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DVD-CSS's Encryption Not Enough? Here Comes DECE
An anonymous reader writes "Studios digitally restricting (drm) or locking down content with DVD-CSS not enough for you? Well, get ready, here comes the entertainment cartel's Holy Grail, all-hardware encryption, via 'DECE.' And let's not forget this little issue."
The amount of software I have a "cracked" version of running on my PC coincides in a scary manner (>85%) with the amount of software I have discs for sitting on my shelf.
The remainder I have either (a) lost the disc for or (b) had the floppy go bad.
Why so many of them cracked? In the case of games, so I don't have to get out the disc and use the DVD drive as a fucking 5 1/4" dongle just to play all the content that's been loaded to my hard drive anyways. In the case of the software, so I can disable the neverending stream of "UPDATE ME UPDATE ME UPDATE ME" crap and just use the software for what I need it for.
And don't tell me it really constantly needs to check for updates. It's phoning home just to fucking phone home.
They turn around and do this with "digital media" files, I don't bother with them any more. "Rights locker" my ass.
StarForce can break some drives /hardware/, parent had SecuROM break /software/ (drivers). I've never heard of this before, but I believe it inserts itself as a CD driver to prevent some things, so a small bug could easily ruin a driver stack and require a reinstall.
One of the many dangers of trusting legal, properly licensed software. Kind of sad that you can trust scene hackers more than legit content providers; I've found trojans in both but the former is by far cleaner.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
That is supply and demand. The motives for people buying the goods at a given price is irrelevant - it could be mind control from the planet Zog , it makes no difference. The fact that they are willing to do so is all that matters.
Well, that's demand anyway. The idea of "Supply and Demand" is that prices fluctuate based on shifts in either. But MP3s on Amazon or iTunes are in unlimited supply so according to supply and demand the price for them (regardless of demand) should approach $0.
I'm not suggesting that supply and demand don't factor into real world prices of physical products. But I am suggesting that the reason buying an MP3/AAC "album" on iTunes/Amazon is still priced close to the same cost as buying the physical CD *and* why the price for a newly released CD is still $9.99 - $13.99 (on average) even though the cost to manufacture them has dropped significantly since the early days of CDs is NOT supply and demand but due to price anchoring. Hell, Amazon still shows "list prices" of almost all CDs and has them CROSSED OUT so you can see how much "you save" when you buy it even though NOBODY is paying $18.98 for a new Taylor Swift CD. And that IS price anchoring.