Flash Memory with Copy Protection

Castar writes "Mercury News is reporting that SanDisk has created a new type of flash memory with copy-protection logic built in. From the article: "Today, much of a consumer's digital content is held hostage on a particular kind of device, such as an iPod or a PC, because that is the only way to prevent massive piracy. But with the SanDisk flash memory card, a consumer can move the digital content to another device. If the music company insists the data can only be copied five times, the memory card itself enforces that policy in the new device, be it a cell phone or music player." Rejoice that your data can be "liberated" from the confines of your PC or iPod!"

Comments

Hooray!

[BrainInAJar]

I was getting sick of all that freedom, good thing sandisk's taking care of that, so i don't have to

Re:Hooray!

[catwh0re]

Hooray! They'll also figure out a way that I can pay for it in my next device! (obviously a product that should be avoided.)

Hooray! One day we'll pay for "advanced" devices that let us do novel things such as "Duplicate" and "Read" (more than 5 times, and over my 30 day limit, and without a $14.95 a month license until the end of time aggreement.)

Re:Hooray!

[Professor_UNIX]

Hooray! One day we'll pay for "advanced" devices that let us do novel things such as "Duplicate" and "Read" (more than 5 times, and over my 30 day limit, and without a $14.95 a month license until the end of time aggreement.)

What's next in your silly little worker's paradise... buildings full of books, DVDs, and CDs you can borrow for free? A system like the one you describe would cause our entire economy to collapse.

Re:Hooray!

[Gefunden]

you mean a library?

Re:Hooray!

[Quarnage]

I think SANdisk has come up with a crippled version of this old technology:

Write Only Memory

Just think of the DRM possiblities!!! No copying out of this device, ever!

BTW if you want to convert any RAM you have into WOM... just scuff you feet on the carpet a few times and then touch your fingers to the chips. ;)

Re:Hooray!

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean a library?

Good work junior! You figured it out. Now if you could just understand the meaning of irony, you'd be OK in this big world.

Re:Hooray!

[Whisperingwolf]

What's next in your silly little worker's paradise... buildings full of books, DVDs, and CDs you can borrow for free? A system like the one you describe would cause our entire economy to collapse.

Why yes but we already have this sort of thing. Most people call it the library.

Re:Hooray!

[Anonymous Coward]

"pay additional money to get a security code that unlocks additional songs"

I know there's a longstanding precedent in certain computer software - pay more, unlock new features, but how desperate can they get? Just give the people who've put down good money for the album all the songs. Stop being so damn cheap.

"much of a consumer's digital content is held hostage on a particular kind of device, such as an iPod or a PC, because that is the only way to prevent massive piracy"

Alternatively, forget the new technology, keep buying CD's, rip them to your PC, transfer them to your iPod. Voila, transferrable music. And if you're honest, the music industry needn't lose out either.

Here's a great idea for the music industry, no more perfect copies made and swapped, increased sales guaranteed if it's the only medium. It's called Vinyl. Heck, a lot of people prefer the sound anyway! How about someone inventing miniature vinyl discs that fit in a portable player?

Or maybe they should just realise the world has moved on - enforce copyright by all means but stop sueing kids for thousands of dollars just because they downloaded the latest crap. Stomach the fact that some copying will happen, but drop your prices so that the honest majority will buy more music (I read in another article they wanted prices to go up. WTF?). There, that wasn't difficult was it?

Re:Hooray!

[LaundroMat]

Refrain from the use of irony on slashdot please. It obviously doesn't register.

Whooo

[lachlan76]

Today it's held hostage to your PC or iPod! Tommorrow, it's held hostage to your USB drive!

Re:Whooo

[nospmiS remoH]

And three copies after that its USELESS! Hooray!

Re:Whooo

[typical]

I really don't like the increasing complexity of devices that don't need to be complex. Complexity tends to decrease reliability.

My last motherboard, an ASUS, had an in-BIOS MP3 player. That qualifies as "unnecessary, reliability-decreasing feature", in my opinion.

As for the latest sky-is-falling-on-copyright-infringement alarmist crap from Slashdot, pay no heed. This whole thing is a lot of horseshit that companies are using to extract money from the publishing industry. Many, many companies try to do this. If you make a commodity device (Flash storage, for instance), you're desperate to do *something* to make more money on it.

So, let's take a look at what this system is probably going to do.

Assume that the engineers *really* knew what they were doing and made *no* errors (and that security in hardware is pretty hard to do and there isn't much of a culture of that in the hardware world).

It's a pretty good bet that if properly designed (*not* necessarily the case), each device has some sort of embedded public-private keypair. They use this to transfer symmetric keypairs to do bulk data transfer between each other.

This means:

* Everything is on one IC, and there is no inter-IC bus involved. Tapping busses between ICs within a DRM-using device is a good way to break the protection. bunny broke the X-Box by using the fact that not everything is on one IC. Probably reasonable for the Flash world, where this is already the case.

* The hardware's pseudorandom number generators (that symmetric key has to come from somewhere) are secure. An attacker can twiddle power to screw up PRNGs...maybe zero them, induce current, screw with the power lines at just the right frequency, whatever. This is not trivial to avoid.

* There are *no* diagnostic interfaces left in the hardware. Trying to make every hardware engineer lose their diagnostics in the release product is like trying to convince a fish to jump out of water and stamp around on land for a bit.

* The crypto algorithm involved doesn't get broken (once it is in lots of products, you are irrevocably committed).

Remember that this is a system that relies on *zero* breaks. Maybe the manufacturer can have an "update key" and release new protected content with hidden "updates" to invalidate existing compromised keys, but this takes a while to propagate around the system. Once such a system is released, the manufacturer is gambling that not a single person, in any lab, with microscopes and the works, anywhere, can break the thing. Once it gets broken, that person can distribute all the protected content (and possibly even create a "modification" to disable the protection on other devices, if the break involves the compromise of a key). The math is *wildly* against the publishing world here. It's a safe assumption that the publishing world will make dire legal penalties, heavily watermark content (and probably tag with the IDs of devices that it passes through) to try to track down any such break, but it's still a seriously long-shot gamble for them -- and a break is likely to happen after they are widely deployed and are committed to the scheme, as happened with DVDs.

And remember that nobody gives a damn about simple data transfer. That data has to go somewhere -- the Flash drive. So now every device that *consumes* this data (sound cards, video cards, etc) has to also be similiarly secure, and not have any breaks. That is a *huge* undertaking. If one consumer is Windows running under Palladium (e.g. a trusted software MP3 player), then you have to secure a vast software system, as well as much of the hardware in a computer system, against any breaks. That means *Windows local kernel security must be airtight*. Every bluescreen you see is a violation of that! Even better, you can't use a single good prepackaged solution, because then you run into the bus-attacks-across-multiple-ICs problem -- every single device needs a custom chip, and that chip has to perform *all* the t

Re:Whooo

[cdrguru]

Yes, it is probably extraordinarily difficult to do what you presume they are doing. So, they probably aren't doing quite that.

But the real point here is to (a) discourage redistribution of materials and (b) present the appearance of locked content. Yes, actually preventing redistribution would be difficult and maybe impossible. But the appearance is what really counts.

Another aspect of this is quite simple: if people would respect the rights of the creator/distributor of content (music, movies, books, software, etc.) there would be no discussion of this. The need would not be there. As it is today, there are two possible enforcements: technical and societal. Both are failing. The cry from more technically astute consumers is that this means all enforcement should be abandoned. This leaves the content owners in a difficult position because they must choose between controlling the distribution of their content and abandoning such control - and the revenue it brings in. Neither is a good choice, but the revenue loss from abandoning control is (or at least should be) 100%.

People talk about "try before buy". Shareware works that way and people have figured it out - 95% don't pay. Suggesting that music can work this way should result in similar numbers. Same with movies and books - check out Steven King's experiences vs. TOR books and others that have used "simply free" schemes. The 95% number seems like a pretty good benchmark figure when people do not have to pay.

If you ask music and movie executives how they can continue in the business they are in with a 95% drop in revenue, they will tell you they cannot. It is pretty much the same way with any other business - nobody can lose 95% of the revenue and stay in operation.

So why are people still paying? There are three reasons:

1. Guilt. Copyright infringment is subject to both civil and criminal penalties. Granted that these penalties are not often encountered by average people, but the penalties are there. Some people also feel the artist or content owner should be compensated.
2. Unavailability. If you have a poor dial-up connection, you aren't going to be downloading any movies, regardless of your knowledge level. If you don't understand how to send an attachment with email, you probably can't figure out how to use Bit Torrent or download Kazaa. So, for many people they simply do not have access to the materials they would like to.
3. Packaging. They feel they are getting something that a naked download doesn't offer to them.

None of these reasons are going to hold up long-term, although the unavailability one is going to last the longest. What people on the forefront of the copyright issue need to understand is that it is all free now. Go and get it. Make it your duty to keep other people out of the record stores, video stores and so forth. When someone wants to buy a new DVD, give them one!

The result of militant action will be one of a relatively few possibilities. Think about it. What can happen?

• Death penalty for copyright infringment.
• Collapse of all media companies - no more large corporations.
• Artists wake up and decide that the Internet is the only distribution medium that counts.
• End of Western civilization.

You get the idea. However, with the current state of affairs - only a small drop in media revenue, if even that, things will continue as they are today. Of course, any DRM scheme can be beaten and the result of a single crack can be redistributed far and wide on the Internet removing any possibility of future sales.

And, if pushed hard enough, the media companies will have no choice but to either (a) cease operation or (b) lobby for the death penalty for copyright infringement.

Re:Whooo

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to let you know this is one of the most well reasoned comments on DRM I have seen posted in a long time.

So, there is no benefit at all to this technology?

[Peeteriz]

So, the only difference between this new flash and ordinary flash is that this one can do LESS ?

Sigh

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Step 1) Copy once
Step 2) Remove protection from your new copy
Step 3) No more DRM.

Re:Sigh

[Pieroxy]

This is the beauty. They can't decently propose music for sale without allowing you to burn a CD with it. So it comes down to:
1. Burn a CD
2. Rip the CD
3. Enjoy!!!!

They just don't realise that a mere recording from line-out to line-in in any half-decent sound card will sound as good as the original to 99.% of the users. So they should try and prevent that as well.

But I think what they are really up to is to try and prevent users to enjoy their music. Next thing to come, you won't be able to play it either, so there! No more copy protection problems.

Re:Sigh

[LoonyMike]

I'd say that those 5 copies can only be made to trusted devices, no? Devices that will themselves enforce the 4, 3, ... counter for remaining copies.

Re:Sigh

[kfg]

They just don't realise that a mere recording from line-out to line-in in any half-decent sound card will sound as good as the original to 99.% of the users. So they should try and prevent that as well.

They understand that perfectly well. They also understand that sound cards and speakers can be chipped to refuse to reproduce the sound of a file that does not have a valid license code. See DVD players. See the current issue of the broadcast flag.

They're working on chips for your ears and brain. I think they're just going to duct tape mittens on your hands and a super ball in your mouth. Don't even think about nose flute, if you know what's good for you. You won't like the solution with mittens on your hands and that super ball already in your mouth.

KFG

Re:Sigh

[ichigo 2.0]

But I think what they are really up to is to try and prevent users to enjoy their music. Next thing to come, you won't be able to play it either

Considering the quality of music nowadays, I'd say that's actually an improvement. I guess RIAA really is on the side of the little guy, trying to protect us from all the "music" their artists produce!

Re:Sigh

[G-funk]

That's exactly what they'll do. If you want high definition video out of Windows Vista, you need to use the copy-protected output, cables, and rendering devices. That's a fact. Once people are used to it, they'll do the same with audio. And sure, you guys will all use XP, or linux... Until you want to play WOW2...

Re:Sigh

[Jugalator]

They just don't realise that a mere recording from line-out to line-in in any half-decent sound card will sound as good as the original to 99.% of the users. So they should try and prevent that as well.

Uh, they do.

Re:Sigh

[Jugalator]

Using XP or Linux isn't a way to solve the problem with DRM'ed content.

Vista will support it via all sorts of restrictions.

XP and/or Linux will have to as well, or not support it at all.

It's not exactly like XP and Linux will freely be able to play the negatively affected content in Vista.

Re:Sigh

[Carthag]

The thing is, they have to allow two things:

1. People have to have the ability to play a recording they made themself
2. People have to have the ability to play a recording somebody else made

With those two requirements, it's just a matter of piping, really.

Re:Sigh

[panic_smooth]

They just don't realise that a mere recording from line-out to line-in in any half-decent sound card will sound as good as the original to 99.% of the users. So they should try and prevent that as well.

RF-out analogue from DVDs plays this trick, to stop you dumping straight to VHS or whatever. the RF analogue --> CRT is a straight picture signal, but its manifestation at 25fps to VHS syntax is a bit different. each frame is stored as such for VHS, a specific section of analogue pic signal, but is prefaced individually for each frame by a 'datum' black/white signal. the pic itself is 'normalised' against this b/w datum. copy-protected DVDs mess with this datum on output - if you dump to VHS you effectively get slow phasing of pictures making them unwatchable - whilst the core RF signal to your CRT remains untouched.

i don't know if there's an equivalent exploit for digital sound --> analogue --> burn to CD. possible workaround would be to put a microphone next to a speaker - let's see 'em mess with THAT!

Re:Sigh

[MadCow42]

You also forget that one of the reasons RIPping files is so common and easy is that it can be done at 50x normal playing speed. RIPping with a line out / line in system can ONLY be done at 1x speed. It'll take you an hour to RIP one CD. This alone would limit the use of such a system, so that it's not a major threat to the copyright holders.

MadCow.

Re:Sigh

[Pieroxy]

But look at macrovision. While almost all DVD players implements it, they all have a remote control sequence to disable it. So what the hell? Who is anyone kidding here?

Re:Sigh

[Erris]

Step 1) Copy once

Try again. This memory won't work in a nuTrusted(TM) device. You might be able to rig up a recorder to your headphone jack, but you are going to get a really crappy copy. Worse, any computer capable of playing this trusted crap will then refuse to play your crappy copy. Welcome to the lock down.

Re:Sigh

[Technician]

Step 1) Copy once
Step 2) Remove protection from your new copy
Step 3) No more DRM.


The way I've seen it work for some digital marine charts is;
1) Copy once
2) Strange unrecognised binary file
3) copy to second device
4) works in original device but not in another device.

The chart is married to the card. Copying to a PC is OK. Copying back to the original card is OK. Copying to a second card is rejected by the boat nav. Original card only please.

You can use the chart in another boat, but only if it is on it's original card. This is hardware level DRM.

Notice almost any GPS you can buy that uses a map will only take a SD card?
That is for in the future when you buy your boat or aircraft charts, they will come on a card and won't work if copied to another card. The chart and card are married and won't work without it's partner.

Charts for a local waterway won't be shared by a group of fishermen. Each will need to buy their own chart card. That's how the SD feature works.

Re:Sigh

[kfg]

Do you understand that this isn't about casual copying for personal use, but about file trading?

Labor is distributed.

KFG

Re:Sigh

[Technician]

Direct from the article;

With the TrustedFlash chips, music studios can release albums or whole collections of musical groups on a single memory card that consumers could buy at stores and insert into their phones, MP3 players or laptops.

This is not a buy a blank and burn your own compilation. This is buy a pre-recorded and it is tied to the card. I'll play in your future cell phone, laptop, CF music player, but only from the original card. The file without the card does not work.

This is like old floppy games. Please insert the disk...

Making a custom compilation is not an option. Carying a case of cards with your phone is the new future of copyprotection. I'm voting with my wallet. It's a no vote.

Re:Sigh

[dnoyeb]

I have to disagree with you here. My wife and my mother both want stuff to "just work." They can't understand why playing a CD should be more complicated than playing a tape. It try to explain, but really what am I talking about? It should be.

If you make it complex, you will have to make better music/movies for someone to want to jump through these hoops. But they want to make cheaper movies and sell you junk music.

Re:Sigh

[Toby_Tyke]

You should see how many copied tapes I have from years ago. All done at 1X speed. If your listening to it anyway, you just hit "record" at the same time.

Re:Sigh

[esarjeant]

Very interesting. Actually, Microsoft will have protections for video but they are still researching ways they can protect the audio. All of this has reached a level of complexity that the consumer will never understand.

Recently, I tried to play some discs on a JVC mini-stereo and some media refused to play. While they won't play in my computer they will play on other CD players in the house. At this point, as far as I can tell the JVC player is "broken" and it should be replaced - but the replacement system will need to be able to play these CD's. Maybe it's okay that the discs won't play on my PC, but they should work in my stereo systems.

As a consumer, what am I suppose to do? There is no incentive for me to buy any new CD's until my JVC stereo has been replaced, and that's just going to take away from media purchases.

Recently, a co-worker lost the hard drive on his personal laptop computer. There was a sizable portion of the disk devoted to music that had been purchased online; however, after copying the music to the new drive it could not be played. What kind of backup is this? Imagine if these kinds of restrictions are extended to other digital media, you might have a Word document that can be read on one computer but is inaccessible from another.

For now I have stopped buying any kind of digital media content, this includes movies, music and anything online. It's simply too difficult to know if this content is going to work on my own hardware, and for now I will continue to enjoy the thousands of CD's and LP's that I accumulated in the past 20 years with my eyes on a turntable upgrade that will let me enjoy my collection for many years to come.

Re:Sigh

[rempelos]

Until you want to play WOW2...

So Vista will not let me install linux on the same box???

Re:Sigh

[StrongAxe]

The problem is that DRM devices can superimpose a non-detectible (at least to humans without electronic augmentation) watermark carrying the message "do not duplicate" - and that other DRM devices will be mandated to respect this. I remember hearing a story about 10-15 years ago about a CD manufacturer doing this, but abandoning the project at the time because on certain CDs the watermark made a slight audible difference in the sound, causing adiophiles to get up in arms about it.

Re:Sigh

[LLuthor]

If it can be filtered by our brains (or lies outside the audible ranges), it can be filtered by our software.
Almost all audio codecs already removes most inaudible artefects.

Re:Sigh

[StrongAxe]

If it can be filtered by our brains (or lies outside the audible ranges), it can be filtered by our software. Almost all audio codecs already removes most inaudible artefects.

Yes, but how will it get to the software? If the sound card automatically refuses to pass any sounds that contain such artifacts, you won't be able to get them into your computer to do the required audio-post-processing to remove them in the first place. You will need to use a third-party analog (or at least DRM-free digital) sound-processing device. Unfortunately, as more and more devices will start to include "trusted computing" (bleh) hardware, low-tech devices that can easily circumvent such will be harder and harder to come by.

Re:Sigh

[Greyfox]

Probably not.

I haven't installed a Microsoft product on one of my systems in a long time, but Windows used to arbitrarily refuse to install on a system that had a partition type it didn't recognize. Back when I was working OS/2 tech support we had no end of customers who installed OS/2 first and then wanted to install DOS/Windows on a separate partition. Turns out there wasn't an easy way to do that and naturally IBM took a lot of blame for this.

I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to add some code to Windows Vista that refuses to boot if there's a "Non-Trusted" operating system on the same system. They'd be running the risk that the DOJ would not look kindly on that but really what are those guys going to do? Fine them the change in the couches at the Gates mansion after a 10 year legal battle?

Re:Sigh

[vexx0]

So your saying that WOW2 will only play on windows vista? I highly doubt that they would retrict themselfs like that. Just think about how many people are not using XP but Win2k instead to play their favorite games. Shoot, I know people who play on 98 and *gag* ME. More than likely it will still play on XP too as long as the hardware meets the requirments.

Re:Sigh

[Hal_Porter]

1) Copy one

This is ok - you're allowed to do that.

2) Remove protection

This won't work - the copy is encrypted.

I had a look at the CPRM documents, and it seems to depend on two things, firstly that the protected material is always encrypted. The second is more subtle - that software that plays it needs to license the keys, and the company that makes it will need to sign an agreement not to provide unencrypted content to get the license.

Of course someone could pay up the cash or get hold of the keys and create a libuncprm. But then I think the compromised keys could be revoked, and that someone could get sued. If you copied the encrypted data, it won't decrypt because the media id is hashed into the decryption key, so changing media will break the decryption process. Also, at least in the US the DMCA would criminalise parts of the cracking process.

And they've learnt from CSS too - the keys may be secret, but the encryption algorithms are open sourced and peer reviewed, so the encryption won't have flaws like CSS did.

http://www.intel.com/standards/case/case_cp.htm

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Re:Sigh

[courtarro]

Watch out there; that sounds like sedition to me. You'll find yourself in the same boat as John "hold the shift key" Halderman.

