[Reader-list] HDD COPYPROTECTION

[Jaswinder Singh Kohli]

The open PC is dead - start praying, says HD guru
By: Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 07/03/2001 at 20:01 GMT


Apologies in advance if the following mailing list posting ruins your
next meal. It ruined ours too, but since we believe in equality of
indigestion here, we feel obliged to share it with you.

Hale Landis maintains the ata-atapi.com website, and has been working
for open standards for 25 years. He has been a participant in the ANSI
X3/NCITS Technical Committees that developed the ATA and ATA/ATAPI
standards since 1990, and works as a consultant and provider of test
software.

His chilling, deeply pessimistic view is that the good times are over.
The fight for an open hardware platform is very real, and the power has
swung from the PC leaders to the entertainment industry. It's a valuable
strategic view from the trenches of the T.13 committee, where the fight
over copy control mechanisms continues. It was posted to the private
T.13 mailing list, and we cite it here with permission.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Missing the BIG picture

I think many of you discussing CPRM and similar things are missing the
BIG picture.

We, the computer industry and especially the hard disk industry, are at
a major crossroads and there are lots of people and companies with BIG
BUCKS trying to pick the next road the industry will follow. The current
business model for the "personal computer" is failing. Hardware prices
are rock bottom and no hardware vendor is making any money.

The big software vendors are not doing much better. You only need to
review the press releases and product announcements from the likes of
Dell, Gateway, Intel and Microsoft to see that near panic has set in.
These companies can see that there is a real possibility that the
"general purpose personal computer" could be replaced by a variety of
proprietary devices. And many of these proprietary devices have
entertainment functionality.

The questions for many T13 members, especially those that make mass
storage devices, are: Are there any customers out there with money that
we can sell devices to? What do those customers want? The hard disk
vendors will give a customer anything if it means selling a few devices:
CPRM, SD, 1394, "serial ATA", USB, anything, even something completely
proprietary.

And it does not help that there are many young companies around the
world with lots of money doing new, different and strange storage
devices. Many have the backing of the entertainment industry because
these young companies are willing to build proprietary device interfaces
including any kind of "copy protection" desired.

The old line hard disk vendors can not survive without bending to the
desires of the entertainment industry. Just as all those companies I
listed above will be unable to ignore the "requirements" of the
entertainment industry.

Basically your "general purpose personal computer", aka "home computer",
is history. This should not surprise anyone since Microsoft has done
everything in its power to convert the home computer into an Internet
appliance. And Intel still thinks it can convert home computer into the
central house and consumer electronics "control center". But I think
both Intel and Microsoft will find they can't fight the entertainment
industry either. They too will end up doing anything so they can
continue to sell hardware and software to the "home computer" market.
But we probably should start talking about
the "computer enhanced consumer electronics" market.

Unfortunately for many of us we are at the mercy of some very big
companies and hostage to some people with lots of money. One example is
the now nearly complete control over small computer design: PCI, AGP,
"serial ATA", recently announced "wireless 1394", etc. With "serial ATA
Intel has successfully shutdown any public discussion of what will
probably be a widely used "low end" disk drive interface.

And why is Intel doing a "wireless 1394"? What is wrong with BlueTooth?
Answer: BlueTooth is not a specification controller by Intel. And
Microsoft thinks we should all be "renting" our software. I'm not
surprised since the only business model that many companies seem to
trying these days is one that collects money every month from every
household. No one wants to "sell" a product, they only want to "rent"
something or provide a "service". These products and services are
usually proprietary and have carefully crafted and limited
functionality. As an example, just WHAT is Tivo "selling" anyway?

In my opinion if you are someone, like myself, that needs and uses low
cost general purpose computers then you should start praying that there
will be some hardware vendor left selling such a computer and that you
will be able to run some general purpose OS and adequate applications
software. And I would say it will be unlikely that such a computer will
have an Intel processor or that any of that application software will
come from Microsoft. This possible future must be driving product
planners at Intel and Microsoft crazy.

But back to T13. Where does this leave T13? In my opinion, and trying to
be "kind", T13 has become nothing but a rubber stamp for the few
proposals that are made public. As pointed out by others there are lots
of hard disk drive "features" that are not public information. I expect
this will only continue to get worse as more and more companies attempt
to "protect" their proprietary products and services.

We are seeing the end of "open device interface standards" and
especially the end of T13. I just wonder how long it will be before T10,
SCSI, 1394, and others, meet that same fate?

So have fun fighting the battle against CPRM and alike but please do not
be surprised when you fail, after all the war has been lost, long live
the new world order: proprietary devices, proprietary interfaces, copy
protection, limited functionality, and prepare you credit card accounts
for all those monthly rental and service charges you will be paying for
every "computer controller consumer electronics device" you use.

-- Hale Landis

Readers are invited to comment. ®

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Regards
Jaswinder Singh Kohli
jskohli at fig.org
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