From: Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Date: Wed Jan 24 2001 - 07:30:59 MST
denis bider wrote:
> My fears are the following:
> - That CPRM might actually be a very well designed technology. If it was
> just a software layer over the operating system, sure, I can break it. But
> if it's integrated in the computer itself, there's no way I can defeat it on
> a budget.
I've been following the discussion since end-December 2000, and it is indeed
not breakable, since built-in at the hardware level. You can't read the
(large, many) CPRM keys of a hard drive (stored in a dedicated surface
area) by means other than opening it in a clean room, and bypassing the
controller.
> - That the masses will be indifferent enough not to mind if they buy a hard
> disk and there's this weird "CPRM" thing mentioned in the fine print.
Sure, but there are 5-10% of consumers which are going to care. And they
constitute a market.
> Suddenly, there will be *no* alternatives. And while we were looking away,
> the scenery for content extortion has been set up.
>From lurking on t13 mailing list I have the impression that C4 entity people
were really surprised by the public outrage, and backed off quickly. We'll see
how it goes. In any case, I'm not going to buy any CPRM device, period. If this
means I can't buy any device at all, tough luck.
> There is this film called The Matrix, I'm sure some of you might have heard
> of it [grin]. There's this Keanu Reeves that plays some bloke named Neo in
> this film, and Keanu gets USD 30 million to do it. But that might still be
> OK; I don't mind that.
The man wants to make copying hard. Losses are negligable if 99.9% of all
users can't bypass the copyright protection.
> Oh, but I forgot. There is also this producer who earns hundreds of millions
> from the movie. Oh, and they produce hundreds of movies to earn hundreds of
> millions from. But I could tolerate that, too.
Movies will be getting ripped off, whether copyright protected, or not.
A person still needs to be able to see it, so you can intercept the content
there. For instance, I can grab the frame buffer, or just set up a digital
camera and film stuff of a CRT or LCD.
> What I *don't* particularly like is that these people don't realize that
> they are already in an outrageously advantegous position, and now they even
> want to *increase* their advantage. If this succeeds, I think it may lead to
> a totalitarian regime (diguised as a democracy) with content-generators as
> the new powers that be.
I dunno, I can rip off DVDs and CDs just fine. I just don't bother.
If they're going to up the ante, we're going to get a rather large alternative
low-commercial culture. If I make a movie or a music piece, I own the rights
to it, and can publish it on the Net as it will darn please me, do PR by word
of mouth or hire a PR agency, and take whatever revenue might be coming in.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:05:17 MST