Re:Sigh

[Pollardito]

I think they're just going to duct tape mittens on your hands and a super ball in your mouth.

some people pay good money for that kind of treatment

Re:Sigh

[Pollardito]

So your saying that WOW2 will only play on windows vista?

the same installation discs for WoW that installed it on your PC will work on your Mac, and i believe that has been the case for all of Blizzard's products going back a bit

Re:Sigh

[Taevin]

This is still true (up to the latest version of Windows XP that I have tried). Near as I can tell, the Windows setup utility insists that it be able to write to the MBR as well as some amount of data to the other partitions on the drive. I think this is because naturally, you wouldn't have a non-Microsoft operating system on the drive right? So of course it freaks out when it can't read/write your (non-FAT, non-NTFS) filesystem. I've had this happen to me (more than once because I forgot how stupid Microsoft is), but fortunately it's easy to just tar up your whole Linux system and scp it over to your server and back again once you've installed Windows first.

So after dealing with that, I would not be surprised either if Windows Vista did that. Fortunately, we probably would not have to deal with a long drawn out legal battle with a small fine at the end. Instead, the DOJ will probably meet with Gates and his lawyers to find some way to pervert the system and exploit the DMCA to make this okay. After all, Vista has all this nice DRM built-in so allowing a "Non-Trusted" OS to be on the same system could indicate complicity in subverting copyright protection schemes!

Re:Sigh

[Moridin42]

No.. In the instance that WoW2 doesn't install on older versions of Windows (and assuming I actually want to play it..) I'll go get that Apple that I always wanted. And I'd finally be able to justify spending all that money for a computer.

Re:Sigh

[ZachPruckowski]

See, here's my thing with all the new tech. If I can rip/burn now, if I just buy a computer now, and don't connect to the internet, it'll have good enough software/hardware while avoiding the new flags, right? I can download legally on another computer, and then crossload to the isolated computer, and rip/burn there, and it won't recognize the flags. CDs are easier. I just pop them into the "old computer" and I'm good to go. The problem for the whole "forced upgrade" thing is that it'll tick off people who aren't geeks. People like my parents can barely do email, but if they ever find out that the government is forcing them to upgrade in order to listen to CDs or watch movies on their computer, they'll get pretty mad. And they are symbolic of a large group of adults who are not in high-tech-heavy jobs, but are still middle class. So it'd take something like 3 years for the natural upgrade cycle to make it safe for the RIAA and MPAA to eliminate backwards-compatibility. Also, on the topic of 1 to 1 pipping, there are probably only 3 songs on a CD that people are going to really want to share, so you only need about 20 minutes at most a CD, which is still a lot, but not insurmountable. Not that I'm advocating this. I just use iTMS most of the time.

Re:Sigh

[chphilli]

I've done exactly this several times actually. I have a Linux system with some spare space and want to use that space for games. So, take that extra partition and install Windows on it. No big deal, just make sure you can boot back into your Linux install via a boot disk or live-cd, since Windows will always overwrite the MBR. Windows (currently) does not refuse to install becuase you have a non-NTFS/FAT partition in your system.

It's easier to do it the other way around of course, but that only works if you are setting up a fresh system (and then I usually do the partitioning in a Linux environment first anyways).

Re:Sigh

[digitalvengeance]

At this point, as far as I can tell the JVC player is "broken" and it should be replaced - but the replacement system will need to be able to play these CD's. Maybe it's okay that the discs won't play on my PC, but they should work in my stereo systems.

I think there is a flaw in your logic here. If the JVC system plays standard CDs just fine, then its the new CD that is broken - not your hardware. Return the CD and let them know exactly why - because its broken as far as you're concerned. If they refuse to take it back for cash, get an exchange for the same CD..then another, then another. (For what it's worth, I've always been able to get cash back when I explain why I don't want the broken (read: DRMed) disc.)

If enough people do this, DRM becomes unprofitable (returns are expensive) and disappears.

Re:Sigh

[Kaa]

I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to add some code to Windows Vista that refuses to boot if there's a "Non-Trusted" operating system on the same system.

Highly unlikely. Given things like VMware and the clear trend towards virtualization of hardware, such a move would be quite pointless.

Re:Sigh

[ZachPruckowski]

That's what I'm trying to say (I think). The industries can't eliminate "backwards-compatibility" because your wife and mom wouldn't understand why they have to update their computer to do stuff they used to be able to do. My parents still use a Performa 6000 (my 8th Christmas present), and we've used it to play music CDs before. If they had any interest in playing CDs on it, and couldn't now, they'd be annoyed at someone - and they vote/donate money. While I doubt that my parents and the people they symbolize would swing an election based on this, it'd still be a factor to the government and the **AAs.

For the record, they also have a iMac G3, but they do often use the old computer.

Re:Sigh

[spitzak]

Therefore it is now far faster to download a pirated copy of the CD than to make your own copy. Thus the incentive to buy a CD is *reduced*.

Re:Sigh

[KillShill]

they already have it for audio. so you have it backwards.

it's called Secure Audio Path. (Secure meaning Ignorance is Strength).

video is later to the game because it involves a lot more hurdles and is far costlier to produce (guess who'll be paying for those Digital Handcuffs...).

people keep missing the point though.

it's not just windows.

any system where you will want to play HiDef "protected" content will need a DRM-crippled solution like this.

so that means those "alternative" os's will have to implement these restrictions if they want to play back those videos... unless they are de-crippled and distributed over the net...

so officially, only one other OS in the world has to support this and it aint linux or BSD. they are including TPM/TCPA DRM-crippled, Insidious Computing chips on new motherboards and cpus faster than you can count. they want this to succeed so badly, they are willing to pass on the costs to you, their beloved "consumer".

all new video cards and new monitors will come with Crippling Technology.

and you will say "fine i didn't want to play their crappy DRm-crippled videos/music anyway"...

that's all good and well except for every 1 person who refuses to buy in, 1 million people who have NOT BEEN EDUCATED about the evils of Insidious Computing, will be financially supporting those backstabbing companies.

GET THE WORD OUT.

TELL YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS TO AVOID THESE PRODUCTS LIKE THE PLAGUE.

and tell them to let one other person know about this conspiracy. and yes it is a conspiracy. if it weren't, we would be hearing the "mainstream media" telling us about the horrors and evil-ness of this scheme. it's a "relatively: secret plan to commit a crime. the crime being to put unlawful restrictions on copyrighted items. that itself goes against the copyright agreement enshrined in the constitution. if we had unbribed legislators and judges, that would be a crime and they then would revoke their copyright privileges.

TELL YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS and tell them to tell others about this nefarious plot.

education is the key.

Re:Sigh

[rempelos]

I haven't installed a Microsoft product on one of my systems in a long time, but Windows used to arbitrarily refuse to install on a system that had a partition type it didn't recognize

Well I have a dual boot system now, didn't have any trouble setting both OSs. Of course I first installed windows (just because it clears everything from the boot sector during installation, very annoying), then installed fedora with no prob at all.

I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to add some code to Windows Vista that refuses to boot if there's a "Non-Trusted" operating system on the same system.

The hell with it then, although I doubt it. Microsoft is being flamed all the time for its marketing policies. There are already countries, municipalities, academic/educational institutes that are considering an alternative based on linux, this trend will get a boost in that case.

Anyway, I'm not realy sure why I need windows installed in my system anymore. I found out that I do all my work in linux, especially after the release of OOo Writer 2.0Beta. It seems that alternatives to MS products are keep coming. And by the time Vista will be released I'd have to upgrade all my hardware to install it so maybe I'll just pass. I prefer to give my money to PS3 if I need a new gaming expirience.

Re:Sigh

[E8086]

"If the sound card automatically refuses to pass any sounds that contain such artifacts, you won't be able to get them into your computer to do the required audio-post-processing to remove them in the first place."

Yes, the RIAA seems to like shooting itself in the foot, but restricting playing to only newer devices would mean taking on the entire PC industry, maybe shooting itself a little higher in the leg where a major arteries are. Mr Bronfman already said screw you to Linux and Mac and older CD players with their new ideas for DRM, you'll just have to go out and buy a new one, next will be everyone who owns a sound card, the ones before they paid off someone to produce their DRM/DMCA compliant RIAA brand sound cards and CD players. They seem to think they're more important than everyone else, it's time everyone else takes them out back for a good olde fashioned woodshed beating. As much as some people may want this "trusted computing" I don't think they're going to willingly exclude older or generic brand parts for financial reasons. Family saves movey for 2yrs to buy the cheapest PC offered by Dell, a couple months later the RIAA wants to enforce some new "brilliant" DRM scheme. That poor family's sad story isn't going to make the RIAA look good in the public eye.

Re:Sigh

[tepples]

Yes, but how will it get to the software?

In the worst case, you can wire up your own sigma/delta ADC out of a few analog and discrete logic parts and then feed its output over any serial bus (such as USB).

Re:Sigh

[E8086]

By "lost" I'm guessing you mean Windows was corrupted to the point of needing to be reinstalled, not he took the drive out and forgot where me put it.
That's one of my favorite DRM problems, the files get attached to the the current hardware setup or windows installation. Upgrade your hardware or reinstall/upgrade Windows and your cut off from your data. I previous poster suggested ending the use of "backup" this is data recovery, not backup. I have backups, they get made every week or two. I'm more concerned about the data I make/obtain between backups. If windows dies and I recover the unbacked up data to another windows installation on another hdd or another PC I want to be able to access it. I too have no plans on purchasing DRMed content, I'll buy DVDs and useds CDs, their copy protection is easily bypassed and I'm allowed that legal copy for use on other hardware I own. It's easier to rips CDs to 320kbps and amke a winamp playlist contaning every song I have than to swap CDs. I find it easier make a playlist of my DivX rips to tv-out to the tv in the bedroom than it is to move my dvd rack around the house.
Forget Darwinism and Social Darwinism, it's time for Corporate Darwinism, corporations that can't adapt their business models to new technologies and miss new markets deserve to be killed off(RIAA).
Instead of DRM maybe they should develop something that requires more resources than any home PC has, it worked with CDs for 15yrs. If only home PCs were restricted to 66MHz and 8MB RAM and 100MB hdd and 4x cd-rom drive, HAHA.

Re:Sigh

[E8086]

"Step 1) Copy once"

I hope it won't confuse "copy" with "read" or "play" instead of being able to copy the content to five "trusted" devices you will only be able to play it five times, sounds to lot more like renting than purchasing.

Re:Sigh

[E8086]

"That's how the SD feature works."

I've always wondered how the "secure" part of SD works, but was always too lazy to look it up. When I first heard about them I thought maybe it means there is a way to secure/encrypt MY data on My card, without the use of 3rd part software I'd have to install on everything I used the card with. It seems it's really just a way for other people to restrict their data on MY card. It makes sense for things with a small client base, there arn't that many people who would want electronic charts for a local waterway, a few dozen at most. They should hope the security is durable enough when the user/customer base is increased to the millions and there are people who are trying to break/bypass it.

Re:Sigh

[E8086]

"This is like old floppy games. Please insert the disk..."
I liked the ones with the manual check. What is the 5th word in line 13 on page 42?

"This is not a buy a blank and burn your own compilation. This is buy a pre-recorded and it is tied to the card. I'll play in your future cell phone, laptop, CF music player, but only from the original card. The file without the card does not work."

That doesn't sound like anything that can't be "fixed" with a hex editor. Find out what on the card the data is looking for, serial munber? Find that info on the target card, change the line in the data to match that of target card.

"Making a custom compilation is not an option. Carying a case of cards with your phone is the new future of copyprotection. I'm voting with my wallet. It's a no vote."

Remeber back in the day before PCs had the ability to rip and burn CDs? You were required to carry around a case of CDs and the ability to make custom playlists did not yet exist, it's not that big a deal, SD cards are only about 7.5sq cm while CDs are about 113sq cm and I carry around a few cards for my PDA. I do agree with your arguement on custom compilations and combinations. If music is sold on only 128mb, 256mb for higher bitrate, cards and I have an 8GB card I'm going to want to be able consoliate them onto as few cards as possible. What I don't like this is that there is nothing new here, it's all already possible, buy CD, rip with Winamp or other to MP3, copy to SD card, use with PDA or phone. It's only going to change to buy audio SD card, rip to MP3, copy to another SD card of your choice. The only way this can work is if they are able to force compliance on all manufacturers and outlaw the MP3 format which I don't see happening since just about everything can read it. My wallet also says NO.

Re:Sigh

[StrongAxe]

This can't happen eventually, but just give it 5-10 years. EVERY computer sold by people like Dell (even the cheap ones) will be using whatever chip sets the industry is putting on their motherboards and sound cards. Everybody these days is using AGP video cards. Just TRY to find a PCI one (they exist, but are much rarer and more expensive). Heaven forbid you try to find something made for ISA. Look backwards the same distance. How many people do you know that are using computers made in 1999 or earlier? While they still do exist, the number is dwindling.

Companies like RIAA care about the bottom line. Once they can get 50%, or 75%, or 90% of the people under their thumbs, they won't really worry about some family that is so poor they are running Windows 95 on a 10-year-old computer - such people usually also don't have huge hard disks and broadband to be major piracy threats.

Re:Sigh

[StrongAxe]

In the worst case, you can wire up your own sigma/delta ADC out of a few analog and discrete logic parts and then feed its output over any serial bus (such as USB).

First, the number of us capable of doing this is relatively small. Second, this depends on the availabilty of DAC/ADC chips. How long before the U.S. government makes such devices severely controlled because they can be used to circumvent the DMCA? (Of course, you could always try to wire one up out of transistors or vacuum tubes...)

Re:Sigh

[Paraplex]

Sure, they'll change the type of cables that systems use so they can sell you more shit, just the way they removed the "line in" plugs from most stereo's in the 90's

Re:Sigh

[Technician]

Please read the article.

That doesn't sound like anything that can't be "fixed" with a hex editor. Find out what on the card the data is looking for, serial munber? Find that info on the target card, change the line in the data to match that of target card.

This not a read write memory card. This is a computer on a card with some memory space. The computer program is not in read write memory. You simply will not be able to read the key (protected) and copy it to another card (unable to write to read only protected memory)

This is not your fathers compact flash memory drive card.

It is more like an H card for your dish network receiver.

Copied?

[TheRaven64]

What does `copied' mean? From the perspective of a storage device, the data being read and put on a CD, which is then duplicated a million times, is exactly the same as the data being read, decoded, passed through a DAC and fed into someone's ears. It seems that these constraints are either unenforceable or just plain silly.

Re:Copied?

[Pieroxy]

It seems that these constraints are either unenforceable or just plain silly.
Or both? But shhhhhhhhhhhh, don't tell anyone. Screwing up regular users (let's get real, they will be the ones screwed with ill-devised devices) seems to be their credo these days, so I say let them do it and we shall see if it proves to be a good business model.

History will tell.

Re:Copied?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. If you're playing music from these chips, it will be allowed, but if you're pirating to your friends computer you must set the evil bit (there will be checkbox) and this flash memory reduces counter by one. It's fool proof.

Re:Copied?

[KDR_11k]

They'll demand that any application capable of reading the data will correctly inform the system. Of course, we all know that all applications are absolutely 100% secure and could NEVER be compromised to act in a way not intended by the developer!

Re:Copied?

[gronofer]

From their press release "TrustedFlash cards also function as regular cards in non-secure host devices." and the card has "an on-board processor, a high-performance cryptographic engine and tamper-resistant technology". Presumably it requires the cooperation of "trusted" devices to restrict access to the unencrypted data, and untrusted devices won't have the decryption keys.

Re:Copied?

[gronofer]

But they also say "It provides independence from the host, offering consumers true freedom to enjoy the content they own on their cards in numerous host players." which presumably doesn't just involve players developed specifically for the memory card. Maybe it's only software in the device?

Re:Copied?

[Technician]

Presumably it requires the cooperation of "trusted" devices to restrict access to the unencrypted data, and untrusted devices won't have the decryption keys.


You buy your music already on a card. You collect cards much like collecting DVD's or CD's. The music file on the card is mated to the card's DRM key. Copying the encrypted file off the card and putting it on another card means the file won't play on the other card. Making a copy of a card to give to a friend to play on his phone simply won't work. You have to give him your original card which he then can play in his phone. While he has your card, you don't have the music. (unless it is permitted by the software such as the 5 copies given in the article example)

You have to have the file on the card and the original card it came on to play the file. The file placed on another card is designed to not work.

Wow, a miniture version of physical CD's.

Re:Copied?

[rempelos]

What does `copied' mean? From the perspective of a storage device, the data being read and put on a CD, which is then duplicated a million times, is exactly the same as the data being read, decoded, passed through a DAC and fed into someone's ears. It seems that these constraints are either unenforceable or just plain silly.

Think that everything from the storage device through to the speakers or headphones must support hardware DRM. If any device in the sequence isn't DRM compatible it will not play. So, you can only copy it by air (place a recorder near the speaker).

Re:Copied?

[gronofer]

This is not very clear to me. So the card has a processor and DRM key and can decrypt the data itself, but what makes it possible for the "trusted" device to request the unecrypted data, so that it can actually play the music or whatever, while preventing the "untrusted" device, if it has a compatible card reader and copies the protocols, from doing the same thing?

Re:Copied?

[Anonymous Coward]

But you can't make a speaker cone enforce DRM, so you could detach the wires from that and get the analog input from them. Still analog, but doesn't suffer any degradation from going through acoustic sound production and recording.

Re:Copied?

[Technician]

or whatever, while preventing the "untrusted" device, if it has a compatible card reader and copies the protocols, from doing the same thing?

The untrusted device will not be able to convince the processor on the card it is a trusted device. The processor on the card then will not use the key to decrypt the file on the card for playback. The key is not stored in an area that can be read outside the card. The trusted device must handshake with the card. The data portion of the card contains the content in encrypted form. Copying off an encrypted file gets you an encrypted file. Writing the file to another card puts the file on a card with the wrong key to play the file. The key is not in read/write space.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Pieroxy]

So, the only difference between this new flash and ordinary flash is that this one can do LESS ?
Yes, and that's the key to its success! Isn't it nice?

Copy protection, HA!

[InitHello]

To quote Edward E. 'Doc' Smith:

Anything physical science can research and synthesize, physical science can analyze and duplicate

What they apparently don't get is that anything can be cracked, given enough time to research the protection scheme.

Re:Copy protection, HA!

[AndroidCat]

And even the Lens was copied eventually. Not that the few Boskonian black lensmen would ever fool anyone into thinking they were with the Galactic Patrol. If the next cards glow red and kill unauthorized users at a touch, then I'd start to worry.

Re:Copy protection, HA!

[rajeshgoli]

RSA is having a competition for people who beleive what you say here.

Break that!

Re:Copy protection, HA!

[KillShill]

RSA doesn't live in a void.

in order to hack a product using RSA, you'd go for the weakest link. the encryption is the strongest link so you'd try to avoid attacking it directly.

but since that contest is unrelated to DRM and since DRM !HAS! to be viewable, it isn't nearly the same thing.

DRM-crippling is the worst form of encryption therefore.

xbox/ps2/gc were protected by high end encryption also... and by protected i mean they were denied to the lawful owner of those machines. that's what DRM and Insidious Computing are ALL about. preventing the real owner of products from having full access to them. that's stealing in the truest sense.

i say, "fuck em". one i won't buy their products, 2 i'll help others in gaining back their property from the clutches of those legal thieves.

Oh, the freedom!

[Hanok]

I feel so much more free now that I no longer can copy my own files. Thank you!

Re:Oh, the freedom!

[KDR_11k]

Don't be silly, your own files don't have any DRM restrictions on them and you'd be pretty stupid to add any that you can't override.

Re:Oh, the freedom!

[Anonymous Coward]

Files on my storage device == my files. Are you saying I don't own my hardware?

Sounds like communism to me son.

Re:Oh, the freedom!

[Taevin]

Not really communism, more like corporate dictatorship. They're starting with saying you don't own the media files, but in time they'll move to say they own all your files to be sure that you aren't pirating or in some way ruining their archaic business model.

Other than that, I agree. I cannot understand how it can be legal for them to say what I can or cannot do with my hardware (and since all this "IP" is just bits stored on my hard drive, that's basically what they are doing). If I decide that it's more efficient to have those bits stored on one of the drives in one of my servers, what's wrong with that? Now they're saying I can only copy a specific pattern of bits a limited number of times? What happens when one of my important documents matches that bit pattern?

Re:Oh, the freedom!

