Will it automatically up/down grade our Microsoft licenses and make the proper deductions from our bank accounts too? Microsofts accounting staff would love that feature!
Sorry, but there is no such thing. As the parent was saying, DRM is 'illogical', meaning that there is no amount of computer logic that can lock up something while simultaneously giving it to you. Check list: media, check; DRM key, check; DRM algorithm, check. So, whats missing? Only the time and motivation. I will remind you it only takes one motivated person to break it. It won't be me, I don't do that kind of thing outside of work, but then I also personally know and/or work with dozens of people that would be just as capable. Its not rocket science, you just need to know how to use the proper tools.
Trusted channels do not exist except in the minds of some wishful thinkers. The only way to have a true DRM is to have the media and player all in one black box enabled with a big self destruct anti-tamper device surrounding it. Even then I would question its ability to keep me out of it. If you suggest that there could be DRM on any general purpose machine that isn't subject to reverse engineering tools, RootKits, Virtualization, and custom device drivers then I'd like an account on that machine. Nothing, on any machine I have ever used could keep me from reading any byte in memory I choose if I have physical access to it. Given that nothing is safe that resides in its memory just where is this trusted channel going to exist?
Just make sure that every computer ever made is doing 100% CPU time on filtering of the Internet content looking for illegal content, and then there won't be any computers left to download that nasty stuff!
I have just one question... How are they going to make any money that way? Like, if I want to watch a movie one a brand new iPod, or my computer, and I can't rip it from the physical disk, then how do they collect my money? I'm not going to just give my money to them for 'not watching' what I can't even use.
Its difficult to see how one person can get so much so wrong, yet he obviously is not stupid, just in somebody's pocket. He obviously went to a lot of trouble to throw together a bunch of unrelated facts in order to build his alternate universe that he was trying to sell to the public. The problem is he even contradicts himself and totally ignores the facts of the case.
The comments on the other hand are quite intense and full of REAL facts to back them up. The meat of the case can be gleaned in just a short perusal of the responses.
...just a hook into your inbox to see what you trash right away and who's email you'd keep around for a while, or respond to, before trashing. Funny, Gmail and Yahoo could both do it his right now if they wanted. Why the big deal over understanding "the social network"? Its always been there right under their noses.
The technology presented here is good for 'the above average geek with a little extra time on his hands'. I thought long and hard as to whether this particular project would be worth the effort, for several months. My conclusion from an Industrial Engineering perspective is that you can only produce some very crude products with this kind of equipment due to the very loose tolerances with which you can squeeze out of a tube. No matter how hard you try to keep the line of ooze accurate, you are going to make a very rough edge on any product you try to squeeze out of the toothpaste tube. The better answer is to look at catalytic reactions under the higher frequencies of light, lasers, so that the tolerances can be kept to very high standards. The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength, thus the better the finish of the surface of the final product. Given a high enough frequency one could manipulate individual nano-particles into place and then solidify a catalytic substrate to permanently bond the structure into place. This would give you the ability to assemble many unforeseen compounds into structures that have properties that we can only dream of today. There would be no end to the possibilities if we could do this on the most accurate scale possible. Imagine a solar panel array being printed where almost every wavelength of light permeating the earths atmosphere could be captured and rectified into a constant usable voltage. no matter what wavelength. That in itself would be a very life altering event. Even a hypodermic needle will never give that kind of control. Lasers are much more accurate than paint brushes or tooth paste tubes.
If the GIMP team is at all concerned with market share I suggest doing two things;
1) Contact the camera manufacturers and present the idea of them of including a bundled version of GIMP with their hardware, much the way Microsoft had MS-DOS bundled with every IBM PC, and you know where their market share went after that. PhotoShop Lite did the same, as well as many other want-to-be's in that market, all hoping for the upgrade money when the product couldn't actually perform all but the most simple functions. GIMP would blow them away and would require no upgrades to do the whole job. If GIMP worked with an image management and photo upload package, all in the same software bundle, it would be the killer app for digital cameras.
2) Provide a simplified menu system for the novice user, like the "GIMP Shop" version, which is more intuitive to most users. The GIMP is powerful, but also intimidating to the new user. On the other hand a simplified interface for the common home user functions and the ability to enable the full set of tools would satisfy both types of users.
