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IDs For MO Drives To Counter Copyright Violations 124

Posted by timothy from the did-the-unique-processor-id-flap-mean-nothing? dept.
CaptMondo writes: "It seems like HD manufacturers may be feeling the heat about MP3s and MPEGs. Fujitsu has just put out a press release about putting what they are calling 'Media ID' for their hard drives, which will identify each individual hard drive. Applications utilizing this feature can 'prevent reading of copied information.' Ugh!" From the description that link offers, it sounds like media, drives and applications would have to cooperate for this to work as intended, and that it only applies to 3.5" MO storage. Can you say technological tangle? It sure sounds like a good way to sell media though ... hmmm.
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IDs For HDs To Counter Copyright Violations More

IDs For HDs To Counter Copyright Violations

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  • Take a look at Richard Stallman's 1997 text The Right to Read [fsf.org]. Very interesting and far-sighted perspective on the things that RMS saw coming three years ago and that are becoming reality much more quickly than even the more paranoid among us had thought.
    --
    Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
    H. Rap Brown
  • Now all those 'misplaced' disks at US research facilities can be tracked down much more easily!

  • I remember various copy-protected floppy schemes. People stopped buying copy protected programs because they failed in various ways.

    That brings back memories. One of my least favorite copy protections was that utilised by a PC game called "D/Generation". Not only did it have the usual weird sector arrangements, it also had code to read Ids on the computer hardware, and after only 2 changes of any hardware ID, the game would no longer install [it would save information on it's own diskette]. Talk about planned obselescence. ;-(

    Back on topic, the nice thing is that are so many storage options these days that an overall copy protection strategy would be extremely hard to enforce. We have hard drives, zip disks, CD-Rs, MOs, DVD-RAM, etc.

  • maybe I'm the only one who got this out of the story, but it has nothing to do with an ID for the drive. It is MO disks with their own unique ID incorporated into it by the manufacturer. The drive reads the ID... not real sure how this would affect piracy, unless they plan to make MO disks the primary means of software distribution. I dont know anyone who uses them personally and few companies I've worked for have used them either, but primarily just for running small backups.
  • If he wants to repeatedly post something helpful
    so that /. newbies understand what's at stake in
    these IP posts, why should you bitch? I note that
    his post genuinely provides useful information,
    while your post, on the other hand, simply
    derides him for offering help. Who's post is
    the more insightful?
  • > Just imagine if to register a copy Windows you had to call M$, give them your windows registration code and your HD ID.

    Simple "solution" to that. Just keep pestering them ever few weeks giving them a new id, until M$ realizes "its more trouble then its worth"
  • That's a great idea. I'm definetely going to go out and buy a Fujitsu drive tomorrow. That way, not only do I have to swap the hard drive back and forth to listen to MP3s on more than once computer, I'll have the added feature of not being able to share them with friends. Gee, I hope that everyone buys one of these drives. Then I won't be able to get any of their music, either.

    Seriously, though. timothy [monkey.org] mentions that "media, drives and applications" must cooperate in order for the plan to work. That's done easily enough with enough man hours working on proprietary software. But why does fujitsu think that they'll actually be able to sell any of these drives? Yours in sarcasm, Matt

  • Just imagine if to register a copy Windows you had to call M$, give them your windows registration code and your HD ID. Then you would receive a password needed to install windows. If your hard drive crashed and you bought another, you'd have to call them again for another install password. Now imagine M$ started to require it's OEMs to use this type of drive to get the "best" price. Since most people buy instead of build their machines, next time they buy a new machine their stuck with one.
  • I've never had them say that when I *buy* a CD, but they do when I RENT one.
    So strange a concept (renting new CDs) but it is very popular here. Just like renting videos.
    The minidiscs are usually right by the counter, too, but you can always find them cheaper somewhere else...
    Cheers,
    Jim in Tokyo

  • Have you scene the sheer size of a LaserDisk? Can you imagine trying to put a drive that size in your computer? I doesn't matter whether someone wants a LaserDisk drive available or not. The fact is, you can't have one! It's too big!
  • No, I am a person who is technically competent enough to understand the issues and build my own systems (and systems for clients) yet still be concerned for those without the funds to buy my systems (I build using high-quality, brand name parts) or otherwise lacking technical sophistication.
    And, the tatooing movement has now moved to the corporate desktop as well. I have my own consulting company, but until recently I advised people to buy brand-name computers. The profit margin is not high enough for me to focus my resources on system builds.
    However, the latest Microsoft crap has made me rethink that, and I am now actively building (or subcontracting out, depending on the order size) systems again, because I cannot in good faith recommend purchase of the latest crippled machines.
    I generally find that those who are the most arrogant are the least experienced.

  • How does this thing work? (Score:3)

    by Starselbrg ( 45165 ) <slashdot@NoSpam. ... er.mailsnare.net> on Thursday September 14, 2000 @08:17PM (#778530)
    I'm surprised no one has asked this yet: How does this thing work? The press release held no valueable information, of course. It just kept saying "this will protect you copyrighted content on the Internet" over and over in different words.

    Is it supposed to prevent you from copying information to it? Because that would make one darn useful removable drive, not being able to write to it. How would a program using the Media ID tell if what it's writing is "copyrighted material"?

    Is it supposed to prevent you from copying information from it? Because that would make one darn useful removable drive, not being able to read from it. How would a program using Media ID tell if what's being read from the disk is "copyrighted material"?

    I can imagine a scheme where a "specially certified application" could write data to the disk with information about how many times the data had been read, but that really doesn't have anything to do with an ID. How the heck does the ID help?

    The only answer that I can think of is that all this ID and Copyright Protection BS is going to get in the way, and nothing else. And you know what? It will kill the format. These things will never become popular if people have to jump through hoops to use them.

    Besides, how many Evil Pirates do you know swapping Copyrighted Material on Big Floppies? Give me a break. CD-Rs and the Internet, that's the tools of their trade.

  • Yes, I remember this from my Japan days. In my day (1992) they had big stacks of TDK tapes (conveniently labeled "For CD!") next to the cash register. As I recall the prices were pretty good.

    I remember reading in the paper that the US Trade Representative (Carla Hills) wanted CD rental to be shut down as it was contra-copyright. No such luck, apparently.

    sulli

  • Fujitsu and Western digital go hand in hand when it comes to making cheap hard drives. I sure as hell wouldn't buy one. Strangely enough fujitsu also makes (or made) Sparc cpu's.
  • This is almost one of those "if a tree falls and nobody's around" types of issues. I think the last time I used an MO drive was around 1990 or so...NeXTcubes booted off of 'em. When I look around at home, at work, and elsewhere, it seems to me that Zip, LS-120, and CD-R(W) have taken the market. Zip and LS-120 are cheaper. CD-R(W) is cheaper and the disks can be read in audio CD players, DVD players, and CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives. Where does that leave MO?