[KDR_11k]

Communism would be that everybody gets to download the files for a standardized cost.

Well, if you plan on loading DRMed files on your harddrive, that's your problem. But most likely, since you probably won't enable any of these "trusted environments" on your PC the download services will simply not allow you to download anything.

But does it run...

[lowrydr310]

I'm not a linux (or Mac) nerd by any means, but I wonder if this fancy protection scheme will only work for Windows files.

When SanDisk starts manufacturing DRM-protected thumb drives and PNY or other manufacturers continue to sell unprotected thumb drives, I think the market will do the talking.

Re:But does it run...

[Technician]

When SanDisk starts manufacturing DRM-protected thumb drives and PNY or other manufacturers continue to sell unprotected thumb drives, I think the market will do the talking.



It won't be marketed as a recordable drive to end consumers. Read the article. It will be marketed as a pre-recorded CD/DVD that will fit in your phone, computer, MP3 player...

It is marketed as an itsy bitsy CD that can't be copied. If you use your computer and copy the encrypted file off the chip and record it as is onto another chip, the copy won't work because it requires the key and processor of the original chip. You won't be able to extract the key from one chip and copy it to another chip. You won't buy a album on a chip and make a copy for your friend. That is how this DRM works.

Re:But does it run...

[niiler]

My first thought was to reformat the drive. My first SanDisk 128MB drive didn't work so well with Linux until I did this (despite all claims to the contrary). Now it works like a charm. It has even been through the wash and still works on both Windows and Linux computers.

Re:But does it run...

[KillShill]

the last part of your post makes sense but the first doesn't.

the actual drive itself is doing the encrypting... it doesn't need a "host" to tell it yes or no. if the file being copied is tagged a certain way, and is copied to the device, that's that.

the problem then becomes that it requires an "Approved" OS to get the files back from them, in an "Approved" manner. meaning that they are designed for Insidious Computing Machines only. anything that does not meet those reqs will not be able to retrieve those files in the normal manner.

SD and sony magicgate flash memory products also have similar restrictions. don't buy those products either unless of course you want to finance their putting Digital Handcuffs on you.

"i just won't use that part of the product"... then it's a good thing that you didn't pay for that part of the product and only bought the part that allows free and uncrippled access to data...

Golly I love Copyright Management!

[jettoki]

What will they think of next? DRM fruit? Apples you can only take five bites out of!

Re:Golly I love Copyright Management!

[Anonymous Coward]

Five bites isn't very much, but 640k of them should be enough for anyone.

Re:Golly I love Copyright Management!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Monsanto has won a legal battle against a Canadian farmer it accused of growing a form of genetically modified rapeseed it had patented without paying for it.

Canada's Supreme Court on Friday ruled that Percy Schmeiser, who was found to be growing the GM rapeseed in 1998, had breached Monsanto's patent.

He had denied planting Monsanto seeds, saying they took root on his land through natural cross-pollination. "

Oh snap! I think there's also a suit regarding some crops that won't pollinate and need to be rebought each year.

Re:Golly I love Copyright Management!

[Linker3000]

No, YOU can take as many bites as YOU want, but will only be able to describe the experience (good or not so good) to 5 other people.

Re:Golly I love Copyright Management!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, DRM seeds.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/NewTerminatorCrops.php

Seeds that grow only once, forcing the farmer to buy new seeds every season. How greedy do you need to be to think of that?

Re:Golly I love Copyright Management!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a common practice amongst the seedy and depraved "dope peddlers" to microwave the evil weed, MARIJUANA (or "tea" as addicts call it) before sale, in order to render sterile any seeds that it may inadvertently contain. This serves two purposes. The drug is known to be weaker in a supply which contains viable seeds: "dope" which is absolutely seedless produces the best "high" (if this were smoked alone, and not mixed with tobacco, a single puff might be enough to kill the average man, or at least reduce him to a permanent state of insanity), with the effect becoming proportionately less virulent the better developed the seeds. But also, such a practice keeps the addict (or "dope fiend") from growing their own supply (or "stash") of the plant which produces this most poisonous drug, and thus forces them to return to the dealer for another "hit".

Be vigilant! Protect our youth! Help end the menace that is this wicked weed from the Devil's garden!

Re:Golly I love Copyright Management!

[Anonymous Coward]

but I only wanted a nybble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nybble/

Re:Golly I love Copyright Management!

[StrongAxe]

They ALREADY have DRM grain. Monsanto has grain that is genetically altered to resist Roundup pesticides. This is copyrighted so that you must buy new seed grain every year - you are not permitted to reuse any grain from previous years as seed grain (i.e. make copies). This grain has been introduced into Iraq, and the new constitution enshrines American-style copyright restrictions, so Iraqi farmers who have been keeping thier own seed grain for many thousands of years will no longer be permitted to do so. There have been cases in the US and Canada where farmers have had their fields infected by stray Monsanto seeds, and were then (successfully) sued by Monsanto for copyright violation.

There are also concerted international efforts working to create grains that produce edible (but non-viable) seeds, which will truly be enforcing non-copyability via hardware means. Sigh.

Re:Golly I love Copyright Management!

[Anonymous Coward]

They already have a kind of drm fruit. Companies like monsanto that produce seeds for farmers, engineer them so that the plants dont produce seeds for a second generation or farmers are induced to sign agreements that stipulate they cannot use seed from their crops and have to purchase new seeds next year.

Just what I needed

[Arsh79]

Yeah! More expensive, less freedom... I can't wait to buy one!

This is the general direction of the industry

[ReformedExCon]

The industry seems bound and determined to put copy protection on everything, whether it be ringtones or MP3s. Flash memory makers are doing their best to help them, and OS makers are doing their best to take advantage of those features.

We speak of Freedom as if Linux could provide it, but the question is gradually becoming whether it is better to be the canary in a gilded cage or the crow eating garbage in the snow. Having an isolated "free" system that can't interact with other "non-free" systems is not really how we expected things to turn out, I bet.

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[ettlz]

A crow eating garbage in the snow, definitely. Unlike his canary friend, he does not have to rely on an owner. Nor does he have to sing for his dinner.

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[Blind_Io_42]

This raises an interesting point. If most new techology will eventually have some form of "Big Brother" looking at everything you do we techophiles might want to hold on to our "obsolete" components, computers, CD and DVD drives and so forth. There may come a time when all this hardware will be more valuable than a new system - kind of like pre-ban assault rifles during the assault weapons ban years. They were selling for much more than they are today because you could only buy ones currently in circulation.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this new direction of integrated copy protection. What really needs to happen is for the RIAA to loose a high profile case that puts a dent in the current campaign. I think alot of these new measures are out of fear that the RIAA or other organizations will go after hardware manufacturers next. Companies may be doing this as a preemptive move to avoid litigation later.

Save your old hardware, someday it may just save your data.

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[putko]

The way easy, low-cost hackability and freedom is disappearing fast.

It the old days, processors with DRM, on board boot flash and encryption didn't exist, because it would have cost too much, the theory wasn't known and it wasn't so obvious that schmucks would pay so much for fucking ringtones.

In the last decade, it has become clear that:

* hardware encryption is key
* schmucks (by the millions) will pay for ringtones
* downloading music is the future
* encryption works -- you can build a good cryptosystem for DRM
* hacker-types are the small, small minority of computer users (as opposed to 1977 -- when they helped make Apple the DRM-king that it is today)

So why would a businessman cut off 99% of the market, just to please a bunch of fat, bearded GNU/Linux fans, or a bunch of old, crabby BSD guys? Billions want their ringtones and pop tunes -- what do they know from freedom anyway? What is freedom, when you live in China/Africa/India and are bascially poor as dirty anyway?

More and more the question is just -- "why not" load it with DRM. The hacker types can either A) use other hardware or B) have a reduced-content experience.

Which makes me think hackers have had it pretty "easy" all along.

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[RAMMS EIN]

``Having an isolated "free" system that can't interact with other "non-free" systems is not really how we expected things to turn out, I bet.''

Which is why we need to protest the use of proprietary formats and protocols. Just having the right to reverse-engineer them for interoperability reasons (as we have in the EU, AFAIK, IANAL) is not enough. We need the information required for interoperability to be freely available, or there will be no level playing field, no healthy competition, but rather vendor lock-in and monopolies. I think it's reasonable to legally require this information to be free.

I also wrote an essay on the subject (still undergoing minor changes, feedback welcome).

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[incabulos]

The existance or popularity of non-free systems has no real bearing on free systems. Computers that attack their owners, destroy their files, spy on their owners online activity while reporting said activity to mafia-like groups like the RIAA, etc will be the ecosystem that dies out. Why will people pay for OSes, hardware, etc that are not merely defective, but actively hostile to their activities when Free systems exist that can be obtained for little or zero cost? Witness the explosive growth of the Firefox browser as an example that this can and will happen.

Oh, this discussion is not complete without a link to The Right to Read - overly paranoid or eerily prophetic, the predicted orwellian information society is approaching.

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[LordSnooty]

Absolutely, I've been thinking this for a long time. In fact, there's your hot business idea - start scooping up all the good but unwanted hardware from today, and get it in storage. In a decade's time, assuming it still works, a lot of people could be very keen to get their hands on this free (as in freedom) hardware.

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

The main issue is how DRM lockdown is impossible if not "perfectly" implemented. A perfect implementation would lock down creation, not just copying. Creation allows for copying. Preventing copying cannot be done because creating and copying are the same thing, but with one minor difference. The source of creation is inspiration, the source of copying is another work.

In addition, by restricting creation by "unsafe" entities, the industry would be guaranteed a PERFECT music monopoly which would kill off absolutely all unsigned music on the net.

(And it would mean that for a musician to let other people to listen to his music, he would HAVE to get signed)

This isn't about the "hackers" vs the industry. This is about "culture" vs the industry.

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[Midnight Thunder]

More and more the question is just -- "why not" load it with DRM. The hacker types can either A) use other hardware or B) have a reduced-content experience.

Or turn to online sources for liberated versions. Even your average users are more inclined to download from illegal sources online, if they can't use their music in the way they see fit. Build a better mouse trap and they'll build a better mouse.

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[coralsaw]

• Software rules hardware
• It takes one person to break the system
• Geeks work faster than corporate types

Thus, I believe, DRM (hardware or software) will fail.

To be honest, I couldn't care less about the millions of schmucks that download their ringtones, as long as the geek community is around. There's no evidence that it's withering, quite the opposite I should think.

Mass and Energy sit on opposite sides, I'd like to remind you.

/coralsaw

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Since creation of content includes things like people taking videos of their children I somehow doubt that creation will be so tightly locked down that people will have to be 'signed' to send their parents a video of their new grandchild. The likely worst-case scenario I can think of is that you will have to pay some nominal fee to wrap the video in DRM in some way such that the grandparents can decode the video. Even then I can see this causing complaints.

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[ZachPruckowski]

I had similar thoughts, but what happens when they tie the stuff to security updates? Or using the internet?

If you play Blizzard games on "Battle.net", then you have to download the patches to play. Personally, I think this is good for Battle.net, but what if the same logic is applied to the internet in general? In order to use an ISP or access certain websites, you auto-trigger the download of the software with the DRM stuff. While they can't eliminate the use of old computers, they can make it hard to access popular sites. What if you had to have the software in order to use your cable ISP?

just a thought

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[spitzak]

The parents will be required to connect the original camera to the internet in order for the grandparents to see the video. And only one playback at a time. Unfortunatly, the masses will probably accept this.

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[Reziac]

And if the owner dies, the canary starves to death.

I think I'll take my chances out in the snow.

Re:This is the general direction of the industry

[westlake]

Or turn to online sources for liberated versions. Even your average users are more inclined to download from illegal sources online, if they can't use their music in the way they see fit.

You have a choice:

1 Spend hours trolling the P2P nets for a single, quality, mp3 rip.

or

2 Click once on a Rhapsody playlist. Click again to export the music to your portable devices. It's a rental service, of course, but if the catalog is deep enough, who cares?

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[mwvdlee]

Presumably, future card-readers such as MP3 players and PDA's can only play certain types of content from such protected flash cards. So essentially this is not a standard flash card at all, just a completely new type of card with the same form factor as far as the consumer is concerned.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[steve_l]

Yes, although I thought SD memory had this kind of "feature" too, as did some of the enhanced memory sticks from sony.

But remember we consumers have been crying out for a way to move our music around freely and securely. Oh, wait a minute, I have that, its called scp.

OK, DRM for music is present in the device..

[Unski]

..and I have the right to vote elsewhere with my wallet, but what about the ability to manage the rights of *my* data, quite aside from any music that may or may not be my property..?

To be able to restrict the usage of some of my files, yet distribute them to people, well admittedly I don't personally have this need, but surely someone could?

TFA goes on about liberating music and such, couldn't find any mention of user-side rights management..

Re:OK, DRM for music is present in the device..

[naich]

TFA goes on about liberating music and such, couldn't find any mention of user-side rights management.

You have no rights. The whole DRM thing just shows the utter contempt the content industry has for the consumer. We are here to be milked for every penny we've got and, sadly, most people seem quite happy with that.

Re:OK, DRM for music is present in the device..

[Anonymous Coward]

To be able to restrict the usage of some of my files, yet distribute them to people, well admittedly I don't personally have this need, but surely someone could?

How about the data you give to a company regarding your name, address, and phone number? Wouldn't it be nice to ensure they couldn't copy it, and it would expire after a while?

Yeah, I'm sure the big conglomerates will get right on satisfying that market...

"confined??"

[akhomerun]

i don't understand how i'm confined. makes no sense at all.

if i use my PC or iPod, that's not really confining. plus, any idiot can get their music off of their ipod, it's as simple as viewing hidden folders. not to mention the availibility of free (legal) software that has that ability.

so how does this new flash memory free me up when i can just get current flash memory and copy my stuff as much as I want? i'm not really being confined at all. even with DRM, i can still play it on my ipod, my PC, and burn CDs to play on bazillions of devices. i can't even think of any other uses i would really want for my DRMed music.

hmm...maybe sandisk is making excuses here...maybe they know that consumers don't actually want copy protection built in to their flash memory.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Peeteriz]

How about a new and improved version of this that tells the device 'I am a mighty protected flash card', but in reality allows unrestricted copying - then it has all the best features from both worlds, and would really be superior technology.

Backfire

[thisnamewastaken]

Eventually all of this copy protection/schemes will backfire very hard on the industry. I think that once the MPAA, RIAA, Faceless Corp., etc. can embrace technology (to their advantage) and such, we wouldn't see these feeble attempts at controlling our rights.

Okayyy...

[everithe]

Then I won't buy from Sandisk.

Re:Okayyy...

[Technician]

Then I won't buy from Sandisk.

You won't be buying from Sandisk. You will be buying from a customer of Sandisk. That customer will be selling songs on cards. The card will fit your phone, MP3 player, computer... But playing the file on the card without the original card (copy) won't work because the protected keys and processor are missing for the encrypted file.

NO Mention of iPod

[LiquidCoooled]

The copy protection is between Sandisk->sandisk compatible transfers (from what I can tell)

Otherwise I assume the data will be an encrypted blob and be unusable.

No more worries!

[Blind_Io_42]

Wow, this is great! I was so tired of my old Belkin USB drive and other memory that let me put any data I wanted. Now I don't have to worry about the possibility of moving copyrighted data, and I never have to think far enough down the road to possibly to *gasp* six backups.

Thanks SanDisk

/sarcasm

DRM definition files

[Neo-Rio-101]

This whole "Copy protection management" thing is getting ridiculous. What I want to know is how they can check for DRMed content without some kind of massive database.

Speaking of which, what on earth is next? Will we be having DRM scanners next to virus scanners and spamassassin? Will W32.Boyband_somecrap be part of a new wave of definition file? Will we need to upgrade our servers to deal with the extra load on DRM scanning?

Oh who cares anyway? As long as it all makes money for somebody.... ..... oh wait :)

Re:DRM definition files

[xtracto]

What I want to know is how they can check for DRMed content without some kind of massive database.
Speaking of which, what on earth is next?

Mmmm... seems to be a work for Google

Re:DRM definition files

[maxwell demon]

I'm just waiting for the first DRMed virus which will be well protected against reverse engeneering, but of course allows copying freely, as long as the destination system is "trusted" as well.

Re:DRM definition files

[TheMeuge]

You mean Windows Vista?

Damn...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd been lead to believe that Flash (woah-oh) was the Saviour of the Universe.

Re:Damn...

[ettlz]

No, that was Flash (ah-aah).

Re:Damn...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that was Alan Partridge (ahh-hah)...

Re:Damn...

[Moses_Gunn]

Let us not forget his other title: King of the Impossible. Greatest...soundtrack....evar.

Yep, easy solution

[thelonestranger]

If it concerns you then just dont buy it. Lack of market support will soon see this die out.

Re:Yep, easy solution

[malchus842]

Lack of market support will lead to attempts to pass legislation to force adoption. The RIAA (and others) will spare no expense of buying Senators and Representatives in their quest to control all content, always, everywhere. Just doing nothing, unfortunately, won't work.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Anonymous Coward]

I note that the Dickhead in your username is there for a reason.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[gowen]

Well, I imagine they'll be an licensed encryption key required. That'll be cracked in about ten minutes (probably by DVD Jon), but using hardware implementing his crack in the US will magically turn you into a felon.

Hooray for the DMCA.

What?

[Bogtha]

But with the SanDisk flash memory card, a consumer can move the digital content to another device. If the music company insists the data can only be copied five times, the memory card itself enforces that policy in the new device, be it a cell phone or music player."

Er, so if I copy a file from the memory card onto, say, an iPod, the memory card alters the way the iPod works? Huh? This makes no sense whatsoever.

One of these days, I wish there'd be an article about copy protection that protected the ability to copy.

Re:What?

[Technician]

Er, so if I copy a file from the memory card onto, say, an iPod, the memory card alters the way the iPod works? Huh? This makes no sense whatsoever.


Not quite. Your future I-pod will have a card slot just like your phone and computer. The card you bought from the music store will play in the slot. no card, no tunes. There is no copy to the I-pod. No card in the slot, no tunes. The card contains an encrypted file, a processor, and a hidden secure key. The file will be no key, no decrypt and play. The file copied to a second card, wrong key, no play. The DRM stops a copy of a copy of a copy. The encrypted file copies fine. The key and on card hash processor to make the file work is much harder to copy.

Copy a file to your I-pod and have it play is not an option. Plugging in the card and playing the card is an option.

Re:What?

[jtgd]

The point is to make it impossible to copy, but still possible to move the media. Thus when you move (copy) it from your San Disk device to your iPod, you can no longer play it in your San Disk device. Move it around all you want, you still only have one copy. Give it to your friend and you no longer have it.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

The card you bought from the music store will play in the slot. no card, no tunes. There is no copy to the I-pod. No card in the slot, no tunes...Copy a file to your I-pod and have it play is not an option.

This would destroy the point of having an iPod (the ability to easily carry around hundreds of the albums you have bought).

You know what's not an option? The industry getting any of my money for an abomination such as you describe.

Copy protected memory?

[Aryawhat]

I really need help understanding what this means. TFA is heavy on CEO/analyst statements about how wonderful and important this is, but light on how it works. The closest it comes to it is :

To create the device, SanDisk had to build a lot of computing power into what would otherwise be a dumb memory chip.

What on earth does that mean? Every memory chip has a powerful CPU?

As I see it, a memory chip basically does 2 kinds of operations :

• Read, when the appropriate address and read signal is appplied on its pins, and the chip puts out the data.
• Write, when an address, data, and a write signal are applied.

So, when the chip sees a read cycle, how does it know whether the program which is asking for the read is reading the data to play the music or to copy it?

Re:Copy protected memory?

[ReformedExCon]

Memory chips are not "just memory chips" anymore. They do in fact contain little CPUs which run little programs which can determine whether commands (not simply signals) are read or write or some other application. This is the basis of multi-function cards like SDIO which can be both normal storage memory as well as an actual device.

Re:Copy protected memory?

[TheRaven64]

Interesting, if true. If the device really does include some kind of cryptographic co-processor, then I might be interested in it. It would be nice if everything I wrote to a flash drive could only be accessed by supplying the correct decryption key - it would mean that stealing the device would be no use to anyone. It's a shame that something society-benefiting wasn't the first thought of the people who developed this.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It's the CPRM SD application.

Makes Sense

[putko]

Cheap and secure DRM -- looks like San Disk has done it.

There needs to be integration with the processor (e.g. processor starts up, decrypts and runs a boot program using a special key) -- but that's already been done. Secure storage makes those two things work better. Note: if your processor is old school and non-DRM, you just snoop the bus and get the secrets.

