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Hardware

CPRM Voted Down 135

Posted by michael from the one-battle-down,-an-infinity-to-go dept.
CBNobi writes: "The National Committee on Information Technology Standards (NCITS) has rejected 4C Entity's proposal of the CPRM, a copy-protection that can be placed on future hard drives. While this may be a win for us, many other organizations are attempting the same thing. Full article at ZDNet." This is only a very temporary victory - there is nothing to prevent this addition to the ATA standard from being proposed again, or to prevent Intel, IBM, Toshiba and Matsushita from figuring out another way to implement it. Another submitter notes: "According to The Register, Apple, Adaptec, ST Micro, Western Digital, Maxtor, LSI Logic and Hale Landis voted against "Generic Functionality" in ATA devices for content control. Voting in favor of content control were IBM, Toshiba (4C members), Hitachi, Iomega, Microsoft, Phoenix, Absolute Software, and Circuit Assembly."
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CPRM Voted Down More

CPRM Voted Down

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  • Re:Apple against MS (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Apple is not a friend, Apple is a bunch of corporate pirates as bad as Sun and worse than Microsoft. Since Day One, Apple has hated any innovation besides its own. (Open systems? Apple sued and exterminated companies who produced Macintosh compatible systems, thereby allowing IBM compatables to take the market). OSX, open source? Bull. The only 'Open Source' in OSX is the underlying architecture, which is a version of BSD hacked to be specific to Apple's hardware. The real power, the GUI and graphics layer, is still as closed source as Windows. Microsoft is evil now, sure, but when they get uprooted eventually all of the geeks will see that IBM, Sun, and Apple, who they have been praising, are just as bad. What happens when Apple takes over the market, and continues their anticompetitive practices? It may seem far fetched now, but imagine what will happen with Microsoft gone. Will Apple treasure Linux and BSD? No, because they will threaten it. You people might praise Apple now, but in the end you will see the truth.

  • Above contains GOAT SEX link; do not click (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The text above ends with a link that says "Click here to read the rest of this comment". It appears to be the normal link Slashdot automatically generates for text that is too long. In fact it is a GOAT SEX link. Do not click on it. Moderators, moderate this article down.

    Note that Slashdot does not authenticate identity. The above user chose the nickname of "rms" and identifies himself as Richard Stallman. However, there is no reason to think this really is Richard Stallman.

  • Re:Optimism (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Allow me to make a futile suggestion. Build a better mousetrap. If the commercial software forms of copy protection are bullshit, write a better open source version; if they adopt it, that's a victory for open source, right?

    NO NO NO COPYRIGHT PROTECTION IS WRONG WE DESERVE TO HAVE EVERYTHING FREE, AND NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO CHARGE FOR SOFTWARE!! WAH!!

    You see, that's where you lose. This is a game where each side has its wants and needs; you need to buy a hard drive. A bunch of corporations need to sell you that hard drive, but they also want to offer a means for software makers to protect their IP rights. You don't want this. The bunch of corporations make the hard drives, so they win. If you don't like it, make your own hard drive out of tinkertoys.

    Or, you could stop being such a big fucking baby and meet them in the middle. Admit that corporations (and individuals) are allowed to expect fair compensation for their work, and are allowed to use technology to try to enforce that expectation. The benefit to you is that you get to buy that nifty new 20,000 RPM 500GB hard drive and use it as you wish, as long as you aren't violating copyright laws (the same copyright laws that keep MS et al. from stealing GPL code, you dumb fuck)

    That is all.

  • Another winning touchdown STOPPED (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    at the 1 yard line!!!
    WOOHOO! Way to go Apple!!!

  • Actually, I spoke to people from the cash register division at Linux World Expo, and they're pretty gung-hp about linux.
  • That's right, the dems and repubs are entitled to your vote. If you vote for someone besides one of the big two, you are stealing a vote from the duopoly candidate with the nearest ideological agenda.

    What a load of rubbish. I am no fan of Ralph Nader, but he has as much right to seek the presidency as anyone else. If it hurt Gore, too bad.

  • ok fine.

    Steve Jobs is not your friend, hes not even Apples friend, do some research. He's a flamming Meglomaniac, with dilusion of being Microsoft. Apple is suing over Themes from OS X. Give me a break, the only thing that motivates them is Money, not devotion to the customers.
  • USB, you are right....PCI, all I can say is put down the crack pipe. Apple picked up PCI because it had to, and was easy and cheap.
  • > Since Day One, Apple has hated any innovation besides its own.

    Oh give it up! this is bunk. Apple has done a great deal to adopt and popularize standards from outside its own domain. Both PCI and USB were created in the Intel camp, but showed no real commercial life until Apple adopted them. The Intel camp is _very_ conservative about adopting new technologies, while Apple, in general, has been rather adventuresome and willing to (somewhat forcibly) sell new technologies. They are mostly sufficiently picky about the quality of the ones they try that many of them do end up popular (again, PCI and USB have finally made a large dent in EISA and RS-232/parallel port/SCSI etc. chains), but they will happily adopt from the outside.
  • No, favoring restrictions on access to technology and favoring the crippling of consumer technology in order to keep consumers safely in their pens is un-American.

    Boss of nothin. Big deal.
    Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

  • I don't get your point. Mac OS QuickTime has had a basic CD audio import feature since, what, version 2.0 or so, which dates back to the early-/mid-1990s. Are you sure a CD ripper is all that exciting to find in a modern OS?

