Tag: DRM
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SunnComm Responds
Hiawatha Bray’s story in today’s Boston Globe reports on SunnComm’s response to Alex Halderman’s dissection of SunnComm’s CD copy-protection technology. ”There’s nothing in his report that’s surprising,” said SunnComm president Bill Whitmore. ”There’s nothing in the report that I’m concerned about.” Whitmore said his company’s system is simply supposed to give honest music lovers a…
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Fixing Trusted Computing
The EFF has posted a very nice piece (apparently written by Seth Schoen) on “trusted computing” systems. The piece makes two important contributions to the debate. First, it gives the best simple introduction to trusted computing technologies that I have seen. Second, it suggests “owner override,” a technological tweak that would largely eliminate the downside…
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Story Time
In a speech today, John Fictitious, president of the Hospital Association of America, expressed his industry’s disappointment at the continuing prevalence of cancer in America. “Our industry stands ready to deploy a cure, but the doctors and drug companies have been unwilling to sit down at the bargaining table to work out a mutually agreeable…
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DRM and Black Boxes
Lisa Rein has posted (with permission) a video of my short presentation at the Berkeley DRM conference. I talked about the push to turn technologies into “black boxes” that the public is not allowed to study, understand, or discuss, and how that paralyzes public debate on important issues such as electronic voting.
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"If It's Not Snake Oil, It's Pretty Awesome"
In today’s Los Angeles Times, Jon Healey writes about a new DRM proposal from a company called Music Public Broadcasting. The company’s claims, which are not substantiated in the story, give off a distinct aroma of snake oil. The warning signs are all there. First, there is the flamboyant, self-promoting entrepreneur, newly arrived from another…
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Self-Destructing DVDs
Last week a company called FlexPlay announced Self-Destructing DVDs (SD-DVDs), which oxidize themselves – and so become unplayable – 48 hours after removal from their package. (The official name is, amusingly, “EZ-D”.) The idea is to provide the equivalent of a rental, while saving the consumer the trouble of returning the disk to the rental…
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Rounding
Cory Doctorow writes on Cruelty to Analog about an MPAA presentation to the ARDG, the group that is trying to bring Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to analog content. The presentation talks about a “rounding problem” that arises because of an assumption that analog DRM is unable to micromanage the use of content to the same…
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DRM, and the First Rule of Security Analysis
When I teach Information Security, the first lecture is dedicated to the basics of security analysis. And the first rule of security analysis is this: understand your threat model. Experience teaches that if you don’t have a clear threat model – a clear idea of what you are trying to prevent and what technical capabilities…
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DRM in Cell Phones?
Elisa Batista at Wired News reports on the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) trade show. Rep. Billy Tauzin gave his perspective in a speech: But Tauzin did offer [CTIA CEO Tom] Wheeler some advice in order to avoid more regulation: Have the industry clean up its act. If it doesn’t want to be hit…
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DRM and the Regulatory Ratchet
Regular readers know that one of my running themes is the harm caused when policy makers don’t engage with technical realities. One of the most striking examples of this has to do with DRM (or copy-restriction) technologies. Independent technical experts agree almost universally that DRM is utterly unable to prevent the leakage of copyrighted material…