Digital Music protection in New Hard-drives?

submitted by Joe on Tuesday, January 2 2001 at 4:02 PM

So you think they'll never be able to stop you from downloading mp3's? Not if a new proposal (requires Acrobat Reader) for the ATA specification used by computer drives backed by big players in the computer industry such as Intel, IBM, Matsushita and Toshiba is incorporated into new hard drives. Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM) encrypts files flagged as protected, requiring a software key (controlled by the distributor) to decrypt..

But of course the money-grubbing entertainment industry is really behind this scheme. According to this FAQ at The Register, the entertainment industry bullied the personal computer industry into this with the threat of excluding PC's from playback of digital entertainment content.

The developers of the proposal have argued that the article at The Register is misleading and that it is only intended for removeable media such as Zip and Jazz drives. To which The Register responds that the specification includes details specifically for hard-drives...


Related links:

4C Entity (CPRM developer)
The Register's CPRM Story
ZDNet story
CPRM discussion at Ars-Technica

posted by BigMac on Wednesday, January 3 2001 at 1:41 AM

This is really quite scary. But, I wish that the recording industry / motion picture industry would learn their respective lessons.

Napster is the bane of the the RIAA, and DeCSS is the bane of the MPAA.

As long as people want their digital media for free, they will find a way to get it.

1/3/2001 10:31:34 AM

Honestly; how long do you think it would take a crafty programmer to develop a way around this? Remember encrypted DVDs?

1/3/2001 11:50:11 AM

Can the administration please reformat the front page articles? I think it is the post about the bowl game that is screwing up the display on 800x600 monitors. It is way too wide, and forces the whole brentroad front page to be stretched way off screen.

Thanks.

P.S. For the sake of on topicness, why wasn't the slashdot discussion of this hard drive scandal posted?

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00%2F12%2F24%2F1837215&cid=&pid=0&startat=&threshold=4&mode=thread&commentsort=0&op=Change

1/3/2001 1:07:08 PM

Actually I was in a hurry to write this, and added the links as an afterthought. I kinda forgot to check slashdot for a thread about this...

1/3/2001 4:51:30 PM

that may not be as bad as you all think... simply because most of the mp3's that are circulated across the internet are made from ripping them from the original CD and as long as computers are able to read a CD they will be able to rip the music from them, and once that is done it is simply a process of converting them to mp3 format... and the hard drive wouldn't be able to discriminate that as the "protected" media...

so for now i'm not worried about it...

-T

1/3/2001 8:13:42 PM

I realize that there will be ways to get around this...

What is scary is that this is being considered for part of the SPECIFICATION for ATA. They are making copyright protection a priority at this level of hardware...the specifications that hardware must follow to be compatible with all other equipment out there. The entertainment industry must have some serious clout to be able to swing this kind of shit into the hardware specifications...

Do you guys think that this will be the last time we will see intellectual property protection being made a priority at the hardware level? I see this as a sign of the times as much as anything...

1/3/2001 11:56:13 PM

now of course, this may create a HUGE market for foreign HDs if this ever comes to fruition as it seems to be intended... i never imagined the potential for a Black Market on Hard Drives like this...

-Ty

1/4/2001 1:05:34 AM

Most HDs ARE foreign. If anything, when you get a "Japanese" HD, it will have been produced alongside an "American" one. In fact, most every part for your computer is produced in the far east. If this bullshit (yes, it is indeed bullshit) comes to be the standard, you'll see hoards of pre-standard HDs being gobbled up by the masses, and an accompanying price rise to go along with them. You remember a few years ago when RAM prices nearly doubled? It was because of that earthquake in Kobe that destroyed the plants that produced one of the alloys need for the RAM chips. This will be nearly the same thing.

1/4/2001 1:16:31 PM

but could there be potential for an insurgence of foreign owned and based companies that are not regulated by american law...

-T

1/4/2001 4:55:39 PM