Looks like a real home run: this is the "right place" (from an economic standpoint) to put the DRM. It will be cheap and secure.

However, it then becomes a juicy target for attack: if they are selling these chips by the millions, and they are protecting IP worth billions, then it is time to break out the acid and electron microscopes, and figure out how to deactivate it. And then it is busted.

Re:Makes Sense

[cyclomedia]

the trick will be to wait until the planet is DRM saturated and then release the nifty programs and plug in chips that cracks it all. all of which will have been in top secret development in the mean time so that the exploits that are found arent published (and therefore fixed) until it's much too late.

Re:Makes Sense

[Sefert]

Hold on - you are saying something completely different from everyone else here. I mean, I can see why it's useful for the record companies, but why would anyone buy it? Or are you implying that it's for a different market than I am aware? Also, once it's on the hard drive, in bits and bytes form, and then gets cracked, how does this technology help?

Really, with multimedia getting so prevalent, will anyone buy any product that enforces DRM if they have their choice? I mean, i'll never buy another Sony handheld device after I was forced to use their crappy software to drop music in their crappy format onto my handheld player. And look where they are now - gone from market leader to being 'sony who?' compared to IPods.

Re:Makes Sense

[KillShill]

you missed the point.

you cannot snoop on a trusted system and on a non-"trusted" system the device wouldn't work at all, thus there's no reason to snoop as there would be nothing to see.

the reason a "trusted" system is "trusted" is because everything you can do is regulated by someone other than the real owner of the machine. and if your "trust" capable system is running in "legacy" mode, then any data/code that requires a "trusted" stream will fail to run/execute.

unless you have an extremely sophisticated hardware analysis lab somewhere on a volcanic island your chances of cracking the "protection" from the hardware level is nearly nil. you'll have to use another attack vector, usually the weakest links in the component chain of your system. and i use the word "your" loosely... modern companies are holding your property hostage err their property... err it's confusing....

every time a company holds your property hostage, god kills a lobbyist/shill.

Re:Makes Sense

[tricorn]

For a practical look at the level of hardware protection that will be in such devices, take a look at the HDCP specifications, or more specifically the license agreement (PDF), look in Exhibit D (page 45 of the linked PDF) for the "Robustness Rules".

It won't be anywhere near impossible, but it will take significant effort to crack. If they do it right, a successful crack will only allow them to compromise the specific device they're working on. While that will certainly be enough to then start siphoning out protected content, it won't be able to be done on a wide-scale basis, and that's all they need to do to keep most people from re-distributing tunes they've bought.

What it doesn't solve is that content will still be found on the Internet, and if they make it too difficult to use what you buy in the way you want to use it, people will start turning to such unauthorized copies as the only way to do it - and a significant number of them, who never would have done it otherwise, will then decide "why bother paying" for a crippled version.

Same as Sony MagicGate

[NigelJohnstone]

It's sounds the same as Sony's MagicGate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagicGate

The copy protected memory stick from Sony they did as part of the failed SDMI system.

In other COMPLETELY UNRELATED news, Sony plans 10000 job cuts after poor product sales:
http://us.ft.com/ftsuperpage/superpage.php?news_id =fto092220051313320477&referrer_id=yahoo&utm_sourc e=Yahoo&utm_medium=OrganicSearch&utm_campaign=URLC rawl

Re:Same as Sony MagicGate

[Anonymous Coward]

Nailed the hammer on the head.

The tighter the DRM squeeze the more and more converts will slip between their greedly little fingers. I used to strongly believe in IP as "property" so I speak with some experience when I say that conversion is brutal and polarized. It really politicized my entire feelings towards corporations whereas before I just looked at them as people trying to make a living.

        I for one am hoping they rush to fulfill their every DRM fantasy. We can begin paying fees to use the English language too since we didn't "invent" that either. Maybe someone will start purifying air and charge us a breathing fee?

    I'm not exactly sure when "freedom" to share ideas available in public forums turned so drastically into "pay" to share but the consequences of moving so deeply into this direction are horrific. Privacy (closed source) and freedom (What is freedom defined as if not to communicate ideas?) are both seriously threatened. The big CEO's don't seem to see this because they can "pay" to have a voice and have squads of lawyers to hide behind.

    Even innovation is affected as Linux can be theoretically sued out of existence for alleged patent infringement, but (according to the Austrialian government), cannot even be trademarked to protect it's own existence.

    What's worse is most of this software "innovation" is simply stolen ideas from people that either lacked marketing channels or power in the courts. Did Apple invent the MP3 player? The GUI? The mouse? Did MS invent the spreadsheet. word processor-- or even Dos? (an adoptation of CP/M that Paterson did)

      The general public will eventually wake up to power grab that some corporations seem to be engaged in. I just hope we don't go to crazy to the left when that happens. Wasn't too long ago that corporations were a great thing. What happened? Too much of good thing?

Enter Famous Bruce Schneier quote:

[Qbertino]

Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet.
The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take
this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.
        - Bruce Schneier

Re:Enter Famous Bruce Schneier quote:

[RAMMS EIN]

It seems that is exactly what Sandisk is doing. Their product makes the bits harder to copy. You bet they're going to make money off of it. However, this product won't be the final frontier, so later they can release one that does an even better job, and make more money again.

Re:Enter Famous Bruce Schneier quote:

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet.

They have to freeze the bits :)

But of course the cp command

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

will tell the card that the current data file is just binary junk and doesn't have a copy limit.

Or is the "copy protection" just a byte pattern in the file, so that the card will refuse to copy certain files?

But will it work with...

[afaiktoit]

the new Limewire??

I just over heard an important conversation...

[el_womble]

RIAA: So it makes us, I mean out artists, richer?
Microsoft: Sure.. why not?
RIAA: Let me get this straight. You line all these ones and zeros up and it makes music.
Microsoft: Yep, on a little disk we like to call a MicroDisk TM.
RIAA: And this can be done for 100th of the price of pressing a vinyl record.
Microsoft: Sure can. And its easy too. The whole point of digital technology is that you can make zillions of 1s and 0s line up for no money whats so ever. Anyone can do it!
RIAA: Anyone?
Microsoft: Err.... I mean anyone who can remember these magic words (which are a big secret) whilst waving this MicroWand TM can do it.
RIAA: Ah! Theres the catch!... How much is the wand?

Re:I just over heard an important conversation...

[LosManos]

hejdig.

I guess Smart People already have figured out that music cannot be copy protected. The moment it enters the D/A converter it is digital and contains all the information needed. Just pick it up there and all copy protection in the world cannot stop it.

Unless - every player and D/A convert in the world contains anticopy circuits. Not every is needed btw, just many enough to make it tedious to copy and hard to come by copies. If it, for instance, is illegal to produce CD players without anticopy hardware it wont matter if countries don't sign the copyright agreements because there won't be any (large series) CD player producers.

So what the Smart People do is to hinder the copying as far as they can. And then they retire and don't care. So if they can fool the grey masses for 10 to 20 more years they have succeeded in their mission.

/OF

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[alexhs]

They've learned from "less is more"...

Bingo!

[Anonymous Coward]

The card will copy data via a command/response system. The filesystem will be managed internally, so there is no way for the client computer to directly access any of the files. It will have to request a list of content, then send a Read command with the appropriate file ID and the card will then pass the data along or reject the command according to the rules embedded in the file.

This is not your father's flash memory.

Re:Bingo!

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Yeah, but if you tell the card that you're copying just a binary blob, then how is the card to decide that it wants to twiddle a bit, or to NOT even copy it?

And a copy command in a good OS would tell the card just that.

Re:Bingo!

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point.

You can't "just copy a binary blob". You request the file from the card. If the file has protections built into it, the card will alter the file as it is processed to you. It may even pass the encrypted bytestream to you for client-side decryption, so you'd have to have the appropriate key to decrypt the data properly (I'm guessing the mechanism here, but it will likely be something similar to this).

The point is that if you don't have the correct permissions set up in the first place, you can't even make the file request. It isn't like you program the desired address, turn on the Rx pin and just sit back and wait for the data to come rolling in. You will make a card request, it will return a response, and determinant on your credentials and the file's protections, you will either receive the file data (with updated file protections) or you will receive an error response (insufficient privileges).

Regardless of the OS, you won't be able to just copy a binary. The card itself prevents that.

Re:Bingo!

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

I think we're talking about different things. When you transfer a file *onto* the card, you tell it that it's just a blob without restrictions.

If you want to transfer a DRMed file from the card, of course that won't work without authentication etc. But if the file on the card isn't restricted (because your OS said that the file put onto the card wasn't restricted), then there should be no problem. At least it cannot prevent copying of data, unless the data was put onto the medium (any DRMed medium, that is) by a DRM-respecting source.

When I copy a chunk of data onto the card, the card CANNOT know what kind of file it is. When I tell it that it's an image of a database and that the card may not change that file in any way, then how could it? (it could, but then it would be a totally useless storage medium, corrupting my data!)

Re:Bingo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to get back to you so late, anonymous posting doesn't exactly let you keep good track of your posts, ya know.

Yes for your own data, the card wouldn't have any idea. But for the type of data that the article is talking about, those restrictions will be built into the file, or will be programmed to the card when the file is copied onto it.

I really can't comment more on this because of legal reasons (working on something very similar), but for the most part, the card itself will be mostly normal storage, and you will enable certain areas of it for this special protected functionality with special commands. For the end user, the card will continue to work as a normal memory card with filesystem, but for special applications (something requiring protection) the card could be accessed securely through the card's own software interface and that data would be written to a special area of memory.

Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth and nothing but the truth

New Freedom.

[P2OG]

That's the New Freedom(c). Get used to it. Flash drives that can't copy, cameras everywhere (London), not owning your own house (eminent domain), being held without charges indefinetely (patriot act). It's all part of the New Freedom (c). See everything is turned upside down. It's easy.

Re:New Freedom.

[I confirm I'm not a]

...cameras everywhere (London)...

Spelling pedant: dude, you mis-spelled "the entire United Kingdom except maybe a bit of Shetland, oh wait, they've got that covered too." Happy to help!

As an aside, UK residents have the right, under the Data Protection Act, to request any video footage of themselves taken by a private body (cost £10). Anyone tried this?

Re:New Freedom.

[dptalia]

Hate to go off topic but... We've never owned our own homes even before eminant domain. Ever hear of property taxes? You have to pay the government every year for the "right" to own that land....

Re:New Freedom.

[Saberwind]

The concept of property tax is just as bad as eminent domain (perhaps worse), inasmuch as it prevents people from truly owning their own homes and land. Instead, "owners" are actually renting from the government.

Re:New Freedom.

[Tony]

Geez, everybody gets this all wrong. We pay the government taxes because they are *protecting* our land for us, something we could not do ourselves. We are paying the *protection* money.

I wish people would get this straight.

Re:New Freedom.

[ettlz]

I could, but it's not the kind of video I'd pay £10 for...

Re:New Freedom.

[Sefert]

I think you're right on most counts, except the one that this topic is about. That's where we get to vote with our cash. (Unlike property tax, cameras, patriot act, etc, where we get no say). I have a sony handheld, and after I discovered that I had to use THEIR unbelievably crappy software to put music onto it, and it would convert it to their shitty format that couldn't be transferred (all done to protect their music division), I can guarantee you I won't be suckered again. There's good reason Sony went from market leader in handheld music players to being so far back in the race that you can't even see em any more. There will be plenty of people who want into the SanDisk market who don't have an agenda (except making cash of course)and who will happily promote 'copy anything you want!' right on their packaging.

Re:New Freedom.

[Reziac]

"Taxes: extortion by the biggest thugs that happen to live next to you." -- R.A. Heinlein

Re:New Freedom.

[KillShill]

cameras everywhere and the one that was looking out over the subway, happened to "fail" at just the right time.

what's the reason they gave when spending your tax dollars/pounds to put up all those cameras?

yes i thought so.

MI5/6. gotta love their sweet little hearts. making the world a better place.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[KDR_11k]

It can most likely contain unrestricted data, too. The point of the DRM implementation is that the RIAA/MPAA will not offer distribution services (at least not cheap ones) for any device that allows you to copy to unrestricted media so the devices wouldn't take your standard SD card or whathaveyou, anyway. This thing gives manufacturers the option of offering a removable media slot on their devices.

That's the whole point of junk like TCPA, some companies don't want their stuff digitally distributed outside of a "trusted" system so you'll have to offer a "trusted" system to them if you want their data. Of course you can still ignore TCPA, ignore the data offered by these restricted services and do what you always did.

Noone forces you to use TCPA and noone forces them to offer their content to non-TCPA systems. It's kinda like a contract, you have to sign it for some stuff but if you don't want the stuff you don't need to sign the contract.

Arrgghhh - the name!!

[surprise_audit]

They spent 3 or 4 years working on this thing, and the best name they could come up with for the chip is gruvi. Someone needs slapping really, really hard.

Re:Arrgghhh - the name!!

[Linker3000]

Yep, a lousi, crappi name - almost as bad as enything with 'Eezi' in it.

Re:Arrgghhh - the name!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but see? It's entirely clever! For, gruvi spelled backwards is IVURG!!!!

Re:Arrgghhh - the name!!

[jasonditz]

They should've called it Secure Digital or something. Maybe have it fit in the same drives as MMC

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Ythan]

So, the only difference between this new flash and ordinary flash is that this one can do LESS ?

No, it can do more, the new functionality just isn't something most consumers will find beneficial. In my opinion, products like this are inevitable. Media companies will eventually have to tap the enormous potential of electronic distribution. Does anybody believe they're going to do this without some system in place to control access to their premium content? I just hope when the time comes it will run on an open DRM platform instead of some studio-created proprietary one. Not holding my breath though...

DMCA

[RAMMS EIN]

You, sir, have just violated the DMCA by circumventing a technological measure for copy protection.

Re:DMCA

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

quick, everyone paypal me money so I can take refugee in sweden with the fiber internet access and hot swedish chicks everywhere. infact, screw the refugee.

rock star

[the bluebrain]

I'm sure this has been said better, somewhere else, but I just haven't read it yet: one of the great memes of the age is getting rich quickly. Hence the subject, "rock star". Maybe there are people out there who create the zen way, "create to create", but I guess that a large majority has more dollar signs than stars in their eyes when they fire up that amp / movie camera / what-have-you. If you make it into the "class A" celebrities, you've got it made: you've got the fuck-you cash, and the freedom that goes along with it.
 
Question: why are all the "new" rock stars still signed up with the big lables, in this day and age? They're signing away 90+% of the proceeds, and essentially all creative control. Answer: because 10-% of the large pie is still bigger than 90% of the small pie, and the big lables still define the term "rock star".
 
However: if fewer people figured that they can invest a large effort at one time, then re-sell the issue of that effort ten million times at $1 a pop, then this SanDisk invention would be moot. But it's more people, rather then fewer, so the invention is anything but moot.
 
/hello. my name is chris, and I'm a wage slave.

Re:rock star

[mabinogi]

> I'm sure this has been said better, somewhere else, but I just haven't read it yet: one of the great memes of the age is getting rich quickly. Hence the subject, "rock star". Maybe there are people out there who create the zen way, "create to create", but I guess that a large majority has more dollar signs than stars in their eyes when they fire up that amp / movie camera / what-have-you.

Those people don't last more than a month.
The vast majority of musicians and authors out there are doing it because that's what they want to be doing. Sure, they might dream of making it big - but that's not why they're doing it.
If you want to get rich quick, put an extra dollar a week in the bank, or invest in real-estate, it'll give you better results than trying to become a star of any sort.

Copy protection?

[VincenzoRomano]

I was expecting something smarter than plain copy limitation!
Real copy protection deals with grants and access permissions!

-1, Offtopic+Flamebait. Mods where are you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never saw a better candidate for a downmod.

You all have the wrong mindset... :-p

[Jugalator]

These news reminded me of the oxymoron of the day:

"We think it's a great consumer win, and it's a great industry win, to be able to ensure that with good copy protection, you can have so much functionality for the user", Jordi Rivas, Microsoft Director of Technology. (source)

Would be sig-worthy if it wasn't over 120 bytes. :-p

Re:You all have the wrong mindset... :-p

[mrbobjoe]

You could cut it to:

"with good copy protection, you can have so much functionality for the user"

Retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole concept is retarded (read: dreamt up by a Businessman with a eye for a quick buck and no knowledge of the underlying technologies), I hope the techies who worked on the project (read: expensive contractors who are clever enough to keep their mouths shut until they get paid) enjoy their thirty pieces of silver.

I hope that this and the other ill thoughtout pieces of tech die a quick and expensive death!

Just don't buy it

[Progman3K]

The market will show manufacturers what users want.
Bye-bye new copy-protected flash memory.

Next month...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Today, much of a consumer's digital content is held hostage on a particular kind of device, such flash memory card, because that is the only way to prevent massive piracy. But with the Next Big Thing (TM), a consumer can move the digital content to another device. If the music company insists the data can only be copied five times, the Next Big Thing (TM) itself enforces that policy in the new device, be it a cell phone or music player."

WTF?

[ceeam]

Anyone care to explain how this is any different to "protection" scheme used (or rather, un-used) in SD/Secure_Digital cards?

George Orwell, Animal Farm

[Anonymous Coward]

No animal shall sleep on a bed (with sheets).

Fahrenheit 451

[obender]

You can't have full copy protection until you get rid of the analog version. I wonder how long it will it be before the *AAs start burning books?

Re:Fahrenheit 451

[KillShill]

your eyes and ears are analog...

gives new meaning to "butt plug"...

Laws of DRM

[acid_zebra]

Some thoughts I am still mulling over:

a) Any device encumbered by DRM will fail if there are alternatives available on the market. If there are no alternatives the product might enjoy a limited success until the product becomes so successful that alternatives/clones/ripoffs become inevitable.

b) All forms of drm can be corrupted/broken/negated, and most will be broken within a matter of days or even hours.

c) Most new technology will be used in ways the inventors never imagined. Trying to restrict this behavior with DRM will surely kill your product.

This 'Gruvi' (what a horrible horrible name) probably falls under cat. A, and will disappear soon.

Re:Laws of DRM

[ediron2]

Nice post. I utterly agree with A. Maybe I'd cross out 'limited' and change inevitable to 'viable'. And b and c are also quite close to my opinion. That said,

b: bypassing is the key weakness here, since hard crypto can create a mechanism that isn't easily broken. XBox discs and satellite TV are two examples that come to mind. A crypto arms race goes until the crypto becomes unwieldy enough to deter all but the most-dedicated hacker. A side thought: the UMD drives for Sony PSP are an interesting/common wrinkle: they add physical (media) robustness: if nobody else has burners or media, engineering costs can run high enough to be a part of the DRM scheme. Wide success is needed before someone makes a competitive/compatible drive or media.

c: trying to restrict behavior isn't always death to a product. A well-designed product with enough flexibility to be interesting to joe consumer can thrive under DRM. DivX failed, but macrovision in both VHS and DVD formats has kept movie-copying lower than it might have been.

Re:Laws of DRM

[acid_zebra]

Like I said, I'm still trying to formulate them, so thanks for the opinions :)

X-box, satellite TV, gamecube discs, PSP; aren't all these hacked already? I see plenty of x-box/gamecube ISO's (just waiting for the emulator scene to catch up) and joe round the corner will sell me a hacked satellite receiver for next to nothing. I'm inexperienced in the PSP arena but wasn't that broken too?

As for your point C, you are right, I need to work on that one, but in what way did divX fail? (did I miss something?)
And it's really hard to get accurate number on macrovision efficiency... which is a shame.

Re:Laws of DRM

[ediron2]

Satellite TV and XBox-live both have a means for updating the security, shifting keys, or whatever. This thwarts hacking, makes it a treadmill where each new countermeasure improves on the one before. Also tends to bore or wear out anyone but the most dedicated. You can buy a hacked system capable of accessing DRM content without paying, but what you get may not stay hacked for very long, or may be feature-limited (like mods to xboxes... xbox-live will notice them so my understanding is you get to choose: live, or hacked).

PSP: you can hack the system, you can play movies off memory sticks. You can't burn your own UMD. Shame, since I *love* the small disc form factor and would shift to it instead of dvd's, would use one as a music and podcast player and personal video toy, emulator, etc.

Divx: think we're misunderstanding each other. Divx the elder was a Circuit City plus ??? scheme where you bought a (cheaper) movie disc that played a few times and died unless renewed. Divx the younger is a movie compression protocol that is alive and healthy, named in part as a parody of the first one.

Standard disclaimers: IANAE, may be wrong on minor details above, not going to waste time carefully fact-checking.

Re:Laws of DRM

[dcam]

The assumption on slashdot is that DRM will fail. This seems to undergird a lot of the posts when any new DRMed thing is released. What if it doesn't?

Taking point a. What if the US govt. (prompted by lobbying, soft money blah blah) passes laws that outlaw the alternatives? Sure devices can be produced in countries outside the US, but they would have to be smuggled in. This would effectively remove such devices from the mainstream.

Taking point b. Yes, but see item a. The problem is that we are increasingly seeing people move to hardware. You can hack the hardware, but it is harder, and is *much* harder to distribute than software hacks. Moving to hardware (like this device), will slow spread of non-DRMed stuff.

Taking point c. It won't necessarily kill your product. It will limit your product. That may mean it makes less money, but it won't kill it.

There is an underlying assumption here that I am not sure are correct. The assumption is that there will be a reasonable amount of hardware that will not be DRMed. The other answer is often to use $favourite_P2P_network to access the files if you aren't able to circumvent the DRM. If there are no P2P networks, you can't get your files.

Re:Laws of DRM

[acid_zebra]

Hmm, I know that /. is US-centric but saying the 'mainstream' is the US only is pushing it. There's a lot of people outside of the US, and some of us natives even have a computer! ;)

But seriously, about the hardware thing; I am more or less working under the assumption that there will always be clonepusher countries like china, taiwan etc.

And in the same vein I assume that now that the P2P pandora's box has been opened it will not ever be closed. From the start P2P has been mutating/evolving and I am sure the next generation P2P will include encryption/anonymising options. For what I can tell of Azureus development this is already happening. Who knows where it will lead? But P2P is not likely to disappear.

Re:Laws of DRM

[dcam]

Hmm, I know that /. is US-centric but saying the 'mainstream' is the US only is pushing it. There's a lot of people outside of the US, and some of us natives even have a computer! ;)

I am outside the US. This still applies to other countries.

I am challenging your assumptions about both of those. First of all, while there amy always be another country that will produce clones, If they are made illegal they will have to be smuggled in. This tends to lower market share.

Also, exmining P2P and blocking. The example that is often used is that there is no way to censor the internet. Well China has proved it is possible to censor the internet. Suppose you do the following:
- Make P2P software illegal.
- Mandate that ISPs block certain ports.
- Mandate that ISPs perform traffic analysis to filter out P2P traffic (this one might be a bit difficult to quantify)

This isn't going to eliminate P2P. But it would remove it from the main stream.

Re:Laws of DRM

[acid_zebra]

Hmmm making clones of consumer apps is a tricky move with farreaching consequences (AFAIK every one of the larger industrially-developed countries is copying stuff off of each other like crazy and churning out copied products left and right) and it gets even trickier with your P2P argument; then your enter the arena of international law... make P2P illegal in ALL countries? Block technology that has many valid and perfectly legal applications?
portblocking by ISPs at a global level?

I don't see any one or consortium of countries pulling it off... though I might be tempted to snark that the US might try if given the chance ;)

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Rich0]

Depends on how it is implemented. If they use one key for all the cards there, it is fairly certain that somebody will crack it and publish it.

On the other hand, if they have one private key kept only by the vendor, the public key for this on each device, a serial number on each device, and a unique private key on each device with a certificate, then it won't be cracked. Sure, DVDJon can crack his flash device, and then he could read/write the data off it. However, your device uses a different key. If he cracks it using software-only, then this could be distributed. More likely, though, he will crack it using logic analyzers and electron microscopes, and you can't exactly just post do-it-yourself instructions for that online. He could mass-produce clones of his card, but the vendor could revoke his key once they found out about it.

I'm not sure how the protection is implemented, but if they really wanted to stop hardware cracking this is exactly how they would do it. Of course, just using one key is easier, and so who knows what they really did...

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[fbjon]

And the encryption stuff won't be available for linux.

It's actually a good thing

[Kawahee]

I think the "liberation" thing shouldn't have been said so sarcastically. What we need is *more* of these devices. If I can legally purchase music and no longer have it bound to my iPod and PC, but have it play on my other MP3 players or phone or whatever else I want, then DRM is more feasible.

Et tu.....

[mangus_angus]

SanDisk?

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[__aaaehb3101]

Not only do less with this card; but what do you want to bet they charge 300% more for the "priveledge" of doing less.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[indytx]

So, the only difference between this new flash and ordinary flash is that this one can do LESS ?

Yes, and that's the key to its success! Isn't it nice?

If you think about it, the new flash memory has "supervisor"y functions!

Wait for it . . . .

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Nightlight3]

So, the only difference between this new flash and ordinary flash is that this one can do LESS ?

Similarly, the only difference between a rock and a Michaelangelo statue is that the statue has less rock. Or a difference between a woman at 18 and the same woman at 40 may be that at 18 her tummy had less fat. Or between you and an equivalent quantity of the same types of atoms that make your body is that your own atoms can be reshaped and rearranged much less while being you than the separate pile of atoms while remaining a pile of atoms. Less, icluding less free is often valuable and good.

RTFA Please

[thebdj]

Seriously guys did any of you read the full article or instantly just post here whining. I usually don't take the time to read them because I spend most my time responding to others people. However, in this case it helps to actually read, for if you did you would see that the talk from SD is that they would sell this devices in stores pre-loaded with the content you want to purchase or with content that would be 'unlocked' later.

I do not think, this device is meant for direct marketing to the public in anything resembling the way current flash drives are currently marketed. You would not be buying these and loading the DRM content onto them, the DRM content comes on them when you purchase them. The idea of this is that it will probably allow a set number of devices to read the media. When you insert it into the one device too many you get the cannot read message.

This is how it liberates the 'standard' user from music being stuck on their iPod. Most consumers (and trust me the slashdot community IS NOT most consumers) have no idea how to remove DRM from their iTunes purchases or know how to get the songs on their iPod back off. They have not had the great fortune of hearing about things like ephpod. So now they will have their DRM content on a flash disk that can go into their cell phone, PDA, PC, mp3 player and so on.
So put the foil hats away, and stop contemplating about the demise of SD because this IS NOT targeted for straight sale as a consumer media and WILL NOT replace all the drives and memories that they presently sale.

Re:RTFA Please

[nickyj]

Sounds to me like they are going to get rid of CDs since most "hackers" just rip a copied/borrowed/stolen album.

FTA:
"With the TrustedFlash chips, music studios can release albums or whole collections of musical groups on a single memory card that consumers could buy at stores and insert into their phones, MP3 players or laptops. They can listen to the music tracks they paid for, or pay additional money to get a security code that unlocks additional songs. The unlocked song might be already stored on the memory card, or the consumer could download it from a Web site or phone service onto the memory card."

Re:RTFA Please

[mbbac]

"However, in this case it helps to actually read, for if you did you would see that the talk from SD is that they would sell this devices in stores pre-loaded with the content you want to purchase or with content that would be 'unlocked' later."

Sweet! I really was hoping someone would provide us with a solution that would allow me to have to go to the store to buy a new memory card so that I can listen to new music on my Ipod. This is great! I love retro stuff, and this is just like 1980 and the Walkman. Flash cards are the new cassette tapes.

Re:RTFA Please

[iainl]

Sorry, I think I must have missed the part where the record industry can churn out preloaded 128Mb customised flash cards for around the same price as manufacturing a CD. What's the point of this thing otherwise?

Re:RTFA Please

[WindBourne]

When CDs firts came out, they were more expensive that LPs. That did not stop CDs from replacing LPs and 45s. These cards will come out in very high volume and the price will be about the same as a CD.

Re:RTFA Please

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but CDs are of arguably higher quality and are in stereo. These are lower quality then CD, the only advantage they have is being able to plug them into a music player, but if they are more expensive, why not buy the CD and rip a copy for your music player? That is what I did when I had a minidisc player as prerecorded minidiscs were more expensive than a CD + blank minidisc.

Re:RTFA Please

[WindBourne]

Actually, CDs are of much lower quality than LPs. The problem with LPs, is that it required expensive equipment to get the fidility out. The advantage of CDs was cheap equipment and cheap to make.

and hundreds of thousands of end-users...

[Animaether]

and hundreds of thousands of end-users are bound and determined to believe that everything should be 'free as in beer' - and act upon this by taking things, and often sharing things, as if they were indeed 'free as in beer'. Whether it be ringtones, MP3s, movies or software.

And I say they can have them be free as in beer.. as soon as my apartment is free as in beer, my utilities are free as in beer, my food is free as in beer and my water is free as in beer.

Until such a time, most of my products are 'free as in choice'. You have the free choice of either ponying up the money if you think they're worth it, or go with a competitors'. Or, heck, write your own. The illicit copies path is not a valid 'option' in my opinion.

Considering there are those hundreds of thousands (millions.. whatever) who feel otherwise, though, I can certainly understand certain industries' desire to implement copy protection formats. I may not agree with most of them, but I can understand.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Anonymous Coward]

Go away you TCPA fanboy.

Word of Mouth

[reclusivemonkey]

As soon as Joe Public realises what this actually means, they'll dump it in a "flash" and not buy from SanDisk again. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice...

Restricted systems are the motivation for a revolt

[tim_abell]

I want the RIAA etc. to get their own way and to mess up the whole content distribution system soooo badly that Jo Public goes out of her way to find the answers that /. and friends all already know about, but can't seem to persuade others to use.

Example: podcasts (thank you Adam Curry) - radio sucks, so people get podcasts instead. The more radio sucks, the more people are motivated to find alternatives.

My 2 pence.

Chocoration news...

[Misch]

Doublieplusgood! I've heard that the chocoration has been increased to 20 grams per day! ...hey, wasn't it 50 grams before?

Proposed changes to the industry

[shudde]

As a fan of the music industry but not music itself, I wait with great anticipation for the day when we are finally rid of the antiquated notion of personal rights.

I propose a mandatory tithe of 10% of each individual's monthly earnings, that would be put straight into the coffers of music industry to stamp out music piracy once and for all.

Obviously to accomplish this worthy goal we'd have to make some sacrifices, the ability to purchase music online would be one of the first to go. As many slashdotters have pointed out in the past, DRM and similar technologies are always beaten and thus are unenforceable in the long term.

Instead of listening to music in the privacy of your home, I suggest RIAA-run facilities allowing a selected number of people to listen to carefully selected 'Top of the Pops' singles in a structured environment. Obviously a strip-search with full body cavity check, careful screening, drug-testing and metal detectors would be necessary to prevent unauthorized reproduction of the music. Needless to say, RIAA goons would be on hand with truncheons and electroshock equipment to assure proper relaxation and enjoyment.

This utopia can only come about with the help of right-minded individuals such as yourselves. I ask slashdotters to delete their mp3/ogg collections, turn themselves into the RIAA for re-neducation and fight for this glorious future.

Re:Proposed changes to the industry

[crovira]

"As a fan of the music industry but not music itself, I wait with great anticipation for the day when we are finally rid of the antiquated notion of personal rights."

And how 'bout if we enforce it with ice-picks through the ears?

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[FlopEJoe]

So, the only difference between this new flash and ordinary flash is that this one can do LESS?

And the next step will be the "copy X times byte" and all flash drives will be required to honor it. And a bill will put up to congress over and over again to enforce it.

When a copy is not a copy. Dumb future.

[Erris]

What does `copied' mean? From the perspective of a storage device, the data being read and put on a CD, which is then duplicated a million times, is exactly the same as the data being read, decoded, passed through a DAC and fed into someone's ears. It seems that these constraints are either unenforceable or just plain silly.

Sure, it's silly, but that does not mean it won't work. If everything in the chain is non free, you won't be able to do what you think you will be able to do. There will be a difference between the CD and the DAC.

If you have been keeping up with "Trusted" nonsense, this memory falls right in line. It has a fritz chip in it and it's going to act more like an IPod than memory. It will ONLY copy to a "trusted" device. There will never be a legal linux reader and it won't work with 99% of existing devices. It will have the power to only send low quality audio to any device with an audio out, so that "recording" via a sound card will yield an "FM radio" quality copy. Your music will no longer be a hostage on a few devices, it will be held hostage in the memory itself.

Right now, you can avoid DRM insanity but that's not going to last. When the world's three music publishers only release in DRM form, you will buy it or not have current popular music. The hope of music executives is to drive the world back to music quality and distribution that existed before digital technology. You will only hear good quality music live. Everything else will be FM and no one but them will have the ability to sell caned music. You don't think windoze will play that nasty non-RIAA music do you? Tomorrow's computers will be like todays music stores, RIAA only or no RIAA at all.

101 Ways to Promote Piracy

[mmeister]

101 Ways to Promote Piracy
written by your favorite friends at RIAA and the MPAA.

Reason #88 - Copy Protected Memory

Not only will we be able to control the crappy music we're selling you, but we'll be able to limit your own works as well. We at RIAA do not like to encourage the creation of actual music and must take steps to protect our artists from such actions. This technology allows us to treat our customers like they are two-bit thugs and limit the creation of new works through our special filter software.

Note: Copy Protected Memory requires Windows XP. Will not work with Mac OS X, Linux, or pretty much anything else.

----

As if the fact that most content sucks these days isn't enough. These guys (with strong encouragement from RIAA and MPAA) are making it so difficult to "enjoy" the crappy content that it just isn't worth the effort anymore. Result -- I am more likely to just listen to my collection of 1200 CDs.

Sandisk, I should have guessed!

[Zemplar]

I just deposited my 1Gb Sandisk Cruzer Mini in the mail yesterday for replacement since I can no longer write to, or even format, the device.

Apparently that's not a bug or flaw, it's a feature!

Re:Sandisk, I should have guessed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, read a book. SanDisk has a less than 1% faliure rate on thier products. That's better than any flash memory maker out there. For all we know, you killed it yourself.

Re:Sandisk, I should have guessed!

[Zemplar]

For your information, dude, the device is not even 4 weeks old and is in like new condition. Granted this is the first SanDisk product I've had fail and certainly not the only product I've purchased from them. However, the timing is ironic....

Let's wait

[DinX]

Now let us waitfor the first cracks and bypasses to get released for this new system.
Probably 5 minutes after the new chips get released on the market

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Technician]

Yes, although I thought SD memory had this kind of "feature" too, as did some of the enhanced memory sticks from sony.

That's the big reason I kept to regular CF cards whenever possible. Many salesmen brag how much faster a SD card is over a CF card. I've seen the talking points. I also bought a 40X CF card for my camera. (Minolta DiMAGE) Comparing new SD cards to the original CF speed isn't doing CF justice. A buffer in the camera makes up for the old slow card I have.

"enjoy your music"???

[TERdON]

you haven't been listening to the crap the recording companies have been releasing lately, have you???

Who writes this crap

[Baavgai]

Today, much of a consumer's digital content is held hostage on a particular kind of device, such as an iPod or a PC...

This is, without doubt, one of the stupidest things I've ever read. It's storage folks; hostage is something completely different. This is what you get for letting sales try to figure out technology.

...because that is the only way to prevent massive piracy.

This is one of the other stupidest things I've ever read. If I never even opened the CDs from the wrapper, that would really prevent piracy.

Regarding new design...

[turtleAJ]

Dear SanDisk Corporation,

Go fuck your selves.

Sincerly,

-turtleAJ + all the people with at least 0.07brain

Re:When a copy is not a copy. Dumb future.

[ZorinLynx]

Bzzt. Wrong.

You see, it only takes ONE person to crack the protection and distribute the file in an unprotected format, and then the genie is out of the bottle.

If Windows won't play unprotected music, I'll run Linux. Oh waaaaaaait, I already run Linux; I haven't owned a Windows box since 2003.

Nice try!

-Z

Interesting, where can I find the rest of it?

[TERdON]

Uhm, I'd like to see the full list, but Google doesn't seem to be able to find it. Is there an actual list of reasons from which you copied the text (and in that case, where can I find the full list?) or is it just a part of a non-existent one?

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[dnoyeb]

The duration the security scheme survives will be inversely proportional to the amount of entities that desire to see it undone.

No encryption scheme will ever work for the entertainment industry. Thats why they bought laws.

New Invention - Copy Protected Brain

[layer3switch]

Damn, I can't seem to recite it onto paper...

Ah! New Invention, Copy Protected Paper!

God Damn it! I can't seem to write it with pen...

Bam! New Invention, Copy Protected Pen!

God Fscking Damn it! I can't seem to use my hands...

Yeah! New Invention, Copy Protected Hands!

Fuck! Who patented "masterbation"!!!

Hate to Tell Ya...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but since you're posting here, using a computer with internet access, probably from a Western country...

You're already the canary in the cage. Your options at this point are whether to bob your head when asked if you're a pretty boy, or to pass up that cracker.

I love it when people on Slashdot talk about avoiding MS products, building their own machines, running Linux, etc., and they think they're pioneers or rebels.

Re:Hate to Tell Ya...

[FxChiP]

I love it when people on Slashdot talk about avoiding MS products, building their own machines, running Linux, etc., and they think they're pioneers or rebels.

In a sense, they are. Not many people do these things. I will whenever I can, of course, though.

It's not that it's a new thing to do, it's that it's uncommon.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[FxChiP]

Did you just say less freedom is often valuable and good?

What country were you born in? I don't care what the Bush Administration says, thinking like that is un-American.

So...

[Errandboy of Doom]

...it's not so much like crappy alternatives to flash cards, but more like crappy alternatives to miniDiscs.

These guys are marketing geniuses.

Re:So...

[m50d]

Sony is succeeding with UMD protected movies, so sandisk may well get away with it.

It's better than that even!

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA: "To create the device, SanDisk had to build a lot of computing power into what would otherwise be a dumb memory chip."

So not only does it do less, it costs more! How could anybody pass up a deal like that?

Please sir, poke me in the eye with a sharp stick, I'll pay anything!

Magicgate?

[Richthofen80]

I'm pretty sure Sony's Magicgate Memory Stick beat this Sandisk product to market by about a few years.

Submarine DRM

[Doc Ruby]

The best FlashROM format, "SD" is " Secure Digital": secure as in DRM. SD is exactly the same as MMC, but with DRM included. SD is priced the same as MMC, though it surely costs more to produce. And we haven't heard much at all about its "security" features, though every shipped part includes them. I expect that's a strategy to get us all to accept a format with DRM, then switch it on "for our protection".

Re:Submarine DRM

[KillShill]

funny how you're just about the only other person who understands what the S in SD means.

and i reiterate, education is the key.

Re:Submarine DRM

[Doc Ruby]

The more people who know about SD/DRM, the more likely someone will crack it. That's where the hacker community runs circles around a huge installed HW base spec.

You're not dealing with the subject at hand

[agraupe]

To all those who say this is a win for DRM, it isn't really. This doesn't take away your freedoms. I, like the next linux zealot, have a somewhat obsessive preference for freedom. I don't support DRM, nor would I like to see it used on a wider basis. What people seem to fail to understand is that this technology gives you more freedom, not less. All of us freedom-loving folks need to get used to the fact that media companies see the world in a vastly different way, and that we will probably never agree with one another. This merely allows you greater versatility in how you use your DRM-crippled music; the evil is still squarely in the hands of those who "protect" their works with DRM.

Money Pit

[WolfZombie]

Have these corporations involved in this "protection" ever seen "The Money Pit"? They lose money from people copying their music (even though it becomes widely distributed and popular, and we pay a gazillion dollars for a concert), then spend billions coming up with new ways to keep people from copying their music... which is then broken and copied again. This will be an infinite loop of copying and then hacking. Not every single person who comes out with a cd can make a million dollars. Period.

If they keep all this digital protection up, I guess I'll just have to go back to making mix tapes :)

Re:Money Pit

[DigitalSorceress]

Not every single person who comes out with a cd can make a million dollars. Period.

Actually, many very successful artists don't make a million dollars either. The music industry is one of the greediest, most shady bunch of sociopaths ever to walk the earth. Faust got a way better deal than most bands get from record contracts. I mean, "Hey, we wanna sign you, here's a $20,000 advance and a 7 album contract... now, you subtract the FEES that we charge for doing the recording and engineering, and once your CD makes another $500,000, you'll actually be out of debt to us, and can start collecting royalties."

The root of the problem is this: The whole music industry is geared around scarcity of resources. It costs hundreds of thousands to millions to build a first-class recording/post-production studio. It USED TO BE that this was the only way to get a retail-quality final product... but with multi-track digital hard disk recorders and computers, retail-quality recording and editing and post-production can be done for a fraction of the cost.