    _/_
    / v \
    (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
    \_^_/

  • Not everyone has money. I mean, I can afford to buy every CD and DVD I want now, but in my youth, I had to tape albums from my friends, and the local library.

    Now maybe if I hadn't been able to then, I wouldn't be so obsessed now, and the MPAA/RIAA wouldn't have me now as the enormous revenue stream that I am, now that I actually have money.

    Even though I know that any copy protection system can be cracked, I hope they succeed, just so they completely alienate their market, and drive themselves into the sea.
  • >And judging from the actions of Hasbro & Co, most companies don't seem to even care much if they make mistakes that inconvienence users, as long as they keep the majority of people happy and/or oblivious to the problem. (*cough*hasbro*cough*)

    Mattel shurely (hic)... really shouldn't post under the influence, but they make it so damn hard to get hold of weed these days that in order to get out of it, I have to drink, and drinking makes me type loudly and incessantly... damn, there goes all that hard won karma, guess I won't be moderating again for a while... still, at least that means IE wont be falling over under the weight of all those pop-list thingies... arse... where's my vodka...?
  • (IMO) We are witnessing a trend in the industry to include technology in products that can be used for copy protection purposes.
    Right now it is still possible to circumvent those technologies (like it has been in the past) but i expect that this will change as technology gets more powerful, and copy protection tech is backed by law.
    We are heading towards a situation where the pubishers of information have very strong control over who may read it. Since most people do not see what is wrong with that (or expect someone else to take care of it), i do not think it can be stopped.
    With the DMCA it is just about to happen in the US, and since the EU tends to copy US laws we will have it over here soon. I am worried for the people who will not be rich enough to participate in the 'information age'...
  • Exactly. What's to stop joe hax0r from applying the dissassembler, locating the check, and nop'ing it out? Having cracked, and written a number of copy protection systems myself, I can say from first hand experience, all it takes is a little time, and a programmer who's strapped for cash. Not that I'd do anything like that these days, not that there's anything worth cracking anymore...;(
  • So lets get this right... You are watching a low quality actual pirate DVD of a movie, coming out of China, which odds on, your actual criminals *have* made money from and your conscience is *clear*? In what way is it clear? Is this the same clear that has you refusing to pay taxes for the police but paying the mafia protection money?

  • This one applies to media mostly. "If you can view or hear it, you can save/duplicate it." This was proven for ASF with ASFRecorder. I'm sure there's something out there for RealAudio and RealVideo. What the big 5 (music CD producers), the media giants, and the software designers have to realize is that the commerce-ising of media content only leads to a feeling of rebellion. When this rebellion is adopted by programmers, they take steps to crack the code, fool the server, or otherwise wrench loose the bonds which the greedy company has placed on the media piece.

    BTW, anyone know how to get around that Macrovision thing? My GeForce 2 apparently has it, but I'm running it with reference drivers. Any suggestions?

  • Seems like as time has marched on in the software industry, documentation and support are approaching zero while users are tangled up in more and more licensing/protection strings. The "Corporate Model" (even in our lovely 'New Economy') has not bode well for software. In the hire-today-fire-tomorrow devlopment environment, bloated buggy code is thriving. Throw in schemes like these at you have to wonder what your "buying".

  • And the final problem with this. You cannot update the fsck-ing hard disk. If you do, since most of the major OEMs are now not permitted to actually give you a Windows install disk, you have to go buy another operating system (or download one). The other option would be buying another disk from the OEM, and we can all predict how quickly the prices on those will rise, can't we? Locked-in demand, only one source of supply... Either Microsoft gets more money or the OEM does. Either way, you have to pay at least twice for something you should already own.


    -RickHunter

  • the fabled CD-WOM. (Score:4)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @05:55PM (#778542) Homepage Journal
    "prevents reading of copied information"...

    sounds like the CD-WOM drive I saw once. It was two pieces of wood with no real physical connection to a computer. You placed the CD-WOM media between the two pieces of wood, waited as long as you wanted (or as briefly -- the transfer rate was astounding) and lifted the top board. There was no disputing the data had been written to the disk. Of course, being CD-WOM, there was no way to prove it had been written. But there was no need to. Looks like Hitachi has just updated the mechanical side of things.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • VSN (volume serial number) is based on the date/time of formatting. It's there so that WinDOS can read the VSN and still determine if the same disk is in the drive. This is because they use inferior drives that can't trigger a DISKCHANGE event.

    -- LoonXTall

  • Maybe it's because I'm an old guy, but why are slashdotters so obsessed about their "right" to be able to steal copyrighted content?

    Answer 1: see my sig.

    Answer 2: they've never created any art themselves, so they don't credit the blood-sweat-tears argument for IP ownership.

    Answer 3: they ignore the fact that the creator should be able to control to a limited extent something that would not exist without them. DeCSS is OK, because deciding where the DVD is (not) viewable is wrong. It should be viewable wherever the hardware exists. MP3 is OK for similar reasons. Emailing MP3s to friends is OK, as the rough equivalent of tape swapping. Napster's users are wrong because they don't care whether the artist wants to be on it or not. Napster itself is just a sword: whether it does good or bad is dependent on those who wield it.

    Answer 4: they don't remember the controversy [slashdot.org] over Voices of the Hellmouth. It's your post? Too bad, it wants to be free.
    ___ CmdrTHAC0 ___

  • Who buys Fujitsu MO drives anyway? :)
  • I finally got the press release [fujitsu.co.jp] to load, and I guess it is not just Fujitsu, but several Japanese media companies involved. Moreover, we're only talking about MO disks. Still, the boycott advice holds. If you don't like this idea, don't use MO disks from this coalition. CDR(W)s work fine for my needs.
  • ... I wanted to use the Windows 2000 license that came with the machine in VMWare (i.e. use Linux, but also use windows, only in a Virtual Machine). Not possible. Becuase the recovery CD detects the BIOS type, and perhaps other methods and so it *won't* work with VMWare.
    What stops you from having VMWare tell the recovery CD that its BIOS type is whatever you want it to be? Isn't it configurable?
    --
    Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.

  • Forged disks (Score:3)

    by Veteran ( 203989 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @05:57PM (#778548)
    One thing this would normally do is spring up a market for disks without serial numbers - made by a manufacturer outside of the consortium. Market forces would cause these disks to sell more, since they would be more versatile and less expensive to manufacture.