    < tofuhead >
    --

  • except for the fact that it 404's. Besides, it's just not the same without all the hecklers from Slashdot that I hope to see there this afternoon :)

  • > Easier than finding a gigolo to service Hillary Rosen on her next Vegas junket?

    <rimshot>

    Not only will spending a few million bucks on implementing CPRM be easier than that, it'll probably be cheaper, too.

    </rimshot>

  • If they really want it, they could also put the copyprotect stuff in the drivers.

    Either way this thing is going towards closed hardware specs.

    With open hardware specs and copyprotected hardware they would know that some people would write drivers that circomvent this. So they have to close the specs. (And then still.. some people will write drivers that circomvent this).

    With open hardware specs and copyprotected drivers, they will know that some people will rewrite the drivers without copyprotect stuff.
    (And so with closed specs).

    I hope they don't choose a hardware option. I think that would be a BAD thing. Don't like the idea of a company commanding what I can and cannot have on my harddrive.

    On another note: How the **** would they implement a thing like this on hardware? Sounds pretty impossible. And I don't mind upgrading software every now and then... But letting people mess with firmware upgrades just to keep up with the latest copyright protection thing that has just been thought of by company XYZ just sounds plain stupid. A bad driver is not as bad as messed up harddrive :-)

    Just my thoughts on this... don't have any technical knowledge about these things.. so maybe I'm just babbling :-)

    MarsDude
  • Well, if you'd read them yourself you would see that you can also meta moderate, and give yourself the chance to show your disagreement by metamoderating and perhaps disqualifying whoever did this from moderating for a long while. But then, you're an anonymous coward, so it doesn't matter.
  • I'm sure, that it has already come up - but wouldn't it be a cool feature, if you could encrypt the contents of your harddrive with aes or blowfish.

    Wouldn't that be possible, if there were 'hooks' in the hard-disk firmware, which would allow the use of various crypto algorithms?

    I'd like to have that especially in my notebook ...

  • Remember, the British had so much more firepower than the colonies, that it seemed futile to fight the status quo. But the colonies did fight, and the DID win.
  • Ye Who Troll Slashdot, Controleths The Geeks!

    - Steeltoe
  • Yep, these are the words of someone who doesn't care at all.

  • Ha ha - I had to look that one up. four paragraphs of trolling only net a one line response == not much of a troll.

    YMMV

  • I tend to favour "copy control" or maybe "distribution control"

    Call it what it really is: CRIM - Consumer Rights Infringement Mechanism. If I buy a nice shiny new IBM HDD, I own the damn thing - every last little sector. If I want to read or write a given sector, that's my business and mine alone: nobody has the right to tell me what I may or may not do with that data.

    Copyright just isn't relevant here: it shouldn't be enforced this way.

  • That's why the "All Your Bits" headline was appropriate for the Microsoft Passport article. Public Geek Enemy #1 Bill Gates wants it all, and he wants it by manipulating the legal system. He knows deep down that he won't get it.
  • I bought an IBM harddrive just last week. Was my first and now it will be my last. Added to my list of vendors which "it just wouldn't feel right" to buy software from

    Rich

  • not software
  • So they propose it in the ATA standard...

    Another excellent reason to plug for SCSI here...
  • No, I don't think you bit a troll, but I do think you bit a youngster. I thought the same way he did before you reminded me that yes, IBM used to be a monopoly as well. What does this mean? Does this mean that IBM will not be trustworthy as an Open Source code contributer? Or does it mean that IBM will provide the drivers to let Linux run on CPRM enabled harddrives? (which I understand was one of the biggest concerns about these mofos, that you can't use OSes other than Windows because they're the only ones with good drivers and the hds will shut down if you access them incorrectly.) Honest, I don't think he's trolling, the whole situation is very confusing.

    Peace,
    Amit
    ICQ 77863057
  • all the new ones may be at some point...but if we buy enough "large" drives before these are on the shelves, then we can make arrays out of them and use them at least for awhile. Maybe by then enough people will have complained that they scrap the CPRM idea. (we can always hope)
  • You are aware, of course, that during World War 2 the United States had an income tax of 100% on all income over $50,000?

  • I'll have to go find the article, but essentially what it boils down to is that companies like ibm, et al. want the pc to be the dominant platform on which things like movies and music are distributed and used so that they can sell more units. In order to do this, it requires that the record industry and movie industry feel comfortable with the platform. They will not feel secure until there is some sort of copyright protection built into the machines(to avoid another napster fiasco, etc). So its not really surprising that a company like IBM supports things like CPRM and the generic functionality.
    -Aaron
  • Well, if Haynes made a manual for your Ferrari then it could be considered a libre one. You might wreck the service history, but you won't be breaking any laws next time you take a ratchet set to the engine.

    I kind of agree that 'Open' would be a better way of describing the hardware than 'Free' however.
  • Who, in their right mind, would support such a standard? And how long (in milliseconds) would it take the slashdot community to organize a complete counter-strike? We should break-off and start our own computing nation.

  • God, they should use their time to create something innovative like JAZ was many years ago, cuz with their Click! flop and their BUZ flop and their overpriced/underperforming JAZ stuff nowadays (oh and those 250MB zip disks? maybe they should can the zip and sell the 2GB cardrige to the zip price point, that'd sell), what, they want to add content control? and sell even less of their overpriced stuff? way to go Iomega.

