Microsoft's latest bid to conquer the world

[Grazzt]

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

This is absolutely frightening. Please, I want to hear everybody's thoughts on this.

[Zero Signal]

This has been known for at least a year.

I think it's shitty, but...poop.

[Zosimus]

Well, "1984" - became 2003 and you Big Brother....stupid little me, to once think that you were just a scary story!!

[FS]

You know, I'm as much an Internet media pirate as the next guy, but we reeeeaaally need to quit acting like we have rights and shit. I'm very much opposed to any kind of software that starts tampering with my files and computer, but I'm not surprised companies will try more and more aggressive strategies to stop piracy. Yeah yeah, we all defend it by saying the music business shoves too much into their own pockets, games are too expensive, don't want to waste money on a potentially shitty movie and so on, but it's not like that'll make the media industry suddenly decide to cut their profits in half to stimulate sales.

We've all gotten used to getting so much shit for free through the net. Then again, I have a lot of faith in the inventiveness of people to get by things like described on that page.

[Helm]

teh 1337 haxx0rz always prevail, really. So, if you suddenly see the posibility of your source of free entertainment drying up becoming all the more probable, relax... someone will sort it all out for you like aways.

[ranxer]

go linux! tha's probly only a temporary solution though:/

i used to think i was going to smash up my system before i went with the new verification thing in XP but it came with an upgrade system and the vendor verified it, so i breezed right by that protest whaa

what ever happened to bill gates saying that he's 'never' sell an os for more than 100 bucks!!? that was in like 87 and i've paid alot more than that for os's since then.. so i'm still steamed about that statement. he owes me damnit.

as big brother or somesuch grows so does my belief that hackers will save the earth someday

[Jeanette X]

Aaar, the scurvy scalawag Gates will pay for his crimes! He will meet death at the end of me cutglass before I let him take away me ill-gotten mp3s!

[Zero Signal]

Linux will never get mainstream acceptance until it becomes a LOT more user friendly.

[ranxer]

hah, jeanette, gimme a break.. bill gates isnt accountable to me or you.. he can say whatever he wants same as me.. but if he doesnt follow through i'm certainly not going to believe what he says as much afterwards..

zero.. so what if linux doesnt catch on. it works.. that's enough for me... plus there's other advantages to linux that keep me Hoping it doesnt "catch on"

[Jeanette X]

hah, jeanette, gimme a break.. bill gates isnt accountable to me or you..

I was kidding. .

[AChimp]

I'm willing to bet that it gets cracked within 72 hours of being first released to the public. Didn't it take that Denmark guy a little over 11 hours to break the DVD encryption, while Sony spent years (and millions of dollars) developing it?

And, with this technology, what happens if you DON'T have an Internet connection, hmm? Do they not allow you to use you computer at all?

[ranxer]

jeanette: yes, sure but you made me sound like i was whining..
i may have been naive to believe bill meant it but i'm Not whinging about it.. i have been pissed about it.. if he'd have lived up to that statement i'd be defending him here a bit more. sorry to pick on you a little, but i felt a bit poked with yer comment.

[Zero Signal]

Originally Posted by AChimp

I'm willing to bet that it gets cracked within 72 hours of being first released to the public. Didn't it take that Denmark guy a little over 11 hours to break the DVD encryption, while Sony spent years (and millions of dollars) developing it?

The DVD encryption was broken primary because of a company calling Xing; they forgot to encrypt the decoder in their DVD viewing software. Oops. The guy then, by trial and error, figured out over 140 other keys (There were about 550 different keys that are licensed to different companies last I checked). So, the code would have most likely been broken eventually, but this company screwing up certainly accelerated it.

Which brings me to another issue. Because of the US laws banning the distribution of high level encryption (particularly 128-bit), DVD are only encrypted at around 54- or 56-bits. Certainly within the realm of a brute force attack.

[Grazzt]

I'm kind of reminded of the time when Intel wanted to put mandatory passwords onto the BIOS, but the public outcry was so great that they made it optional.

However, if this comes to pass, I'm not looking forward to living in a William Gibson novel.

[Helm]

Relax. As I said there's people up in Sweden, Finland and where else with way too much time in their hands working for your benefit.

[AChimp]

Hooray for countries with lax copyright laws!

[Zero Signal]

And all of this bad mouthing France for the last few months...

...they have laws that state that a consumer is legally entitled to pursue any venture that will make a product work as advertised. For example, Sony's bullshit CD-ROM copy protection scheme, SecuROM, frequently causes games to either run slower or not run at all. Under the DMCA, you are pretty much told to shut up and live with it, but in France you are legally entitled to crack it if necessary.