the data, it can be shared like any other data. They can not seriously hope to stop all email and file transfers, can they?
In Murphy We Turst
Do you know if there are any patents or other legal tricks involved, so that ultimately, a manufacturer who decides to create CPRM-compliant drives will be forced to sign a contract with some single controlling monopolistic entity?
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Last week we read that a copy-control scheme similar or identical to CPRM has been already approved for SCSI and Firewire (without objection...probably because no one knew about it.)
First off, is it true? Secondly, why hadn't we heard about this before? Can we expect this technology to be built into all new SCSI and Firwire hardware, or is "optional" there too?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I think you're a little too overconfident - there is a very real chance that, for the first time, you'll be up against real encryption technology - the kind of stuff that military intelligence can't break.
If things go badly, the only workable "crack" might need to be installed with a soldering iron and some expensive components. And once it's done, you might still need to crack all your legitimate software just to get it to think it's running on a compliant device rather than some evil pirate's machine.
It may be less than a year before we hear "If you've got nothing to hide, why do you have a problem with CPRM?"
Easy. With a techno fix everything on the hard drive becomes protected by an effective copy protection device. Anyone who coppies anything on the device, finds a way to copy stuff on the device, or even tells other people how to copy stuff on the device is guilty of a federal offence. This standard makes the existing copyright laws stronger which it can then enforce through traditional means. Also, it is hard for big companies to go after small time infrengers (e.g. mp3 users) because it looks bad for them. This prevents the average person from copying protected content and allows only those evil "hackers" to do it. It's a lot easyier to sue "hackers" than conumers. And, the media industry does not appear to be limiting people the hardware industry does. This is why the media giants want this and the hardware ppl dont.
Copy protection is only tangentially related to piracy. It is very easy (logical, IMHO) to be anti-piracy and anti-copyprotection.
This will just create additional expense for Microsoft, without having a significant effect on piracy. Copy protection normally only hurts legitimate users, not pirates.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm tired of seeing this copy protection aimed at "pirates." All of the copy protection schemes I've seen aired are designed to coax more money out of the consumer out of pay-per-use schemes.
Since a DVD pirate, with $20,000 worth of mastering equipment avaialable, can make perfect copies without decoding or altering the content, how will copy protection on my hard drive help thwart Chinese DVD piracy?
The only reason why IBM etc. would want to do this thing, that I've heard, that makes sense, is that they want to sell more computers by pushing them as home entertainment devices for playing all the lastest movies and music. Hollywood isn't going to let that happen without some way of preserving their distribution models, so the deal between them is CPRM.
Is this the primary motivation?
If so, can we expect Apple (which prides itself on playing media) to fall in line with IBM etc (or at least quietly look in the other direction, happy to use to proceeds of CPRM but not dirty its hands creating it) ?
Should we expect companies that sell HDDs rather than computers (eg Maxtor, Seagate) to be fairly neutral in this (eg either way, they still sell their product), or support it (eg greater sales for IBM means greater HDD volumes which means higher profits) or against it (extra headaches)?
We know MS and some others are pretty loudly against it, but are there other relevant sectors of the industry that might play key roles that are currently being overlooked?
Are the legal precedents that will be set from the DeCSS trials likely to play a key role?
Lastly, would I be correct in my assumption that it is not actually within 4C's power to claim that CPRM is "optional" - it is completely up to the manufacturer of CPRM-compliant-software, as they can choose to write software that will not operate when CPRM features are turned off or absent?
As you've had some contact with these folks, perhaps you've got a feel for this:
- Corporation implements (or proposes to implement) a technology designed to protect their business model that happens to trample on the rights of their customers
- Educated customer realizes implications, makes a big stink about it.
How sensitive are the corporations you've been dealing with to non-busines-related "huma rights" issues?
In other words, how big does the stink have to get before the profit provided by the implementation being disputed is no longer worth the effort?
Which I suppose is another way of asking "how much effort do we have to make before they'll back down?"
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
So many current practices (like encrypted filesystems) would bypass this technology. Do you predict the 4C will attempt to have these outlawed under DMCA if this effort is successful?
My guess would be no need - an encrypted filesystem just makes the HDD look like a non CPRM compliant device. Once CPRM is established in the market, there will be a little label on the software box you buy:
Requires Pentium4 1Ghz, 256Mb RAM, 300Mb CPRM HDD.
If you're running an encyrpted filesystem, tough luck. Ditch your system or ditch the software. You can't have both. A non-CPRM disk will probably be like DVD player without CSS descrambling.
Is IBM aware of this?--or is it that IBM is so big, the part dealing with CPRM is unaware of the implications for Linux? If the latter, then maybe just making IBM aware of things will help to kill of CPRM, or at least IBM's support for it.
I've been in a situation before (and known others who have had similar situations) where important data for a project was physically located on a specific machine, and that machine's drive crashed. I've known several instances where the drive no longer worked, but the data was recovered (for a hefty fee). If a drive is equiped according to this copy protection standard, would data on a crashed drive be recoverable?
OK, here's my question:
CPRM is obviously just ONE of several technologies designed to build the CPSA (Content Protection System Architecture) framework, as described in the CPSA whitepaper published by the 4C Entity.