  • And of course if somebody wrote their own driver it would be unusable under Windows since M$ didn't 'sign' the driver...
  • Well, look at the DeCSS arrest in Norway and the anon remailer being shut down in Finland due to the Scientology incident. The US has something to do with both...
  • You can see streaming video of this talk here [stanford.edu].
  • Would anyone who attends please attach a comment to this story?
  • That's what really matters. If/when drives with CPRM or similar mechanisms are released, don't buy them, and advise your friends and associates against buying them as well. They shouldn't last long in the kind of market where consumers are more informed about their choices.
  • I'm sorry I miss read your post. I thought you said boycott not buycott. sorry
  • If you're planning to buy a new hard drive, buy *NOW*. Before they're all built with control-ware.
  • Early today I read that Microsoft will officially own all bits as soon as they roll out .NET anyways. At least this way they can't break their own copyrights.
  • In cases like this, where open standards are involved, you can fight the power. The people on these committees aren't appointed by God - they get sent there by their companies to work for their companies' interests. The committee member ship is generall open - anyone who is willing to come to the meetings gets a vote.

    This is based on my experience with the NCITS L3.2 committee, which is responsible for the US side of standards like JPEG. Its sister committee, L3.1, is responsible for the US side of MPEG. If T13 (the committee where CPRM was proposed) works anything like L3.2, then membership is open to any organisation willing to pay the membership dues (hundreds of dollars per year) and come to the meetings (three per year, scattered around the US). In order to become a voting member, your company or organisation has to have paid its dues and show up at at least two consecutive meetings. Each organisation gets one vote, even if they have several representatives in attendance.

    It's not cheap - dues plus attending the meetings will take several thousand dollars per year, plus three weeks of work. It's mostly boring work, discussing tiny details of standards, making nit-picking changes to the wording, and so on. But don't complain that you're shut out - it's quite possible for a few people to pool together and form their own organisation and get just as much voting power as Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and so on. Three people sharing the dues and each going to one meeting per year wouldn't be a huge drain on money or time.

    For the organisations like L3.2 and L3.1 that send delegates to international groups like JPEG and MPEG, you can also become a delegate. This is done on an individual, not organisation, basis: the individual delegate must have attended two out of the last three NCITS meetings (plus their organisation must be a member in good standing). Then you can attend three more international meeting a year, doing even more boring work, but often in interesting destinations, though as far as I could tell, all of the places I went looked like the inside of a conference room.

    So it is a commitment of time and money, but anyone who wants to put in the effort can have a say on what standards are formed.

  • The art of cloning (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hard disks and removable media are at birth, exactly the same. Then we burn firmware, model number and serial number into them, plus disk configuration. What can be programmed, can be cloned. Telephone SIM cards have been duplicated, which indicates this scheme would be about as robust, minus the protection telephone cos get. I would have like to know the legal status of duplicating YOUR hard disk firmware exactly, or how the OS would react to seeing TWO removable media devices with the same serial number. This scheme was never going to work, unless each drive company used special secret, non-open commands as obscurity. oops, they do now. Now I will not have the right to nag MS everytime I reflash my HDD firmware, or see MS list each HDD model serial number and firmware revision its os will work with, as bottom line, HCL hurts new OS sales. Like CPUID's, the over the net transmission of HDD s/ns as yet to get the nod from privacy groups.
  • no no! Apple's license agreement for iTunes (which you MUST read, and click-agree to prior to downloading iTunes from their site) states that iTunes is NOT to be used for illegal copying copyrighted materials.

    So if you're using iTunes to illegally copy copyrighted materials, STOP RIGHT NOW! You are violating Apple's license agreement!

    Of course, if you are copying copyrighted works for noncommercial purposes, under your fair-use rights, copy away man. It's your legal, American, Apple-pie right.
  • download a spine you twit.

    you're british, aren't you?

    pantywaist.

    you probably believe in gun control too.
  • Microsoft is rabidly opposed to HARDWARE copy protection (because it makes it a pain in the ass to use hardware).

    Microsoft is all for SOFTWARE-based copy protection, of course.

    Neither are going to be 100% effective even in Hilary Rosen's wildest and wettest lezbo dreams.
  • that may have been an issue before Apple's stock plummeted from $125 to $15 last year. Probably not a big deal anymore
  • Check out this latest wierdness on my PVR;

    My DISH network DISHPlayer got a software update a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, when I was watching a live broadcast (a rarity), I clicked on MUTE during a commercial, and the fucking subtitles for hearing impaired turned on. So even though I turned on MUTE to get the commercial noise out of my ears, those oh-so-thoughtful engineers decided to put the text of the commercial dialog on my screen anyways.

    Good thing I still have that 30-second skip forward button. (UNlike TiVo)
  • You don't seriously think IBM is talking about Linux because they are a bunch of nice guys?

    They have an agenda, and Linux right now fits into that agenda.

    IBM isn't an underdog by any means, they still have higher revenues and profits than Microsoft.
  • > I wonder if somehow, something bad will eventually happen to Microsoft and cause it to shrink into underdog status,
    > just like it happenned to IBM.

    Wasn't it Microsoft DOS and Microsoft Windows that hapened to them?

    Another large hole they dug for themselvs was the PS/2 machine with the horrible MCA.
    IBM has actualy gotten a lot better from being a underdog and it might just be what Microsoft need to get stratight.

    // yendor

    --
    It could be coffe.... or it could just be some warm brown liquid containing lots of caffeen.
  • Easy. A company so large is very compartmentalized. The guys in charge of hardware may not care about Linux. I mean, really, do you think the cash register division cares about Linux?

    Its sad, really, because for every person at IBM that "gets it" theres so many more that don't, and probably never will, because all the evangelism in the world won't change that.
  • The DMCA was passed into US law to comply with an international treaty. You'll get yours soon enough.
    Here, courts will not penalize someone for exercing his fair use rights.

    --


  • Even if those copy protected hard drives become your staple diet, what stops people from developing mod-chips for them...?

    Umm, how about five years in federal prison?

    Er, this does applies ONLY to american citizens. Fortunately, 95% of the earth population are NOT american citizens.


    --

  • This only marks you as under 40. Older programmers and hackers used to regard IBM the way young kiddies do Microsoft, and with better reason, since their monopoly was more complete and there weren't nice squishy linux sandboxes to play in. Ouch! Did I just bite a troll? Hate when I do that, it's like biting tinfoil.

    I wonder if somehow, something bad will eventually happen to Microsoft and cause it to shrink into underdog status, just like it happenned to IBM.

    But, to do that, it's gonna have to be FRIGHTFULLY bad, and whatever does it will have to be EVEN MORE frightful than Microsoft nowadays...


    --

  • By Buycott I suppose that you mean that we buy from these companies. Sounds good to me.

    But perhaps you need to be a bit less ambiguous.


    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • Right. #1 is more likely, and a better solution. But, #1 is only possible because #2 is possible. If the masses were easily and completely controlled nobody would care what they thought. We'd all work in the slave mines (mining slaves?) supporting the mega-rich.

    We're free only because there are so many of us that if we grab weapons and revolt, we will win.

    Life is about threats. People pay a traffic ticket because their car will be 'boot'ed if they don't, and at some point down the line, the national guard will be called in to stop them if they keep resisting. Law is enforced by power, and as Mao said, power comes from the barrel of a gun.

    Luckily, veiled threats are almost always enough, but it all depends on the eventual willingness of each side to go to desperate ends.
  • I tend to favour "copy control" or maybe "distribution control"
  • How very unhackerish of you. You have failed to look at both sides of the equation. You can earn as much money as you like, so long as you make the minimum wage equal to at least on tenth of that.

    --
  • That's an interesting question; what's in it for hardware folks, IBM, etc? Is it just cheaper talking about these stupid proposal than sending Steve Case to Aruba to try and close a big contract? Easier than finding a gigolo to service Hillary Rosen on her next Vegas junket?

    Methinks there will be more time to ponder this. They will not stop with these schemes until the last dog dies. I loved the line in the article about how "this wasn't the most consumer-friendly of proposals, but there are others." That's the smartest reason to fire any employee of any technology company supporting such schemes is that they are ALL unfriendly to consumers. If they are worth a nickel, they depend on end-to-end control, or else they are trivial to avoid, in varying degrees. If they are end to end, they can't reasonably tell the difference between my home movie and a copy of Crouching Tiger, unless they depend on registering, say, md5s of my home movies automatically, which is unwieldly and the unfriendliest, most privacy invading assault ever wielded by corporations against their CUSTOMERS, who are unlikely to go along.

    It won't be easy to cram this down people's throats. Their best hope is to get it built into all hard drives, and over the course of 20 years or more, get all input/output technologies to cooperate. That's a tall task.

    Boss of nothin. Big deal.
    Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

  • Damn, the Register has a FAQ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/15718.html weird, the href won't take) that speculates extensively on the motives. Check items 7 and 8.

    Time to send an email to Dave Emory (listen to WFMU [wfmu.org]). ;-)

    Boss of nothin. Big deal.
    Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

  • There are enough heavyweights pushing for this that you might not have a choice.


    SuperID

    Free Database Hosting [freesql.org]

  • you can read my summary of the day and my own opinions here [biodome.org].
  • It's an operating system. If Microsoft can get in trouble for including IE in their operating system then why shouldn't they get in trouble for including a ripper in there? Think of all the people who make cd rippers like Real Jukebox and the like. Who is going to go download that? You've already got Microsoft's. I can see a time when you will go to the store and look for software and there just wont be any there because a "not so great but it's free" version comes with Windows.
  • WinXP has a CD ripper built into it. Think about that, a CD ripper built into the operating system.
  • > Saying you'll never buy a CPRM HD is similar to the "no one will ever need more than 640k" mentality.

    For general-purpose computing, right. But for homebrew entertainment use, which is the only use threatened by CPRM, mistaken:

    My worst-case scenario: MP3 at 320kpbs. 2.5M per minute of music. 60G IDE drive. 24,000 minutes, or 400 hours - the equivalent of 320 74-minute CDs.

    Hardware? A friggin' P166, 32M of RAM, and an old SoundBlaster will do the trick.

    For any conceivable audio application, $1000 (the price of a good stereo) worth of 60G IDE hard drives purchased this summer, along with a couple of surplus PCs (to be bought a couple of years from now) will last a lifetime.

    If you wanna do video, that's another story. Yeah, we probably will have to wait for optical holo-cubes or whatever, before we can store a few hundred DVDs on a single chunk of data, and yeah, CPRM will be an issue then.

    But if your ears can't hear the difference between a CD and a 320k MP3, grab a drive.

    "Nobody will ever need more than 640 gigs for home audio".

  • I agree. I don't even know why they should be concerned with such matters at all. Getting data stored and retrived as quickly as possible should be the ONLY concern they have.
  • The less secure your media the less software vendors will distribute on it.