    In the past there would have been no way to keep a manufacturer from making such disks. HOWEVER: The copy protection part of the DMCA does make it possible to stop the manufacturing of such disks.

    All anyone has to do is come up with some sort of utterly lame copy protection scheme involving the serial number on the disk and the DMCA springs into effect with its draconian penalties against a non serial number manufacturer - since they would be circumventing a digital protection means.

    This means that one manufacturer of any type of digital media who puts a serial number on their media could force EVERYONE to put serial numbers on their media of the same type. This includes floppies - and it would be a felony to erase a floppy serial number!

    Isn't the DMCA just swell?

  • And, oh yes, "one license is all you get?" Fine. That's part of the whole model. But I should NOT have to pay extra money if I want to upgrade my harddrive.
    With the recovery disks, you can reimage your system. A non-destructive reinstall of Windows is much more difficult.
    Obviously, you have the luxury of playing with your own toys. I, on the other hand, have to help consumers who are finding out that their copies of Windows are now useless without some form of hacking if they dare to upgrade their hard drives.
  • He probably does, but gods why should he? There are far more important issues. GNUtella can't scale to support any more than 2k people [and poorly at that], most of which would have access to free sh1t anyways. Napster, on the other hand, is an entirely different animal due to its proven size, scalability, and ease of use.
  • Didn't we go through this same BS a few months ago with the embedded ID numbers in intel PIII chips? I assume this feature will be able to be turned off or else the companies that incorporate this privacy invading feature will get hit with major lawsuits. Or better yet, they'll spend 4 years bitching about a standard like the RIAA and the SDMI standard. [Menacing laughter]



    Kris
    botboy60@hotmail.com
    Nerdnetwork.net [nerdnetwork.net]
  • The stupidity is that they always resist new technologies that would end up helping them. They fought VCRs, they'll fight everything else.

    By driving this underground they'll just keep it from ever being profitable for them. They can't stop piracy, they'll just end up keeping it from being easy, by trodding on everyone's freedoms. By doing this they'll alienate the casual pirates, the ones who would pay a small user fee for media.

    As it is, they remove all potential good will from every potential customer.

    It used to be that I'd buy a movie, not caring about the MPAA. Now, I'll take any means I can to hurt the MPAA as much as I can.

    They want to promote their own greedy ends at the expense of everyone else in the world who wants to use digital media. Fuck them.

    Only the truly stupid piss off everyone who might potentially pay them any money.

    Of course, they're all liars and thieves, they'll simply bribe politicians to enact a media tax, payable by everyone, to compensate them for the piracy they claim is robbing them of their profits.

    The rich always win, until the poor have had enough and shoot them. Pushing too far is *never* smart.
  • September 13, 2000 -- Today three major manufactures of removable magneto-optical (MO) media agreed to proto the installation of a Media ID, aimed at protecting copyrighted digital content.

    The media ID will apply to new discs with the unique media ID factory programmed, announced company officials, which combined with media access software requiring the IDs will create new market opportunities for the media. Officials also commented while the MO discs with a media ID will read with legacy MO drives, new Media ID-compatible MO disk drives will be required to enable content playback with Media-ID aware client agent software, creating additional market opportunities for the new Media-ID aware drives that will be required for content playback.

    The companies participating in the Media ID initiative plan to make the function compatible with the copyright protection function that Microsoft Corporation will add to its forthcoming Windows Millennium Edition. By bundling media access control with protected industry leading proprietary software from Microsoft, the participating companies, copyright protection will be enhanced by control of the platform and software that access the Media-ID.

    Saving information to a removable MO disk with the Media ID function not only protects copyrighted content distributed over the Internet but also makes it possible to save an unlimited amount of information by simply adding more MO disks. Because Media-ID discs will be required, MO discs which have enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 140% on the number of units sold, are expected to become be in even greater demand, thereby promoting the further acceptance of MO technology.

    Saving information to a removable MO disk with the Media ID function not only protects copyrighted content distributed over the Internet but also makes it possible to save an unlimited amount of information by simply adding more MO disks, as well as easily carry information and store it safely and conveniently, even when replacing computers. Indeed, because protected copyrighted digital content will be protected by the unique Media-ID, the MO manufacturers forcast an additional demand for the MO Media-ID enabled discs, as consumers carry and safely store their copyrighted digital content rather than copy it digitally over the internet. They further believe that the realization of an environment which protects intellectual property and the popularization of a new removable memory media used with it will lay the groundwork for various types of new content businesses.

  • No kidding. It's a normal HDD, and a normal Asus board but with customized BIOS code. The tatoo is software, written in a sector of the HDD & portion of the BIOS that I cannot remember the address for at the moment. As for where I heard it, perhaps it was my HP Technician training class? Or maybe it was in the HP service center I worked in?
    (I am no longer affiliated with HP, thank God. Great high-end stuff, but their low end stuff is crap, and now with the M$ licensing garbage I can no longer recommend ANY HP desktop). I once had the misfortune of supporting the Pavilion
    Tell you what. Don't believe? I assume you have a stock Pavilion. Use another HDD, and image your drive to the blank HDD. Then, take a third HDD, from a non-HP computer, and atttempt to boot from the recovery CD in the CD-ROM, selecting the "Full system restore" option. Odds are, it will say something like "This only works on an HP computer." (I say "odds are" because there are a few systems that did not have this "feature".)
  • In related news, Melbourne, Australia Linux user Goonie, in between receiving massive email attachments with spy shots of the opening ceremony rehearsal, and discussing appropriate drinking games for the occasion, agreed with friartux. He added "If you want speed and rewritability, you'd use an orb drive anyway".
  • (Score: -1, Offtopic...but who really cares? :-) )

    Of course, who wants all the crap the major OEM's load up anyways?

    Indeed...a customer of mine got a Compaq Presario notebook (one of the really skinny models; I don't remember the model # offhand) last Christmas. After sending it back to Compaq to replace the built-in modem (because the bastards @ CompUSA wouldn't take it back), he complained that it ran fairly slow for what was in it (a mid-speed PII). I said it was all the preloaded crap that Compaq put on it. I nuked the hard drive and did a clean install of Win98 with the necessary drivers (modem and display drivers were available from Lucent and ATI, but I had to go to Toshiba's website to get a driver for the ESS sound controller). It ran much faster after that.

    Since then, he's also bought a couple of new machines...650-MHz Durons with 7200-rpm hard drives and no WinHardware (one with 128 megs of RAM, the other with 256). OEM Win98 SE CDs were provided with each machine. (I also burned restore CDs for each machine...Ghost is great for that. Pop the CD in and it's restored in less than five minutes.) The new machines have run like champs, and there's no proprietary crap in them like you'd get with a Compaq, Dell, etc.

    _/_
    / v \
    (IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
    \_^_/

  • Today I had to flash the firmware on a Pioneer drive so I could watch a DVD at a friend's place (he came back from China with X-Men on DVD, and I wanted to see it. Based on the quality and such, I'm assuming the MPAA didn't see any money from it, so my concience is clear).

    I'm sorry that Fujitsu had to do this. Now I either have to stop supporting them (probably what I'll do), or deal with having to work around their silly artificial limitations on my usage of a device (like I did with the region coding). Hopefully they'll learn their lesson and end this madness. Either that, or I buy more Seagate drives :-)
    --

  • A defense of (Score:5)

    by Mathonwy ( 160184 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @08:57PM (#778558)
    Maybe it's because I'm an old guy, but why are slashdotters so obsessed about their "right" to be able to steal copyrighted content?

    I think you are missing the point that most people are upset about. The issue here isn't that it would prevent you from doing illegal/immoral things. The troubling fact is that someone else, some faceless, nameless division of some company somewhere is the one who would get to decide for YOU what would be moral usages of their device. And that kind of large corperation hasn't been especially renouned recenetly for acting in the best interest of the consumer. (or anyone else but themselves, really...) So you can see how it would make people edgy letting such an organization dictate what is ethical.

    The other issue is that this is yet one more step in a fairly disturbing trend that has been going on recently in corperate thinking. As you has doubtlessly often heard quoted in DMCA discussions, originally when you bought a product, it was yours, you could do whatever you wanted to it, since as soon as you purchased it, it was entirely your proprety. However, corperations seem to want to change that, and retain quite a bit more control over their products, even after purchase, and dictate what you can and cannot do with them. For example region codes on DVDs. Region codes allow companies to make arbitrary decisions about what you can do with DVDs you legally purchased, and enforce them. (For example, you can't play them in a country different from the one you bought it in. There is no law to this effect, but Sony effectivly enforces one anyway with their region coding. And there is no apeal to this kind of law.

    And lets not forget the ever popular problem of pattern matching errors. Such as the problems that have plagued nearly all "net nanny" software packages since the dawn of time. (or at least "net nannies") While deciding what is "moral and legal use" of a product is ticklish enough, programming the product to recognize the difference and act on this information is even trickier. And judging from the actions of Hasbro & Co, most companies don't seem to even care much if they make mistakes that inconvienence users, as long as they keep the majority of people happy and/or oblivious to the problem. (*cough*hasbro*cough*)

    This is what makes people edgy about this kind of thing: This product would give someone else (who's trustworthyness is questionable) the ability to create "laws" governing the useage of their product, with no real apeal. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but that's a little more trust than I'm willing to give them. And judging from the general tone of most of the responses to this artical, I think I'm not the only one.

    Sorry if I'm ranting, it's been a weird week.
  • I believe you are refering to the WORN storage technology. WORN is similar to WORM technology; it is only one letter/word different. WORM stands for "Write Once; Read Many" while WORN stands for "Write Once, Read Never." Fortunately, an "M" looks much like an "N" and since you can't return them once the package is open...
  • I don't see why they don't just give the software away for free... of course, instead of a "cd key", you'd be required to enter a credit card number. Charge at time of install.
  • Yes, many people ask, "Why do they load so much crap on there?"
    I have heard horror stories of Pavilions coming out of the box, brand spanking new, with 63% resources free because so much crap is loading at startup.
    Simply put, the marketing weenies do their research, and ask people, "Do you want free this, this and that on your PC, would it make it more likely that you will buy it?"
    Joe consumer says, "duh! yes!"
    HP goes to Big Software Company and says, "Please give us a "lite" version of your latest bloat to put on your system to get your name out there & encourage people to upgrade!"
    Big Software Company says (most but not all of the time), "Sure, but only if you make it load at start up so people see it!"
    HP, of course, pauses about 1 millisecond and says, "OK! Where do we sign?"
    The same goes for Dell, Gateway, etc. Lately, some of them seem to be better. Dell, Gateway & HP I *THINK* allow you to have some input. BTW, an HP tech just told me that now the tatoo is ONLY on the motherboard, the HDD tatoo is no longer used on the currently shipping systems.

  • And who says it's me using the computer or the attached hardware? Ever heard of multiple user accounts or People Using Your Machine Temporarily? =)

    Besides, why bother using something as hopelessly arcane and hardware-architecture-dependent for identification when we already have prefectly good and widely supported authentication schemes that do not depend on something as bogus as those two methods mentioned? =)

  • Right. So burn Xtras and share them with your friends (and their friends). Pretty amazing how many mp3's (at 192 kb) fit onto a $0.65 CD-ROM. Like 10 CDs worth.

  • Right, but a large proportion of the 'Doze world barely knows how to start Microsoft Word w/out clicking on a Word document directly, let alone fire up a debugger. Cheats and cracks help out the tech-saavy users, but the bulk of the $$ come from people who know just enough to be dangerous.

    I've cracked a few copy-protection schemes myself. But still, I'm usually the one in my family which sets up the computers and stuff for everyone else, while most everyone else in the family knows a a handful of cookbook operations, such as how to click on "Connect to the Internet".

    --Joe
    --
  • The irony in this particular case is the fact that people usually find they need more drive space when they start collecting or creating MP3s and MPEGs, which pushes them to purchase bigger and faster hard drives.

    Imagine the disappointment when they buy that bigger, faster hard drive and then find out that none of their files will play because they weren't created on that drive. Which brings up an interesting scenario: What happens if you create all your content on one drive but then move it to another?

  • > Unless you have to use a 1-900 number to call MS

    Yes they could do that, but if they "inconvenience" the customer too much, I would imagine there would be a huge outcry.

    While M$ would certainly love to go to that model, other software (for the most apart except high-end stuff like 3D Studio Max) DOESN'T require a person phone in to be able to install software they bought* off the shelf. If Microsoft started doing that, people would just start "flocking" to the competition.

    [* Yes I know you don't buy software. You just purchase the license to it. ]
  • As long as there are manufacturers making drives without this "feature", why would anyone buy one that has it? It is adding complexity (and possibly cost) and does nothing except lessen the users ability to use his hardware as he sees fit.

    As I see it, Fujitsu is the only manufacturer currently going this route. Just boycott Fujitsu. Problem: solved.

