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Digital Display Encryption Details Leaked
Phill Hugo writes: "Cryptome has details of the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection System which will be implemented as content control between computers and monitor screens. I wonder if continued leaking of the details of the many copy-protections systems will make them unworkable. Who's willing to follow suit in the other camps?" Your monitor will soon be a "licensed monitor device".
The newer digital TV's that I am familiar with,IE:Sony, Mits, Philips,Sharp, the I2C bus links ALL the IC's in the set, if ALL the IC's arent responding ,the set doesn't run. So, I'm sure it wont take a brain surgeon to tie into the bus and dump the correct data in to defeat the encryption, at just about any IC, Tuner,IF, video/chroma jungle ic,Horiz. reg./shutdown. PICK ONE!
Yes, Unix users hate documented formats where the reference implementation is under an Open Source licence.
But so friggin what? In NYC, the Indian method of piracy is to have a roomful of VCRs dubbing. The Chinese method is to use stolen, borrowed, or legitimately held DVD masters to print "pirate" copies at the same factories in Asia as the legit ones. So this puts the crimp on the Indian method, and does nothing to stop the Chinese one.
This kind of "enforcement" shares much in common with other forms; to make criminals out of ordinary people while victimizing them and producing not one cold turd to stop the actual criminals.
The movie industry acts in concert - they act as a single company. They use their monopoly (the movies) to gain control over another industry (B) the players. Is that not illegal?
Likewise, if MSFT - demands that all audio drivers are signed by MSFT otherwise the content is messed up. If I want to sell my sound card to windows users, have they not gained a monopolistic control over sound card manufactures?
Same thing happens here - but with computers, dvds and hdtv.
So how does the little guy - like me - who wants to make his own stuff and start his own company do so? These companies have raised the bar so high so as to preclude the particpation of a new player in the market. And have thus completed their monopolistic take over of the market.
Obviously - something is going on.
So now we will need a dummy video driver that "T"'s video to the screen and to disk. Faster computers will make this readily doable.
I like it... but I seriously doubt that it would ever go through.
Just a couple more things might be necessary: one to satisfy the copyright holders, and be explicit about it, and the other to save money on court costs if and when the situation arises.
(6) These rights do not and can not be implied to extend to permit any unauthorized broadcast or redistribution, except as specifically outlined above.
(7) Where these rights and existing Copyright Law come into conflict, Copyright Law shall be enforced only so long as it does not diminish the consumer's rights to copy as listed above, or any other "fair use" rights explicitly described in Copyright Law
I'm going to stock up on normal monitors now, and sell them on ebay in 5 years.
I'll make a fortune!
(1) The Right of The People to make unlimited copies of copyrighted materials, which they own or hold a valid license to, for their own personal use shall not be infringed.
(2) The Right of The People to transfer ownership or licenses of copyrighted materials , and at their own discresion, (with all copies made therof, if any) to another party shall not be infringed.
(3) The Right of The People to make a copy, in any format, of a copyrighted work aired on a public or subscribed broadcast medium for time shift viewing purposes shall not be infringed.
(4) The Right of The People to possess the hardware and software and other tools necessary to carry out the above shall not be infringed. (5) These rights, as a whole, shall immediately, retroactively, and for all time preempt the portions of all contracts and licenses contrary with the above.
Seem fair? Changes? Additions?
Once the technology exists in a production model who's going to stop the MPAA from releasing only formats that work with the new monitors?
What's going to be worth watching once an audience is found that will bend over and take these restrictions? My guess is it will split culture between brainless consumers of Britney Spears type crap and intelligent people who like real music.
Is for ONE person to make a device to tap into the signal going to the picture tube, and this protection scheme will be useless.
Doesn't our governmet already have that. Just search Slashdot for "Tempest"
In other words, without the use of force, there can be no monopolies, and socialist governments are in the business of monopolies.
The idea is to benefit the people by ensuring that profit doesn't interfere with service. In theory a great idea, in practice difficult. I'm not saying don't try, though.
I just thought that should be clarified.
effectively have a Communist idea at their root; if we are allowed to own any copyrighted material we will steal: Property equals theft.
Imbecile you have it backwards. The communist idea of property as theft is that we all share equally. When I program I share with you, when you write (though showing your ignorance) you share with me. If, however, I program and have the government pass a law to make you pay for my work when we're all supposed to be sharing (playing nice), that is theft, especially if you miss out on the opportunity to get a similar law passed.
Did I just feed a troll?
Time to BAN the US mail and other delivery services. It appears that they can be used to get around the DMCA...
Man, I _wish_ the Jews controlled the world. Maybe then I could get a better job. Sadly, it's got a lot more to do with the rich and powerful, and me, I'm not one of them.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Bruce Perens warned of this when napster first arrived on the scene, everyone seemed to ignore him. (The above link is a google cache, because I couldn't get to technocrat.net for some reason)
It is extremely hard to get such an effort off the ground.
If say 80% of the users would have such a monitor, it would be a possible decision to say: "f*ck those without HDCPS, we'll only release this movie with this enabled".
So who is going to be buying compatible cards and monitors? You can't do anything with them that you can't with a normal monitor.... So, we'll always keep a significant marketshare that makes the decision to copy-protect the movie very uneconomic.
Roger.
It just must be. Because if this trend continues, they're gonna have to classify computers as munitions, and keep 'em out of the hands of everyday citizens.
When computers become outlawed, only outlaws will have computers...
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
is for nobody to buy this shite. Then it will go away.
If every computer monitor manufacturer implements this, you will have two choices:
1) Buy this shite.
2) Don't buy anything.
If you choose the later, this shite won't go away; you will have gone away. I doubt the entire world is going to give up on computing, so your time would be better spent finding another way to fight this. Perhaps convincing a couple of manufacturers to continue to offer monitors that don't implement it, for instance.
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If Linux is more common by that time, can we design something into it that is incompatible with the protection? (i.e. have the kernel fail to recognize the encryption handshake, meaning that in order to use Linux, you'll need an unencrypted display.)
The result of that would be fewer people using Linux. It would not necessarily translate into manufacturers making monitors for us.
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My comment was completely on topic.
I was just stating my bemusement at the fact
that a spam/flood post up reasonably high
on the list of posts was not modded down.
Now, what i think should have been done to my post
is yes, mod it down, HOWEVER, then you should
post anonymously a reply stating something to
the effect of "you want it modded down? here ya go HAHAHAH"
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
sets, limit, for, analog
this is sooooo flawed, and will cost them billions
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Have you noticed that most newer cars (i think all of them that are computer operated and street legal in the US) top out well short of what the police drive? It's not a fault of the engine, it's just that the engine itself isn't "allowed" to go faster than say 140 or 150 in many models of cars... Where's the protest against that?
To summarise for those who haven't read the thing: I initially thought, "Ok, cool, so we just reverse engineer the secret keys and KSV out of the hardware that we have access to and implement in software." We don't have to know what the hell's going on, just get access to the keys. Any cryptosystem is broken if you can get a hold of the secret key(s).
Aha! But they know this is possible, so they've built in a method to get the system to check for known leaked secret keysets and KSV's. It's broadcast in the media, so your copy of The Matrix will play fine, but Antitrust knows your keys are compromised and so won't play. This is basically the same as revoking your PGP/GPG key if it becomes compromised. Actually, from my quick read of this spec, they appear to have designed a variant of public key cryptography. I'll leave the cryptanalysis of the algorithm to someone actually good at it.
Key management is the real weakness here, though. Sure, if a keyset is compromised it can be tagged as such on newer media, but old media which _doesn't_ know the keyset is compromised should play fine... unless the values are stored in NVRAM or similar on the video card or in the monitor, which would be what I'd design in if I were trying to take all your rights away.
That's a management nightmare, though. Just look at the proliferation of DeCSS. Now imagine a similar program for decoding the video stream and an online database of compromised keys. Sure, the HDCP consortium can update their compromised keylists, but there's a time delay in getting those updates out to the hardware (using the video media as the vector). Cue a game of cat and mouse with the hackers putting out keysets and the HDCP struggling to keep their updates moving.
The big problem that they don't appear to realise is that they are sending the secret keys out into hostile territory! The only way a cryptosystem can remain secure is if you can maintain security of the secret key(s). If the user were choosing the keys for the hardware themselves to protect a datastream over a local video broadcast medium, then that would be fine, because the person choosing the private keys is the person who can maintain the security of those keys.
An analogy: creating a PGP key pair and placing your public key on the 'net for people to use. Now encode your private key onto a CD, which you give to someone. They leak your key, so you issue a recovation and generate a new keypair, but every time you generate a new keypair, you publish your private key (no matter how it has been obscured). As soon as someone other than you has access to your private key, it should be assumed to be compromised.
All in all, a better attempt than CSS, but still fundamentally broken.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT after you.
It blows my mind that people would consider
using 56-bit keys anywhere esp. in devices
with several years lifetime. They can have
en/dec-ryption in hardware so speed wouldn't
be an issue so why not have say 4096 bit
encryption? What am I missing?