Distribution of a CD to radio stations (via the payola system), and to retail outlets is very costly and requires a great deal of connections and resources. That USED TO BE the only way to get your product to the mass-market of consumers. With the internet, you can reach fans, market physical CDs as well as offer instant-downloads of MP3s and the like... again, this can be done for a fraction of the cost of the old brick-and-mortar ways.

My point is that bands are getting to the point where they don't NEED the big music publishers. Their (the publishers) greed is making it worth the artist's time and investment to seek other means of production and marketing. Current technology empowers the little guys. The music industry realizes this... that their entire livelihood revolves around this scarcity of production, distribution, and promotion resources, but instead of trying to adapt and figure out how to provide a product that meets the consumers needs and make a reasonable profit, they want to litigate and lobby to artificially prop up their doomed business model.

Yes, the ease at which you can pirate a CD or a single song for free means that the record label and the artist "loses" potential sales, but if consumers are given an option for paying a reasonable amount for a quality DRM-free product, there is plenty of potential revenue for the ARTISTS... This can and does work. The record industry is pretty much a middle-man with decreasing value in our technological society. How many really great musicians have we never heard of because they didn't have "the look" or they didn't sound like the crap-du-jour?

</rant>

Rivas mis spoke...

[pentalive]

He meant to say ' ... good copy protection, you can have only so much functionality for the user"

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and that's the key to its success! Isn't it nice?

Actually, I doubt they will discontinue non-DRM flash production. If so, they will walk away from their embedded system market. We buy 256 MB flash now like popcorn for Linux kernel-driven embedded systems. DRM would be ineffective if an open source driver were provided that could facilitiate reverse-engineering (regardless of DMCA provisions for/against).

More likely, we'd shift purchasing completely to microdrives and dump the flash market altogether. I'm aware of quite a few network appliance manufacturers who represent a significant amount of flash purchases that would be in a similar situation. Granted, we're not the consumer market, but losing 15% to 20% of your volume does wonders for eliminating coverage of fixed costs in a manufacturing operation. Certainly it'd be enough to drive the foolish DRM manufacturer into materially higher costs than their competitors.

Then again, SanDisk has pretty much taken the embedded market for granted and might need to discover what happens when volume disappears. Unless they can get significantly higher prices and margins for their DRM-crippled product that consumers usually resist, this plan is DOA.

Excuse me?

[lynx_user_abroad]

Rejoice that your data can be "liberated" from the confines of your PC or iPod!

What do you mean your data?

Why can't you hear the message being sent? The content cartel is admitting the culture they created was a mistake and doing the best job they can to clear the way for the culture we are to create ourselves.

Create your own culture, and don't buy into the rules they setup for their own stuff. Then all the DRM and content control technology will just fall into history's dustbin with the old fogies who created it.

Is gruvi for flash drives the as DIVX is for DVDs?

[Secrity]

From TFA: "With the TrustedFlash chips, music studios can release albums or whole collections of musical groups on a single memory card that consumers could buy at stores and insert into their phones, MP3 players or laptops. They can listen to the music tracks they paid for, or pay additional money to get a security code that unlocks additional songs...

It sounds like gruvi is a secure content distribution add-on doo-dad for flash memory which in some ways is similar to DIVX (Digital Video Express). I really hope that the public embraces gruvi as warmly as it did DIVX.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[NormalVisual]

And the only difference between Marie Antoinette at 36 years and 37 years was that the later version was about 8-9 pounds lighter. Less didn't exactly work out to be "valuable and good" for her, did it?

Stupid analogy.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[acariquara]

It will if you enable the multiverse repository.

For purchasing music

[Anonymous Coward]

It would appear from the article that this 'gruvi' flash card is intended to be pre-loaded with music or other content, not something that one would buy to load with music (or other content) oneself. In other words, it is more like a music CD than a CompactFlash or SD card. As long as the consumer is made aware of the limitations of the product, I don't see a problem here. Of course, breaking this DRM for music is trivial -- just connect the headphone jack from your MP3 player to the audio in jack on your computer and record. Other content will require actual work, but will not be impossible.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[thewiz]

Didn't you know that "Less is More"? Except for the price, of course. It'll cost just $24.95 + tax + your freedom = Profit!

They must be kidding

[famazza]

What kind of copy protection can be done in a flash memory?

Let's try to figure a real life condition:

You buy at local store a flash-card with your favorite band, containing 18 songs. You can listen to it as many times you want. But not copy? How does the flash card understand that the data is being read to be copied or to be listened?

Let's suppose that you need a special reader, so the flash-card need less intelligence. Still how does the special reader know that the data is being copied?

This is nonsense. Vapourware!

To paraphrase:

[oneandoneis2]

Technology: The cause of, and the solution to, all the world's problems

Getting rid of CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sounds to me like they are going to get rid of CDs since most "hackers" just rip a copied/borrowed/stolen album."

Well, I think you are right that the music industry would love to get rid of CDs, but I don't think they will be able to. They can try to push something like this as a new distribution medium, but I don't think it has a chance. I think they want to split their distribution into two different media:

1. crippled CDs that play in regular CD players but can't be ripped onto digital players.
2. crippled memory cards that interact with "approved" crippled players that prevent copying.

So if you want an album for both your iPod and your car, you need to buy it twice, at least until you have the means to plug your iPod into your car stereo.

Replacing CDs in the marketplace is going to be a tough sell for the RIAA - even though they want to cram crippled CDs down our throats, portable music players have become so popular that they will make an extremely large number of people extremely pissed, well beyond the slashdot/geek types.

p.s. - I have over 800 albums ripped and stored on my computer, with a grand total of three being unauthorized copies from friends. Everything else I ripped from CDs I purchased. I bought four CDs yesterday. I have no problems paying for music, either online or in stores, but I want to be able to listen wherever I want without restrictions, and also to make backups.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[MyDixieWrecked]

...as did some of the enhanced memory sticks from sony.

you're thinking of MagicGate(TM) on the MemoryStickPro.

I'm not sure what, if any, product supports it, but it's there. the logo is proudly displayed on my PSP's MemoryStick.

I really don't see the point of this tech, since these memorycards are DESIGNED to be used to transfer data. If it's used to restrict data, I assume it's only to appease the various IP hordes (RI/MPAA).

I just wonder if they will crack open my skull

[sparc_mepronet]

With all this tinkering with devices to prohibit making extra copies, I just wonder: I can hear music in perfect fidelity in my mind (after hearing a song a couple of times). I am probably making illegal copies this way. Will the recording artists or government come to splice open my skull and remove the feature from my brain? I have never worn a tinfoil hat, but any instructions on how to make one would be welcome.

Re:Is gruvi for flash drives the as DIVX is for DV

[iainl]

The idea is that they can sell these DRM'd flash discs preloaded with music secured on them. With luck, and a proliferation of devices that support the format, they might take off as successfully as pre-recorded Minidiscs did.

Oh, wait...

Re:When a copy is not a copy. Dumb future.

[JerkBoB]

When the world's three music publishers only release in DRM form, you will buy it or not have current popular music.

O nos! What will I do without new Tittney or Chrislutna Ogle-ara? I think popular music sucks, and I don't think I'm alone. The decline in music sales isn't due to rampant piracy, it's because most new music sucks.

If musicians don't care enough to make sure their product isn't compromised by the distributor, then I don't care to support them. I'll keep listening to the music I already own, and only buy unencumbered music.

</curmudgeon>

What this ALL is for?

[Anonymous Coward]

And who EVER need this?
Me? Other users? Consumers of data/information? - we need only that information.
Producers of data/information? - they need to produce information and be rewarded for that

The only one who need this are data/information OWNERS!
And who are they? Are they the same who produce it? Ofcourse not!
And who EVER need them???
Do I need the existence of information owners?
Do the man, who produce the information content need to share his rights with special
rights owning company? Is it whe only way he can work?
The only thing he need is some reward for his work. And that is the only thing he gets.
And why does somebody else receives from that a lion part of revenue???
And why does this all called author's rights protection?

Re:What this ALL is for?

[null etc.]

That's a beautiful poem. You should publish it elsewhere, too.

Except for One Thing

[Greyfox]

Once everyone's adopted the format, Microsoft will start charging everyone for the privilige of playing their content on their operating system. Which would, of course, guarantee them a piece of all the action that goes on in their system whether they had a hand in it or not. I don't think the RIAA has quite realized that they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts yet. When Microsoft sends them the first bill, we may end up with a rather surprising ally... That may be your point, but we haven't reached the last 2 sentences yet.

One more hole added to the above

[typical]

Oh, yes. And remember that for media presented to the user in an analog format (currently the majority of content that people want to protect), there's always the analog hole. After all that work, money, time, effort, crypto PhDs, vendors, promises, advertising and getting the public to buy into it, pissing off your hardware guys, outcompeting cheaper competitors, forging agreements with slippery people who are out to stab you in the back, and dealing with dubious governments and consumer advocacy groups, the content can be simply and easily ripped by anyone who can solder two wires to a speaker cone. This comes at only a very slight reduction in quality (remember that people are already settling for the quality of *MP3s*, where 90% of the data is already being thrown out at the factory!), which may even be recoverable with clever software tools that understand the lossy compression algorithm that the publisher is using.

So, don't be afraid of the DRM-using industry. Pity them. They have things a hell of a lot worse than you do.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[fbjon]

But you won't get any details from the manufacturers unless you enable the NDA suppository.

Divx lives again; kudos for clueless marketing!

[quibbler]

I wouldn't worry too much, Divx lives again: (quoting article)

"music studios can release albums or whole collections of musical groups on a single memory card that consumers could buy at stores [ . . . ] They can listen to the music tracks they paid for, or pay additional money to get a security code that unlocks additional songs."

...like this will ever happen; yet again, the content-industries simply don't understand their customers. So, if all of the anti-iPod guys can kindly simmer down seeing how much this could be made, Apple did it right (first), playing fair to the involved parties. This is SanDisk and the content-industries being nasty, greedy, and wanting still more. The best part is this is just a marketing gank on the part of SanDisk:

"The toughest thing was to convince the studios that this was more secure than anything else out there"

Lame.

How about not even getting the product

[Easy2RememberNick]

Maybe someday in the future when we are more advanced we will pay for products and not even receive them at all! Now that would be far more advanced then our current backward freedom to copy something five times.

  Really, it seems at times the entertainment industry doesn't want to sell anything. It almost seems as if they would be happy to sue you rather than risk selling you their product.

  I can see some sort of ID required in the future before you buy a product and then link your ID to the product you bought. It's getting more Orwellian by the hour!

  Start hoarding storage devices now.

Apostrophe Police....

[oliverthered]

There was an Apostrophe between consumer and s, according to the dictionary that makes the digital content a possesion of the consumer, what right has anyone to prevent the consumer from copying something which they own.

Re:Apostrophe Police....

[Simonetta]

Although I suspect that you're comment was meant to be ironic and the selection of the apostrophe was random, it really is true that there are Apostrophe police.

  In Quebec, a quasi-independent section of eastern Canada, French language fundamentalists have prohibited the use of the apostrophe in any public sign or published document. According to them, the character doesn't exist in French language and therefore has no legal reason to exist in any publicly displayed word. Any use of the apostrophe is subjected to a fine of several hundred dollars.

    No, seriously. I'm constantly amazed that these people once actually believed that they could run themselves as an independent country. And I like Quebec. Great people, great country. I guess that every culture has one or two points where stupidity just went recursive with no way out of the loop. As an American, I would know about this.

    Anyway, I wonder if you could call an apostrophe a comma and get away with it. If they ask why it's placed so high in regards to the other letters, just look them straight in the eyes and say it's a Mexican Jumping Comma.

Re:Apostrophe Police....

[WaterBreath]

I'm going to assume these laws apply only to the possessive apostrophe? Because it's fairly standard and proper French to take a noun beginning with a vowel and merge it with its article in a contraction.

A random sampling:

• L'eglise = the church
• L'elephant = the elephant
• L'oiel = the eye
• L'accent = the accent
• L'oreille = the ear
• L'autobus = the bus
• L'informatique = the computer

Disclosure: My qualifications are 6 years of French classes, ending 5 years ago.

Re:Apostrophe Police....

[Mattcelt]

D'accord.

Re:Apostrophe Police....

[E8086]

l'grill...what the hell is that?
TrustedFlash...what the hell is that?

Sounds a lot like "Trusted Computing" If you're tired of having your digital content "held hostage on a particular kind of device, such as an iPod or a PC" switch to our TrustedFlash so it can be held hostage by our product.
I can almost see an implied "we want to relplace the CD with a SD card" which would be nice now that the 1GB cards are dropping(slowly) in price. Instead of carrying a non scratch resistant CD you could hold a few SD cards in your pocket. I wouldn't mind buying a read only SD card instead of a CD. As far as the DRM, I've never liked it and combining it with hardware is not a good thing. What happens when **AA thinks it's been overly cracked and decides it no longer meets their impossibly high standards? You have a memory card that's useless to use with newer content, they're not even big enough to be a coaster. But why do I care? All my DivX movies and MP3s are my legal copies of my movie and music collections and do not even hint at any form of copy protection. DRM makes things that should work together not work together and that's a BAD thing.

And the first exploit will be turning on the write protection so the card can't record the new count of how many times the contents were copied. Or holding shift so it can't autoplay and install RIAA/MPAA system crippling spyware. I'm assuming they're going to try this with existing forms of flash cards, or we'll all have to go out and get the newest 50-in-1 reader with copyprotection built into the drivers and firmware and will be rendered useless with v1.01 of the DRM.

Re:Apostrophe Police....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, like my Honda?

Re:Apostrophe Police....

[Simonetta]

yes, you are absolutely right. It is the possessive apostrophe that is missing in French. It's the possessive apostrophe that was banned. For example, Montreal's - Eaton's -Department store was forced to become Eaton.

    This whole Quebec language police situation that outlaws the public use of any word not in French has always amazed me. Even more so because in the 1990s my formerly sleepy and insular suburb of Beaverton Oregon received many thousands of immigrants from all over the world. There's a chart in the unemployment office where you can point to the language that you speak out of selection of about thirty and they will get an interpreter on the telephone for you to help find a job. There are micro neighborhoods where most of the signs are in non-English languages, such as a Korean business block, a Mexican block, and a Vietnamese block.
It's a game on the public transit to overhear random conversations and try to determine what language is being spoken. Beginners can just tell Spanish from Chinese. Good players can tell the various European languages apart. Advanced players can tell the various Asian languages apart. Masters can even differenciate between the various Chinese languages and sometimes even the SouthEast Asian languages, like being able to tell the difference between Hmong and Central Highland Vietnamese. That's way beyond my level. I can tell spoken Japanese from spoken Chinese and the written Korean from Japanese and Chinese.

almost certaintly,...

[WindBourne]

this is tied to an ID on the device. IOW, you know how the AMD CPU has an id? My guess is that more will get them. Either that or a new single chip on the bus will handle the interface. Eitherway, somebody will develop a dumb hardware interface and then use drivers to load a user inputed ID, which will then bypass this.

Never fear!

[Yeechang Lee]

There isn't a copy-protection scheme around that Fast Hack'em can't defeat![1]

[1] These Sandisk cards come in 5 1/4" format, right?

need not rely on binary-only drivers

[idlake]

There will never be a legal linux reader

I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be. If the system is properly designed, it has to rely on hardware to keep the keys necessary for decoding into audio secret. Software running on a general purpose computer would be able only to move around various encrypted forms of any protected data on the flash card. For example, software might obtain a device key from an audio player or sound card, transmit it to the flash card, and then be able to get all the bits for any audio file on the flash card, but only in a format readable to that audio player or sound card. The flash card itself would keep track of how many device keys have been used and would put a limit on that.

Moving the encrypted bits between the flash card and the output device can be done by an open source driver with no problems and without any loss of functionality.

Conversely, if any piece of software running on the PC is ever able to decode the contents of the flash device into a waveform, then the manufacturers have effectively lost because it is fairly easy to get keys and decryption algorithms from a binary-only driver.

Of course, the whole thing is stupid and won't work well anyway. Among other things, you can just transfer your entire DRM'ed music collection to your portable jukebox, plug its audio output into a line input for your PC, capture everything (over a few weeks). Existing audio software divides the input into songs for you, and putting the stuff into correspondence with your playlist is also a little Perl script (with some manual corrections).

In any case, if the manufacturers get the cryptography right, it will work no more poorly under Linux than it will under Windows. And if they get it wrong, it will work better under Linux than under Windows :-)

How can this possibly work?

[ajs318]

How the muddy mildred do they expect this thing to work in real life?

It's a memory card, for crying out loud. I give it a bunch of zeros and ones and tell it where to put them. At some later date, I ask it what is in that particular location and it spits out those same zeros and ones. That is what memory cards do. The key point is that, once I have retrieved those zeros and ones from the memory card, the card then has no way to know what I plan to do with them. And there will have to be general purpose slot-readers that work with these things and treat them as disc drives.

Now, unlike a traditional memory device such as an EPROM, where you present an address on one group of pins, assert an "output enable" and the data appears on another group of pins, these little beggars use some kind of serial protocol. You send it a command such as "Read 0x0100 bytes starting at address 0x1234" and it returns a response. Well, by cunning use of an oscilloscope on the transmit and receive lines, we can observe the data flowing in each direction. And by interposing some simple circuitry of our own design between the reading device and the card, we can modify bits at will.

It sounds to me as though this is some kind of destructive read-out {DRO} thing. Any variant on DRO is absolutely not viable as a copy prevention mechanism. I invented a variant of DRO protection for audio cassettes myself, over 25 years ago -- and I had already found a way to crack it, even before I got together all the bits to build a prototype. Ho hum.

Furthermore, any encryption scheme where the key is shorter than the plaintext is crackable -- and especially so where one has {even indirect} access to both the encryption and decryption engines and can generate known plaintexts to encrypt and known ciphertexts to attempt to decrypt. We know that the brute force approach is next to unworkable {and more so when you don't know the algorithm, let alone the key}, but this isn't a case for brute force: we have plenty of purchase already.

<tangent>I was watching CSI on ch.5 {does that side ever show anything not police-related?} with a friend last night. This show seems to be a propaganda exercise, in which the message is drummed into the viewing public that the police (1) are infallible and (2) have access to sophisticated techniques for extracting information which one would ordinarily expect to be forgotten {in this case, a reflection from someone's eye in a photograph; though I would not have been surprised to see them reconstruct the text of a burned letter from analysis of the smoke}.</tangent> I seriously suspect that this announcement is similarly a propaganda exercise, aimed at convincing the recording industry fatcats that they have achieved the physically impossible.

Prediction for the short-term future of file sharing: Copies will be made using analogue techniques if necessary, and distributed using on-the-fly public key encryption {client sends public key to server, server encrypts against this key, man in middle is frustrated by not having appropriate decryption key}. Used keys will be published for reasons of plausible deniability. Key only needs to last as long as required to transfer one chunk of data {smaller than amount permitted under fair use doctrine} before replacement.

Clueless

[WindBourne]

Ok, so DRM is coming in a big way. You may wish to think about this system. For this to work, it does not really restrict the number of copies, but the number of devices that is allowed to copy it. Therefor, it will almost certainly be talking to a chip on the hardware on the host side. There will almost certainly be a single chip that is on the bus that is designed to provide a unique ID as well as decode. Do you really think that this will be a software solution? No. any software system can be reverse engineered. What this shows is that it will not be tied to an OS. So for all your insane comments about linux/BSD flamebait, this will almost certainly work there as well. Besides, right now, Linux is way ahead of Windows when used on consumer electronics esp. on cell phones, and will probably stay that way.

What I want to know is HOW/WHY you got modded up? What is wrong with you modders? Lack of glial cells? Not enough endorphins? Just woke up stupid?

Ever pay again?

[Kazrael]

Why would anyone ever purchase music anymore? We have streaming audio in a ready to use/rip format coming from hundreds of thousands of stations. Anyone ever heard of Station Ripper? IPODS SUCK because they cater to the music industry's cries. 'Top 10' streaming music stations + Station Ripper + Winamp = never pay again and never be short of great music to listen to

I find it sad that...

[WindBourne]

your sig has to do with asking ppl to be nice concerning your English. I am tired of the grammer nazi's that post here.

I do wish they would consider going to D.C. and teaching a few ppl there a bit about the language. Then can then tell us what they think of gitmo once they get out.

Re:I find it sad that...

[EnglishTim]

I am tired of the grammer nazi's that post here.

No apostrophe is required for the plural, idiot!

Re:I find it sad that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep it up EnglishTim. Don't ever stop.

