Copy protection in hardware
- From: "John J. Lee" <phrxy@[redacted]>
- Subject: Copy protection in hardware
- Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 19:00:40 +0000 (GMT)
People here may be interested in this short article from the latest
(2001-02-15) Crypto-Gram by Bruce Schneier -- its about the copy-
protection scheme for hard disk drives and flash memory (where newly
published electronic books will be stored) supported by three big
manufacturers. Two or three of the first couple of paragraphs are a bit
technical, but you can ignore them if you're just interested in the
consequences.
http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0102.html#1
The following quotes give the gist:
-------------
CPRM (Content Protection for Recordable Media) is a system for enforcing
copy protection on personal computers. The basic idea is to enforce
digital rights management -- copy-prevention, limited use, whatever -- in
electronic media.
[...]
The technology will be ineffective, but that may not matter.
[...]
So, what do we have here? We have a serious threat to civil liberties:
large entertainment companies are allying themselves with the computer
industry to dictate what can and can't happen on your hard drive.
[...]
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Bruce Schneier has his head firmly screwed on and is reliably a source of
much wisdom on anything relating to computer security.
John