Actually... cops shouldn't be able to tell anyone how fast they should drive. It's the owner of roads (which happens to be the government) that should be allowed to tell people how fast they're allowed on their roads. In practice, it's the same thing (since government owns most infrastructure), but in theory and concept, it's a very important difference.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"which they own or hold a valid license to"? What a horrible idea. Copyright law alone should apply; special contracts between the content provider and the user shouldn't be acknowledged. Change it to "which they own a lawful copy of".
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
From section 2.1 in the paper: Each authorized participant (e.g. licensed monitor device, graphics controller device, etc.) receives an array of 40, 56-bit secret device keys and a corresponding identifier from the Digital Content Protection LLC. This identifier is the Key Selection Vector (KSV) assigned to the device. So each device has an array of 40 56 bit secret keys. Any of which is usable for accessing the content until it gets revoked (more about that later).
56 bit is not much. And given that each video-receiver will have 40 such keys, it doesn't take much imagination to think that these will quickly get cracked. All you need to do is record the initial authenthication-protocol, then you brute-force all possible keys that could give a certain response to the challenge. That's probably just one key, but migth be more, in which case you need to record another session and use that to narrow it down.
There is a mechanism for revoking keys, allthough it's not specified. My guess would be that the video-transmitter somehow must get data from the internet (i.e. cryptographically signed to ensure integrity) listing all revoked keys. (either it migth download this by itself, integrated in it's drivers, or it migth simply refuse to work unless you've got an "revoked.keys" file less than half a year old or something.)
The problems with this are many. For starters: what happens when all the 40 keys in a device are cracked ? Will that mean my brand new VIDLOCK-enabled monitor is now a piece of junk and I need to buy a new one ? Or will a trip to a service-center to upgrade the firmware or whatever with the keys be enough ?
I imagine it'll be real popular with customers to have a device that essentially works for an undetermined period until someone else cracks the keys and then stops working.
This is just one problem withthe scheme, there seem to be numerous others, I guess if they're stupid enough to try to pull this one off we'll hear about those soon enough.
Microsoft won't prevent users from loading unsigned video drivers, or XP fail completely as a game^H^H^H^Hconsumer OS. So all you need is to write a fake video driver that searches for the code that checks the 'Microsoft approved' test and disables it.
Microsoft will either require all drivers to be signed, set up the driver development program so unsigned drivers can't descramble the encrypted signals (making them useless), or 'fix' Media Playwhore so it won't play audio files without signed drivers being present. It's not that farfetched - remember six years ago nobody ever thought they'd go so far as tying IE to Windows.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
This is similar to what Microsoft is planning for Windows XP's sound infrastucture. XP will send all sound signals to the sound card with some kind of encrypted static in them. The card, using a Microsoft-approved driver, will then decode the signal and remove the static for playback [see The Register].
Its all intended to prevent us from somehow getting between the OS and hardware to 'steal' audio (and video, with the monitor system) after the software decodes it. Microsoft is jonesing to help the RIAA kill MP3 and replace it with WMA, and the best way to do that is sucking up to the RIAA and its member companies by taking control away from the end user/listener. Yet another reason to Boycott Microsoft!
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Taral
WARN_(accel)("msg null; should hang here to be win compatible\n");
Taral
WARN_(accel)("msg null; should hang here to be win compatible\n");
-- WINE source code
I think the only answer would be customer demand. So how can the movie studios create this demand? By releasing movies that will ONLY be playable on conforming equipment.
But this is going to be a huge hurdle, much bigger than the introduction of DVDs. With a DVD, at most you have to buy a DVD-ROM drive or a DVD player that now costs under $200. But this new protected videostream is going to require you to buy a new protected DVD player AND a new protected TV. (Or for PC folks, a new video card and a new monitor.) Now you're paying at least $500, probably closer to $1000. That's pretty severe! These movies are going to have to be awfully good to make it worthwhile for anyone who isn't rolling in money.
The eventual disappearance of NTSC broadcasts is going to be tough enough to sell even when "all" most folks have to do is buy a set-top box. But tell everyone that they must replace every TV they own, and I don't think they'll go for it.
Therefore, I think the only way for this to go through in a big way is for the movie studios to get together and buy all the major monitor manufacturers. Good luck, fellas.
Aha! But they know this is possible, so they've built in a method to get the system to check for known leaked secret keysets and KSV's.
Is it just me or does it seem like at *some* point this database of known leaked secret keysets and KSV's would take *large* amounts of space? Possibly terabytes? Where would they store all this? On the CD/DVD? On a server on the Net (this would imply working Net access would have to be a given...imagine you can't play your copy of "The Matrix" because your Net connection is down or broken)?
My journal has hot
In such cases of an unbroken encryption scheme, the leaked details could easily be vendor keys and suchlike.
The measure for protecting against that is indicated in the article linked off the peice. It mentions using a satellite network to revoke comprimised keys but the details of that network would then be candidates for leakage.
[I suppose this post violates the DCMA because it describes a system to break a protection method.]
It should prove interesting once AI progresses to the point of human intelligence and beyond. An AI will be able to incorporate itself and become an immortal person. Never die, continously accumulate assets, given the laws it will have more rights and less responsibilities than carbon-based lifeforms. A world of AI's with human slaves.. err consumers..
I give it 20 years to happen,
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
Or kills your access to your hard drive.
Or selectively disabling some kinds of window displays, as in needing to hit ok in a popup that cannot display.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Is for ONE person to make a device to tap into the signal going to the picture tube, and this protection scheme will be useless
There are probably more people who'd know how to do this kind of hardware hack than who know cryptoanalysis.
Suppose you could place the decoder in the CRT itself, but it's a hostile enviroment for microchips and it's kind of hard to obscure a valve circuit.
Even if you could assume that the design will be discovered.
Unfortunately some fuckhead came up with the idea of "licence-agreements" - and worst of all, most governments in the world allows this kind of development-brake to be switched on.
At a guess the original point behind a software licence was the protection of a small (contractor) company from a much larger customer.
Problem is we now have software suppliers who are larger than customers and tend to have software sold as a packaged item, rather than being custom written by the software company as a contractor.
Who the hell made the Movie and Song industries the people who get to choose how I use things for which I've already paid for??
Rember that these industries are "middlemen". Unless they can keep the status quo in methods of distributing they might simply become obsolete. Actors and musicians will always be wanted, however...
Keep in mind that this is an international market though I realise that most of the consumers exist in the States.
Except that this simply isn't the case.
Its about time the balance of power shifted away from the consumer of media, and back toward the producer. Better piracy-prevention technology will enable content producers to invest in new movies music and other content
Except that it isn't content producers who are makink any fuss at all (with the exception of Metallica). The people involved are middlemen.
Where are all the protesting musicians, singers, sound engineers, actors, writers, produces, stunt men, etc?
The Beatles were big. Metallica is/was big. But that's only because, in the past, record companies had to winnow out obvious losers in order to recruit talent which could stand a chance of sustaining mass appeal.
How much of this is the record companies and how much is actually the effect of consumer choice.
Leave music 20 years and most of the rubbish is long forgotten, leave it 200 years and all of the rubbish is forgotten.
This system could result in huge lawsuits against monitor/TV manufacturers. Just picture the GlamCo sees 2 million HDTVs/Monitors when Joe Hacker hacks one. The content producers now deactivate all of the monitors/TVs sharing GlamCo's key.
Can you imagine their support people saying "No, your TV is not broken. We deactivated it because a 13-year old in Norway reflashed an EPROM. I'm sorry... but our new models still work. Would you like to purchase one now for $899?"
I smell lawsuits ready and waiting to happen...
--Rob
Where else did you think laissez-faire capitalism would lead? What, the persuit of happiness?
And now we're all fucked. Thanks.
- undoware.ca
So remember, Hillary Rosen is a stinkin' pinko. Hmm... Rosen... Well, there you have it.
Oh, and don't buy any of these encrypted monitor things, or I'll have to call you a total sucker. SUCKER, I SAY! FELL OFF A TURNIP TRUCK, YOU DID!
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
It crosses over into sabotage - not quite terrorism. More like gluing locks to public parks than taking a nail file to a Firestone tire. It is destructive and violent, but it also might do more to convince John Q Jackass, Senator Dipshit, and the juries of class action lawsuits against the RIAA and the MPAA than all the copies of DeCSS put together.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Five letter sequences are the key. Perhaps someone less lazy than I will try a password. I'd start with "This is good." Then try "Slashdot", "Anonymous Coward", and variations. That person is not only less lazy but has more time than me.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Forget Ted Turner Tie a goddamned noose around the neck fo that bastard Rupert Murdock. In my revolution his head would be the first to roll.
War is necrophilia.
If the lawyer could not have come up with an example no wonder they lost. They gotta get better lawyers.
War is necrophilia.
What part of that was wrong? The part about the liberterians advocating less laws? The part about corporations being more profitable under laxer labor and environmental regulations? The part about having to settle disputes via civil courts because the there are fewer laws with smaller scope? The part about fighting even richer corporations in court being hard?
Go read the liberterian literature and point out to me where they advocate more regulation and sticter laws.
War is necrophilia.
Unfortunately there HAS TO BE FORCE. No powerful organization s going to do what's right without some sort of force. Let's take your overly simplististic and totally useless example. Let's say that exxon just spilled a barrel of oil on my back yard. I have to take them court can I afford that?. Let's say I found a lawyer with a good heart who took on the thousand lawyers exxon has on staff and by some divine act of god actually won in court before he and I both were bankrupt and in our grave. Who is going to force exxon to clean up or reimburse me? That's right somebody has to eventually force exxon to do the right thing and that is the evil gubmit.
Now take a more realistic example. Exxon spills a billion gallons of oil 500 miles off the coast of california. Who is going to sue them? Whose property got ruined? That's right nobody!
As you say in a liberterian world all environmental disgressions are a matter of compensation and must be settled in civil court (which was my point as well). By reducing the scope of criminal law and legislation and by selling all public lands to the private sector you will shift the entire burden of grievences to the civil courts. If you can afford to fight the exxons of the world that's good news if you can't it sucks for you but it's great for exxon.
For the common man it will suck so much more to live in a liberterian world. At least you can attempt to lobby your legislator or organize but the CEO of exxon is not elected by you and does not give a flying fuck about you, your family, or the world you live in. He just wants more money.
War is necrophilia.
I read it three times and it still does not make sense. You just sprout nonsensical phrases like "ends don't justify means". What the hell does that have anything to with anything. Either something is a crime and can be punished via the criminal system or it's not a crime and has to be settled in the civil courts. Which police is going to charge Exxon with what crime when there are no environmetal laws? When pollution is a civil matter cops won't get involved. When pollution happens in the middle of the ocean then nothing happens. A liberterian world is one ran by corporations and for corporations. Liberterianism is the means to that end. Either you are rich and rule or are poor and suffer. Nobody to protect you from the exxons of the world.
War is necrophilia.
As a liberterian you would be advocating a smaller nay an absolutely minimalist government. You would in effect reduce the executive and legislative branches of the government to a bare minimum and allow the judicial branch to become much more powerful. Every dispute would have to be settled in the courts and most of those would have to be settled in the civil courts because there would be a drastic reduction in the number and scope of laws.
Given this I submit that the corporations would be much more powerful then they are today. By eliminating all safety regulations, minimum wages, pollution laws etc you would allow the corporations to make much greater profit then they do now. It would be even more impossible to take them to court given their greater wealth. By reducing power of government you will create a vacuum which will be filled by the corporations. They can grow unchecked and wreak havoc on the world without any resistance whatsoever.
War is necrophilia.
Kinda like taking antibiotics ends up, in the long run, making those diseases stronger--the feedback loop (that they're not getting to reproduce) gets 'them' to generate a more powerful strain to beat the antibiotics.
It would be hard to do in a community of millions with underground spies and whatnot, but we'd be in fat shape (wrt to encryption; I'm done with the antibiotic analogy) if we could remove the feedback loop from our cycle. I.e. if they don't know that the encryption was comprimised, then not only will stronger encryptions not be made, but at the same time we'll have the backdoor at our disposal.
The upshot is--if you break someone else's encryption code in order to prove to them that it's not good enough, because you want it improved, then by all means spread the word, blare the trumpets, and alert media outlets like Slashdot. If however you don't want it improved, then (word to the wise)--shut up. Leaking a story about it, no matter how much it strokes your personal ego, potentially destroys all those accomplishments and starts the next round of warfare over, with the enemy a little strong this time.
Once again the (ignored) voice of your favorite/dispised Luddite: Boycott Boycott Boycott! Stop buying DVD's... stop buying content protected audio devices... stop buying products from members of the RIAA and MPAA... stop going to movies.... and bail out of Microsoft's Product Gestapo! (Ooops, this IS slashdot - I forgot that everybody here uses GNU/Linux)
Tune into independent sources of information and media. Run a FreeNet node. Hack on Gnutella, and keep thoes P2P MP3's alive. Thank You Slashdot for creating my favorite Independent Technical News site. We should ALL be doing as much to create alternatives to CNN/TimeWarner/AOL.
There are additional measures some can take by targeting their investments against these Media Interests. Divest from any fund or stock associated with the Media Monoliths bent on evisceration of Fair Use and the First Sale Doctrine.
And if you plan to purchase that new car containing an Engine Management Unit, insist that the dealer provide you with precise and specific technical details of the Diagnostic Port so that you can examine your own vehicle's diagnostics without using the dealer's Liscensed Diagnostic Equipment. Surprised? Automobile manufacturers purpetrate the same Ruse as the RIAA and MPAA! Bet you didn't know that your car's hood is already welded shut by the manufacturer, did you?
(Ooops.... off topic)
oh....my!
Actually, new releases would play fine if you just block the key revokation certificate. They will likely encode the certificate within the header block for the media, but if you can monkey arround with that information enough to copy it to disk then you should be fine.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Except it will become mandated by a law passed by the corrupt government of U.S.A. ... What's STL?
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I'm a C++ guru
I know what it takes to win an election in the US. ... What's STL?
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I'm a C++ guru
I'm talking to YOU. You know who you are. You're the guy with the ability (money) to run for political office, and could probably win, but you don't want to get into politics. You're leaving the governing of your nation to the more corrupt or power-hungry or lawyer-type or self-centred bastards who don't give a damn about society as a whole.
Run for office, for Christ's sake, because the way it's going, it will only get worse! Get off your ass and make a small sacrafice for the rest of us. You can do it! We're only asking for two terms. ... What's STL?
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I'm a C++ guru
When the value of cracking this scheme reaches seven figures, rest assured that someone with access to all the S00Per SeCkriT code will sell it, and we'll see little cable-patch doohickeys that decrypt the video stream.
In the meantime, buy the monitors, and return them within whatever period your local laws mandate for letting you change your mind. When you take the thing back, tell the merchant that you decided that it's morally wrong to support RIAA stupidity.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm sure graphics artists, video producers, etc. are going to love having MacroVision or some other image-degrading thing reducing the quality of theur images. Or maybe there will be "professional" equipment that costs more, a la minidisc. I hate the MPAA and RIAA.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Every now and again some Slashdotter posts something along the lines of a major corporation being "socialist" - meaning that it has a monopoly and, ergo, is part of the state. I don't necessarily support that type of logic.
Maybe they say it from the point of view that, Socialist government relies on the use of force to maintain "fair" distributions of resources, and companies who achieve monopolies also use force, via the government and its laws, to maintain their "fair" distribution of resources.
In other words, without the use of force, there can be no monopolies, and socialist governments are in the business of monopolies.
The U.S. Government used to grant limited monpolies for short durations of time to strike a balance between the "common good" -- wide dissemination of ideas and information -- and profit motive. The idea was to have more information created, which would then be widely disseminated. In exchange for the use of government force to establish and maintain a monopoly in a specific area (i.e., getting a patent, trademark or copyright), you agree to give up all rights to that thing after a set, limited amount of time; and also show other people how to so it. If you don't like that deal, you try to "trade secret" -- which affords no government protection to you (beyond regular theft/espionage/etc laws).
I'm pretty sure that if we could dig up and re-animate the founding fathers and other revolutionaries that founded this country, they would be throwing DVD players into Boston Harbor in no time. And advocating the widespread production of hemp. And backing out of entangling treaties. And giving the smackdown to corporations as a legal entiry. Etc. I.e., improving the place.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Corporations are essentially immortal; they can wait
Here's a crazy idea that just might work: limit the life span of a corporation to the current average, or maximum recorded, human lifespan. The the corporation is dissolved and its assets sold, with the usual inheritance taxes taken out. The owners of the company can set up another company to buy the old company's assets, so the business will go on. But other companies and people can also bid for it in open auction. Turnover, baby!
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
That's so it can send power too, without having another cord. Kind of like imacs only being one piece, and the mouse plugging into the keyboard.
You mean Schneier, surely.
technocrat.net was being shutdown a couple months ago
Then all it takes to crash this system is that it be continually cracked. Either one of 2 scenarios will soon ensue:
1) Keys are the same over many users. Joe Hacker cracks a key, the key is revoked, lots of other honest citizens suffer:
so your copy of The Matrix will play fine, but Antitrust knows your keys are compromised and so won't play. And neither will anyone else's copy . The system gets a bad rep and tanks in the market.
2)Keys are different for each user The List of 'compromised keys', with a bit of work, soon becomes unmanagably long.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
> But with more and more of the rules we find ourselves living under being dictated by corporate groups, could it be that the line between business and the state is blurring?
It has been for long time.
Proof: Most corporations have a "Business License" aka permission to do business. Granted by who?? The government/state!
And the fact that corporations are a legal entity certainly doesn't help matters.
From what I have been reading, and what I have seen, all these crytographic and control mechanisms are the same thing as trusts - they both combine a mechanism for control and force the masses to submit to it without choice! No matter where you look, alas, your monitor must hook up to a VIDLOCK(tm) compatible video card. And, not just that, but all monitors are VIDLOCK(tm). And, even better, all video cards are VIDLOCK(tm) embracing.
What happened to consumer choice? How can the people choose NOT TO PURCHASE THIS STANDARD, when there are no other choices in the market? When the market is supposed to be based on choice, and people vote with their dollar, how can you have a fair election with only one choice on the ballot?
This is a dictatorship through capitalism!
Perhaps we should look at lobbying our representatives? An addendum to the Sherman Anti-Trust act?
Please, I beg all of you to read Jessica Litman's _Digital Copyright_ which was recently reviewed right here on slashdot. If you need a copy email me. If we're going to argue about copyright law, let's at least get informed first.
Can your IM do this?
Is for ONE person to make a device to tap into the signal going to the picture tube, and this protection scheme will be useless.
It is getting to the point where I am going to ACTIVELY pirate copyrighted media, just to show my absolute disgust for the MPAA and RIAA. This blatent manipulation of the computer and electronics industry by these monolithic giants must stop.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
It may be that this specific scheme suffers from some flaws, but that's beside the point. The principle is sound. It can be done.
For a long time, what prevented this from hapenning was that by definition this places strong encryption at the hand of the people. Any would be evil person would be able to send data securely to his partner using consumer hardware. So the TLAs (NSA etc.) have killed any such notion in the past.
This exposes a dilema of the "free stuff" movement. For a long time it has pushed for allowing people to freely use encryption, against the aforementioned TLAs. It has killed notions of key escrow which would have made encryption palatable to these TLAs. At the same time, it had fought the right of the FLAs (RIAA, etc.) to use encryption for their purposes.
Now, so far this movement was successful. It has brought us both PGP and Napster. But this double success can't last; a double standard rarely can. After all, if "information wants to be free", it should apply to your shopping history as well as to the digital copy of the Matrix. It is silly, or hypocritical, to claim you can/should protect one but not the other.
Allowing everyone to use strong encryption allows for content control schemes.
So, here's the choice. Either fight encryption tooth and nail - "information wants to be free" - give up privacy, and end up with something like David Brin's "transparent society"; or fight for encryption, protect your privacy, and give up on content control.
Bad choice, you say. Well, here's what will happen if we don't choose one and actively fight for it: we'll lose both our privacy and content control (e.g., by key escrow, but there are many other ways).
Personally, I'd rather protect my privacy. Let them build an RSA engine into their D2A chips. Market forces will keep the price of "The Matrix" at a tolerable level, and a lot of micro-payment systems are possible if strong encryption is massively available. It will be a strugle to ensure that consumer privacy is maintained, but this is possible.
The alternative, IMVHO, is worse. First, it isn't very consistent; "information wants to be free" - except for encryption information. Yeah, right. Second, there's no bound on the abuse large organizations (e.g., goverments) will inflict on people given the chance (and zero privacy allows them to do almost anything they want).
I'd love to see an open-source project for a standard, strong system for content control which also ensures privacy. If we do it we'll know it is done right, and if we join the FLAs we'll be able to beat the TLAs. Otherwise, we risk them joining forces. We'll really regret that.
This story bears a common thread with several recent stories, f'rinstance:
A judge recently asked an attourney defending 2600 against the DMCA what previously-held "fair use" that new law makes impossible. He wanted to know what daily activity was being made impossible. She didn't have a great answer for him.
But I think that's not the right question. DVD's haven't been around very long to have established a very large set of uses: the problem is that the DMCA helps the DVD CCA to market a product that is functionally useless for convenient "unauthorized fair use" of it's contents. So it's hard for normal (but unauthorized) other uses to develop.
If a bookseller marketed a product that made fair use really difficult, judges would instantly see the effect of the law. Say the book's ink disappears if the fingers of the person opening it aren't detected to be the owner's fingers. It's easy to see the effect. But for a judge who has no use for manipulating multimedia content, the only "use" for a DVD is to hit "play" and watch.
I don't know the semantics of this video "Digital Content Protection" spec well at all, but it seems to follow the pattern. We'll argue that circumventing it for the "fair use" of the content going over the wire is fine; but the judge won't see why, since we never had good access to that data before, so why should we be entitled to it now?
It's disappointing. Maybe someone should start a company that sells a book like the one I've described who wouldn't mind seeing this go to court.
At least Clinton just let things go on without furthering or decreasing our rights. It seems that we now have a president that wants to decrease our personal rights even further. Go figure.
I'm sorry. Remind me: who was it who signed the DMCA again? I can't seem to remember. Starts with a C or a K I think.
June 3rd, 2003: Compaq today announced that as from this coming August, all their PC's will ship with a DMCA compliant USB keyboard, making them fully Windows XXIV compatible.
The keyboard works by plugging into a phoneline and comparing any words entered to an international database of copyrighted works. If no phoneline is detected, the keyboard refuses to work.
If a match of more than five sequential words is found against copyrighted material, the keyboard will switch into anti-word-theif mode, exploding and embedding shards of plastic and keys into the offending user's hands, face and torso.
Yeah, I was thinking that. Presumably the revocation list is write-only; otherwise hackers like us would just be able to write a little proggy to un-revoke keys. But the flip side, as you mention, is that some nasty person could write a virus that adds all keys to the revocation list. It could revoke your video card and/or monitor, killing them permanently. It could also revoke particular brands or models: a nice piece of info warfare for a video card manufacturer who wants a competitor out of the way.
And it will happen that all the keys for a given device will be compromised. When CSS was cracked, the recovery of one key allowed the recovery of all keys in a short time. In the case of CSS, Xing accidentally exposed a key. Similar things will happen with this technology: keys will be accidentally exposed, and whole sets of keys for given devices compromised.
Note that if all your keys are revoked, your monitor will not simply refuse to display a given movie -- it just won't display anything. The handshake and encryption occur when the device is connected and power up, not when you press "play" on your Quicktime viewer.
That means that the controlling body will be faced with the choice of leaving "protection-free" devices operating in the field, or of killing those devices. Neither is an acceptable alternative -- if they do revoke, users will be seriously pissed off when their screen suddenly stops working; and if they don't revoke, then what we have is a protection scheme that doesn't protect.
That is because Bruce shutdown technocrat.net some months ago, as it wasn't fulling his orginal idea of what it should have been, as site to get geeks involved in politics..
Linux and Free Software is the Revolution. Support freedom of software and hardware and save what is left of our individual liberties.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Unfortunately, it wouldn't actually be legal.
-----
"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Well, ATRAC is just compression. The actual copy protection is all part of the transmission standard (SPDIF). Of course, its easy to toggle the copy protect bits off if you have the right hardware. :)
While I'm not totally against the concept of "rights" in the form of "pay the person whose content you use, I would like to know exactly where in this mess of crap are MY rights protected? I think shit like this is way out of line when implemented as hardware requirements . Who the hell made the Movie and Song industries the people who get to choose how I use things for which I've already paid for?? Hell, never mind about the content that I've paid for, who the hell made them the arbitrers of how HARDWARE that I purchased - PURCHASED!- functions? It's ridiculous to the extreme and would make for some seriously deadly comparisons to other industries. You'll notice that if Ford doesn't like how I drive my car, they can shove it up their ass. The same of course goes for the people who made my microwave, and desk lamp; all of them can think whatever they like but having paid for these goods, I decide how I use them.. And can anyone tell me where the concept of free and open markets making decisions on what (products) live or die, went...?? Bastards one and all..
What most people don't realize is that YOU DON'T HAVE TO PARTICIPATE! Don't like the tactics of the MPAA and RIAA? Don't buy anything put out by their respective companies. ANYTHING. Tell everyone you know about these schemes. Tell them not to participate either. Consumers have a right to a choice. What they don't have a right to do is to dictate to other people what or how they must manufacture, except through the act of not buying said products. If you buy them, you just reinforce the manufacturers notions that no matter what they do, people will still consume from them.
Otherwise, start your own media company. Support companies that don't do these evils schemes. You'll probably have to live with less stuff and have access to a smaller range of products, but that's the price to pay. Only then will these organizations listen. When they don't have any money left.
>There are lots of non-Sony, non-Sharp, non-Toshiba, non-Philips makers
But almost all of them use Sony or Mitsubishi parts. The Trinitron and Diamondtron tubes are standard in most good CRTs, and while I don't know much about LCDs, I'm sure there's probably a similar situation where 2 or 3 manufacturers make some of the important components or license some necessary IP used in almost all. So if all the major companies back content protection, they can say "include content protection or we won't sell you [needed widget]." Then you have the market effectively in total control by the content barons. Another possibility is to create a content encryption and playback system which will not work at all with standard, non-protected ports.
Naturally, there will be hardware hacks to remove protection from monitors, or to make non-protected monitors work with protected content. But they will be illegal circumvention devices under the DMCA, so impossible for consumers to legally obtain unless they live in a truly free country. Even so, they will require too much technical expertise for the former, or be too esoteric for the latter, to ever reach the average consumer.
What we have is a few large conglomerates setting themselves up as IP barons, just as we had the robber barons of the 19th century or the nobility of the feudal systems in earlier centuries. IP barons will have rights and opportunities and modes of existence far removed from what the average citizen ever sees. And that's not the way it's supposed to work. Unregulated capitalism is as evil and crushing and divisive as any system ever conjured in history. I'm all for capitalism, but with responsible consumer protection.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Tell that scare story to the makers of Divx.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Leaking details won't make these systems unworkable if they are any good. In fact it may make the copy protection schemes better, as manufacturers realise security through obscurity doesn't work. And there's always the fact that you can't encrypt the final output, it has to be visible to us humans :) I mean granted video protection mucks this up a bit, but it's still watchable.
