Re: Why Digital Video Disks are late to market

[Landon Dyer <landon_dyer@wayfarer.com>]

At 09:53 AM 2/19/97 -0500, you wrote:
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>azur@netcom.com (Steve Schear) writes:
>> Has anyone seen discussions on how these protection mechanisms can be
>> circumvented?
>
>Ummm, sector copy? AFAIK, the reader/writer manfacturer is trusted to
>cripple any copies it makes. Of course, it's all software, so if some
>EVIL person were to write a driver that did not honor the "don't copy
>me" header ...

  i can confirm this.  i recently talked to an employee of a firm [who
i won't name] that was looking for some kind of shrouding scheme to protect
their copy-protection enforcement code, under W95.  [he knows the effort
is ultimately doomed.  he *is* a user of SoftICE, after all... :-) ]

  quotable quotes:

  "we know someone's going to have their scheme cracked.  all we care
   about is that ours isn't the first."

  "i can't tell you the [encryption] algorithm, because that would let
   you break it.  yes, the security is in the algorithm."


  where does hollywood get its crypto?  mattel?


-landon [back to lurk mode...]