  • In Japan, the Media is the Market (Score:3)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @05:32PM (#778568) Homepage Journal

    In Japan, we've heard it said here before, the media is the prime mover in the market. If you buy a music CD, some clerks ask, "Would you like a Sony MiniDisc or two with that?"

  • I remember in 1992, I found a utility that I've still got somewhere on a BBS called something like 'disk_id'. It allowed you to set the ID on your floppy to whatever ####-#### hex value you chose.

    Oh what fun we had changing the codes to things like 'EFFF-0FFF'.

    thenerd.

  • And there comes special drivers... (Score:3)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @05:37PM (#778570) Homepage
    ...and there goes the ID. The CPU ID had a chance to work, since it was unsing an actual instruction, bypassing the OS (well, I think, don't flame me). However, this hard drive ID has no chance of success. It will need to ask the OS about the ID of the drive. There's nothing that prevents the OS of always answering the same ID for everybody... and there goes the system. Under Linux, it's quite easy to bybass... you just don't implement the system. Under windows... I'm pretty sure some people will come up with modified disk drivers..

    I think this move is more meant to look like they're doing something to prevent copyright violations. And if the MPAA believed there CSS was secure, they'll probably believe the hard disk ID will be too!

  • erm (Score:2)

    by Blymie ( 231220 )
    Erm. Are you all on drugs? ;) The purpose of this technology with REMOVABLE MAGNETIC OPTICAL DISKS only (that's all fujitsu has designed it for) is to prevent piracy. Each FO disk (not drive, disk) will have a specific ID, so that when you buy copyrighted software or what not, they can do a check on the disk to make sure that you are using the original, and not a backup.

    This is NOT about identifying you.

    This is NOT about mp3's or anything you are going to put on the equivilant of a floppy.

    This is NOT about hard drives at ALL!

    I wonder how many people actually read the article that was linked, and how many people just read the summary? Apparently not many...

  • Hard Drive "tatoos" (Score:5)

    by The Breeze ( 140484 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @05:38PM (#778572) Homepage
    This sounds similar to the practice that HP & some otehr vendors have been following for years, and which is now REQUIRED by Microsoft if you're one of the top ten or so OEM's.
    An HP Pavilion HDD has a "tatoo" in a section of the hard drive that can only be reached by debug scripts and the like. FDISK can't touch it. "Recovery" disks look for the HDD tatoo & and the BIOS tatoo and if they don't find it, they will not install. This means if you have one of these types of systems, you need to take your system to an OEM-approved "service center" and they will run the script to make your new hard drive able to function with the recovery disk should you buy a new hard drive.
    Some OEM's (notably HP) used to foist this travesty on consumers in return for cheaper licensing for their protection payments to Microsoft for Windows. Now, this is REQUIRED by M$ on all new system.
    The solution, of course, is refusing to by OEM systems that have "recovery disks". Use Linux, BSD, ANYTHING, or if you MUST use Windows, by from a smaller OEM which will still give you a genuine Windows OEM CD - the big boys are now PROHIBITED by M$ from distributing Windows CD's, they can only distribute "image" CD's.
    I'm sure there's disgruntled techs out there somewhere who have the debug routines to duplicate the tatoos, or a good assembly language hacker can do it. Of course, who wants all the crap the major OEM's load up anyways?
  • I don't see how this is a big deal at all. First, MO is kind of marginal in it's usefulness. Expensive media, slow data rates, drivers required. We all burn CDs now don't we? What's so compelling about 1.3G MO drives if DVD-RAM is around the corner?

    If anything the use of large media is in decline, with the advent of online drive websites, faster internet access and even home LANs becoming more common. I burn CDs to share photos. For backing up data I slot in another hard drive, or copy it over the net to somewhere else.

    This probably doesn't pose a big threat to our freedom to copy anything at all, just a threat to the appeal of these MO drives.

  • Re:BIOS types (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No, it's not configurable. The serial number is hard-coded into the BIOS. Well, as hard-coded as a BIOS can be. If you can figure out the EEPROM spec, you can overwrite any portion you want. Most BIOSes even have internal code to do that. For instance, some BIOSes can update the flash in the SMI handler, so all you need to do is trace through the SMI handler, and you'll quickly find the code that updates the flash.
  • If your hard drive crashed and you bought another, you'd have to call them again for another install password.

    There is one falacy to this. There is a dos program that will allow you to change the Volume ID on your HD (Works great for stupid companies that have their serial # based on your HD Vol ID! can you say Aldon!). So if this situation came up, just have a pre-created boot disk with this dos program on it and change the Volume ID on your HD to the One you previously had (make sure you make note of it when you install the first time!) and Whola! you don't have to call M$ ever again! The program is called VolumeID [sysinternals.com] You can get it by clicking on the "VolumeID" Link Provided! :^).

    There is ALWAYS a way around companies blatenly being stupid!

    Remember: "There is no such thing as a stupid question, Just a stupid person!"
  • Jeff's extension to Hanlon's Razor:

    Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity or negligence.

    I wonder how many of our good congress-people actually read all of the DMCA?
  • They got trounced on by the EVERYONE.

    The potential for abuse is too overwhelming. I dont care if you are the RIAA, the MPAA, or the freaking president of the USA. It isn't going to happen.

  • Everyone saw this coming three years ago. Thing is, most of Slashdot is still in denial - just read the posts on this article.
  • I thought MS was focused on eliminating CDs in the near future -- that is, the OS comes on the 'puter you buy, and only licensed depots have CDs.

    This way, you send in your bad hard drive to get an exchange or repair.

    Obviously, for this to work, HDs have to have some type of individual id, to prevent DD 'duping.
  • I don't think the DMCA would apply in this case. It can't stop the sale of blank CDs, why can it stop the sale of media without ID bytes. Removing the ID byte on a disk with one might be a crime, but just making blank disks wouldn't be.

    I think you're making too much of this.

  • I don't think you get it. The ID isn't to prevent copying software from working. Rather, it's to prevent "aware" applications from running on media other than its original.

    Here's an example. Suppose, for instance, I install SuperApp on my drive, and it records the fact that I installed it to a drive with ID# 123456 in some super-secret way. Now, you come along, copy it to your drive, with ID# 654321. SuperApp, because it's aware of the drive ID#, looks at the drive ID when you try to start up your copy. It sees 654321 != 123456 and refuses to start.

    All that matters is that SuperApp (the application in this example) is aware of the ID. The copying software and other software doesn't need to know about it for the ID to be effective.

    At any rate, I think this will fly as far as Pentium III ID#'s, or maybe even less far. "What do you mean I have to repurchase all my software because I upgraded to a larger drive?"