--
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
I don't know about the rest, but I think we can take care of this part...
Oh, and send us more p0rn, while you're at it.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
Yeah, I guess that's why he also came out ahead in every official or unofficial recount since election day.
I remember that Circuit City developed and demoed this technology (or a similar one) way back then when they were promoting their DIVX format. It is scary and sad to see that this evil idea is still being worked on by other companies.
The keys are exchanged between the transmitter and receiver (i.e. the hardware devices.) If you write a "receiver" (e.g. a Linux DVD viewer,) that "borrows" a secret key, that key will be declared compromised. The next time you player any media that lists the key as compromised (e.g. a new release movie,) the DVD player will see the revoke, and refuse to send *any* content to your viewer in the future.
When I first heard about this, I was thinking to myself, "Hey, someone's working to make sure Wim van Eck's legacy can be staved off cheaply and easily."
Mind you, I'm an overly paranoid person who doesn't necessarily know as much as he should, so you can somewhat understand where this addled thought came from. I'm sure you can also understand, then, my disgust when discovering its true purpose. However, my original impression raised a few questions in my mind. Is van Eck Phreaking still a viable thing? Could it be used in some form to bypass this?
Pax Digitalia
but, in conjunction with several others, I'm going to reiterate a very cogent point: Action on the governmental level is the only way to preclude this runaway machine that has become "content protection". Hacking DeCSS and watermarks is all well and good but it isn't going to stop this shit: only delay it. The expected replies to every story like this one is always "it'll be two weeks before someone posts a crack/hack for this POS" and, while true, it misses the point. As has been demonstrated in court numerous times, the law (as currently written) is on the side of the publisher(s). We need to get the law back into a middle ground that reigns in these crazy protection schemes, protects the consumers rights to material he/she has purchased and also provides a legal recourse for those copyright holders who are being ripped off.
In order for people not to but it, they will have to know why they shouldn't. Microsoft is pretty gung-ho about digital rights management -- in a future version of Windows Media, they'll proabably have an option "don't play this content unless monitor is encrypted." They may even go so far as they're doing with XP (so I've heard) -- to get a "designed for XP" logo, your sound card needs to support the encrypted "secure audio path." If this rumour is true, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that Windows 2006 will require a "secure video path" as well. You won't be able to play certain things without the encrypted monitor, so everyone will buy new encrypted monitors.
So can we do something to prevent this? What incentive does the average consumer have to stick with a standard monitor? If Linux is more common by that time, can we design something into it that is incompatible with the protection? (i.e. have the kernel fail to recognize the encryption handshake, meaning that in order to use Linux, you'll need an unencrypted display.)
We need to do the following:
- Avoid controversial lawsuits.
- Appeal to Joe Average, not just Joe Geek or Joe Free-Rights-Advocate.
Since these corporations own the mainstream media too, they'll paint us all as evil hackers -- that's something which must be avoided.
Its not enough that a device be created, but it needs to be distributed to people to use them. After all DeCSS has been created, but no one can easily develop a DVD player that uses it since the MPAA (with the help of the courts) would try to shut them down.
This is especially the case with hardware. Its not as easy to build a device from schematics as it is to directly copy and use some sort of circumvention software. As with the "old" DirectTV hack, you'd have to go through the effort to buy hacked cards from somewhere (like ebay).
MPAA and RIAA and all these people are old school, I can confirm this simply by the fact that MP3 was known and available WAY before (YEARS) it was popular. They could have reacted to this long time before it jumped out in popularity. Same goes for video, mpeg4 was a work in progress, if someone in there would have done their homework and research, they could have seen it comming. Now they are reacting on a panic level, attacking left and right since many months, and basically in their non-technical reasoning, they think that if they scramble EVERYTHING well, nothing could be cracked that way (i.e. encrypt content device, encript output device, hell encrypt tools to do the transform (i.e. harddrive, CPUID on a processor, etc) ). Fact is, it will never work, there's NO 100% safe system, if one can create it, one can crack it. Period. Truth? look at software piracy, which has YEARS of experience fighting and developping schemes to not get copied. Name me one software that never got cracked?.
If there would be one wise person in these fine establishments, they would realise that making AFFORDABLE stuff in a mass market, if far more profitable to EVERYONE than trying to rip off the last dollar on the top of the pile. I mean, would you copy a DVD if it would be 5-10$? hell no, who would be stupid enough to go to that trouble? Ok some people would, but not the majority, same goes for CD. Why the heck would one want to pay CAN40$ for an import when he can get it on napster for free? knowing that the cd costs 1$ to make (not only the material, but let's say everything around it). I see classical CDs for 5.99$ how come metallica is 20$? I'm sure the 5.99 manages to do a profit, and sells a LOT less than the metallica CD.
Implementing protection scheme to protect a market is one thing, doing it to preserve greed is pointless and WILL BE demolished. Instead of investing shitloads of money developping this, they should invest in MARKETTING and THINKING of new distribution venues. But again, old school people, not able to think straight and think the world revolves around them. Too bad.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
A zip file, on a pro unix site, are you out of your tiny little karma-whoring mind?
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
You are comparing the police, who (in theory at least) function as the representatives of the people, and are (in theory at least) accountable to elected officials, and hence, to us, "we the people", to a corporation which is privately owned and can do basically whatever the hell it wants to?
Are you serious?
Nor are they too keen on you feeding rat poison to other people
Who in their right mind would want to? That is not only illegal, unethical, and immoral (in almost all cases). That is a FAR cry from DMCA "violations".
As for single engine private planes, I wouldn't fly in one if I could! I have been in a car that stalled. Had it been a single engine private plane instead I'd be dead. That is just bad engineering. If I were to say backup web servers were silly, I'd get flamed. And a web server failure with no backup doesn't (usually) kill someone.
I agree that lawsuits against gun manufacturers are stupid. Just like lawsuits against DeCSS.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Hardly useless. The hordes of consumers won't use that device because they don't know it exists, or they can't find a way to get it, or they're afraid of the legions of lawyers.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Suppose that I don't want to watch any copy protected media (I don't own a television or any DVDs). Will it be possible for an open source operating system (e.g. Linux) to use this sort of display hardware for standard web surfing, coding, word processing etc or will these monitors only work if you have a closed source driver containing the crypto keys?
...as the quality of such devices increases (along with a concomitant increase in the quality of recording devices) it is likely that the loss in such a "low-tech" copy scheme will be quite low, certainly within viewable levels. Unless, of course, they decide to fit us all with cyber-eyes...
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
So what would happen in that case is that the hot new releases would be unpirateable for awhile (and thus people who wanted to see them would have to pay for them), but after a period of time the keys would be compromised and anyone could copy, excerpt, or modify the original work.
If you squint a little -- okay, if you squint a lot -- it almost looks like something the U.S. founding fathers would approve of. The creators of new works would have a limited period of exclusive distribution (providing an incentive to create works), after which the works would fall into the public domain.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
This has an obvious flaw: the light emission from the monitor to user is unencrypted. I look forward to a future enhancement which embeds a content protection chip in each user's brain.
64mb DDR, etc, etc.
Games look fucking awesome on this - and it isn't being used to its full capability. I can run Q3 at damn near 100 FPS at 1024x768. needless to say, my kills have increased dramatically. Bow down before me, for I am God.
I'm not going to give up my 19" monitor and Ati Radeon sometime soon. NOTHING on the market today requires anything near the level of the Radeon, nor is much planned.
I'd say that I can be using this for at least another 3-4 years if I don't get the "upgrade bug". We have kind of reached a slowdown in the video dept - why? because nobody will buy your game if only 3 video cards, each costing about $200, support it - we won't even mention the fact that none of the compaq / dell "consumer computers" support the game.
You eliminate your market, you lose money. It's as simple as that.
Backwards compatibility will always be paramount to any "copy protection of video" - and unless something super fantastic comes along, and I honestly don't see it (maybe real time 3d rendering in games that actually looks real, as opposed to the Black and white people)
That said, I wouldn't mind one of those super big mac LCD screens, you know, the $4000 ones. Unfortunately, money is kind of tight - shit I can buy a CAR for that amount.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Who gives a bucket of shit about a secure video path when I have deCSS? Which will take something, rape the encryption on it and then send it along the secure video/audio path . . .
Maybe I'm missing something . . .
There is not ONE a/v format where the encryption has not been broken on it, nor do I believe that there will be one in the future.
It seems that this is a giant waste of time on the hardware manufacturer's part. Quite honestly, this sounds like a government sponsored project, $70 hammers and the whole bit.
As for;
Your monitor will soon be a "licensed monitor device".
I have a feeling that my driver in device manager will look something like this.
" @1m05T m1cr0$0ft h@x0r3d dR1viR " if there is a need for it.
yeah, speaking of bucket of shit, have you seen the Aztec?
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Do you actually believe this?
here is a similarity: when enough large companies start using GNU software in their commercial, it makes it ok from then on for ANY company to do so. intellectual rights are intellectual rights. Whether it be protecting companies from using and abusing gnu source code, or people copying movies/music/other copyrighted material. If you believe in protecting in one, you cannot just trample on others' rights without being a hypocrite.
it seems there are too many people in the GNU community that are like this.
Yes, exactly! The whole movie production business is based crucially on the need for massive budgets for the near-obsolete tech required by using film. This is going away fast. In less than 5 years anyone coming out of 'film' school will have all the digital video gear they ever need. They're going to suck up to Hollywood producers? Why, for distribution? Not with any sort of progress in bandwidth and/or compression to the home. Not as long as we can build hi-rez net-reception home theaters. And if you want the public experience, put net-video jukeboxes in bars. The education market will take care of itself - get those science lectures for your junior high from real scientists, with you-are-there immediacy! Less boredom, more real inspiration, fewer inept teachers to hire; it will be a no-brainer. Of course, this will be greatly driven by pr0n, too. Time to resign from the Mickey Mouse Club, kiddies, the real fun's about begun.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Yup, and therefore has turned the thing into 1 triple-handshake rather than 22. Maybe saved on 21 forks too.
FP.
--
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
With Sony having its hands in both licensing and the display technology, you're just gonna have to look at making your own, unless...
...well, let's think.
The 'ingredients' are a bunch of small companies, from tiger economy countries.
The 'cooking time' is maybe 10-15 years (before this crypto-nonsense technology becomes as standard as DVD).
The 'recipe' is wait. That's all.
They've (the smaller IT eqpt. manufacturing companies) seen that there's a huge consumer market for being able to just do things unencumbered. CD-Rs for example. Everyone wants one, they're everywhere now. By the time this technology becomes mainstream, there'll be a bunch of people making 'incompatible' hardware that will just output the stuff unencrypted. They will because they can, and because there's money in it, and thirdly because they're _not governed by US law_.
That's what Sony are forgetting...
FP.
--
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Its off-topic, but this "quote" is a hoax. There is nothing in any of the quatrains even close. Check out the Nostradamus Repository for details (and a cool quatrain search engine).
This doesn't require an act of Congress to mandate or any strong arm tactics against the manufacturers. It is an integral part of the evolution of video. And for you audiophiles, both DVD-Audio and superCD (or whatever Sony calls it) are already encrypted on the media.
And before you think I see this as either a good or neutral development, I don't. This is another step in the entertainment industry's plan to strip we consumers of all of our rights and force all media into a "pay-per-view" scheme.
As it currently stands at this moment, the public no longer has any rights relating to content they purchase or own. The content companies have all the legal rights and legal protection. When it comes to content, they all but own the judicial system. They definitely own the Legislative branch of the American government.
:P
As citizens and consumers, we must strive to change to the system. Write letters to your congressmen and congresswomen and send them via postal mail. Do not send the letters via email as many congressmen ignore email all together. You can also call and encourage your friends to call as well.
Next consumers have to stop buying the rights abusive products from the content companies. It would take less than a month for a boycott by millions of people in order to force the content companies into changing their ways. Sadly, we can talk as much as we like about the problem here on Slashdot however, the odds of any meaningful changes resulting from it are just about zero.
--
When I'm good I'm very good, when I'm bad I'm better, But when I'm evil you better run
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
If it can get more people reading and less people watching TV. ( Or spending time online, me included )
Right, but you can buy a Macrovision-free DVD over at DVD City. Don't want it? Buy without!
sulli
RTFJ.
Right, and the smart makers won't implement it. There are lots of non-Sony, non-Sharp, non-Toshiba, non-Philips makers out there who would love to get a bigger share of the market and would gladly use this as a way to do so. Think of the MP3 Discmans the smaller electronics makers ship now, or VCD ... someone will ship hardware that's user-friendly, or I'll eat my hat.
sulli
RTFJ.
How many of you use SDMI or ATRAC vs. MP3? Show of hands? Case closed.
sulli
RTFJ.
I know it sucks...but...bandwith is getting cheaper and cheaper, can anyone think of an acceptable solution to prevent the internet becoming the biggest free blockbuster on the planet? What is wrong and right with that?
|| is a concatenate operator in SQL...and that for a long time.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
If you think || is a logical OR, that would explain why your programs don't work. It's a conditional OR. The difference is that the second operand isn't evaluated if the first is true (non-zero), because then the value of the second is superfluous. For logical OR, both operands are evaluated. An important distinction, especially if the second operand has side effects or can produce an error under conditions which are checked by the first operand.
If this were to happen, let's say the Hackmeister hacks the secret code to my [ video card | monitor ], and so new movies made won't play on it/them. Does this mean they think I'm going to UPGRADE because some hacker/cracker somewhere got the code to the card/monitor!? I don't *think* so...
Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep in a shared include somewhere.
We see theese kind of things popping up everywhere. "Pirate-protection" on cds, computergames, compressed music, vcrs, dvds, harddisks and now, as if it wasn't enough, The game of profit-maximizing makes buissiness out of encrypting signals in the 1m wire between my computer and my monitor. I have to ask myself one question - WHY? Why are someone allowed to control my pc? Why are someone allowed to limit the use of services I have legaly purchased? If I purchase something, I like to think of it as my own. I own my car, my tv, my bike and my books. I can do with it what I find delightful or funny - whenever I feel like it. Unfortunately some fuckhead came up with the idea of "licence-agreements" - and worst of all, most governments in the world allows this kind of development-brake to be switched on. If I would like to know how this pc operates (it runs winME), I'm not allowed to. I'm tried to be prevented from having my DVDs copied, someone tries to prevent me from copying my purchased music, someone is trying to have my purchased books time-limited, someone is trying to stop me from taping TV-shows, and now - as the top of the "kransekake", as we say in Norway, someone wants to keep me from listening in on the signal MY OWN pc tries to send to MY OWN terminal. I liked to think of my own as my own. Just as Linus pronounces linux as linux. But I'm not allowed to. This has got to stop. If this common policy continues, we are not allowed to change the lightbulbs in our own homes, we won't be allowed to open the hood on our cars, we won't be allowed to install our own car-stereo, and we won't be allowed to not watch commercials. Someone has got to say NO at some point, or civilisation is going down - driven to the ground by its own hunger for profit. I'm not a communist - far from it, but I do want to point out a communist fact, manely that the people are in charge. Or, for you american citizens, you were in charge. Then you found out that you had to let the money take control, and now it's the buissinessmen in the USA that litterally controls your lives. And when I thought you'd seen what you have become, you elect - of all the idiots in your country, Mr. George W. Bush as your president. I've gotta laugh. But everywhere else in the world, I would like you to think about what kind of control you want over your own life. Think abiut it the next time you are to elect your representate to the natonal-government. Of course we don't want to steel things - but then again, that's why we BUY it. What we are really doing nowadays is renting stuff - but noone calls it that. I wonder why...
Thanks to krazyninja for pointing to the original file on http://www.digital-cp.com. That URL has been added to the Cryptome doc. The PDF original is superior to the Cryptome HTML, with clean copy, and includes identification of who prepared the document which was missing from our version. -- Cryptome
You mean Madona would actually have to do on tour?
Content producers made money long before CD and DVDs. Musicians played concerts, and people went to movie theaters to watch movies. Loosing the home distribution market is not the end of the world.
The people who are going to loose out are the once who make titles that normally go straight to video. They're the ones who have the problems, but ironically they aren't the ones screaming the loudest about copy protection.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Like it or not, whenever something like this happens (DVD encription, DMCA, stuff like that) in the USA, it always leaks down to the rest of the world.
So far, when transnational companies *cough*Sony*cough* begin implementing this kind of changes, almost all of the time they begin in the US. So what can non-US citizens do to defend themselves? I mean, american culture influences most of the world already. And whatever is decided there, we're stuck with, here in the developing countries.
So come on, fix it up! We're standing behind you, all the way! Hip hip hooray for DeCSS! Down ith the RIAA, the DMCA and all of the other FLAs.
Oh, and send us more p0rn, while you're at it.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Actually, from my quick read of this spec, they appear to have designed a variant of public key cryptography. I'll leave the cryptanalysis of the algorithm to someone actually good at it.
You know who you are, Bruce...
"And like that
Secondly, this technology could also be used in our schools and libraries to ensure that objectionable content, such as sexually explicit images, or anti-religious propaganda can be blocked from our childrens tv screens. It is difficult to imagine any law-abiding sane adult arguing against this technology.
Lets hope it becomes commonplace, soon.
I swear, Major League Baseball must have a hand in this. Now we're really going to need their express written consent for any rebroadcast or retransmission. But I'm still going to miss having them remind me.
-dbWhy do we watch or listen to what we do?   Because we found it and like it.   How did we find it?   Most likely through advertising.   Hollywood, MPAA, RIAA advertising.   But there're a shitload of talented people out there who'll never get that type of big advertising.   Nevertheless, we might like them.
Technological advances are making it possible for people to record music and make movies in and from their homes, without the need for massive studios.   The internet is just waiting for them to do their own marketing.   Look at the incredible penetration of "All Your Base", for God's sake.   When professional electronic entertainment becomes too expensive and too complicated to enjoy, more and more people will flock to free alternatives.   Want to see a movie?   Well, IndieTonight.com has 3000 titles which you can download - all independently written, produced, directed, acted and scored.   Copyright free.
You get what you pay for.  