Reportedly you're trying to convince the T.13 committee of introducing a possibility to opt-out of CPRM support for Linux.
What are your views on CPRM's sister technologies like CPPM (Content Protection for Prerecorded Media), DTCP (Digital Transmission Copy Protection), HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) etc. and their possible inclusion in upcoming devices such as DVD-RW recorders, Firewire and USB devices, DVI displays, etc.? Will Linux just not support these devices?
Hi Andre.
What the content providers really want is to impose their controls on the data they provide. E.g., they want to be able to impose policies like "single use", "pay-per-use", "time-limited", "give up to 4 copies to your friends", and so forth. They want to impose these policies using technology. That's fine by me: if customers find value in it, the content providers will get rich; if customers find insufficient value, content provider CEOs and VPs will find their bonuses shrinking when the stockholders hear they flushed millions of $$$ down the toilet.
To control content, the PC needs a tamper-resistant crypto module under the content provider's control. It could be a PCI card, a smart card, a parallel port dongle, a FireWire box, integrated with the motherboard chipset, yadda yadda yadda. The are only three requirements: 1) high bandwidth, and 2) tamper-resistance, and 3) easy access to a power supply. As long as these criteria are met, it really doesn't matter what location or form the cryptographic module takes.
It looks to me like the content control people listed every PC subsystem, and wrote off the ones that couldn't work. "RS-232 is too slow." "Smartcard reader is too expensive." "Video card OEMs would laugh at us." "Sound card OEMs would laugh at us." What they were left with was IDE/ATA: it has plenty of volume, power, and bandwidth, and hard drive OEMs might buy their stories.
This begs a question: why will the hard drive OEMs design, manufacture, and distribute their crypto module for free? What is in it for them? Designing custom, tamper-resistant silicon and firmware is expensive, and superfluous for data storage. Manufacturing the custom chips is expensive. (If a hard drive engineer told his boss he'd just added $2 to the manufacturing cost, he'd be picking his teeth up off the floor.) Supporting it will be tremendously expensive, requiring cooperation with OS vendors. Data loss and guilt-by-association could besmirch the OEM's reputation.
So here's my question(s): Have the hard drive pointy-haired bosses been sold swampland by the content providers? Will the crypto survive the merciless budget slashing manufacturing engineers at Seagate, IBM, Maxtor, and friends? Do the content providers really believe hard drives need crypto, or are they just looking for a free ride from the OEMs?
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
Specifically, with RAID5, for example, which could very likely want to spread CPRM data across a number of disks, will CPRM muck up this process? Will the new spec allow me to swap disks if one is defective and retain my data? What are realistic problems with various RAID implementations?
Regarding backups, will restoring CPRM data to replacement disks abort a restore, either in part or in total? Will it limit itself to blocking just the CPRM data restoration or could it block the whole process?
Can I defrag a CPRM file?
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
I remember reading somewhere that one could opt out of this hard drive copy protection. If this is the case, what incentive do programmers have to write CPRM compliant software?
Also, since most CPRM compliant software would be windows based, would this not make Linux even more attractive as an alternative?
After digging through the specs I noticed that the encryption components appear to be based on 56-bit keyed C2 ciphers. The cipher appears to be a modified version of C2, the specs for which they had to send by regular mail.
The authentication phase (where the host software authenticates the drive) uses a 39-bit nonce (random number), which they claim doesn't have to be unpredictable. There is also, as you have noticed, an unused bit, always set to zero -- this makes me think that there's a back-door in the authentication system, perhaps to allow changing keys when they are inevitably cracked.
Security through obscurity, short key lengths, guessable random nonces for authentication, likely back-doors, an overly complex chain of security -- this sounds to me like another poorly designed protection scheme like CSS.
Do you feel that the 4C bunch hasn't learned much from the DeCSS debacle? How strong do you feel the actual security component of this system is (regardless of how notoriously bad an idea it is)? If the DMCA gets thrown out as unConstitutional as some think might happen, how high and dry will 4C be left when CPRM is open to reverse-engineering?
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
I don't listen to MP3s; I rarely watch movies and don't expect to do so on my computer. All the closed source software I have (very little) is properly licensed and paid for. I am not a criminal. Having hardware copy protection on my computer does not benefit me at all, and it doesn't benefit the media industry at all (because I'm not stealing from them and I don't intend to).
If I have hardware copy protection in my computer, and it works perfectly always, I'm still paying for extra complexity that I don't want and don't need. If it fails, then I lose my valuable work. I don't like:
The Question
As I understand it, IBM is a big player in this game. IBM is genuinely putting a lot of effort into making relationships with the Open Source community. This move is (in my opinion) going to badly hurt the Open Source community. Can we put effective pressure on IBM to publicly renounce it?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Makes sense. Would you devise a filesystem that would simply encrypt everything before it gets written on the HD? That would certainly confuse the copy-protection-watching code in the hardware. I'm wondering also if there are other ways to do this that don't involve replacing your whole filesystem.
sulli
RTFJ.
Very true. We should not be negotiating on this issue. We should be telling them where they can stick their copy-protected devices.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer