[LINK] The impact of DRM on the market for new content [Was: alternate media formats]

[Rick Welykochy]

Jan Whitaker wrote:

> This parallels the DVD region silliness. There is nothing
> less-functional than a company protecting its turf once the horse has
> bolted. (love mixed metaphors and I don't come up with them often)

The real silliness with DVDs was storing the encryption key
on the DVD disk itself. This scheme was cracked within days
by, i believe, someone from Scandinavia. Anyone recall the
release of a the DVD DRM cracker on the net in the 90's?

I do not know how Blu Ray disks are protected, but apparently they
use a secret multi-level encryption scheme. Once again, though, this
is security by obscurity and it has already been cracked. Google for
"blu ray crack".

The point is that without an external key source (i.e. requiring
a key fetched from an online store or elsewhere on your storage
device), the encryption is pointless and moot.

And I believe many of us have already been stung with DRM that
requires an external key, say on your hard drive. Once you move
the DRM material to another rive, bingo, encryption is broken
and you have a dud document that you cannot read. Broken audio
files from iTunes store come to mind.

cheers
rickw

-- 
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Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services

Hardware n, "The parts of a computer system that can be kicked."
      -- Henri Karrenbeld