Posted on May 24, 2008

DRM Racketeers With More Famous Last Words

Lets begin this exercise in hilarity by covering this little gem of a tagline:

Encryption Chip Will End Piracy, Says Atari Founder

The problem here is that another attempt at draconian DRM enforcement (at the hardware level) is totally worthless. While this might stop a casual pirate, the same people who are currently successfully pirating media will continue to do, regardless of security efforts. The time-rich and cash-poor will always find a way to bypass TPM, DRM and whatever is the current fad in copy-protection. I’m sure some Brazillan kids in a favella already have this particular hardware issue figured out. After all, people don’t need to break the encryption (hard), just find a weakness in the system to exploit (easy).

The DRM failure world tour – “uncrackable” systems that have been bypassed:

  • Most computer software: id Software / Blizzard / Adobe / Autodesk / Microsoft / etc. – 1990′s to today

The thing about TPM chips is that you give up all rights and lose control of the hardware that you purchased. An example to drive this point home is that it’s exactly like buying a new BMW, only if you decide to get service at the local shop instead of the dealership the car will turn around and drive you home. Not only does this mean you don’t really own your technology but someone else is making your choices for you. Cory Doctorow’s fantastic new book Little Brother covers some of these issues (read it, it’s free).

This draconian type of security is really a problem since 95% of the general public does not understand the consequences of losing ownership in their technology. Unfortunely that means that same public will blindly go along with the DRM people and end up shocked when they can no longer use the data they purchased.

via ShackNews

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