    Bzzt.. Why? Software companies biggest interest is selling more copies. The more secure the format, the more that can go wrong, and the less satisfied your customers are..

    Another reason. I'm just using Microsoft because they're handy..

    The skript kiddy that snags unprotected ME off of alt.binaries.whatever isn't gonna magically pay for a legal copy of XP when it's distributed in a secure format that can't be copied. When he can no longer warez it, he'll switch to an unencumbered, warezable, or free OS. That means less sales of the new Windows versions of games and applications, and more demand for other OS and older Windows versions users already have. Less dependance on Windows for the applications and games that you desire means fewer legitimate copies sold. Retail sales of both MS OS and MS apps drop like a rock as the upgrade path is pushed. Retail and channel sales are down dramatically, and Microsoft raises the OEM price to offset the losses. OEMs don't like that, higher prices mean less units shipped, they buy fewer copies and offer alternatives. The alternatives are quickly gaining applications, remember?
  • I'm just as fanatical about freedom and anti-corporational as any other geek, but if the Napster/RIAA fiasco has taught us geeks anything, it should be that we cannot win. There are minor victories along the way for freedom, but in the end, it's completely rediculous to fight the power.

    Think about the recent USA elections. Ralph Nader had some promising campaign goals, and a few good court battles that helped him get onto the ballot in many states. However, in the end, fighting for him was futile. There's no point in trying to overthrow the current political/corporational regime. The only thing that can be done is to sit back and try to make the best out of our terrible situation.

    DeCSS has taught us that the American corporations know no national bounds in their attempt to gain more profits for themselves.

    I could go on and on, but I think my point is made. There is no reason to fight against the status quo. I know, it would be good to fight it, because it's moral, blah blah blah. But it's futile. Just live with it already.

    ------
    That's just the way it is

  • It's kind of interesting that it seems the "geeks" who have long hated Apple for many reasons (some good, most bad, IMHO) will now be seeing Apple more in the Linux/Open Source camp as far as fair use rights and the freedom to be able to do what you're supposed to be able to do with information (that's not to say pirate it, but no artificial fair use restrictions).

    Meanwhile, Microsoft is further entrenching itself in the camp of "we're the only game in town, so we don't have to attract users; they're stuck with us. Now we can attract record companies."

    I can only hope that this'll backfire on Microsoft when it turns out that the general public DOES indeed care about fair use.
  • How can a company that has been so gung-ho about Open Source products be so gung ho for something that will ultimately utterly fuck this industry up? Does someone know the team that's spearheading this or the names of any of its members? Perhaps someone needs to ask Senior Management if they are aware of this counter productive team in the midst of an otherwise cool company.

  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Microsoft strongly *against* copy control in hard drives? I seem to remember them publicly stating that they would not build in the neccesary changes to Windows to support it...

    But here, they've voted FOR it? What gives? For good or evil, Windows is pretty damn big. If it ends up in Windows, especially if it's required to use new versions of Windows...well...we'd be forced to eat it.

    argh


  • His point was, troll, that in order to install a new windows version you would have to get a new hard drive, you couldn't use old hardware.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • How many karma points do I need to win this game ?

    51.

    --
  • Even if those copy protected hard drives become your staple diet, what stops people from developing mod-chips for them...?

    Umm, how about five years [cornell.edu] in federal prison?

  • I was with you until you insulted vim. Emacs commie.

    That aside, it's a good idea. As long as we have big, profitable companies on our side, making money selling us the products we want-- well, what do we have to fear if IBM and MS pass this content control BS, if we can still buy non-content controlled products from such a prestigious list?
  • You're right that we can't win a technological arms race with big business. CPRM will probably get implemented.... What we can do is win the PR war.

    Agreed, but I don't think we have to get the government involved. A few companies may manage to get some random standards body to pass CPRM, sure. And then MS and IBM will make content-controlled crap, but there will still be the companies that voted against it offering non-CPRM stuff for some time. Then there are two possible outcomes:
    1) Joe Consumer doesn't understand this "geek issue", and buys the CPRM stuff, puzzled as to why his computer is more of a pain in the ass to use than ever, and nothing works. Solution? Spend more money. Western Digital, Maxtor, et. al. see that no one cares about CPRM, stop making non-CPRM drives.
    2) Joe Consumer finds out that there's a select group of companies out to screw him out of his hard-earned money, but there are other companies that will sell him much better stuff that doesn't break all of his old software. Maxtor, Western Digital, other non-CPRM stuff becomes quite popular, and CPRM goes the way of DivX.

    We need to make sure #2 happens.

  • I can see why a software company like Micro$oft would vote for copyright protection, but why would companies like IBM and Iomega want copyright (copywrite?) protection?

    It doesn't seem that free, fair or illicit use of harddrives or zip disks would be that bad for their business, it would actually be good. The more mp3s I can distribute fairly or not, the more 250 Meg Zip disks people will be buying, it would seem.

    Are they just doing it out of the goodness of their hearts for all the poor software distributors? Or are they being pressured from somewhere? Or do they own sizable software subsidies?

  • Geeks always have options

    if you are into Beowulf clusters, there is the Parallel Virtual File System [clemson.edu]. Basically it is something that allows you to configuration the drives from many machines into one large drive.

    You can find added information here [google.com] on other similar systems

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • Wrong. Although I won't debate your other points, because they are, well, debatable, this factoid is plain wrong: the stock that MSFT purchased from Apple is non-voting, meaning they can't control this way.

