h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think that without "PCs which only run software approved and 'signed' by a central agency" the worst case predictions about the other stuff will not come to pass. And, I don't think that will come to pass for many reasons (the one about lots of government computers using Linux and other free software is a good example). Whichever way you look at it, human ingenuity will always find a way round whatever legislation they come up with. This is not to say that there isn't a problem, though. The more difficult you make it to circumvent the rules, the less people will decide that it is worth their while to do so. Blame it on capitalism I say.

Oooh, check this out:

http://support.bbc.co.uk/ogg/

If I paid a TV licence fee, I'd be proud ... as it is I'll mention it to my parents

Well - have you read about Palladium, Dogster?

Those PCs are already under development... lead by Microsoft with full support from Intel and AMD.

Two other quick points:

"Documents which can only be read within a specific company, preventing 'leaked' documents" - this is nothing new and is anyway totally irrelevant if someone has access to a printer (or simply copy and paste into a text file if they are dead set on not using paper).

Also:

"These measures are all illegal according to the concept of copyright. Look at the word Copy-Right. That is what you're purchasing when you buy a book: the right to a copy. That copy now belongs to you. You can read it, you can give it away or sell it. You can put it in your attic and unpack it decades later to read it again. You can't do any of that with a limited play cd. These measures designed to "protect" the copyright of digital media, are in fact denying your rights to the copy you've purchased."

I think this is a misunderstanding of copyright. A copyright is an exclusive right (given to the author, but can be sold) to make copies. When you buy a book, you are buying a material object (nothing to do with any rights) but you do NOT have the right to make copies of it. When you buy softare, you are not buying an object, but a license to use the software in a certain way. By installing the software and clicking on the "I agree" button you've agreed not to run on it on more than one computer, etc. The distinction is slightly blurry for something like limited play CDs, and I shouldn't think there are many (if any) relevant precedents, so there's an opportunity for the big companies to define new law and precedents in their interests.

Printing it out might work - but, then, that's fairly easy for a company to control... and extra options for restricting printing will be available.

Copy and paste to a text file *wouldn't* work... that's the whole point of Palladium; DRM is built in at ground level, and can't be circumvented in software.

I admit that's quite a technical challenge... but I believe it's what they're aiming for.

26199, I just read Ross Anderson's Palladium FAQ. I agree, it is disturbing stuff.

My feeling, having read it all, is that in the worst case scenario, we would no longer be dealing with what we think of as computers anymore, but something more like all-purpose entertainment devices. I don't think they could make all of this stuff work as they want it to and still leave the devices able to do what quite a lot of computer users need them to do. I would anticipate that they would break off into two separate products, "entertainment computers" and "work computers".

For example, consider programming. (Assuming that in this dystopian world of Palladium, people are still allowed to write their own programs of course.) Am I allowed to write software that sends a stream of audio data to the sound card? Let's assume so. Am I allowed to read data off the hard disk? Again, let's assume so. If you allow those two, then the problem of "break once, run anywhere" is back. Assuming that someone, somewhere, has the technical savvy to break the encryption on a piece of music, for example, then he just invents a new file format and people can download the music. He also distributes (perhaps with it) a copy of the source code that has to be pasted into your programming software to play it. Obviously this would lead to a cat and mouse situation, but one that is, I suggest, unwinnable by the powers that be (on these terms, that is).

Or consider this. At some point, if you are playing a piece of music, the sound has to leave your computer and go to your speakers. You can easily imagine a device that is placed between your speakers and computer line out port that records the data to a third device.

I've no doubt that this ridiculous game will be played out and many of these ideas will indeed be put into practice, but it seems to me that it has been being played for ages and the hackers are always one step ahead of the powers that be.

OK true, they could restrict printing and I concede the point about copy and paste. But what about good old fashioned pen and paper? Or, if it was long and you couldn't be bothered to write it out by hand, good old fashioned photographs (much easier to take pictures of the screen now that most monitors run at quite high refresh rates). I believe there's even an entry somewhere on H2G2 about miniature cameras that could be unobtrusively used. In fact, now that digital cameras are getting so tiny, they could probably be used equally well. (My next door neighbour has a digital camera small enough to fit on a keyring. It's not very good quality, but that's surely only a matter of time.)