... as he gives his interview to be published on the Internet.
The cause and effect he imagines just isn't there. The 'cold place' he sees was just hidden during the past. He never had the chance to meet the mobs of people out there without the power of the Internet before, except when he traveled on tour. And I am sure he stopped to talk to them all. The new technology merely allowed him to know about the world he never saw before, and any existing problems he never realized.
Yes, the Industry is "colder" today, for him, as that is just in his own frame of mind. The Industry has always been a cutthroat place where contracts rule, not the artist. The "people" don't make it colder, they just make it possible for a sinking artist like him to make a living and get their interviews published on the Internet, and to drive up sales.
An uncrackable DRM is simply not logically possible. You need the media, key, and the algorithm to play the music don't you? What else would you possibly need? Just time! Any dedicated geek with a copy of IDA Pro and a ring 0 debugger can crack anything that can be put on a general use computer. The only way to keep the geek from doing that is to not allow the content anywhere near a computer that has an interface that can create software. Just think about the iPhone and how many hacks have been done in such a short period of time just to run other software on it, and the compilers have not even become mainstream yet. Once there is a foothold on the platform or a cross compiler for it the game is already over. The only way to keep your media safe is to lock everything into hardware that self destructs when tampered with. Of course I hate to think that the RIAA would ever talk to the military to find out how thats done.
The issue DRM is trying to solve is really a "social problem", in that the geek has to have a reason for wanting to 'share' what he has hacked. Yea, they want to show off and that is the 'proof', but sharing IS the problem. The hacker mind set is somewhat like the 'gunslinger syndrome' in that they feel challenged by the RIAA/MPAA and their seemingly feeble tactics that the hacker then feels justified, even obligated, to share. Crackers always think they need to prove they are smarter so they take the challenge and show proof of their success. The want to share, just for the prestige of being 'the one' I personally hack what I need to, when I need to, but only to get around my own fair use issues, and I would never share the content, ever. Not all hackers are dishonest. Some of us actually work for a living and understand what it is like on the other side of the fence.
If you can read it, to play it, the game is already over.
...to buy into an OS/Software model that M$ can just throw the switch and turn off your company if you have not paid your monthly extortio^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H payment on time.
I buy absolutely NOTHING with Sony's name on it, not just Sony BMG.
In fact I have one very dead laptop which I could have easily fixed, but I won't spend one penny on a replacement part for it if it winds up in Sony's bank account somehow. Upon a family member hearing that it could actually be fixed and usable again, and that I would not fix it, they asked if they could have it. I bought them a brand new laptop instead. I do put my money where my mouth is, and that won't be Sony any time soon.
Sorry, I can't do that in this forum, and certainly not for an 'Anonymous Coward' with an attitude. My employer has a very strict policy about going through the proper channels when it comes to these things and I kind of like my current job just the way it is. If you what to know the answer then go buy your own copy of IDA Pro and figure it out for yourself. It's really not that hard once you know what you are doing.
Their GDI privilege escalation (non-bug, non-vulnerability, buried topic, never mentioned anywhere at MS) started with NT 4.0 and was not "patched" until the GDI was rewritten for Vista. It was never "patched" because the design was fundamentally broken and could not be patched in any practical way. All you needed to exploit it was to get some application running at the SYSTEM privilege level to create and display a window and then the system was toast. Vista finally made the GDI just as secure as NT 3.5. Things are improving, No?
Glad you set me straight on that one. I guess this means I woun't have to tell my office mate I 0wn3d his system late yesterday then. Didn't happen because that would be virtually impossible now wouldn't it? Must have just been my active imagination watching his reaction to his new Folding@home screensaver a minute ago. EAL4? Yea, right.
Believe it or not, they can read a ram chip after a power down. Of course if you keep the chip below -60C its state stays stronger and longer, but there is equipment that is capable of reading those chips if 'National Security' is at stake. However I doubt the RIAA has the time, money, knowlege, and patients to do this and you can't just run out and buy the machine at the local computer store either. And we all know the RIAA will just put some "expert" on the stand that once apon a time saw one of those forensic chip reading machines in some lab one day and they now say though his expert opinion is there was a copyright violation on that chip. They could not pay me enough...