    Owning this large a block of ANY stock means that the merly registering their *INTENT* to sell (a requirment if you own certain levels of stock is that you disclose your purchases and sales) would cause the stock to plummit.

    If you think that the Board of Directors arent aware that if MS were to *THINK* about registering, or heaven forbid actually sell, that they wouldnt all end up loosing millions in options (and their jobs because the shareholders would be pissed) you are very sadly mistaken.

    I often hear that the stock is 'non-voting' as argument that MS dosnt dominate Apple - but I think your getting caught up in the smoke and mirrors of the 'regulations'... Apple is very definately working in 'conjunction' with M$, or at least understand that M$ holds a very big hammer (their stock value) in case Apple was to propose something M$ wouldnt like - you can be sure that Apple is under a virtual non-competition rule 'in-house' to keep from stepping on the wrong toes at M$.

  • Everybody who voted down CPRM makes storage devices (except maybe Apple, but hey...). Everybody who voted it up was a wide-spread company with stakes in many areas, and often at the base of the computer (IE - Intel: CPU, M$: OS). Hardware companies are sure this will hurt business, software companies are dead set on being the only ones who get liscensed to use the programs compatible with CPRM thus giving them a boost. Just imagine Microsloth making deals with the major media to only build stuff for their company!

    I can't be karma whoring - I've already hit 50!

  • Yes, I am supposed to follow somebody who sayz there is a limit on how much money I can earn--Right

    Green Party [greenparty.org]
    Maximum Income: Build into the progressive income tax a 100% tax on all income, regardless of source, over ten times the minimum wage. With this Ten Times Rule in effect under today's extremely unequal distribution of income in the U.S., a 100% tax on income above ten times the minimum wage would allow us to cut the income taxes of everyone in the bottom 99%, by over half for the top brackets, by over three-quarters in the middle brackets, and totally for the lower brackets-and still generate about 40% more tax revenues than under the current income tax structure.

    Crippeling finical motivations is not adequate to fix the problem. Companies and the people are trying to protect their way of doing business. this has happened everytime there has been a technological breakthrough that changes the way people live.

    They need to learn to take advantage of things and re-align to do business rather than wasted billions of dollars trying to fight innovation and change.

  • Microsoft is not the only vendor that wants to sell out consumers' rights in order to distribute controlled media.

    They are in company with Be, Inc. [be.com]

    Their CEO, Jean-Louis Gassée desperately wants the BeOS to be used as an internet appliance, and he is trying to sell his internet appliance as the perfect platfrom for content-controlled media.

    JLG calls this mis-feature a "secure digital music" platform, but a computer does not know the difference between a music file, a movie file or a text file. So Be, Inc. is attempting to become the favored distributor of all content controlled media.

    Perhaps it is best that they go out of business now, so we only have one OS vendor to worry about: MS.
  • imagine for a moment a hard drives and flash media enforcing copyright in the little things that are going to need them, not just our big and bad pc's. thats where you'll see the same outlines for cprm cept they'll do it on embedded hardware in something like, oh I don't know, a sony mp3 player, a panasonic hd based vcr (not the replaytv) to name a few.

    They (thankfully) didnt penetrate the pc standards but that won't keep them from tying leashes to your media in the new (portabke) formats either.

    My karma is too high so I'll add this: Stop calling for friggin boycotts already. Slashdot barely controls a million people. If it happened it would be on oprah's tv show, not /.
  • When software companies started doing Bad Things with software, Free software was born. If hardware companies start doing Bad Things with hardware, I am sure that at least one will sense the profit in millions of geeks exclusively buying Free hardware.

  • Us 1. Corporate 0.

    A bunch of hardware and software companies get together to decide whether or not we get to keep control over our own property and benevolently ordain that yes, we do get to maintain our own control over what's on our computers (for now) and somehow this is a win for us?

    If this is the status of our opposition to CPRM, we're doomed. The customer badly needs a voice in these discussions.

  • While this vote can be seen as a small victory, I predict that the media companies will lean heavily on individual hardware manufacturers to implement content controls with or without a standard. Any manufacturer who wants to provide hardware to the companies that make closed devices such as PVRs and portable music players is going to feel the pressure to "play ball". It's pretty clear that computer technology is moving out of the PC and into consumer electronics. That's where the mass market lies, at least that's where the electronics industry thinks it lies. At any rate, any manufacturer willing to go along is going to get the business. Looking at it that way, IBM could probably care less that this vote went against CPRM because they'll just implement it anyway and have the market for those drives locked up tight. Now if you really want to piss off the entertainment companies by throwing a monkey wrench into their plans, design an open-source media appliance that is relatively easy and cheap to build with standard parts. Post the plans on the Net and let anyone who wants to get into the act build and sell this thing. Make the thing using open standards, including an open-source OS and the ability to play alternative media content off the Net via a broadband connection, not just the mass-produced content that comes over the airwaves, cable, and satellite. If you think the media companies are scared of the power of the Internet distribution channel now, imagine how they'll feel when anyone can have access to it on their TV and stereo from the comfort of their couch. I can more or less do this now using some gadgets from X10.com, but building this into a neat little box that can fit into the home entertainment center will take things to the next level.

  • Re:Where are IBM's priorities? (Score:3)

    by Salsaman ( 141471 ) on Wednesday April 04, 2001 @12:16AM (#316942) Homepage
    I think the problem is that Big Blue's legal department is too disconnected from its technical people.

    On the one hand we have cool stuff coming from them such as the Linux watch, and then on the other hand they lobby for lame ducks like European software patents and CPRM.