Get Real U Vike It

[WindBourne]

makes sense.

Don't blame the musicians!

[crovira]

They aren't the ones responsable for the homogenized pap you're getting between the ads.

The industry is a process of skipping any need for talent at the front end and going straight to CD with 'a sound' that just suck the life out of the music and makes the musician an irrelevancy (in fact they're an embarrasment to the corporatists. They have the wrong image. They're poor. They don't vote for the right people [people with 'Tin Ears' who don't give a damn about music, but who have ... money.])

Fuck all the soul-less bastards.

Flaimbait

[Anonymous Coward]

Free, as in payed for by taxes on stuff people buy and or have. Gotcha.
Sorta like Free, as in gpl software. All the cost has already been payed, but you don't see it, or don't want to pay for it, or support it.

Is it at least reusable?

[John Jorsett]

I skimmed through the article and didn't see whether the memory can at least be erased and used as a plain SD memory once it's hit its replay limit. Tossing a perfectly good memory chip once it's "used up" seems pretty stupid and wasteful.

incremental Acceptance

[nurb432]

Remember the story about the camel's nose and the tent?

Here comes the nose..

Not the point at all

[Tony]

This is how it liberates the 'standard' user from music being stuck on their iPod. Most consumers (and trust me the slashdot community IS NOT most consumers) have no idea how to remove DRM from their iTunes purchases or know how to get the songs on their iPod back off.

That's all well-and-good, but does it accomplish the stated objective of detering massive piracy? I submit it does not. As you imply, the people who *can* circumvent the DRM (and there will always be circumvention) will initiate the on-line propagation, and these "regular" citizens of whom you speak will download and continue to further "piracy."

In that case, they are merely providing another inconvenience for the "average" citizen, while not stopping, or even slowing, the massive "piracy" they are constantly whinging on about. As the average citizen can now download the songs they want (and *only* the songs they want, rather than a whole crappy album for a single good song), what is the benefit to the average citizen? What does it gain us, as society? Anything? Anything at all?

It is disingenuous to claim they are doing this to combat piracy. If anything, they are doing it to regain control of the distribution channel, and in the process to further their control over what a citizen can do with the music they lawfully purchased, essentially circumventing the doctrines of fair use and first-sale, two bugaboos of the music industry.

This is a blatant attempt to shore up the industry's control, and nothing more.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[ultranova]

On the other hand, if they have one private key kept only by the vendor, the public key for this on each device, a serial number on each device, and a unique private key on each device with a certificate, then it won't be cracked.

Of course it will be cracked. You are thinking in terms of cracking cryptography, when you should be thinking in terms of getting the master private key that can be used to produce new certificates so your computer, for example, could present one for this card (I assume that's what you meant by the vendor's private key). This key must be kept stored somewhere; it is just a matter of time before it is stolen (or some guard is bribed, or someone simply screws up and accidentally uploads it to the Internet).

No, a scheme which relies on keeping a secret worth billions and known by all to exist is not going to work. The only question is how many creative break-in attempts do we see before one succeeds. That, or we'll all return to telling stories around a campfire... Could be a step up from most media nowadays ;).

I, for one, welcome the cat-burglar enemies of our new DRM overlords.

No problem for this.

[Spy der Mann]

Just make sure all the data you copy to it is "magically" unprotected ;-)

Nothing new under the sun...

Hmmm...

[BrokenHalo]

And in other news:

"Sandisk in receivership after investment in lead weather balloons"

New Rolling Stones Album

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

There is an announcement today that the new Rolling Stones Album (can't say CD anymore, can we) is being released in this format for about 2.5 times the cost of the CD. The chip will also contain a bunch of other content that can be unlocked in return for cash, gonads, or other body parts.

Re:New Rolling Stones Album

[kabz]

Have you seen Keith Richards ? He needs a full days supply of gonads just to get out of bed in the morning.

Re:New Rolling Stones Album

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

get out of bed in the morning

Richards and Wood both look more like the sort that goes to bed in the crypt in the morning and get up thirsty after sundown. Watts is the only one who looks like he's seen the sun in the last twenty years. Still can play, though.

Hasn't this been done?

[yeremein]

Has SanDisk ever heard of Secure Digital? Sony MagicGate? They ought to have, since they manufacture both...

Or is Sandisk just giving a lot of fanfare and hoping their me-too solution will actually be used by someone?

Maybe it's an urban legend...

[Hosiah]

Probably an urban legend, but I remember reading something about "the first light bulb", or one of the first, that's still burning in a firehouse somewhere in the US. It was one of Thomas Edison's earliest. I think about that every time I change a light bulb that I just changed this month. I also think about cars I used to own like a Ford Fairlane and a Dodge Dart, that kept running well past the odometer rolling over, and compare that to today's cars that you're lucky to make it all the way off the lot before they break down.

It seems that computers "work too well" and are "too cheap" by everybody's standards, and they can't jump all over themselves fast enough to break them in every concievable way. One day, you'll hear people saying "Of course you lost your data! That's a USB drive, you only get five uses out of it and it wears out!" Doubtless, they'll only hold 10 Mbs at a time, as well.

All the more reason why I've resolved to never buy anything that's electronic new if there's a used/discarded item available. I have simply gotten too good at fixing old hardware...I never see the time when I'll need to buy a new computer, just spare parts, and even those I usually get used. I'm glad I already did my USB flash drive shopping, while I still had choices.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Rich0]

No, a scheme which relies on keeping a secret worth billions and known by all to exist is not going to work. The only question is how many creative break-in attempts do we see before one succeeds.

Uh, verisign has had such a scheme for about a decade now. About the closest to a breakin was some guy who got them to issue him a key on behalf of MS, which was quickly revoked. As far as anybody knows, there has been no attempt to obtain the signing key. They could probably defend it from anybody short of an army - I doubt that anybody on their own can even access the computer it physically resides on, and most likely electronic access to the machine is carefully filtered. It is possible to create a completely secure firewall for the connection if it only needs to pass one particular type of data back and forth...

Orwellian madness

[Simonetta]

This press release is filled with double-talk and flat-out Orwellian nonsense. Like: Preventing people from backing up their data 'gives them more options'.

    We get a bad feeling about all this because so much money and resources is going into developing a technology that no one who is actually buying the technology actually wants. The chip designer firm is working with the chip manufacturer who is negotiating with the global entertainment corporation who is linking with the agent who interfaces with the artist who toots up with the liaison of the technology company.

      So who's missing here? How about the people who are actually putting out the money to actually pay for this stuff. One person buys an entertainment product and a little while later discovers that they can't do the simple and obvious things that they had come to expect that they could do with it; like backing it up or moving it to another medium like the car stereo. Suddenly the perceived value of this entertainment item drops to half or less of its previous value. So the consumer is only willing to pay $8 for the same CD that they were willing to previously buy at $16 when the CD or CD player has copy prevention technology built into it.

    Now the entertainment corporation is raising the price to pay for the development of this new technology and also raising the price because the competition (from easy copies) is now restrained. So the perceived value (and price) is going down at the same time that the price for the entertainment product is shooting up. How exactly is this supposed to be good for the entertainment company or the artist? It must be that they fundamentally assume that because they are so cool and beautiful that the vast dork masses will buy the product regardless of how much it costs or difficult it is to use. This is what happens when entertainment people start talking business with computer people. The greed goes recursive and you end up with the worst mentalities of both industries in one package.

    In the long run (10 years plus) this mentality will only act to reduce the importance and viability of the entertainment corporations. The board of directors will look to spin off the entertainment divisions in the way that everyone is now trying to dump their record companies. Maybe DRM is nothing more than a long term plan on the part of the technology companies to seriously depress the value of the entertainment companies so that ten years from now (when all the ultra-fast download-entertainment-directly-to-the-home technology is in place) they will be able to buy the entertainment companies for a tiny fraction of what they are worth now. Or maybe it's just the fantasy of immature greedheaded yuppies with too much access to other people's money.

Re:Orwellian madness

[LeonGeeste]

I think you're missing the point of this technology. Yes, the data would have less value to the consumer. However, the better the copy protection technology is, the more certain the creator of that content is that they won't lose sales through mass piracy. That would in turn encourage people to produce more and better content and bring it to market (at least, the people who are motivated by money). Yes, I know that some content producers turn a blind eye to the small amount of piracy because it gives them free advertising and future sales. But many would simply stop creating, or create at a much slower rate if pirating substantially increased. I think it would be in error to attribute this to greed. Wanting to get paid for content you created and/or marketed (yes, marketing is a vital function in that it connects content consumers with what they want) is not "greed" in any meaningful sense of the word. In my mind, it's like calling a worker who gripes about his boss withholding his paycheck greedy. Yes, he's greedy in that he wants money, but he earned it!

Now, if you want to propose a way to compensate (and thereby encourage) content creation without copyrights or copy protection, I'M ALL EARS! And so is the rest of the world struggling with this difficult issue. And if you come up with a solution, I will personally attend your Nobel Prize award ceremony. (Sorry, Bank of Sweden Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel.)

I have an idea that would work for inventions, that is, a way to compensate inventors without patents. It goes like this: People invent things to increase efficiency (satisfy the same or higher desires with the same or less effort). That means an invention is useful if and to the extent that it alters market prices. But (as a fundamental insight of economics) if you know a price is going to change before it changes, you can profit from that information, whether the price goes up or down (as long as you know the direction). So, an inventor can just speculate in the markets his invention is going to distort (for example, if you invent a cheaper way of making orange juice, that will probably bid up the price of oranges and orange futures). Since he invented it, he has the information before others, and can thus profit. It would be in his interest to give it away for free, because that will accelerate the price shifts. Note that he doesn't necessarily need money to do this: he can go to people who do have money and offer to tell them when he's going to release the invention in exchange for a cut of their speculative profits.

I don't yet see how this idea applies to written works, but it's a start. So, if you can come up with one, then you can justifiably rant about copyrights and copy protection. But not until.

Re:Orwellian madness

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we question the notion that content creators need to be compensated at all in the context of the benefits of living in an information-rich, digitally free world? The normal capitalistic business model is based ultimately on scarcity of natural resources. The model as it applies to intellectual property, specifically copyright law, is based on the idea of artificial scarcity. This is obtained by a coercive government which presumably enforces laws protecting the "digital rights" of content creators. But consider that digital content is for all practical purposes, infinitely redistributable, at very little cost.

There are two basic questions here; What motivates content creators to do what they do, and how do individuals and society at large benefit from their work? Most people who create digital content, be it books, music, movies, or software, do it out of love, or at least that was the original reason, even if it is now their primary source of income. Even without a government protecting their "digital rights", it's highly likely that authors would still write, musicians would produce music, filmmakers would still make films, and programmers would still develop software, purely out of the love for what they do.

You could argue and probably rightfully so that the quality of content would nosedive, at least initially, as those who collaborated strictly for creating content to benefit from the aforementioned model of artificial scarcity would suddenly be left without motive. The important question, however, is would the benefits of a truly digitally free society offset this drawback, and more? Sure, your favorite band members might not show up at the production studio on a scheduled basis to crank out new CDs, but they would probably continue to make music, and only music that they really wanted to make, as opposed to music they or the suits who represent them thought would sell. In turn, everyone would have access to their music, assuming they made it available, and they would also benefit from access to everyone else's music, virtually free of charge, and eliminating the bureaucratic need for copyright law and its associated costs of legislation, and enforcement.

Note that this wouldn't exclude people from taking measures to protect their work using copy protection, it would just mean switching from artificial scarcity to a new paradigm of infinite redistributability, by eliminating the coercive element of law. Content creators would suffer initially, as would the owners of the oligopolistic distribution channels, but I suspect the individual and society at large would benefit in the long run from a virtually transparent world of digital content, the production of which would be mostly limited to that which people love, as opposed to their idea of what other people will pay for.

Re:Orwellian madness

[ivan256]

discovers that they can't do the simple and obvious things that they had come to expect that they could do with it; like backing it up

Would you please stop using this example?

Most people don't make backups. It's a fact of life, and it's well known. That means every time you break out the "backups argument" it's automatically parsed into the piracy argument by practically everybody. From the point you mention backups on, you've lost all credibility with everbody except for the people who already agree with you.

When you're talking about music, talk about using it in your car. Talk about mix CDs. Talk about the iPod... Don't talk about backups!

When you're talking about images or video, talk about watching them in the car. Talk about watching them on your computer. Talk about getting a print made at the local photo shop. Talk about sharing home video made on your camcorder with the family. Don't use the word backups!

Re:Orwellian madness

[LeonGeeste]

Scarcity of intellectual works is not artificial; it is totally natural. Yes, an idea, ONCE PRODUCED, is not scarce. But before that time, it is infinitely scarce, and the greatest anti-capitalistic revolution won't change that.

Your next error is to fail to think on the margin. It's not a question of "Do all people produce intellectual works for money?" vs. "Does no one produce intellectual works for money?" Some do, some don't. Absent IP laws, the ones that don't do it for the money will, correct, probably still crank out the goods (er, as much as their need to earn an income in other ways allows). And the freer flow of information will increase this incentive slightly. (I say slightly because most people who produce content for the love of it already give it away.) What IP laws do is move the margin that separates content producers and non-producers. It diverts and encourages investment that would have otherwise been idle or gone elsewhere to go into producing intellectual works. And indeed, there are benefits to be gained from the absence of IP laws that need to be weighed against the drop in content creation. But most people see all the money that has to be spent to produce a good movie or book, and reason that their lives would be far less fulfilling without them. That is why copyright is so popular and hasn't been abolished. I'm not saying these people are right, just that they're not idiots, and they've generally considered the alternatives. If you want to convince the masses to give it up, you'll have to find something better to offer, not just narrowly focus on marginal cost of copying IP (zero) while ignoring the average cost (huge).

(Sidebar: How much did the second pill of any major medicine cost to make? Five cents. How much did the first cost? Billions.)

And on a final note, no, it's not unreasonable to ask that content creators get compensated in proportion to how popular their creations are. Yes, they "love their work" but you could say this about many if not most workers. I love my job. Would I come here everyday for free? ... no.

Oh, and a second final note. I'm not a big fan of government or state-sponsored capitalism either. That doesn't mean I have to be wildly ignorant of the impact of abolishing copyrights.

Re:Orwellian madness

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, ideas are naturally scarce before they're realized, but that isn't a defense of copyright. An ounce of gold doesn't have much value (except perhaps on some mining firm's balance sheet as a proven and probable asset, discounted for the future) when it's sitting entrenched under the ground. Once it is mined, it is bestowed the title of "property", and it is owned by someone. Its status as someone's property is protected by the state, ultimately by the threat of violence. This is reasonable because at this point, the ounce of gold is still scarce. If we have anarchy and fail to protect this property, then the most ruthless in society are rewarded as opposed to the most meritorious. Being a capitalist, I don't think an anti-capitalist revolution would solve much of anything, considering how I don't believe the causes of many of the world's ills are related to anything resembling "capitalism". Competition and market accountability are far superior to the arbitrary whims of some regulatory bureaucrat, but I digress.

I submit that most people who create digital content do it primarily out of a love for what they do, and are just happy that a system exists by which their work can be "protected", and that they can see revenue from it. Broadband and the "digital revolution" have made the publishing of ebooks, music, and software pretty cheap. Production of a big budget movie is still going to be expensive and time consuming, but in the abscence of IP laws these costs will be privatized. I suspect this problem will be solved by voluntary collaboration. People who are naturally fascinated by filmmaking will collaborate with paleontologists, who will in turn collaborate with people who know how to create special effects, and lastly, with actors to create movies with 3D rendered dinosaurs in them.

Keep in mind that the absence of copyright law doesn't mean that people won't still get paid for their intellectual works. Companies will still contract with programmers to solve specific problems. Musicians will still get paid to compose and perform music at venues. Moviemakers and authors will still get paid to document the world, although certainly much less than they are now. All of this would be freely available, in addition to the voluntary works of everyone else. Would I be sad that Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't get paid $20 million to do Terminator 4? No, not really.

I'm not suggesting copyright law should be scrapped, I'm suggesting it should be reconsidered. Certainly other forms of IP are valuable, such as trademarks and patents. It's a good thing to know that "McDonald's" serves what you typically expect from McDonald's, whether you like it, or whether you use that information to avoid it!

DRM, digital rights management seems to me a last ditch effort by content producers to control what they create by taking away from me my right to control my property, and how I use it. The fact that this is being done through law, and the collusion of hardware and software vendors is disturbing, and I oppose it. If at the end of the day it means more money for "artists" like the rapper Nelly, or greedy record executives like David Geffen at the expense of everyone else, and at the expense of our digital freedom, we would all do well to oppose it.

I'm not against copy protection, or implementing private copy protection schemes. Some actually work even without the assistence of governments, and laws, like the MMORPG model, where delivery of content is based on the dependence on servers under the direct control of content providers, proprietary content delivery systems like Valve's "Steam", CD key master server authentication schemes used by many client server games, and proprietary matchmaking systems like Blizzard's battle.net. What I'm against is the collusion of hardware and software vendors attempting to go even further than protecting their content by using the coercive element of law, such as the DMCA, and the SSSCA to protect their control over my personal computer, and any personal electronic devices I may own.

Re:Orwellian madness

[LeonGeeste]

Let me try to go over your major points here:

1) It doesn't matter if most people make IP because they love it. Again, many people love their jobs but would stop doing them if not paid. Furthermore, the fact that some people do make IP for money reveals the social loss that would occur if their IP "rights were not protected."

2) You're assuming away the revenue problem. If anyone can copy an ebook, you're not going to be able to make much if any money off of it. Make sure to consider the full effect of liberating written works.

3) I would be sad if A.S. didn't get $20 million to do a movie. He is paid that much because (a producer believe that) he will produce that much value, aggregated over consumers. If his return were "only" $100,000, he may not do it, and society is all the worse off because of it, since people generally don't work unless the compenstion is large relative to their savings.

4) Yes, you lose some utility from the restrictions placed on media, but this must be weighed against how much more will be produced it the DRM works. It's not at all clear to me which side is best.

5) What did you think of my idea for making money from inventions without patents? And why don't you register, you seem to have some interesting thoughts to offer.

Re:Orwellian madness

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right that there would be a social loss as the result of government getting out of the business of enforcing copyright law. But there would also be many benefits, a completely transparent digital society being one of them. Everyone would benefit at very low cost from every single intellectual creation, be it software, music, movies, whatever, and they would be free to build upon this foundation. An important point is that much of this perceived loss is really just an economic wash, ie: producers of digital content no longer buying the digital content produced by others. The overhead is cut, because the government doesn't get a cut of the action in taxes, nor do the talentless oligopolies that control the mediums of distribution. I'm not sure either of us are prepared to quantify the economic loss vs. the economic gain, that's why I'm just speculating here. An economist worth his salt could probably shed some light on this situation.

With ebooks in particular I'm assuming that most authors will probably continue writing whether or not they're paid for it. There is a bonanza of free written information on the web, from books to guides, to howtos to FAQs to wikis. Professional authors certainly don't want to hear this, but they will also be beneficiaries of the digital society as well. They may end up writing less as a result of their day jobs, but they will undoubtedly continue to write.

I think society would be worse off with one more Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, which brings me to another important point. Much of IP these days really represents nothing but entertainment content, with little to no productive value. In fact, a cogent argument can be made that much of it is time wasting, and could actually destroy productivity. IP laws serve to protect the behemoth corporations that control content distribution for a variety of media, and rarely protect the actual creators of this content, which is in many cases nothing more than vapid pablum anyway. Just because there is a market of dull moviegoers which will fork over hundreds of millions to see the next piece of drivel that Hollywood has to offer doesn't mean this market should be protected in law. Now, let me put the above into context. I'm an avid gamer, and I waste more hours than I care to admit playing most of the big PC titles. I also take in my share of Hollywood fare. I think people should be free to pay for whatever stupid shit happens to entertain them, myself included. But again I'm not sure I think this should extend to the government enforcing laws which protect the makers of this pap. Just because a market exists doesn't mean it deserves government protection.

Obviously we're going to lose utility from DRM enabled hardware. This is missing my point completely, which is that I don't want to be coerced into this new paradigm at all. I refuse to be forced to accept it, but at essence this is what will be required, because even tamper-resistant DRMed CPUs can be cracked by those with the means. In this case, those with the knowledge and the means will be very few, and this is where they plan to use the law to focus their enforcement efforts. International treaties and orgs like the WTO will probably bring enforcement pressure to bear on non-compliant countries as well. It's not enough to simply not buy DRM'ed products, we must oppose the legislation which is going to attempt to force all of this down our throats, for our supposed benefit.