There are millions of people who haven't made it in Hollywood for some reason or another.   If you're like most people, you probably know someone personally whom you think is awesomely talented.   He can act, sing, play, perform and thrill you, but he also has a day job.  
The big players, the MPAA and the RIAA, when they get their way and are able to encrypt everything they produce and limit your rights to its usage, will restrict themselves out of the market.   Their current dominance is based upon the ability we grant them to judge and distribute.   The internet is taking that away from them.   The bad side of all this is the threat of Balkanization.   Right now, in the US at least, we live in a society where anyone from any part of the country can strike up a conversation with most anyone else by referring to common cultural experience.   "Did you see Beck on SNL last night?" "How 'bout those Lakers?", that kind of stuff.   If the giant media corporations succeed in their panicked attempts to limit access to their products, they'll simply send consumers off in search of entertainment that's not so dear.   And we might possibly lose this electronic zeitgiest.   But even that won't last.   Because if people wander off from the media giants, they won't be media giants anymore.   If that happens, they'll be forced to drop their restrictions in order to lure people back.
Joe Sixpack may not know a whole hell of a lot, but he does know he can make a CD of songs he really likes and he can tape a tv show to watch later.   He is not going to give that up without a fight.
I mean, why would you purchase an un-copyable, use-limited CD of Band X for $15 when you can download Band Y's music for free and make a compilation CD from their tracks with tracks from Bands Z, AA and BB?   (Unless of course you're 15 and all your friends have Band X CDs.   But even then, if you can't afford Band X and Band Y is free, what are you gonna do?)   There'll be some cachet, I suppose, to having Band X CDs, but it won't be any more exciting than having Nike sneakers instead of New Balance.   They're still just sneakers.
If you put out big bucks for a super-digital, whiz-bang TV and then you can't afford to watch anything on it other than free crap you drag down off the internet, what are you going to do with your expensive, restricted hardware?   Watch the free crap.
That is an example of free-market forces at work.   No one makes you look at Keanu or Sandra.   There are hundreds of Keanus and Sandras who are just waiting for the chance to entertain you.   That's probably the scariest thing for both the MPAA and the RIAA.   We have a choice and now, finally, we have a source.
(Which is not to say that I don't find it abhorrent that entertainment companies would dictate what use I can make of hardware I bought!   But I think this abnormality will be rendered irrelevent.   The restricted, expensive, difficult shit just won't have any customers, and it will go away.)
Let me try to recap.   The Beatles were big.   Metallica is/was big. But that's only because, in the past, record companies had to winnow out obvious losers in order to recruit talent which could stand a chance of sustaining mass appeal.   The record companies might not know it yet, but they have already lost that power.   And the MPAA will lose it next.   YOU, the consumer, can review music from hundreds, thousands of bands.   YOU will be able to download trailers of truly indi films.   Columbia, CBS, RCA, whoever, won't be there to narrow your choices, unless you choose to pay for their services and submit to their restrictions.
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
There is nothing wrong with vendors creating proprietary systems to play their content. Home video game systems are a good example. Buy a cartridge created for their hardware or don't play their game. Where some people take issue, however, is when the government gets involved in the preservation of a business model. Frankly, If I find a way to use hardware I purchased in ways the manufacturer did not intend, too bad for them. If they make a robust system and I want to give them my money, good for them.
The difference between government enforced copy protection and innovation enforced copy protection is one puts you in jail when you do obvious things with stuff you own and the other just forces the vendor to think more creatively next time.
I'm not so sure hiring lawyers to keep cash-flow positive is better for the progress of society than that good-ole model of yester-year when engineers kept that engine running.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Or they are the opposite model because the state owned everything.
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~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
internet becoming the biggest free blockbuster {a popular video rental chain in the US} on the planet
... If the horse and buggy manufacturers had the governmental reach the Movie and Music conglomerates have today, we would not be allowed to drive a car because that would trash their horse and buggy business model. (A good lawyer would have patented the multi-passenger enclosed coach and attaching an engine would be a breach of license.)
What if there is nothing wrong with that? What if that is really a good thing? Of course, it would smash today's content business models.
Let's think about this
Of course if Radio had realized what they could achieve by hiring lawyers instead of engineers, there would have been no television because it would have (and did) significantly reduce the importance of radio as an entertainment resource. (A good team of lawyers would have manipulated the system so that radio technology was allowed for licensed receivers -- which of course would only have delivered sound, not video.)
No one speaks for the new business models that would rise up to profit from the new content realities since they don't yet exist. And of course, the way things seem to be headed, our big brother will not let things change so we can discover what they are. (And yes, someone will always profit. The only issue is that they may not be the same ones that do today. ===> Change is bad when you are already on top.)
Bang Bang Oww (Me pounding fist on table and then rubbing it because I hit the table too hard.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
So I'm guessing that a DDE compliant display will refuse to display a dvd or other type of media information that has been watermarked unless the media source is also compliant. If this happens it will make it alot harder to play copied media files on you brand new 42" DDE COMPLIANT (simultaneously destroying your fair use rights)
'||' is in fact a concatenation operator in SQL.
end communication
This would really suck if certain monitors would only work with certain computers from companies that have licensed their technology. Do I need to start building my own monitors as well as computers now? =)
Actually, I doubt that's the intent of this document. However, it always pays to be on guard, eh?
end communication
Because the only video cards that will be available are the ones with encrypted output to feed the digital monitors, which won't work with your old style analog monitors.
You and I can tell why this technology is bad, but Joe Scmoe going to an Office Depot isn't going to care as long as what ever system he buys works reasonably well (copy protection or not).
When you think about it, there isn't a PC subsystem that isn't under attack by an encryption standard. Firewire, USB, hard drives, video, and sound all need to be placed under lock and key.
Bruce Schneier of Counterpane puts it well - "As long as there is a general purpose computer, their is going to be a way around encryption methods." So it's the manufacturers' job (they're all pretty much as a cartel in this respect) to "subtract" functionality from a PC so you and I can't do things we shouldn't be. Things are looking bleak More here.
I suppose that their will be ways for some of us to build general purpose computers from a box of ICs like the good ol' days. Who knows, maybe we can have a little niche market selling boards to fellow slashdotters. The only problem is that with the way the courts are thinking, that may be considered a circumvention device.....
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
We need to remember what a small percentage of Americans actually own a computer. Without hard numbers, the last study I saw showed there were about 50 million Americans online. This compared to the 250 million citizens in the country. This is why we have been trying to get the sub $500 PC for years. Once the masses get online, it will be completely free. There will not be any bueracracy that will be able to control the piracy or theft of any digital medium. It will be time sensitivity that will prove a piece of information to be valuable, not copyright.
Good examples of fair use of digital content are:
I want to create a Terminator clip screensaver for my sole use on my personal computer.
I want to run the (hopefully) last 'NSYNC album thru a voice-center filter to remove the vocals so my daughter can pretend to be a rock star.
I collect motion-picture "Boom-Mike" intrusion snippets for my Boom-Mike website in support of my Boom-Mike operators class I teach at the local community college. I never post the entire frame, just the mike part.
The sig below has been sacked. My new sig reads:
"Jack Valenti, you can blow me." --
GeneralEmergency
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
In the case I suggest above though, that critical component that makes socialism palatable (even morally right) is missing. The new part of the "state", which is dictating what we can do in our own homes, is emphatically not democratically accountable (except in a 'go nuclear' - if you piss off enough constituents we'll remove all of these privileges but at great economic cost and upheaval sense.)
That's what worries me. Me, I'm an anarcho-libertarian-socialist ;), I have little problem with democratic socialism, but we're seeing an unaccountable plutocratic environment here, and critically we're seeing that power misused to interfere with and inconvenience people in private. That's just wrong.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But with more and more of the rules we find ourselves living under being dictated by corporate groups, could it be that the line between business and the state is blurring?
I look at phrases like "licenced monitor device" as being the beginning of a worrying trend. The reason is that we're moving from a situation from where something we already had (as opposed to, say, a DVD player, or personal computer, where licences have been a major component since they were placed on the market) being replaced by equipment where tough restrictions on its use are being enforced. Those restrictions are protected by force of law - if you opt to use the equipment without following these rules, you may find yourself being sued. Yet these rules are not being subjected to democratic review.
In the case of TV and radio, the former of which we're seeing this new regime encroach upon, the latter of which we may see soon with the marketing of digital radio and current trends suggesting every digital media device being given these restrictions, this strikes me as particularly obnoxious because over the last 50 years, we've come to rely upon this as a source of much of our information needed to make reasonable judgements about the world we live in. Media has moved from print to radio to TV, and, imperfect though it is, it seems important enough to me to be a source of concern if you can no longer access it without agreeing to rules that you may find blatently unfair and/or counter to your beliefs.
I've seen it argued that licencing rather than legislation is better because you create freedom of choice and let the markets cater for people. But where you have a monopoly, be it on the provision of broadcast television signals for a consortium of interested parties, or a critical piece of system software needed for compatability with peers, is it reasonable to argue that users do have the capability to choose between different products with different licences, and would it not be reasonable to at least have some basic rights instituted for users, at a legal level, so that producers cannot dictate how people use information they have paid for, or equipment they have paid for, in the privacy of their own homes? Does the alternative, which is what we appear to be seeing the start of now, replace elected oversight of law making with unelected legally enforcable rule making?
