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Sun DReaM Finds Home In IPTV

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the someone-likes-the-idea dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Register has a story reporting that Sun's DRM will find a home in a Korean IPTV system. From the article: "This week Sun released the source code for two components of DReaM, its DReaM-CAS (Conditional Access System) and DReaMMMI (Mother May I) the underlying mechanism for always asking a central resource for permission to access content. In papers that Sun put out this week it has described both of these processes. DReaMCAS or D-CAS currently only manages access to content in the MPEG-2 format."

5 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. DRM and GNOME by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sun also has a "customer" in Fluendo... the company set up to develop GStreamer... the media framework in GNOME. Fluendo have committed to the whole DRM shebang. Locked down kernels, trusted computing, and DRM built in to Gstreamer (and hence, GNOME). And Sun, a full-blown member and devotee of The Trusted Computing Group with it's DRM hardware.

    Lovely thought isn't it.

    All that corporate involvement in GNOME was worth it, wasn't it? I mean... now that we've a got DRMed desktop that is completely controlled and developed by three corporations and a few small businesses around edges.

    1. Re:DRM and GNOME by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      and since GStreamer (and GNOME) are seldomly, if ever, run on "trusted" kernels, it just seems completely and utterly pointless to implement DRM in GStreamer.

      1. I've asked Fluendo this, and they will not talk about it. 2. This DRM is mostly aimed at stuff like Nokia Maemo, or other newer mobile phone systems (for the moment), which also run GNOME. 3. Fluendo are taking Free software (and others' work) and using digital signatures to lock it down and ensure that only their signed versions run, and implement DRM systems that take away users' rights. 4. In a comment on his blog, Christian Schaller was talking about the problem with kernels not being trusted -- and noted that there wasn't much they could do about it... except for the fact that Linux distros were working on a "solution" to this -- and again, he refuses to elaborate on the comment. Care to take a guess as to what exactly, and who, he was referring?

      Which Linux distro is busy building a Microsoft-style protected media path... the dirty fucking turncoats.

  2. You Don't Get It by turgid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Do you?

    No one in Sun "believes" in this DRM stuff. They just do it because theu have to to play in the pointy-haired Western markets. They make it Open Source to make a point.

    When Digial Restrictions Management puffs and wheezes its last breath in a few months, Sun will calmly pick up from where it left off, as it has always done, as if it hadn't happened.

    The enigineers in Sun know what they are doing, and they keep the PHBs beaten into shape. Mark my words.

    This is just Sun playing ball with the suits in the short term.

    In the mean time, I urge you Slashbots to learn how to use a compiler.

    --
    Stick Men
    1. Re:You Don't Get It by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      When Digial Restrictions Management puffs and wheezes its last breath in a few months, Sun will calmly pick up from where it left off, as it has always done, as if it hadn't happened.

      No, *you* don't get it. DRM isn't going anywhere... you want to know why? It's because it has fuck all to do with music and video copying now. It did once, but not anymore.

      DRM/Trusted Computing is about controlling what applications can run... and using the hardware to lock data to a particular piece (or pieces of code, "Trusted code" in fact). The technology companies know that how much power this will give them -- for a start, it gvies them the tools for perfect vendor lock-in, and the ability to run code in secret unanswerable to anyone. Furthermore, it allows them to virtually eliminate software piracy (apps are just DIGITAL (the 'D' in DRM) data to the operating system). It puts them in the driving seat and denies root access to the machines of the general public. It will give them an enormous and perpetual control over the entire computing infrastructure, should they get it implemented in its current form.

      So no... DRM isn't going anywhere... and no... there's not a single tech company that is going to back off from this without a massive backlash.

  3. Re:How "open source" can DRM be? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    yeah and do we all have a 'lot of problems' seeing how any good crypto system could be open source?
    the interesting tidbid is, that the open sourced drm will be harder to break as it cannot rely on simple security by obscurity.