Year: 2006
-
CD DRM: Compatibility and Software Updates
Alex and I are working on an academic paper, “Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode”, which will analyze several not-yet-discussed aspects of the XCP and MediaMax CD copy protection technologies, and will try to put the Sony CD episode in context and draw lessons for the future. We’ll post the complete paper here next…
-
Spyware Workshop, March 16-17
Helen Nissenbaum and I are co-organizing an interdisciplinary workshop on spyware, in New York on March 16 (evening) and March 17 (day). We have a great-looking lineup of speakers, reflecting a range of viewpoints on technical, legal, and policy aspects of the spyware problem. The workshop is free and open to the public, but we…
-
CD DRM: Attacks on Disc Recognition
Ed and I are working on an academic paper, “Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode”, which will analyze several not-yet-discussed aspects of the XCP and MediaMax CD copy protection technologies, and will try to put the Sony CD episode in context and draw lessons for the future. We’ll post the complete paper here next…
-
CD DRM: Threat Models and Business Models
Alex and I are working on an academic paper, “Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode”, which will analyze several not-yet-discussed aspects of the XCP and MediaMax CD copy protection technologies, and will try to put the Sony CD episode in context and draw lessons for the future. We’ll post the complete paper here next…
-
Analog Hole Bill Would Impose a Secret Law
If you’ve been reading here lately, you know that I’m no fan of the Sensenbrenner/Conyers analog hole bill. The bill would require almost all analog video devices to implement two technologies called CGMS-A and VEIL. CGMS-A is reasonably well known, but the VEIL content protection technology is relatively new. I wanted to learn more about…
-
Google Video and Privacy
Last week Google introduced its video service, which lets users download free or paid-for videos. The service’s design is distinctive in many ways, not all of them desirable. One of the distinctive features is a DRM (anti-infringement) mechanism which is applied if the copyright owner asks for it. Today I want to discuss the design…
-
How Would Two-Tier Internet Work?
The word is out now that residential ISPs like BellSouth want to provide a kind of two-tier Internet service, where ordinary Internet services get one level of performance, and preferred sites or services, presumably including the ISPs’ own services, get better performance. It’s clear why ISPs want to do this: they want to charge big…
-
CGMS-A + VEIL = SDMI ?
I wrote last week about the Analog Hole Bill, which would require almost all devices that handle analog video signals to implement a particular anti-copying scheme called CGMS-A + VEIL. Today I want to talk about how that scheme works, and what we can learn from its design. CGMS-A + VEIL is, not surprisingly, a…
-
The Professional Device Hole
Any American parent with kids of a certain age knows Louis Sachar’s novel Holes, and the movie made from it. It’s set somewhere in the Texas desert, at a boot camp for troublemaking kids. The kids are forced to work all day in the scorching sun, digging holes in the rock-hard ground then re-filling them.…
-
Predictions for 2006
Each January, I have offered predictions for the upcoming year. This year, Alex and I put our heads together to come up with a single list of predictions. Having doubled the number of bloggers making predictions, we seem to have doubled the number of predictions, too. Each prediction is supported by at least one of…