You're right, it's a real nightmare trying to cover all the possible holes...

But suppose that third device of yours *also* implements DRM? You can record with it, but the result won't play back on anyone else's setup, and can't be copied...

Not a problem for existing media... but for new file formats, subformats of DVD, etc, etc... they may well try to make it impossible to obtain a device without DRM.

As I mentioned, there was a law proposed in the USA which would make DRM a requirement for *all* new devices...

Still no idea what happened with that, though... does anyone know?

the usa isn't the world, so you buy stuff that is linux friendly and produced outside the usa, just like you do at the moment for strong encryption.

if you move to linux as well, so much the better.

> (Assuming that in this dystopian world of Palladium, people are still allowed to write their own programs of course.)

Unlikely. Programs not signed by Microsoft et al. won't run... So every time you compile you'll have to send it to Microsoft to be approved and signed... Probably for a small fee, of course. I can see this creating an entirely new area of challenge programming - write programs that look innocent until their secret functionality is revealed by some hidden mechanism. The software equivalent of spy gadgets.

There is an article in this weeks new scientist about copyright/drm laws and how europe is supposedly following the states lead.

This is the summary of what it is about:

"STOLEN CODE
To many programmers, America's laws on software patents are a disaster. So why is Europe preparing to go down the same road? Wendy M. Grossman reports"

But the article is only available either in hard copy or if you subscribe you can access it from the website...or if you are willing to wait a week it should be on there for free.

I haven't had the chance to read it yet (thats what lunchtime is for) but it sounds relevent.

Also, if Linux and all software that runs on it becomes illegal in America, the development effort will collapse, as most of the companies which provide the funding that keeps a lot of the famous full-time developers developing for it full-time are based in the USA. Red Hat, Transmeta, Sun...

True, the USA isn't the world... but, er, are there any PC processor manufacturers that aren't USA based?

The hardware support is going to be there in PCs... and if you stick with Windows, the software support will be too.

Hmm. It could well be a reason to move to Linux... (been there, done that )... Microsoft must've thought of that, though...

...a good reason to make it illegal, I suppose ...

I'm not sure I can see that happening, though... that's just silly...

It does seem a bit farfetched that the same government that is suing Microsoft for antitrust violations would pass a law making all non Microsoft or Nicrosoft-approved software illegal.

The new scientist article is about patenting software...there is a company in the US who claim to own the patent for JPEGs and a few european patent offices are trying to get EU law changed so that software can be patented in europe too.

Not a good situation

An interjection:

If Alan Turing were alive today, his homosexuality wouldn't be a problem. It'd be the codebreaking that got him jailed...

H.

"But suppose that third device of yours *also* implements DRM? You can record with it, but the result won't play back on anyone else's setup, and can't be copied..."

I'm trying to imagine how this could be achieved without denying people the ability to write their own programs which have access to the line in and line out ports. Possibly, all files could be encrypted so that they could only be decrypted using a key that is built into the hardware. But then, no data transfer would be possible at all. I couldn't send people emails, because if I were allowed to do so, I could easily embed a file into the email just using ASCII, etc. As I said, it seems to me that the only way it could be achieved would be to turn computers into things like TVs (glorified playback devices), or to not allow people to write their own software. Either of these options is implausible because people (and, more to the point, companies) need computers to be more flexible than this. They can't control computer use without destroying what computers are.

Twinkle, I can't imagine that scenario is plausible. The rate of software development would be slowed down by a factor of probably millions if each time you wanted to recompile and test you had to have it certified by MS. The entertainments industry is a powerful lobby, but not so powerful as to achieve that.

I'm going back to pen and paper. and vynil.

Don't know if this will break the DMCA, EUCD but I'd say the simple way to get round copy protection on an ebook would be to:

1. On Windows, do a screen grab using the key.
2. Paste the document into a OCR program.
3. Convert the page to text.
4. Er, that's it.

This would take a while, but is the textual equivilent on running an audio cable from your CD player to your soundcard and ripping music that way. There are even Windows, Mac and Linux programs which can clone a CD *and* its copy protection.
For dedicated pirates, there will always be a way round DRM and the current system will only inconvenience regular users. The Bon Jovi method is probably a better one to take when it comes to music, rather than destroying iMacs.

Andy