[Sussex] BBC Video Downloads

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

Steve Dobson wrote:
> DRM is basicly an encryption technology.  And the first rule of encryption
> is that you've got to keep your secret keys secret.  DRM doesn't do this,
> everyone uses the same keys.  I think it was Blu-Ray that was recently
> cracked by someone just who was walked through the memory dump of the
> player software taken when it was playing a disk.  Because the key was in 
> the memory image somewhere it found it.
>   
I suggest that you take a good, hard look at "Trusted Computing". Keys 
can be stolen, but they're also designed to be expired or revoked. And 
by building it in at the CPU level, and in other hardware, it's possible 
to prevent hard drives from being accessed without the keys, which are 
far more properly managed and protected than most such tools.

And remember who will be managing the keys: Microsoft, with inevitable 
cooperation with federal agencies who admit the need for encryption in 
the modern world, but absolutely want access to to the master keys. Be 
very nervous about this material, formerly called "Palladium". I was at 
the presentation by Brian LaMacchia where Richard Stallman reared up on 
his hind legs and started pointing out clearly abusive features built 
right into it, inherent in ihts design.