But at least this way any religious Christian can sit around all day long and think about nothing but incest and not even get in trouble from the Lord. Just two of each?
Besides, where would Noah find a "decent" priest willing to marry brother and sister to one another? Noah must have just used the Justice of the Peace instead, because obviously a lawyer MUST have been involved in any incest situation, somehow. All the priests alive after the flood had morals you know! One of those slimy lawyers must have been able to tread water pretty well.
Run? Ok, You are dead, next question... Or maybe you could just stand so very very still that the Velociraptor won't even see you sweat. Maybe. I just hope you are standing downwind. God does choose the direction of the wind doesn't he? But then he also has to feed the animals too. Tough choice.
Obviously, with the equilateral triangle problem this won't work very well, in which case just keep reminding yourself "There is no spoon". Is this like, um, praying? You never know, maybe it could work. Where did God put that phone booth anyway?
No, really. But I'm speaking about the people who are selling the DRM Technology, not the products using it. These sales people are committing fraud by selling lies to the business men representing the Media Labels. They use deceit and misrepresent the capabilities of the technology itself, and give such grandiose ideas of maximizing profits for those companies. They are just a modern version of the snake oil salesmen.
The fact is that the DRM technology will never work, and I have a logic analyzer and disassembler tools that can prove it. If I buy something with DRM by mistake (I have, but would never intentionally do so again) I'm going to darn well use/play it anyway. Try and stop me, though I would never stoop so low as to 'share it' because that would be _almost_ as dishonest as the salesmen who sell DRM technology in the first place.
There is literally NOTHING these fraudsters can do that will stop honest people from getting what they pay for, and the sooner the Labels wake up an realize what they are doing to their own industry the better it will be for everyone. In the light of many new "disruptive technologies" available for media distribution their previous role in the industry is in great jeopardy at the moment, and the use of DRM is just making that reality more obvious with every passing day. They need a new business model if they want to survive the new market forces out there.
The "labels" use the law to justify their monopoly by contractually forcing the "artists" into exclusive source distribution deals and assigning all their rights over to the Label. The Artist is the only valid monopoly that should exist, and without question they should be paid the greater sum of what money is collected for their works. The distribution channel should not be under an exclusive distribution contract so that the market forces can reward the artist with the "value" that the customers place on their works. If I like an artist then they should be paid well, not the Mafia cartel of Labels. Forget about file sharing for a moment, the Artists just need to get out from under the Draconian distribution control of the labels since that expense is no longer justified given the new distribution models that now exist. If the Labels want to do some "marketing" for the Artist thats fine, but they should not be in control of the distribution channels anymore.
No, but somebody hacked a Xbox to read the HD-DVD keys. I bet that made Mr G very happy about the future prospects in negotiations with the MPAA to achieve world dominance. When will they learn that the whole concept of DRM is logically infeasible.
The actual purpose of DRM of course is to enforce their monopoly and price-fixing tactics. This scheme only works if the MPAA "contract" with the artists/producer is exclusive, iron clad, and has enough draconian clauses to keep the artist from profiting through multiple venues. Perhaps the real fix to the intentional "unusability" of DRM is to ignore the DRM itself and work instead on getting the artists better contract negotiations so the market has some real competition on the delivery end. Do that and DRM magically goes away through market forces and there will be a value based on the quality of the product. The artist themselves are the only justifiable monopoly, and they should be paid well for good material.
I have got to give them a little credit here; DRM does nothing to deter file sharing, but this is at least closer to that of the "real" problem. Anti-copy algorithms will never be quelled by DRM since the RIAA must give the user the key, the data, and the code necessary to apply the other two together, just to make their crud useful in the first place. Its completely unusable and unmarketable without all three pieces. This is not a contradiction! Its only a matter of time before someone with a debugger takes the time to follow the code to discover how the three pieces fit together. Yes, IDA Pro, Ring0 Kernel debuggers, VMware, and raw human ingenuity all rock!
