I disagree. My experience while working in the entertainment software industry for the past ten years is that copy protection schemes do work.
Are they all eventually cracked? Yes... but that's not the point. The point is that it slows casual copying. I call that a limited success and I bet the movie guys think the same way when they use CSS and Macrovision(tm).
Being a "content creator" myself, I guess I just see things a bit differently than most of the people on here. (You'll probably come to my views if you've walked in my shoes and saw the huge amount of effort that goes into making a quality game these days. You'd feel disappointed too when somebody rips off your game, is obviously being entertained by it, but they think it's their "right" to steel it.)
As I see it, the gist of a secure harddrive is that it is the same as any old harddrive but now you have the option to download commercial content from the web... and that the company who sells it to you gets to describe how you can use that content. What's wrong with that? If you don't like the content licenser's terms... don't buy the content. It's really that simple.
I think the questions we should be asking are:
Is the proposed implementation technically good?
Is it robust?
Is it going to be transparent for those people who don't want to download secure content?
How do I upgrade to a new machine/bigger harddrive and move my licensed content there?
Is there any privacy concerns?
Will it support unlicensed "public domain content."
Will it support "independently produced content?" E.g. If I shoot an indy film on my DV camcorder, is there a way I can release it independently to the world without onerous licensing fees. (This is a weakness of DVD licensing that I don't like.)
So far, my take on the current proposal is that it is weak because it doesn't address all these issues and concerns. These are the areas where we should let our voices be heard but I don't think the whole idea of a secure harddrive is a bad one.
Maybe the open source community should come up with a proposal of their own for how a sane system for licensed content could work. (You might think I'm insane for even suggesting this, but I do think it could be done and we'd get to shape the future rather than let it be done behind closed doors.)
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Are they all eventually cracked? Yes... but that's not the point. The point is that it slows casual copying. I call that a limited success and I bet the movie guys think the same way when they use CSS and Macrovision(tm).
Being a "content creator" myself, I guess I just see things a bit differently than most of the people on here. (You'll probably come to my views if you've walked in my shoes and saw the huge amount of effort that goes into making a quality game these days. You'd feel disappointed too when somebody rips off your game, is obviously being entertained by it, but they think it's their "right" to steel it.)
As I see it, the gist of a secure harddrive is that it is the same as any old harddrive but now you have the option to download commercial content from the web... and that the company who sells it to you gets to describe how you can use that content. What's wrong with that? If you don't like the content licenser's terms... don't buy the content. It's really that simple.
I think the questions we should be asking are:
So far, my take on the current proposal is that it is weak because it doesn't address all these issues and concerns. These are the areas where we should let our voices be heard but I don't think the whole idea of a secure harddrive is a bad one.
Maybe the open source community should come up with a proposal of their own for how a sane system for licensed content could work. (You might think I'm insane for even suggesting this, but I do think it could be done and we'd get to shape the future rather than let it be done behind closed doors.)