I think your idea for making money without patents is generally good. It would require a familiarity with the futures and options markets for all would-be inventors, which may not be practical. A couple of caveats which come to mind immediately are: Most investors who are willing to speculate in the futures and options markets wouldn't be willing to do so without prior disclosure of the nature of the invention. After all, lots of people have ideas that aren't so bright, in hindsight. Investors are risk averse in general, and especially averse to the unknown. If yo

Re:Orwellian madness

[alphamugwump]

Your argument, as I see it, is that artists, actors, etc. will continue to make movies and whatnot because they like to. This is correct. However, the quality of their works is certain to be less because they are not getting paid for it. For instance, movies cost a huge amount of money to make. You need cameras, sets, special effects, etc. If that money isn't there, those movies are going to look like something someone filmed in their backyard. There is simply no way for them to get funding, short of donations and packaging. And with movies, unlike software, you can't even argue that you are going to make them pay for documentation or support. In short, your proposal is communist/wishful thinking. However, I do think that the world would be a better place if all the publishers did like the snark and quietly vanished away.

Re:Orwellian madness

[PetyrRahl]

Caveat: IANAL (except on /.)
I'm not sure what the legal system in your country may look like or allow, but in the US I'm fairly certain that this would fall well under Insider Trading.
If this was allowed what would prevent the following fiasco: BigRouter Co. realizes that there's a major bug in their product. Let's say that it allows for a person to remotly exploit the ever living shit outta their router.
They know the EvilHacker is going to discover this soon, so they start speculating on their own stock, and sure as all hell they don't tell anyone about it. About the time they're ready for the news to hit, and their stock to take a massive plunge, they reap UberProfit from their own f'up.
Now I know there are at least a few companies (*cough*Arthur*gag*Anderson*cough*) that would just be salivating all over themselves for such an oppertunity but let us hope that such things remain only in their fondest dreams and out of our reality.

Re:Orwellian madness

[LeonGeeste]

First of all, I'm proposing a change to the system of laws, and, as such, for purposes of advocating my idea I can assume any change in other laws necessary to make my proposed change legal. So the charge of it being insider trading is orthogonal to whether it would be a good idea. Re: your next point, I share your concern that company officers, but:

1) That can be prevented without insider trading laws. As long as other people also own shares, they can contract to prohibit profiting from intentional destruction of the company, like companies already do today. Contrary to what you seem to be saying, most investors do not try to kill the value of their stock so they can sell it and say "haha! dodged that one! Suckers!"

2) You overstate the difference it would make. Today, employees can tank their companies and they don't lose much because they have *no* shares. Yet no one worries about "wageers" (the wage-earning versions of profiteers).

Re:Orwellian madness

[Coniptor]

Backing up one's media which one has purchased and owns is valid and is in NO WAY "COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT."
You can't have piracy without theft.
Copyright infringement is not theft.
Backing up your media because you paid for it, you own it, and have no intention of buying it again due to ware and tear is not immoral, unethical, unprincipled, wrong, breaking the law, or otherwise illegal.
Also once the media is payed for, I and anyone else can make use of our purchased property any damn way we see fit even against your perogative of how people should use THEIR purchased media. We don't have to restrict our selves to use of our media according to the whims of greedy bastards in the media cartels. We are not obligated to pay more for new unthought of ways to use our media. We are paying for the media, NOT to be able to use the media in some confined way and in no other way.
You seek to set a very unhealthy precedent and I don't feel a bit bad about telling you to go burn in hell as you sure as hell don't represent me or anyone who understands what the correct balance of copyright was intended to set.
Shill. People can talk aboit what ever the fuck they want.

Re:Orwellian madness

[ivan256]

Did you respond to the right post? What the hell are you talking about?

I agree with your principals. I was just talking about wording your arguments in a way that is more persuasive to others that don't understand. Talking like you're talking won't win anybody over.

They tried this with DVD

[po8]

I'm more sanguine than most about digital video copy protection vs the analog hole. The original computer DVD drives also refused to play video content except through a magic cable on the back that connected to a magic cable on your video card. This lasted about 6 months (during which time I unfortunately bought, then returned one of these setups) before the folks in Asia who could care less about our legal restrictions started to sell DVD drives that folks would actually buy. Within a year, the video content protection system (CSS) had been cracked, and the rest was history.

Similarly, I don't expect to be viewing HD-DVD content on my Linux box for a couple of years, after which I expect it will be a no-brainer.

Re:They tried this with DVD

[jaseuk]

It was no magic cable... When the original DVD drives came out processors were not capable of decoding the content, so a hardware decoding card was included to perform the hard work. The magic cable simply allowed the card to overlay the DVD content onto your monitor much like a genlock or early 3DFC cards.

Those same DVD drives used in newer computers work just fine without the decoder card.

Jason.

Re:They tried this with DVD

[po8]

I understand what the cable/card was/did. I'm pretty sure from researching it at the time, though, that the firmware also explicitly disallowed transferring digital video off a DVD into the computer, encoded or otherwise. Fixing this would presumably require at least a firmware upgrade. It would still be usable as a DVD drive for data, though.

Am I off base here?

Is It A Windows /OSX Only Flash Card?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't see in TFA if it was going to be compatible with any OS. Anyone know?

Just boycot SanDisk

[Aceticon]

Personally i've been boycoting Sony for years now - due to them both owning a recording label and their behaviour in relation to IP and Copyright, i simply don't buy anything AT ALL from Sony - I don't trust them not to sneak "crippleware" functionality into their products, so i ain't buying from them.

If SanDisk is investing in developing technology that "reduces value" for their customers, i reckon i don't want to do business with them - no point in aquiring products from them just to find they have reduced functionality when compared to competing products.

Same logic applies to any other company that tries to take features away from their customers.
(Ever since copy protected CDs came out i stopped buying them)

Vote with your wallet people - instead of just bitching and moaning while at the end of the day still putting your money in their hands.

Re:Just boycot SanDisk

[KillShill]

not just a member of the RIAA (record label), they're also a proud member of the MPAA. also manufacturer of the crippled cell DRM-encumbered processor. and yeah MS and Nintendo are right up there with em in regards to the last point (crippled "consoles").

Oldest continuously burning light bulb

[douglips]

The lightbulb was not one of Edison's first, but it is over 100 years old, and has been burning for over 800,000 hours continuously.

http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/time_machine/centenn ial_lightbulb.html

Re:Oldest continuously burning light bulb

[Hosiah]

The lightbulb was not one of Edison's first, but it is over 100 years old, and has been burning for over 800,000 hours continuously.

Yep, that's the one I was thinking of. Nice catch! (-:

Better hit yourself with that cluestick instead

[Anonymous Coward]

He got the point and you missed his ironic (and/or humorous) intent. You should flame yourself instead.

Re:Better hit yourself with that cluestick instead

[nysus]

No you missed your direct parent's humor. He was being funny, you clod!

Re:Better hit yourself with that cluestick instead

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you missed the flame. He was being an insulting moron, you dork.

Re:Better hit yourself with that cluestick instead

[nysus]

Hey, is this supposed to be funny? Because if it is, it isn't, OK? Let's be sensitive and appreciative of each other. Hugs and kisses.

Minority Report?

[meadandale]

All of this digital rights and management functionality that is being created and enforced by hardware and software vendors is usurping consumers rights under fair use and the constitution.

"We think that you are going to use the content that we provided you (and you paid for) illegally so we are going to prevent this--you are guilty until proven innnocent. Wait, scratch that, you are just guilty, regardless. So, even though you have the rights of 'fair use', we have to prevent you from exercising those rights if there is the POTENTIAL for you to use them incorrectly"

This whole thing is a laugh riot..

[Khyber]

As long as that sound comes out of analog speakers, I can take two microphones, one mixer board, and a tape deck (Or an on the fly line-in cd burner from Sony) and make a copy of that music nearly perfectly. Gimme a break. Anyone with half a brain for making music could figure this one out. So there's the audio aspect taken care of.

As far as video goes, I don't know what to do about that. Data? There are programs out there that can copy everything, bit-for-bit, and burn to another DVD/CD. Therefore the license is still valid and intact, and you can put it onto another person's computer. Since they have the "original" (as far as bit-by-bit goes) disc, it should work fine.

These companies are just wasting their time, money, and energy in a pathetic attempt to "control piracy" (read: force their monopolies upon everyone else.) I'm wondering when they'll realize that Newton's third law could very well apply in this situation; For every copy-protection/license/DRM scheme they come out with, someone else will successfully crack and make the exact opposite of it.

Re:This whole thing is a laugh riot..

[diggitzz]

As long as that sound comes out of analog speakers, I can take two microphones, one mixer board, and a tape deck

As far as video goes, I don't know what to do about that.

The same basic solution works for both audio and video ... one output device and one input device. So, for audio, plug you line out or headphone out into the line in of another soundcard, then record. For video, plug the output into the video-in of a capture card.

That's how I got stuff from 8-track to mp3, or Betamax to mpeg, and DRM isn't likely to alter my ability to do that anytime soon.

I find *you* sadder still

[Anonymous Coward]

I do wish they would consider going to D.C. and teaching a few ppl there a bit about the language. Then can then tell us what they think of gitmo once they get out

Let me get this straight - you think people who correct others' (often appallingly) incorrect use of language should be sent to a concentration camp?! And you have the nerve to call such people "nazis"?

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL

Sore Loser Post

[ewhac]

I submitted this story to the queue yesterday; it was rejected within 15 minutes:

2005-09-27 23:40:03 SanDisk to Provide Copy-Protected Flash Chips (Your Rights Online,Technology) (rejected)

Schwab

I'm jumping to conclusions here...

[lullabud]

This technology was pioneered by Initech, right?

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Script Cat]

In the future every one is a non-voting felon, thank you very much!

This is so wrong...

[cr0sh]

Let's say you are right, which from the article it sounds like you are. I can see two VERY big problems with this kind of "media" (outside of the DRM issue - what happens to the music after 50 years when no one has a working reader - does the LOC go "meh"?):

• Album Cover Art - you think it was bad with CDs after LPs, just wait until you try to cram liner notes onto one of these (ok, this isn't really serious)
• Mechanical interface - the connection between the SD device and the computer (in whatever form) is inherently a mechanical electrical connection. That means the connection can go bad over time: corrosion, spills, noise, etc - over time, the mechanical connection will wear out (probably rapidly, considering most consumers can't even handle a CD or DVD properly without scratching it to hell) and the music will become unplayable - PAY UP!

Those two issues are big ones - I actually see the first outweighing the last, at least when these things first come out. How do you market such a thing? I can see record stores doing a final implosion here, as these things will probably be purchased "blank" and the tracks downloaded on them (they can't be preloaded - otherwise the packaging would be way larger than the product - of course, that hasn't stopped PC games, either). If they come as blanks, I can imagine some record stores having a "certified" kiosk (which would check for a blank SD device with the DRM in it) which you could select albums/songs - perhaps even creating your own "mix" album (one can hope). But even these would eventually give way to online buying patterns and special "certified" readers/writers (or certified software drivers)...

The whole thing stinks like a CueCat...

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[kernelfoobar]

[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo \"You live\"

Thanks, now I'll have to clean Orange Crush from my keyboard!

This is so easy to bypass

[computergeek1200]

It is easy to bypass by placing the file inside an encrypted file then distributing the encrypted file with a password. I do this to send exe files over email and MSN

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[networkBoy]

More mundane than that:
Nobody has yet to successfully sign their own Xbox game.
-nB

live performances

[Anonymous Coward]

If an artist has a problem with their creations being copied, then don't allow it to be put in a form that can be read by an electronic device. If someone wants to hear their new song, they need to plunk down the cash to see them in concert.

In response

[Anonymous Coward]

to this article, I started up JHymn and tore the DRM from some songs that I bought at the iTunes music store.

Surrender, RIAA. You can't win.

Another overheard conversation...

[BeerCat]

Tech guy: Boss, I've just put all our back catalogue on a room full of these new anti-copy devices.

Boss: That's great. No more piracy! Now we can sell our back catalogue at inflated prices.

[a few weeks later]

Tech guy: er, Boss, our online store isn't doing so well...

Boss: What do you mean?

Tech guy: Well, no track has sold more than 5 times. The anti-copy device won't allow it!

Boss: In that case, remove our stuff from the devices, so that we can continue selling.

Tech guy: er, I can't. The anti-copy device won't allow it.


So, this will be useful right up until the time that the content creators can't copy their own stuff onto even newer technology (in, say 20 years' time). So, everything they had that will be lost.

Making it harder to consume

[letdinosaursdie]

Entertainment is for consumers... and in my book "consumer" is an ugly word. Maybe with the hawkers of mindless garbage so up in arms about that garbage being copied, people will use their own creativity instead of passively gobbling what big media slops out for them. I'm no friend to DRM, but I don't give much money to these companies anyway.

There are too many flash formats for this to work

[i)ave]

At least record albums were a media standard for a long time, but FLASH MEMORY?

Not considering other media storage formats like Iomega ZIP, this is just a list of flash-memory media formats that 'I' am aware of to have come out in the 10 years since 1995 when Compact Flash Type 1 was introduced:

Compact Flash Type I
Compact Flash Type II
Compact Flash Type III
Smart Media
Multi Media Card
Secure Digital Card
MiniSD
Memory Stick
Memory Stick Magic Gate
Memory Stick Duo
Memory Stick PRO
Extreme Digital Card

That's an average of more than 1 new flash-memory format/year, and I'm sure there are others that I have missed.
If someone buys a Rolling Stones album on a DRM'd SD card, they're making a bet that from now on, every .mp3 player, car stereo, computer, card reader, entertainment system and cellphone they purchase will have built-in support for that particular flash-media storage format. And with an average of more than 1 new flash-media format introduced/year that's just a pipe-dream. That makes the 8-track look like it had a pretty fantastic run.

I can hardly wait...

[Kazoo the Clown]

... until they implement this. Then my huge collection of Vinyl LPs will be worth big bucks! Right now, you can't even give them away...

I don't think you get it.

[Erris]

You see, it only takes ONE person to crack the protection and distribute the file in an unprotected format, and then the genie is out of the bottle. ... If Windows won't play unprotected music, I'll run Linux. Oh waaaaaaait, I already run Linux; I haven't owned a Windows box since 2003.

You are being short sighted both morally and technically. Honest people want to be able to do what's honest and right without having to fear legal retribution. I should not have to hunt around dark corners of the internet for "stolen music" just to share a song with my wife, brother or even myself. You can run free software all you want and that will still be true. More importantly, this kind of screwed up memory can keep you from being able to run a free operating system. You can be sure M$ is going to embrace this "protection" and that every Dell/CrapBox out there will soon be coming with it.

Re:I don't think you get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators: Please note that 'Erris' is actually twitter, using another account to avoid taking a karma hit.

Please do not mod him up and reward the kind of behavior and image that has given all of us in the Free Software community a bad name.

Thank you.

Demon customers

[tepples]

If they refuse to take it back for cash, get an exchange for the same CD..then another, then another.

I've suggested this before, but others have warned that somebody who tries the strategy of returning multiple copies of the same defective title might get the customer branded as a "demon customer" and kickbanned from the store.

New Technology

[RobotAndy]

You know, I am beginning to regret using anything more powerful than a fully mechanical typewriter. I agree that this among other DRM actions will only succeed to devalue both the technology and any content provided for that technology. We can all talk about how "the big companines do not understand", but I would venture to guess that they probably just do not care... right now this appears to be where the money is.

The system...

[SpiritStranger]

Everything is on one IC, and there is no inter-IC bus involved. Tapping busses between ICs within a DRM-using device is a good way to break the protection. bunny broke the X-Box by using the fact that not everything is on one IC. Probably reasonable for the Flash world, where this is already the case

I guess in this case the bulk of the memory need not to be on the same chip as the key keeping logic. In fact the drm chip need only to be able to perform some basic cryptographic operations given a chip-specific secret and a global secret. The chip specific secret enables storing whatever sensitve info (media-keys, rights info etc) on an open memory area and the global secret is needed to establish trust between two of them devices. The trick to fool the PRN generator seems limited to a select few with expensive equipment and can only uncover separate media keys. The weak link would be the global secret deep within, but on the day that it is broken maybe that generation of the chip has fulfilled its purpose and a new one is at hand. The old system could be preconfigured to trust some generations of the new system, but a new system would never trust an older system. Once the standards are at place and there is a strong hardware certifying mechanism DRM will sort of work. Together with cell-phones, pc-audio chips and (mp3?)-players it seems natural also generic memory media must be part of this system.

Earth to Sandisk...

[TractorBarry]

Hello... hello... Earth calling Sandisk... Earth to Sandisk...

FUCK OFF.

Re:So, there is no benefit at all to this technolo

[Anonymous Coward]

Consultants Bob & Bob to useless DRM'd Flash Drive Lumbergh:
"So what is it, you would say, you actually *do* here?"

FD Lumbergh:
"Riiiiiiiiiiiight..."

Re:When a copy is not a copy. Dumb future.

[Paraplex]

As a musician, let me just say this once, and say it LOUD AND CLEAR:

If piracy runs rampant, or if DRM becomes so oppressive that people no longer buy music, lets sit back and just see if the music stops. WE WILL STILL MAKE MUSIC.

The whole "free ride" of RI excess has dried up and they're desparately trying to clutch on to the past fluke of being able to make money off other peoples work

The internet has created two possible paths:

1. Initial complete freedom with a reaction of oppression by the greedy few who fail to understand how things work in an environment of infinite duplicatability.

or

2. Death to greedy middlemen who's 'services' are no longer needed by a community of open, international citizens.

We are now on the dawn of being able to liberate ourselves from needing their 'music studios', their 'big budget film technology' their 'gasoline' their 'phone networks' etc etc all for a very modest investment. Now that they *know* this, power brokers are now struggling to grasp on to the cat's tail before it fully gets out of the bag.

Already the internet has been restricted and is traceable... already VOIP is being 'managed' and restricted and tracked... fuckit.. why do we even NEED voip? its just audio converted to data, passed over a bunch of computers networked together?? no more apathy!

Re:Sigh...

[Thomas Shaddack]

So the chips will get shipped by mail from overseas, possibly in packages branded as "legal" chips. Or highly generic FPGA-based design appears.
Another possibility is an analog "encryption"/"scrambling" of the audio signal in a reversible way. Watermarks are designed to survive modifications that do not lead to noticeable audible degradation of the signal - just apply a transformation they are NOT designed for, but which is reversible. Scramble by an analog circuit, feed through the ADC with a built-in cop, descramble digitized signal that was smuggled past the cop this way.

OT: Re:Golly I love Copyright Management!

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming said DRM grain is viable, randomly scatter quantities of the seed on common land, wilderness, etc and allow it to spread naturally.

Since this grain is resisitent to (at least one) herbicide, it will be a bugger to eradicate, which hopefully will lead to reasonable common sense control of genetic engineered crops.

Additionally, there will be no lawsuit since (1) the licence doesnt stop you sowing legitimately bought seed, irrespective of where that might be and (2) even if it does, they cant prove it wasnt natural transfer. And on common land/wilderness, it's no-one's crop: no one to sue.

And the aim, of course, is to make the grain wild, which ultimately destroys the point of the patent.

memory cards that dont transfer data

[steve_l]

yes -if some storage device doesnt seamless transfer data, the only word you can use is "broken".

It'd be like a socket write() operation that only wrote approved packets.

BIOS MP3 players

[merreborn]

My last motherboard, an ASUS, had an in-BIOS MP3 player

That's in there for people trying to build their own MP3 jukeboxes. You throw together a baseline PC with a really big harddrive, and shove it under your tape deck, CD player, and use it like a big, cheap, stationary iPod. There's no reason to install and launch a whole OS if that's your goal.

Now, if *all* their motherboards included the BIOS MP3 player, that would indeed be excessive.

does not play nice with Linux

[persona 419]

Yep, they are in the stores now. I know, because I bought one yesterday at Stay-Pulls.

I cut it open, stopped by the library (to check how some sites that I built look on IE) and tested it on the MS Windoze machines. Worked fine, but there was extra junk on it. I had not yet RTFM.

I took it home and it did not mount on my Linux box. I RTFM, but it didn't say anything spcific about not running on Linux. A quick call (that was promptly answered) to the tech line confirmed IT DOES NOT PLAY NICE WITH LINUX note: I assumed the everything but the funky DRM crap would work fine on Linux, because it says everything but the DRM crap will work on the Mac. Wrong.

I took it back. Exchanged it for a cheapie other brand.