Now, I must say that at least embedding the original owners information in the data stream is at least closer to the issue of the actual problem. Unfortunately for the RIAA, debuggers still do their job, and the human ingenuity of the "few" that sit back to conceptualize, design, and sell this DRM cruf to the RIAA exec's is completely dwarfed by the the shear MAGNITUDE of the intelligent people who still feel ripped off by them. Honest people who just want to listen to what they legitimately purchased, and that DRM will never be the solution to this. Until the RIAA address the actual "social problem" they themselves have created, in that they are despised by all the honest an legitimate owners of "unusable" content, the RIAA will never be able to solve the file sharing problem that they actually created.
Ok, RIAA, solve the REAL problem, your perception of greed with selling a completely unusable product, and then we, yes, WE, the ones with the M-O-N-E-Y, might just start to pay attention to what you are saying! Me? Yes, I DO have money, but I spend it wisely, and not on completely "unusable" content, no matter how much money you pour into your defunct concept of DRM, or advertising of that same unusable crud. I don't file share, I don't even crack your DRM (though I have everything needed to do it should I have a mind to, or some day if I just get bored enough), but I also have VERY strong principals to live by. When you have something I want bad enough, I'll let you know. In the mean time you had better think about what I might actually want from you. Think long and hard, as that obviously does not come easy for you lately.
In fact almost all networks are non-existent in my area. Five houses down the street they can't even get cable modem connections, no T1's, and DSL won't come here either. Sometimes I think I can shout farther than the network goes around here. The only Wi-Fi in my area comes from my own rig with a legal booster amp on it. Some of my neighbors might appreciate my hooking up a yaggi directional to it though since it won't reach all the way down the end of the next block. I'm currently looking for good/cheap community mesh solution and a way to get it connected online, since its just too much trouble for any of the utilities to bother.
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Will it automatically up/down grade our Microsoft licenses and make the proper deductions from our bank accounts too? Microsofts accounting staff would love that feature!
Trusted channels do not exist except in the minds of some wishful thinkers. The only way to have a true DRM is to have the media and player all in one black box enabled with a big self destruct anti-tamper device surrounding it. Even then I would question its ability to keep me out of it. If you suggest that there could be DRM on any general purpose machine that isn't subject to reverse engineering tools, RootKits, Virtualization, and custom device drivers then I'd like an account on that machine. Nothing, on any machine I have ever used could keep me from reading any byte in memory I choose if I have physical access to it. Given that nothing is safe that resides in its memory just where is this trusted channel going to exist?
I have just one question... How are they going to make any money that way? Like, if I want to watch a movie one a brand new iPod, or my computer, and I can't rip it from the physical disk, then how do they collect my money? I'm not going to just give my money to them for 'not watching' what I can't even use.
Do these people even have a brain?
The comments on the other hand are quite intense and full of REAL facts to back them up. The meat of the case can be gleaned in just a short perusal of the responses.
...just a hook into your inbox to see what you trash right away and who's email you'd keep around for a while, or respond to, before trashing. Funny, Gmail and Yahoo could both do it his right now if they wanted. Why the big deal over understanding "the social network"? Its always been there right under their noses.
Reflex time improves with continued exposure to aberrant behavior. ;)
The technology presented here is good for 'the above average geek with a little extra time on his hands'. I thought long and hard as to whether this particular project would be worth the effort, for several months. My conclusion from an Industrial Engineering perspective is that you can only produce some very crude products with this kind of equipment due to the very loose tolerances with which you can squeeze out of a tube. No matter how hard you try to keep the line of ooze accurate, you are going to make a very rough edge on any product you try to squeeze out of the toothpaste tube. The better answer is to look at catalytic reactions under the higher frequencies of light, lasers, so that the tolerances can be kept to very high standards. The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength, thus the better the finish of the surface of the final product. Given a high enough frequency one could manipulate individual nano-particles into place and then solidify a catalytic substrate to permanently bond the structure into place. This would give you the ability to assemble many unforeseen compounds into structures that have properties that we can only dream of today. There would be no end to the possibilities if we could do this on the most accurate scale possible. Imagine a solar panel array being printed where almost every wavelength of light permeating the earths atmosphere could be captured and rectified into a constant usable voltage. no matter what wavelength. That in itself would be a very life altering event. Even a hypodermic needle will never give that kind of control. Lasers are much more accurate than paint brushes or tooth paste tubes.
