[sldev] RE SnowGlobe and copybots

Dale Mahalko dmahalko at gmail.com
Mon Sep 14 08:17:39 PDT 2009


While locking and security MAY be futile, that sure hasn't stopped people
with extremely deep pockets from trying everything in the book to prevent
you from stealing a pristine original digitally-exact duplicate of their
content. Case in point: Blu-Ray and HDCP

Yes, all the protection fails when it is finally displayed on a viewing
device, and it is possible to capture said image by pointing a camera at the
screen, but the resulting copy is not a digitally perfect copy and results
in analog-to-analog capture deviation, optical distortion, and recompression
artifacts. So it is not a pristine original digitally-exact duplicate of
their content.

I have already discussed the idea of a 3D card with similar DRM protecting
its texture memory and an interal workspace on this list and I won't go over
it again.



But the real point here is that all this "useless DRM":which may "get broken
someday anyway" (as say the naysavers) is expensive to implement. The cost
is high and is a huge financial drain to develop. The knowledge of how to
work with the protection must be shared with outside manufacturers who may
be sloppy about protecting the work, and any one of those idiots can be
responsible for undoing the whole thing. (This is how the DVD deCSS got
started.)

Note that both ATI and nVidia are complying with the music/movie industry
DRM controls on digital data streams and HDCP. I don't think the MPAA/RIAA
can FORCE either video card manufacturer to comply, but they can pay the
manufacturers for their time and effort to implement such DRM controls.

So the real question is, how deep are the pockets of Linden Lab and other
online worlds developers to create such DRM protection and controls, and how
much financial loss due to hacking of their DRM can they tolerate? I don't
think the Lab's pockets are anywhere near as deep as those of the movie and
music industry, nor can they provide "influence/fees" needed to get the
likes of ATI and nVidia onboard, so that kills any such "3D DRM" controls
straight off.

So in summary you won't see 3D DRM because LL isn't willing to spend huge
sums of money on trying to implement what is an "ultimately futile" effort
to protect your content.



And really it all comes back to the content creator. These controls if they
existed don't need to be freely given to you. LL might charge you a large
recurring fee to protect your content. I am sure the MPAA isn't doing their
Blu-Ray protection out of the goodness of their heart for content producers.
No, the MPAA is charging them a huge amount of money for the use of the
protected distribution channel, to pay the MPAA back for their time and
effort to create that channel.

Would the copybot haters be willing to shell out a huge expensive annual fee
five times higher than their land/server rental fees to get their content
protected? (LL would in this scenario intentionally expose your content via
unencrypted HTTP that is ripe for the picking, unless you pay up for the
protected channel.)

Oh, I bet that would finally stop this topic dead in its tracks, if the
"copybot whiners" actually had to PAY say $10,000 a year to LL, on top of
their land/server tier, to have their digital content protected with 3D DRM.
:-)


- Dale Mahalko / Scalar Tardis


On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Tateru Nino <tateru.nino at gmail.com> wrote:

> In summary (and I think this topic is beyond the scope of the list) the
> following things are true:
> * At some point, unlocked content must become available. It doesn't
> matter what method you use to lock it, where that locking takes place,
> or where it is unlocked. For the viewer to actually use any of that
> content for _viewing_ it must be unlocked at or before it gets to the
> viewer.
> * Since the invention of the printing press, billions of dollars have
> been poured into figuring out a way around this, and so far nobody has
> yet found a way for locked content to remain protected unless you never
> unlock it. ie: It is only safe if you never make it available to any
> second- or third-party.
> * Since content cannot be used while locked, it must be unlocked
> somewhere. Which means that either unlocked at the server (transmitting
> unlocked content over the wire) or at the viewer (which means that the
> person using the viewer can find a way to get at the key or directly at
> the unlocked content)
> * Repeating item 2: Nobody has ever solved this problem. I think "design
> choice" is an unfortunate term, because it implies that there *is* a
> choice where none has ever been found. Until one does (if one ever does)
> it's more of a "design necessity".
>
> As I think we've reached the limit on this thread, I'll say no more on
> it on-list.
>
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