    --Joe
    --
  • You can't argue with logic like that.
  • Media ID on a hard drive would be meaningless. One could keep music on Zip Disks or some other large removable media then make CDs of mp3 files. Not to mention this ID plan would create market for mod chips and software to defeat the ID. Once you have people forking out money specifically to break the law it's a short step to trying to recover your cost through resale or even make a profit. Then the RIAA would really have something to panic over. Worse than people pirating free music would be to have people paying for pirated music. This would mean they have less money to spend on ligitimate music.

  • The "Disappearing Information Paradox" (Score:4)

    by Some Id10t ( 140816 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @05:42PM (#778584)
    sigh Once again we have someone trying to capitolize on what I call the disappearing information paradox.

    You can't give someone access to information without giving her the ability to manipulate that information in some way. (Aside from terminating the recepient, which would definitely affect your customer loyalty factor, not to mention squelching any repeat business.)

    DVDs failed at this with CSS
    Sony failed at this with the Minidisk "Do not copy" bit.
    DIVX... well, 'nough said.
    VHS Macrovision

    The list goes on and on, from movies and music, to email and "read once and destroy" messages. If you present information to someone, they can recreate it. Period. Preventing that is not within the realm of current technology, no matter what type of encryption/timestamping/client-side security you put on it. It will be reverse engineered and automated within hours.

    As we say in the south- "You can't un-ring a bell!"

  • Well here's the kicker. They could combine the "ID" of the drive with cryptography to make it harder to bypass. Encrypting the program or what not.... BUT this will never ever prevent people from copying ISO's, etc. All they're doing is making a "universal" method of encrypting data and making it harder to copy... Games like Quake have been doing this forever, and people are still getting around it. This is dead fish in the water.
  • the SN# you are talking about is built into the Dos FS i believe. Reformatting the floppy will assign a new SN.
  • If you live in a city where the police are corrupt, but lie to everyone that they aren't.. a city which also has a mafia which does not lie about what it does.. which would you have a clearer conscience supporting?

    It's a Kobayashi Maru situation. You can't win. But this way, I know my money is not going to the bigger, less obvious criminals. If I don't support them, then I'm at least doing more than 99% of the people.
    --
  • The article is about MO drives. Some previous comments to which I referred had already referred to hard drive behavior.
  • You really sure those are "bigger less obvious criminals"? Hate to break this to you but your disc pirates aren't honest joes bucking the system, they are usually part of organised crime syndicates and the money flows round them. Of course, if you're happy part funding child prostitution, protection rackets, contract killing and more, then, yes, I accept your conscience is clear. Personally, I like my DVDs without the stench.

  • Re:Forged disks (Score:4)

    by Veteran ( 203989 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @06:02PM (#778590)
    Let us see if Hanlon's Razor is applicable to the DMCA. For those who don't know, Hanlon's razor is : "Never ascribe to malice that which may be adequately explained by stupidity."

    To see if the DMCA is simply an act of stupidity we need to think about the people who created the DMCA in the first place. If these are generally stupid people we are safe in assuming that the act was the result of stupidity and we may safely discount it as not being malicious. If however, the people who created the act are not generally stupid we need to show how otherwise intelligent people were confused into creating something out of momentary stupidity in orger to judge the DMCA as non malicious.

    By far the majority of people in the House of Representatives and the Senate in the US are lawyers. The vast majority of lawyers follow the conventional path of graduating from college with superior scholastic records, then going into a post graduate law program which awards them with a 'Doctor of Laws' (Juris Doctor) degree; which is the equivalent of a Ph.D. in a technical subject. After obtaining this degree the average lawmaker then passed a difficult bar exam to become an attorney. After successfully becoming a lawyer these people engaged in significant networking to build up their political prospects.

    Most people who enter the political profession emerge as significantly wealthier when they leave the profession than when they enter into it.

    The argument that the DMCA was created by people who are generally stupid appears to lack plausibility. Now let us examine the idea that the act was created by normally intelligent people who were acting in an aberrant stupid fashion.

    Reading the DMCA fails to give evidence of misspelling, poor grammatical structure, ill thought out sentence constructs, or other evidence of stupidity which might be brought on by the heavy use of intoxicating drugs or spirits or wide spread occurrences of stroke or other neurological damage. When tested against the standards of writing in other laws passed by these same legislators there does not appear to be any obvious fall off in the quality of expression in the DMCA.

    In short, the evidence that the DMCA is the result of temporary stupidity on the part of otherwise intelligent people is very poor. Perhaps the claim could be made that the authors of the DMCA did not understand the consequences of their actions in writing this law and were thus being stupid. However, that argument fails upon further thought. The consequences of the DMCA appear to be carefully designed - the law appears to accomplish exactly what the authors meant it to achieve.

    Here is an example of a stupidly constructed law for comparison. "Anyone who picks his nose in public shall be guilty of an offense. Persons who violate this law will be punished by being forced to have sex with an attractive person of the offenders' choosing."

    The conclusion is that the DMCA is not the result of stupidity, and that Hanlon's razor is not applicable to it. We therefore MAY conclude that the DMCA is the result of malice; it is deliberate, it is intentional, and it is no accident that it is written the way that it is.

  • Re:And there comes special drivers... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    IDE hard drives do have serial numbers - you can view it with 'hdparm' under Linux. Floppies don't - you can magnetically erase one with a degaussing coil then run 'fdformat/mke2fs' or similar to re-create a filesystem with no pre-defined identifiers.

    I think Zipdisks have serial numbers, but I'm not sure about this and I'm not sure if there are any SCSI utilities which would let you get low-level enough to erase/change it.
  • Gee I guess that means we'll have a few more companies to boycott. I am saddened by all these events. Now of course who really gives two shits about this, since we don't use Windows and ME is of course out of the question.
  • Just like the Pentium serial number and the CueCat serial number - it allows eCommerce sites to tailor content to your patterns. Customized content isn't so bad, now is it?
  • No, this is bad. Think about it... hard coded serial numbers... not only can eCommerce sites "tailor content to my patterns" but anyone who wants can use it as a paper trail of sorts.

    I'm not saying that personally tailored content would be bad, but don't you think if I wanted such a beast, I would be willing to be assigned an ID by eCommerce organization X and willingly use it in my software to let them track me?

    Why is freedom of choice such a bad thing?

  • The volume serial # that you see with "dir" is part of the file system (set by the format command), not from the drive.

    Don't believe me? Format c: and the number will change.


