Re: CPRM

From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Wed Jan 24 2001 - 21:20:31 MST


Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de wrote:
> 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.

...or coming up with something to provide a known (maybe blank) key,
either to run in front of or behind the controller.

> > 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.

And we're the remaining .1%, or at least belong to them.

> > 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.

One wonders why the large commercial organizations trying to push this
can't manage to implement hard-to-break security despite the
availability of peer-reviewed, off-the-shelf methods.

> 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.

Possibly conspiracy-theory level, but...what if they push for a law
saying that only licensed organizations are authorized to give away
copyright rights (possibly as a step down from these organizations being
the only ones allowed to have copyright, and that all content authors
must assign copyright to one of these organizations, with the
organizations able to declare themselves owner if the author does not
assign within some finite amount of time)? The licensing agency might
be controlled by cartel, or they might just sue any licensor they do not
approve of out of existence. Upshot: illegal to be an indie
distributor.



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