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
OMG...I just realized something. Sony has these new commercials out saying they are going to revolutionize home entertainment with some new machine. I'll be damned, they're going to make centralized all-in-one boxes that can download music, movies, books, anything. And it'll all be available and encrypted on a pay-per-use basis. And, they will control the encryption all the way up to the output machines. What a lovely thought.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Scary.
And how true that will be!
--
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
The 'Nostradamus' quote is apparently a hoax doing rounds around the net. See www.nostradamus-repository.org for details.
All it takes is one company that won't use this. If one company will make moniters and graphics cards of high quality that won't do this, a free market would favor them until companyts would need to meet there standards of un-encrypted to sell their productes, right? I don't know mcuh if this is wrong I'm sure it'll be pointed out soon. But it only takes one comapny to stand up.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master"-Unknowen
Just a thought... Wouldn't it be nice if there were some kind of law that would force manufacturers of these encrypted/protected devices and media to put a sticker or some other 'warning' on them that this is an encrypted product?
That way I would at least *know* I'm being screwed...
There are already laws (here in Holland) that force manufacturers to actively warn consumers about genetically modifidied ingredients and artificial colorings/flavorings in food.
I mean, most (non-technical) people I tell DVD's are encrypted, are surprized. I even didn't know it when I first bought a DVD-rom drive.
I think it would be a Good Thing if there was some kind of sticker on these products saying 'Big Brother is watching you...'. It would give some people a (false?) sense of protection, and it would warn people like us not to buy this stuff unless we've read up on the encryption to figure out if and how we can work around it (if nescessary).
Just my 2 euro-cents,
NachtVorst
Wrong. The monitor companies have been talking about implementing this for a while now. Too bad most of you don't pay any attention to these things until it is too late to stop them. Did any of you let the FCC know how displeased you were when they mandated that new HDTV equipment be equiped with copy prevention devices. How many of you have written your Congressman demanding that they start defending your rights. I'm an American but almost ashamed to admit it. Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin would commit suicide if they were alive to see what a bunch of whiny, spineless, spoiled rotten brats they left their legacy to. Grow up and start excersizing some of the power of the people or get the kind of government you deserve. You would be amazed at how fast Congress will change its tune if people will actually start holding them accountable for how they vote. I saw one guy talking about how Hatch was his Senator. Well buddy if you didn't like the DMCA are you going to vote for him at re-election time. My bet is probably you will because you know his name. If they vote wrong get them out of officeBoucher is my Congressman. I think he at least tries to understand the issues. So I will vote for him. However, the Senate members from Va. happen to be a bunch of clueless losers and I wouldn't vote for any of them for the job of dogcatcher. The funny part is I'm Republican, Boucher is Democrat, and the Senate members are both Republican if I remember correctly.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
Don't buy it if it doesn't meet your needs then, otherwise, you would only encourage them to make and sell you things that deny you of your freedom.
C-style notation is used throughout the state diagrams and protocol diagrams, although the logic functions AND, OR, and XOR are written out where a textual description would be more clear.
The concatenation operator ' || ' combines two values into one.
I stopped reading about there to go off and fix all my C code. Since when has || been a concatenation operator? To think that for all these years I thought it was a logical OR. No wonder none of my programs work.
BS are the same ones that can stop it. --- For those of you who haven't accepted that corporations are the fourth unelected branch of the government you can stop reading. You can't do much about the 4th unelected branch of government -- but you can work on the elected legislative branch. They need to see these kinds of articles and know that their constiuents are completely opposed to them, and other abused that will stem from the DMCA's wording. Perhaps it's time to lobby for a consumers bill of rights. Either way -- 99% of email directed towards politicians is simply ignored. Nothing beats calling your reps on the phone and the good ol' pen and paper. It doesn't hurt to email too -...but definitely write & call. We already have literally hundreds of laws dealing with piracy in addition to the DMCA... The provisions in the DMCA simply aren't needed. As long as they stand we are going to see a lot more of this. Are you ready for a graphics card with a user license that you don't actually own? ...How about a hard drive with built in censoring of media types? .... I'm sure it's crossed the minds of someone in 4th branch....
Blessed Be, Sacred Salt
Why not just work towards making your favorite flavor of *nix not accept any content control protection scheme between your computer and monitor (or other device)? That way there will be a market for non-compliant monitors etc.
Beware the Dark Side, Luke... ...and if these creeps don't qualify for users of
the Dark Side, I don't know who does.
Past time to marshal our forces for the Good Side.
The reason that there is a broad push for this kind of technology (intrusive content control) is that the current federal administration is very much pro big business.
Ahhh.... I was WONDERING why this whole trend only started six months ago, instead of three years ago...
that I have to view my porn on a pay per spooge basis?
no, that's not the answer. digital is very nice. look at lcd's that take analog in--they have all sorts of tweaking controls (scroll, expand, etc.). then look at a dvi lcd. power and brightness! digital video is cleaner and simpler than analog--and it's a shame if this dumb encryption gets in the way of it.
--how long till the operators are jailed for anime-induced pedophelia and
DVI is a digital spec, as opposed to the current analog VGA spec. a few vid cards have DVI-out, notably hercules and ATI cards. most DVI monitors are LCD, because they natively use the digital information, whereas a CRT has to put a DAC in it to use the DVI signal. they seem to want to encrypt it because this is then essentially a perfect signal that can be copied.
--how long till the operators are jailed for anime-induced pedophelia and
This is strictly a content-control and access-control system for broadband TV systems. Go read the paper.
Go read the paper. This has nothing to do with computer monitors. This is a system for encrypting cable tv, satellite, and other broadband TV systems. This is CSS for your television set. Didn't pay your subscription fee this month? No HDTV for you, your key is revoked. Hacked your HDTV-Tivo? Your key is dead. Want to tape that TV show for time-shifted viewing? Sorry, it can't be intercepted for recording, watch it at the time AOL/TimeWarner/Microsoft broadcast it or forget it.
These specs are put up on the digital-cp site itself. I dont think that they have been "leaked".
"Do something man. Right now."
The reason that there is a broad push for this kind of technology (intrusive content control) is that the current federal administration is very much pro big business. The tactics being employed now skirt existing interpretations of anti-trust laws by employing monopolistic tactics against consumers, not other businesses. While the MPAA may employ virtual monopoly power in forcing consumers to buy expensive new equipment (and therefore sacrifice rights), it does not impose an entry barrier to other prospective businesses. Anti-trust laws could easily be expanded to counter this new type of monopoly, but only under a pro-consumer administration. A supreme court ruling in favor of consumers would bring this whole house of cards down, but the majority of justices will (most probably) be pro-big business if any of the current democratic justices retire (Bush will only appoint pro-big business justices, of course, and it is very likely that at least one democratic justice will retire during Bush's administration).
An interesting quote re Bush:
On the 12th month of the year of the millenium, in the seat of greatest power, the village idiot shall come forth to lead.
-Nostradamus
Big businesses are entrenching themselves against what they see as a potential wave of piracy. As more people come online, and, even more importantly, as bandwidth barriers are lowered, media piracy is being made possible on an unprecedented scale (a la Napster). All they're trying to do is basically protect their profit margins. This kind of thing, however, will never work. All it would take to stop this crap is for one person to crack each major release that comes out, just once. After that, just convert it to good ol Divx, fire up Bearshare/Gnutella/Limewire (assuming all napster-type pseudo P2P services block that stuff out) and the MPAA is screwed. Soon, the industry will kill itself, as it will make obtaining pirated copies much more convenient to obtain than trying to meet all the new standards required to play legal copies. All the media industry has to do is increase the inconvenience/cost ratio of pirated media as opposed to legit goods in order to stay ahead of the game. What they just don't get is that there will always be a hardcore bunch of hackers out there that will break their system just for the hell of it. They can put everybody through a load of shit trying to achieve the golden 100%, or they can do the smart thing and implement something designed to make it inconvenient for most people to pirate media and achieve 85%. What they'll find out the hard way is that it will cost more money that they'll save to try to constantly update a system that will be a perpetual ground zero for hack attacks.
Aside from the potential (make that probable!) gross abuses of this system, it would be great for high-security environments!
...
string* plamenessFilter =
*plamenessFilter = "Flaming Death!!";
Does anyone here really want to do anything about this? I read most of the posts on this page and I never read any truly valid suggestions about what we can effectively do about garbage like this. The entertainment industry is promoting copy protection *because it can* and they think will pay to do so. Why do people copy software? Because they can, and it pays to do so. The fact is current copyright law is simply inadequate under the current circmstances. Any entity, public, private, or commercial is going to take advantage of situations where the law is vague. I know I do! The courts won't (and shouldn't) take it upon themselves to define the law for us, we have to take it to them. The politicians won't do anything about it until they think it will cost them their seat. It doesn't really matter if the issue is raised through the courts or through the legislature. What we need to do is raise the issue of who is allowed to do what when it comes to copywrites. We need a way to funnel the passion over this issue (300+ posts) away from slashdot and toward Washington. People don't get power just because there are a lot of them, people get power when they are organized. Let's get something going!