1) Contact the camera manufacturers and present the idea of them of including a bundled version of GIMP with their hardware, much the way Microsoft had MS-DOS bundled with every IBM PC, and you know where their market share went after that. PhotoShop Lite did the same, as well as many other want-to-be's in that market, all hoping for the upgrade money when the product couldn't actually perform all but the most simple functions. GIMP would blow them away and would require no upgrades to do the whole job. If GIMP worked with an image management and photo upload package, all in the same software bundle, it would be the killer app for digital cameras.
2) Provide a simplified menu system for the novice user, like the "GIMP Shop" version, which is more intuitive to most users. The GIMP is powerful, but also intimidating to the new user. On the other hand a simplified interface for the common home user functions and the ability to enable the full set of tools would satisfy both types of users.
The cause and effect he imagines just isn't there. The 'cold place' he sees was just hidden during the past. He never had the chance to meet the mobs of people out there without the power of the Internet before, except when he traveled on tour. And I am sure he stopped to talk to them all. The new technology merely allowed him to know about the world he never saw before, and any existing problems he never realized.
Yes, the Industry is "colder" today, for him, as that is just in his own frame of mind. The Industry has always been a cutthroat place where contracts rule, not the artist. The "people" don't make it colder, they just make it possible for a sinking artist like him to make a living and get their interviews published on the Internet, and to drive up sales.
The issue DRM is trying to solve is really a "social problem", in that the geek has to have a reason for wanting to 'share' what he has hacked. Yea, they want to show off and that is the 'proof', but sharing IS the problem. The hacker mind set is somewhat like the 'gunslinger syndrome' in that they feel challenged by the RIAA/MPAA and their seemingly feeble tactics that the hacker then feels justified, even obligated, to share. Crackers always think they need to prove they are smarter so they take the challenge and show proof of their success. The want to share, just for the prestige of being 'the one' I personally hack what I need to, when I need to, but only to get around my own fair use issues, and I would never share the content, ever. Not all hackers are dishonest. Some of us actually work for a living and understand what it is like on the other side of the fence.
If you can read it, to play it, the game is already over.
...to buy into an OS/Software model that M$ can just throw the switch and turn off your company if you have not paid your monthly extortio^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H payment on time.
In fact I have one very dead laptop which I could have easily fixed, but I won't spend one penny on a replacement part for it if it winds up in Sony's bank account somehow. Upon a family member hearing that it could actually be fixed and usable again, and that I would not fix it, they asked if they could have it. I bought them a brand new laptop instead. I do put my money where my mouth is, and that won't be Sony any time soon.
Oh great, I can hear the PR advertisements already; "Put a SOC in it".
Sorry, I can't do that in this forum, and certainly not for an 'Anonymous Coward' with an attitude. My employer has a very strict policy about going through the proper channels when it comes to these things and I kind of like my current job just the way it is. If you what to know the answer then go buy your own copy of IDA Pro and figure it out for yourself. It's really not that hard once you know what you are doing.
Their GDI privilege escalation (non-bug, non-vulnerability, buried topic, never mentioned anywhere at MS) started with NT 4.0 and was not "patched" until the GDI was rewritten for Vista. It was never "patched" because the design was fundamentally broken and could not be patched in any practical way. All you needed to exploit it was to get some application running at the SYSTEM privilege level to create and display a window and then the system was toast. Vista finally made the GDI just as secure as NT 3.5. Things are improving, No?
Glad you set me straight on that one. I guess this means I woun't have to tell my office mate I 0wn3d his system late yesterday then. Didn't happen because that would be virtually impossible now wouldn't it? Must have just been my active imagination watching his reaction to his new Folding@home screensaver a minute ago. EAL4? Yea, right.
Believe it or not, they can read a ram chip after a power down. Of course if you keep the chip below -60C its state stays stronger and longer, but there is equipment that is capable of reading those chips if 'National Security' is at stake. However I doubt the RIAA has the time, money, knowlege, and patients to do this and you can't just run out and buy the machine at the local computer store either. And we all know the RIAA will just put some "expert" on the stand that once apon a time saw one of those forensic chip reading machines in some lab one day and they now say though his expert opinion is there was a copyright violation on that chip. They could not pay me enough...