    ---
  • As a consequence of the DMCA free operating systems could be required to comply with 'Industry standard' copy protection schemes. For example the DMCA could require an API which furnishes media serial numbers to any program requesting them.

    It would be a 'circumvention of digital copy protection methods' to disable or circumvent such an API.

    Under the DMCA an act as innocent as formatting a floppy - which results in a change in its serial number could be a serious felony. One of the side effects of this is that older copies of all operating systems which fail to have a copy protection API - or which allow the reformatting of floppies could become illegal. Of course - we all know that Microsoft would simply hate the idea that everyone had to scrap any operating system older than Windows 2001.

  • You are correct. I originally misread, and followed the previous commenter's lead. The goal of the system is to reduce the copying of content more than of applications. The system requires both trusted applications and a trusted OS to matter. I don't foresee any system based on this lasting more than a month or two, depending if there is any content worth stealing this way.

    It may be a play to gain more of the acceptance that the MO disks have found so hard to receive. "Please the RIAA and the consumer will follow", or some such.

  • Sorry for beeing ignorant -

    cat /proc/ide/hda/identify

    Hdd's already have an serial number since, uh, foreaver?
  • What about RAID 1 volumes?
    I believe, that is you have a mirror of the drive, that you would have *many* of the installed images. Mirroring does not just imply one copy, as triple mirroring is common as a means of providing backups of 7 x 24 sites.
    So generate these, then store the drivs away for upgrade time - or not. I can't think of a bigger waste of resouces than this.
    mod this down.
  • external drive maybe?

    eudas
  • Anyone know more about "the copyright protection function that Microsoft Corporation will add to its forthcoming Windows Millennium Edition?" That might shed some light on the subject.

    Unless Fujitsu magneto-optical disks get a lot cheaper, nobody is going to use them as a distribution medium for content. CD-ROMs cost about $0.50 in volume. So what's the point? We're missing something here.

  • What's great about technology is that someone has to go through an extra effort to make something "more secure". This means that unsecure systems (CD Audio, mp3, DivX ;-), etc) will always be more common because they are simpler for programmers and hardware engineers to create, and therefore they will always be cheaper to manufacture. Not only that, but their protocol or implementation will be simpler, so there will probably be more "players" for those simpler types of media since it wouldn't be a big hassle to write software for them.

    Which would be more frightening: We live in a society where a few pirates steal some media for entertainment purposes, while most people still purchase it; or a society where large corporations control how everybody gets their media, how they play it, and what hardware they play it on?

    I'm all about fair. You give me crap, I'll do whatever I want with it without giving you anything but the middle finger. You give me quality, and I'll reward you. I AM IN CONTROL.

    --

  • They're STILL fighting VCRs. Due to the wonders of things like Macrovision, which is present on almost all commercially recorded VHS tapes, many movie and some sports transmissions, and on all DVD players. Not only that, they're fighting to try to make it near impossible to record HDTV and digital cable transmissions. On a global scale, the ballances are tipping in the favour of those with power and money, leaving consumers with almost nothing. I have to wonder when "Fair Use" will be eliminated entirely, having become too much of a bother to these same large businesses. Personally, I blame Disney. They were one of the biggest forces a few years ago to strengthen copyright laws by extending their period to the point where Copyright might as well last forever (90 years? Please! If you haven't made back your initial investment in 20 years, I doubt you ever will.) And all because their little mascot, Mickey Mouse(R) was about to become public domain.

    I really can't believe that people aren't raising a bigger stink about these IP law "enhancements". Where will this end? We already have far too much IP laws that apply to computers, including both patent and copyright protection, something no other industry has available to it, and yet these companies are still crying out, "more! more!". It's gotten to the point where I'd be hesitant to try and implement almost anything similar to a commercial vendor. MS has already claimed they have the .ASF format patented (how??), and even something as simple as XOR animation is patented, and possibly subject to high "licensing fees".

    I firmly believe the copyright and patent systems worldwide need reform, not strengthening. Both copyright and patent protection terms should be subject to various factors, such as time-to-market, the level of invention in that field at the time. A field that innovation is happening naturally and quickly obviously needs less protection and government granted monopolies than a slow moving stagnant market. 21 year long patents and 90 year long copyrights are absolutely absurd in the software industry, where if you're 2 years late to market, your target market may have completely changed.

    Why is it that in an era that big business is booming that they need more "intelectual property" protection?

  • Just don't buy a Fujitisu drive. Corporate line is the bottom line. If a product or design implimentation isin't making money the model/line/product will go out of production in favor of one that does.

    simple.

    -ravage

  • Unless you have to use a 1-900 number to call MS
  • I'd just like to point out that those are not hard disks but Magneto-Optical removable disks. It feels like IDs on floppys. Btw, I think IDE hard disks and maybe floppies too have serial numbers. But I dont know if they can be changed. At least I get one by doing "dir c:" or "dir a:" in MS-DOS...
    I'm not sure if I can get them in Linux...
  • It may be a good way to placate the Prime Evils (RIAA, MPAA, but Baal escaped), but "this media will stop you from copying things that you aren't authorized to copy" won't have a lot of appeal to any user, average or saavy. A good example is definitely the Intel chip ID fiasco. This may be fine for people who don't know better, since they may not care one way or another, but those are the people that the technology would be for anyhow. Let them repulse consumers if they want.
  • From original post It sure sounds like a good way to sell media though ... hmmm.


    And a way to hamstring me, as a consumer, in regard to backups, recovery, or whether I install this on a server. I wonder what it has to say about Raid... Thanks, Fujitsu, but no thanks

    he troubling fact is that someone else, some faceless, nameless division of some company somewhere is the one who would get to decide for YOU what would be moral usages of their device. And that kind of large corperation[sic] hasn't been especially renouned[sic] recenetly[sic] for acting in the best interest of the consumer. (or anyone else but themselves, really...) So you can see how it would make people edgy letting such an organization dictate what is ethical

    What? You mean corporate america isn't writing legislation? Say... you type a lot like Dubya speaks, who are you?

    I'm all for people being able to protect what's theirs. If they want to make a profit selling their work, fine. I don't work for charity so my code (at work) belongs to my employer. When the seller gets to the point of making a consumber good difficult to use (beyond an incomprehensible interface or stupidly written manual) I simply steer clear, and much to their chagrin, tell everyone how much it sucks. Bad PR spreads fast, especially on the internet, ask Intel :-)

    Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000

  • Much as I'd love to have the MPAA and RIAA Go Away, it would be nice if they could be convinced this was secure.

