[Nottingham] BBC iPlayer petition

Peter Chang Peter.Chang at nottingham.ac.uk
Thu Jul 5 16:23:37 BST 2007


On Thu, 5 Jul 2007, Martin Garton wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 13:34 +0100, Richard Smedley wrote:
>
>> Actually Free Software DRM, using unique key pairs, is just as
>> practical as proprietary MS DRM. The differnce being the Free
>> Software solution would be cross-platform, and freely implementable
>> on unsupported platforms. The similarity being that both are
>> fig-leaves to please suits working for the soi-disant rights-holders,
>> and do nothing to prevent either cracking, or real commercial
>> piracy which gets the programmes from other channels anyway.
>> <shrugs>
>
> How, in an open source implementation that can easily be changed, are
> you going to prevent the attacker simply changing the software to save
> the decrypted content rather than displaying it?

You're not. As Richard said, it's a figleaf. A closed binary doesn't make 
it much harder unless the operating system and hardware platform can be 
secured against the user/owner of the machine a la TC.

Peter


This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment
may still contain software viruses, which could damage your computer system:
you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the
University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.




More information about the Nottingham mailing list