Besides, where would Noah find a "decent" priest willing to marry brother and sister to one another? Noah must have just used the Justice of the Peace instead, because obviously a lawyer MUST have been involved in any incest situation, somehow. All the priests alive after the flood had morals you know! One of those slimy lawyers must have been able to tread water pretty well.
Obviously, with the equilateral triangle problem this won't work very well, in which case just keep reminding yourself "There is no spoon". Is this like, um, praying? You never know, maybe it could work. Where did God put that phone booth anyway?
The fact is that the DRM technology will never work, and I have a logic analyzer and disassembler tools that can prove it. If I buy something with DRM by mistake (I have, but would never intentionally do so again) I'm going to darn well use/play it anyway. Try and stop me, though I would never stoop so low as to 'share it' because that would be _almost_ as dishonest as the salesmen who sell DRM technology in the first place.
There is literally NOTHING these fraudsters can do that will stop honest people from getting what they pay for, and the sooner the Labels wake up an realize what they are doing to their own industry the better it will be for everyone. In the light of many new "disruptive technologies" available for media distribution their previous role in the industry is in great jeopardy at the moment, and the use of DRM is just making that reality more obvious with every passing day. They need a new business model if they want to survive the new market forces out there.
The "labels" use the law to justify their monopoly by contractually forcing the "artists" into exclusive source distribution deals and assigning all their rights over to the Label. The Artist is the only valid monopoly that should exist, and without question they should be paid the greater sum of what money is collected for their works. The distribution channel should not be under an exclusive distribution contract so that the market forces can reward the artist with the "value" that the customers place on their works. If I like an artist then they should be paid well, not the Mafia cartel of Labels. Forget about file sharing for a moment, the Artists just need to get out from under the Draconian distribution control of the labels since that expense is no longer justified given the new distribution models that now exist. If the Labels want to do some "marketing" for the Artist thats fine, but they should not be in control of the distribution channels anymore.
The actual purpose of DRM of course is to enforce their monopoly and price-fixing tactics. This scheme only works if the MPAA "contract" with the artists/producer is exclusive, iron clad, and has enough draconian clauses to keep the artist from profiting through multiple venues. Perhaps the real fix to the intentional "unusability" of DRM is to ignore the DRM itself and work instead on getting the artists better contract negotiations so the market has some real competition on the delivery end. Do that and DRM magically goes away through market forces and there will be a value based on the quality of the product. The artist themselves are the only justifiable monopoly, and they should be paid well for good material.
Now, I must say that at least embedding the original owners information in the data stream is at least closer to the issue of the actual problem. Unfortunately for the RIAA, debuggers still do their job, and the human ingenuity of the "few" that sit back to conceptualize, design, and sell this DRM cruf to the RIAA exec's is completely dwarfed by the the shear MAGNITUDE of the intelligent people who still feel ripped off by them. Honest people who just want to listen to what they legitimately purchased, and that DRM will never be the solution to this. Until the RIAA address the actual "social problem" they themselves have created, in that they are despised by all the honest an legitimate owners of "unusable" content, the RIAA will never be able to solve the file sharing problem that they actually created.
Ok, RIAA, solve the REAL problem, your perception of greed with selling a completely unusable product, and then we, yes, WE, the ones with the M-O-N-E-Y, might just start to pay attention to what you are saying! Me? Yes, I DO have money, but I spend it wisely, and not on completely "unusable" content, no matter how much money you pour into your defunct concept of DRM, or advertising of that same unusable crud. I don't file share, I don't even crack your DRM (though I have everything needed to do it should I have a mind to, or some day if I just get bored enough), but I also have VERY strong principals to live by. When you have something I want bad enough, I'll let you know. In the mean time you had better think about what I might actually want from you. Think long and hard, as that obviously does not come easy for you lately.
So all I need is my own source of paper? Sounds like a real "secure" way of proving nothing!
In fact almost all networks are non-existent in my area. Five houses down the street they can't even get cable modem connections, no T1's, and DSL won't come here either. Sometimes I think I can shout farther than the network goes around here. The only Wi-Fi in my area comes from my own rig with a legal booster amp on it. Some of my neighbors might appreciate my hooking up a yaggi directional to it though since it won't reach all the way down the end of the next block. I'm currently looking for good/cheap community mesh solution and a way to get it connected online, since its just too much trouble for any of the utilities to bother.