    The legal guys see something like CPRM and start drooling about how many $$$ they can make for the company out of it, whilst at the same time it's obviously going to impact their good standing amongst open source advocates.

    IBM needs to decide their overall strategy much better - are they going to be long term supporters of open source, or are they out to make quick bucks from the first company that comes along and says "vote for this !" whilst pissing in the open source well. They can't have it both ways for long.

  • Really doesn't get it... (Score:3)

    by Salsaman ( 141471 ) on Wednesday April 04, 2001 @12:27AM (#316943) Homepage
    So apparently people who buy DVD's and want to play them under Linux are not 'innocent consumers' ?

    Very nice...

  • Re:Optimism (Score:3)

    by IronChef ( 164482 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @05:58PM (#316944)

    Even if I agree that it is futile to fight, I'd rather put off the inevitable.
  • Iomega is already pioneering media storage copy protection schemes with its "HipZip Digital Audio Player" ... From the corporate profile [iomega.com]:

    "The HipZip player recognizes MP3 format and Microsoft Windows Media(TM) Format (WMA) actively and is upgradeable to additional formats. It supports digital rights management (DRM) technology to secure commercial music content to PocketZip disks, offering artists and publishers protection from the unauthorized distribution of commercial content."

    This is "phase one" in a larger project. Take a look at a document from InterTrust [intertrust.com] outlining the plan it is implementing along with Iomega.

    (Don't know InterTrust? Read what CEO Victor Shear had to say to the US Senate just yesterday in this pressrelease [intertrust.com].)

    While the claim is made in that document that "Iomega and InterTrust are removing the roadblocks for consumers," it's clear that they're really just building their own roadblock around the corner: the consumer will download an mp3 or whatever from an InterTrust-enabled service directly to a Zip disk; the consumer is then free to carry that mp3 around from device to device on that disk; the consumer is NOT free to copy the mp3 to any other storage medium. Once all the "good" music is safely stored away behind InterTrust-enabled walls, an Iomega-branded disk then becomes the carrier-medium of choice (the LP or CD of the future!), and Iomega cleans up on the digital-content revolution. That would seem to be the long-term vision anyway. ;)

    So: Iomega benefits from increased sales to end users (Bob needs an Iomega disk to store his download of Britney Spears' latest hit and play it in his ZipWalkman, his ZipCarstereo, etc). Iomega benefits from industry kickbacks which reward this kind of stuff, directly or not. Iomega benefits from sales of "solutions" to other companies. Iomega benefits from CPRM adoption because it makes the whole Iomega/InterTrust scheme that much easier to implement.

    In short, Iomega wants to position itself as a "key component" in the "civilizing" of digital distribution networks, and CPRM and similar initiatives would seem to be crucial to achieving that end.

    I imagine that many of the others in the yay column have similar vested interests.



  • It's all about control... (Score:3)

    by BartManInNZ ( 316272 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @05:46PM (#316946)
    Global Warming - control where/how people live
    W.H.O. (World Health Organisation) - cotrol who lives/dies - keep the world population in check
    CPRM - control the lesiure activities of the masses

    May God have Mercy!
  • This only marks you as under 40. Older programmers and hackers used to regard IBM the way young kiddies do Microsoft, and with better reason, since their monopoly was more complete and there weren't nice squishy linux sandboxes to play in. Ouch! Did I just bite a troll? Hate when I do that, it's like biting tinfoil.

    Boss of nothin. Big deal.
    Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

  • "Content Control" not "Copy Protection" (Score:4)

    by mojo-raisin ( 223411 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @07:51PM (#316948)
    It seems like only a minor sematic difference, but the meaning is very significant. I know it is easy to forget the difference, as I have done so in the past myself.

    "Content Control" is what Microsoft, IBM, et al are trying to achieve. They want be able to control any and all information on programmable computers.

    The term "copy protection" simply reflects a symptom of the control; just like a cough is a symptom of a cold. The fact that they want to be able to "protect" certain articles of intellectual property reflects on the deeper truth that they will be controlling this property.

    So let's please call CPRM and son-of-CPRM what it is: Content Control.

  • Apple against MS (Score:4)

    by HongPong ( 226840 ) <hongpong&hongpong,com> on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @06:15PM (#316949) Homepage
    I think this is terrific. Apple is definitely pursuing a good, anti-DMCA/CPRM type strategy from what I can see. Look, Mac users have free access to encoding the licensed Fraunhofer MP3 codec which you usually have to pay for. That's a Good Thing, and surely makes people like these CPRM advocates unhappy. "More MP3s, dammit!" grumbles the RIAA, "And CD-burning built-in to boot!" Was there ever a handier program for (illegally, or fair-usefully) managing and burning Mp3s to CD than iTunes? It's the perfect pilferer's tool. And that means less control from The Man.

    Additionally, Apple has that DVD-authoring program, plus of course Final Cut Pro and such. Plus a new OS with an open-source core. That's goood. Apple is rapidly positioning itself as the good guy as much as it can, usually. Although they aren't perfect, suing guys who make Aqua-like skins. And of course they licensed that one click silliness.

    My point is: Apple is really forging ahead in a lot of areas, even if it's small, too compromising steps for now. (For example, Mr. Stallman annoyed about the Apple Open Source License: "It's not exactly GPL! AHHHH!")