    The problem is, if you see that your MO disk is about ti fail, and wisely copy it's contents to another disk knowing that the stupid serial# thing won't affect you (because of your hacked dirver), you commit a felony in the U.S. every time you access the songs you PAID FOR!

    Personally, I'd rather NEVER listen to a disc from an RIAA label again (even if it means nothing but off key gar(b)age bands) than deal with media that is ACTIVELY hostile to me.

    At this point, I'll buy a DVD IFF I can flash new firmware that does not refuse to do what I tell it to when I want to read a 'secured' sector on the disk. One of the reasons I dumped Pascal for C and Windows for Linux was that the former would refuse to perform simple tasks I told them to (for my own good) and the latter never do that.

  • I remember various copy-protected floppy schemes. People stopped buying copy protected programs because they failed in various ways.

    The difference here is that hard drives do tend to last longer than floppy disks. On the other hand, they're also awfully inexpensive now -- can't someone who wants to copy just sell stuff on preinstalled hard drives?

    Oh, and as for the other comments about Microsoft requiring this...I did say that programs failed in various ways... :-)

  • News Release! (Score:3)

    by friartux ( 89443 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @06:10PM (#778618)

    [Merrimack, New Hampshire] 14 Sept 2000 -- Linux user friartux, never impressed by Fujitsu storage products, has announced a personal resolution to avoid buying any Fujitsu media.

    "This shouldn't be difficult," he said. "Compared to Maxtor and IBM hard drives, in my opinion, Fujitsu sucks anyway. Their capacities are low, and their buffers small in comparison. And who uses MO drives these days, anyway?"

    Backup media such as CD-R have become more popular than MO in recent times, and DVD-style storage promises more than either.

    Friartux looks forward to the first DVD-writable solution certified compatible with Linux -- without any corrupt tracking schemes, and with large buffers and good speeds.

  • Re:Won't work always (Score:3)

    by bgalehouse ( 182357 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @06:10PM (#778620)
    When did you last try to copy a commercial program from one system to another? Quite a few really require re-installing the software.

    Now, if they required online registration as part of install (before activation) and if this linked your CD-key to your hard drive identifier... then we'd be in buissiness.

    Actually though, the hard drive is a pretty lousy place for this. Would be comparativly easy to patch the OS to change it (see the standard work-around for software region checking of DVDs).

    CPU would be harder to patch universally.

    Fortunatly though, Intel got burnt trying to add unique chip ids for privacy reasons. No software vendor will require ID'd processors untill they are ubiquitious (can't risk loosing market share). No hardware vendor wants the privacy loss uproar.

    Be interesting to see how long this 'hard drive id' idea lasts.

  • After reading the recent article about Tom's Hardware, FlaskMPEG and DVDs, I think I notice a chink in the armor.

    The applications have to make use of this technology. If they don't, the Media ID doesn't mean a damn thing.

    (Tangent mode for a moment here...)

    • Look at what's happening with piracy in the DVD market -- the pirated works aren't being distributed as DVDs. It's even a point of pride that they are in a different format with different encoding! The people doing this are using a perfectly legal copy, and extracting the information. Once it's in the new format (whatever it ends up being), there is no CSS, no Macrovision, no region coding...
    • nothing. You can copy it all you want now, it's not a DVD anymore!

      It seems that there are enough incredibly talented people out there, and they're willing and able to write software capable of doing things like this. As long as the media is designed to be used in conjunction with computers, people are going to find ways to use it that the authors did not intend... and probably aren't going to like. LaserDiscs have phenomenal data volume, but when was the last time you saw a LaserDisc drive for your computer?

      Remember how long Macrovision lasted when it first came out on Back to the Future? (At least, that was the first movie I saw it used on...) It was just a matter of months before Macrovision filter boxes showed up -- end of problem! We had control of our movies back!

    (Okay, back on topic now...)

    This Media ID thing really isn't going to cause any problems, I think. People are going to attack the "don't copy me" bit instead of the Media ID. People are going to use different software that ignores the ID #. I think this will be about as effective as region codes. Heck, I can even think of interesting uses for it, like as a holder for encryption keys. Imagine this:

    • Include the (encrypted) Media ID as part of your key. Use that in conjunction with SSH to access your systems from... wherever. If someone tries to copy your client key, it's signature won't validate because they don't have the original disk. You also have a convenient place to store a whole bunch of portable data. (MP3 collection?)

    • On the down side, you could lose it just like your keys.

    Now back to earth. Why would these things be popular? The largest one is 1.3 GB. I can get a 10 GB hard drive for just over $50 -- why do I want one of these? What is the price-per-gig going to compete with?

  • But I dont know if they can be changed.

    They could be. The serial number of a floppy is stored (if memory serves) in the boot sector (#1). So, not only could it be changed, but a simple diskette copy would also duplicate the original disk's serial number.

    I'm not so sure about serial numbers on CD's, but I suspect the same to be true. After all, game companies have had to turn to defective copy protection schemes like Safedisc to protect games, which relies on trying to place ID information outside the area a standard CD can be read.

  • Reminds me of something I saw years ago. (Score:3)

    by shippo ( 166521 ) on Friday September 15, 2000 @12:14AM (#778630)
    Some time ago I deal with very specialised hardware, long since out of production. Semi-PC compatable, but for some strange reason it required all SCSI hard-drives to be supplied from the manufacturer.

    The drives were normal full-height SCSI drives, but had some form of 'signature' written somewhere. Using normal drives of the same model just wouldn't work, as filesystems could not be made on the partitions. Of course the charge for these drives was around 3 times the normal cost.

    I eventually discovered how to sign any drive, using the in-built diagnostics program and an undocumented password. I never had the chance to dump the contents of the disk via dd to determine what the signature was, or where it was written.

  • I think he was talking software, not hardware.

    A lot of OEMs will include a bunch of random software they developed to "help" the operating system. Things like a resolution changer in the system tray, or awnsering machine software that starts on bootup.
  • Much as I'd love to have the MPAA and RIAA Go Away, it would be nice if they could be convinced this was secure. They aren't all that swift anyway, and if nobody told them, they likely never would have heard of mp3. My bet is Valenti doesn't even know what Gnutella is.

    If it's not widespread, I won't buy the media.
    If it is widespread, someone will write the drivers.

  • I'm not sure exactly what his paradox means, but by his examples I take it to mean no one will buy this technology and it will fail in the marketplace. History has shown this to be true, and it doesn't matter how hard it is to circumvent it - it will be circumvented by default, because no one will use it. Why would you pay more for a hard drive that just made life more difficult for you? Given the equally-priced choice of a hard drive that makes life difficult and one that doesn't, which one would you buy?

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