Re: JSH: Challenge with DMESE, copy protection

James Harris wrote:

On Jul 15, 11:52 am, gjedwa...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Most people who bother to post on technical newsgroups are the kind of
people who muse on interesting problems from time to time. You are not
unique. There's a big difference though. Anyone with half a brain who
spent a few minutes thinking up DRM ideas would come up with your
scheme as one possibility. It's mind-numbingly obvious. But here's
(roughly) what might happen in the mind of a functional individual:

Same argument mathematicians currently use to claim no short proof of
Fermat's Last Theorem exists.

I have never seen a mathematician make this claim without
qualification. I have, however, seen many claim that there is
*probably* no short proof of FLT.

Remarkably naive. In the real world, simple solutions are often
missed.

But he didn't say your solution was simple (it is, but that's
irrelevant). He said it was obvious.

I look for simple ideas--unlike you people who love complexity for its
own sake as I guess you think it is impressive--

Rubbish. Mathematicians love simple solutions to problems when they
exist. It's just that, unlike you, they have both the patience and
intelligence required to follow complicated proofs when those are the
only ones that are known for a given theorem.

"Hmm..I think [DMESE, say] seems plausible. It's completely obvious
though, so *thousands* of people must have thought of it already,
especially those professionals for whom DRM technology is a career.
Nevertheless, because it *sounds* plausbile to me, and I'm interested
in the subject, maybe I'll do a little investigation as to why my idea
isn't in use. Perhaps it's impractical, perhaps industry politics gets
in the way, perhaps I missed a major flaw, who knows?

Personally, James, I think that there are plenty of problems with your
proposal. I've already mentioned some of them. Rather than answer them
you dismissed them as "stupid", though perhaps what I said about
firmware got through to you since recently you have been emphasising
that DMESE has to be hard-wired into drives (which will make bugs that
are present at shipping impossible to fix, but never mind). There are
others: for example, CD and DVD writers have to be able to write stuff
unencrypted so that one can back up or pass on one's own work without
inconvenience. What would stop people from copying the information
contained on a CD or DVD onto their computers in a file format with no
indication that it is copyrighted, using something like EAC (which can
be used to get around some of the copy-protection schemes currently in
use)? Even if the original media are encrypted one needs software that
will translate it into something that can be sent to a video or audio
device. What would stop hackers patching that software to save it in
unencrypted form to the user's hard drive?

.

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