    Microsoft, on the other hand, has sort of locked down pretty strongly. As someone observed, Windows Media Player no longer has a "Capture Stream" function, presumably to put a stop to copyright naughtiness (or fair use). And that new codec which supposedly blows MPEG Audio Layer-3 away has all kinds of copyright protection built in. MS is backsliding, man.

    Apple is doing a yummalicious job with this stuff, and going out on a limb by opposing stuff like the CPRM that most people won't even notice. Remember this the next time you're going out to get a computer.

    --

  • Re:Optimism (Score:5)

    by Bill Currie ( 487 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @05:54PM (#316950) Homepage
    With supporters like you, who needs detractors? There is no "cannot win" unless you don't fight. Yes, the deck is their favour, but while there's someone willing to fight, there's always a chance, slim though it may be. We have a higher chance of winning than a sperm has of fertilizing an egg, yet it happens all the time.

    Bill - aka taniwha
    --

  • Re:Whats in it for them? (Score:5)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @06:28PM (#316951)
    Their customers want this.

    You are not their customer in the proper sense. Perhaps you buy a few drives. That's nothing. The commodity PC hardware market is not lucrative enough for HDD manufacturers right now. Prices are rock bottom. They want to sell boatloads of drives to appliance makers(*), and they need an edge in the market. The value add is the feature alot of hardware+software companies are asking for: copy-protection. This is why you see alot of OEMs in the against column, and software vendors in the for column. I'm suprised to see maxtor in the against column, as their website along with quantum's website menition being able to provide this in the future. They must be holding out for a more flexable solution.

    (*) - I'm not necissarily talking consumer appliances when I say appliances either. Think routers, arcade games, groupware servers, server apliances in general... All these manufacturers have a vested intrest in preventing people/competitors from seeing how their device works. That's hard to do with a device made from general purpose components.

    The more mp3s I can distribute fairly or not, the more 250 Meg Zip disks people will be buying, it would seem.

    The less secure your media the less software vendors will distribute on it. Even with these features, you'll still be able to use the disk as you please if you have access to the content you want to put on it.

    Or do they own sizable software subsidies?
    Last I checked IBM had one of the worlds largest...

  • > Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
    > 4:15PM, Wednesday, April 4, 2001
    > NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building B03
    >
    > Title: Content Protection for Recordable Media
    >
    > Speaker: Jeffrey B. Lotspiech
    > IBM Almaden Research Center
    >
    > About the talk:
    > Content Protection for Recordable Media, or CPRM, is a technology
    > developed by IBM, Intel, Matsushita, and Toshiba to provide copy
    > protection on portable media. The technology allows a recorder to
    > record encrypted content, and a player to play it back, without
    > having any keys in common. The media acts as a passive oracle to
    > allow the different boxes to come to the same cryptographic key.
    > In contrast, previous copy protection technologies like the one
    > used for DVD video, depended on shared keys between the mastering
    > studio and the players, with predictable results. As soon as a
    > 16-year-old in Norway found one shared key, the system was
    > effectively broken: there was no way to exclude the broken key
    > from the system without hurting too many innocent consumers. In
    > contrast, CPRM can survive thousands of independent attacks, and
    > exclude millions of circumvention devices, without any chance of
    > innocent consumers being affected.
    >
    > Recently, articles have appeared in the press that CPRM will be
    > standardized on all PC hard drives. This has fueled Orwellian
    > mages of a Big Brother chip on your PC that will decide whether
    > your files are worthy of being copied. This is complete nonsense.
    > CPRM would never be standardized, nor have we ever proposed such
    > a thing. CPRM strength is portability and interchangeability and
    > it is mismatch for fixed hard drive. It is completely passive,
    > requires no hardware, and can only be exploited by newly-designed
    > applications. It cannot possibly affect existing files or
    > applications. How these myths came about, and persist, was an
    > object lesson for a media-naive researcher.
    >
    > About the speaker:
    >
    > Jeff Lotspiech is the manager of the Content Protection
    > Technology Group at the IBM Almaden Research Center. He has a BS
    > and MS in Computer Science from MIT, 1972. He has been working on
    > content protection technologies, both the Internet and media, for
    > the last six years.
    >
    > Contact information:
    >
    > Jeffrey B. Lotspiech
    > IBM Almaden Research Center DPEM/B3
    > 650 Harry Road
    > San Jose, CA 95120
    > 408-927-1851
    > 408-927-3497
    > lotspiech@almaden.ibm.com

    See you there!

  • The point is not to win the tech war (Score:5)

    by Pseudonym ( 62607 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @09:22PM (#316953)

    You're right that we can't win a technological arms race with big business. CPRM will probably get implemented.

    What we can do is win the PR war. It's interesting that you bring up Ralph Nader. He won the PR war against businesses years ago. He turned enough people against companies producing consumer products which play fast-and-loose with people's safety that in the end, the government and business had to stand up and take notice.

    That's where we need to concentrate our efforts, IMO. We can't win the technology in the short term, but if we do it right, we can win the hearts and minds.

  • Buycott!!! (Score:5)

    by Travoltus ( 110240 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @05:48PM (#316954) Journal
    I propose a buycott!
    This is where we send letters to targeted companies, stating why we are going to single them out to purchase, not avoid, their products. In this case it is because they voted down CPRM.

    DO IT, folks! There is more to be gained from honey and sugar than vim and vigor.

    The companies on my Buycott list:
    Apple, Adaptec, ST Micro, Western Digital, Maxtor, LSI Logic and Hale Landis (who is this??).
    ========================
    63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
    ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,

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