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Though there is no organized conspiracy, this is actually not far from the truth, especially in some areas of content protection. Companies that don't have the

Though there is no organized conspiracy, this is actually not far from the truth, especially in some areas of content protection. Companies that don't have the in-house technical expertise (music labels), working from an unprotected distribution system (audio CD) are at a particular disadvantage. At the other end of the spectrum, you have satellite TV. In this area, a lot of money invested and full control of the playback platform have resulted in some strong systems. But still, it took a long time and a lot of cracks of intermediate systems for this industry to become the success story it is today. Disclaimer: I worked for a company involved in the above.

jdietrich 14y ago
Of course, in the case of satellite TV, you have big companies doing an awful lot of "research" into each others' crypto systems - NDS Group's alleged reverse engineering of OnDigital is the obvious example.
minikites 14y ago
Remember DirecTV's war on smart card hackers? http://www.securityfocus.com/news/143 http://www.securityfocus.com/news/143 -------- But DirecTV reacted to that wrinkle over a year ago, by taking advantage of their ability to remotely reprogram the set top satellite receivers, as well as the cards. The company sent a few specific bytes of data to all the H cards, while simultaneously reprogramming the satellite receivers to reject cards that didn't reflect the change. This forced hackers to update the cards manually with the new data, or to make the cards writable again. --------
- xtracto 14y ago
  I think DirecTV is an example of a DRM win (for the company) scenario. With a combination of technology (latest generation smart cards and cryptography) and litigation (going really strongly against infringers) has made DirecTV uncrackable in practice. The fact that here in Mexico I cannot find someone selling a fully unlocked US smartcard shows that in a way DirecTV has won. It used to be the case that for US$300 you could buy this fully unlocked DirecTV card to watch all USA channels here in Mexico. This was about 10 years ago when I was in college (and my flatmate used to buy that stuff).
- minikites 14y ago
  Replying to myself, here's the much more exciting retelling of the story: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/revisiting-the-black-sunday-hack.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/revisiting-the-blac...
deleted 14y ago
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jdietrich 14y ago

Of course, in the case of satellite TV, you have big companies doing an awful lot of "research" into each others' crypto systems - NDS Group's alleged reverse engineering of OnDigital is the obvious example.

minikites 14y ago

Remember DirecTV's war on smart card hackers? http://www.securityfocus.com/news/143 http://www.securityfocus.com/news/143 -------- But DirecTV reacted to that wrinkle over a year ago, by taking advantage of their ability to remotely reprogram the set top satellite receivers, as well as the cards. The company sent a few specific bytes of data to all the H cards, while simultaneously reprogramming the satellite receivers to reject cards that didn't reflect the change. This forced hackers to update the cards manually with the new data, or to make the cards writable again. --------

xtracto 14y ago
I think DirecTV is an example of a DRM win (for the company) scenario. With a combination of technology (latest generation smart cards and cryptography) and litigation (going really strongly against infringers) has made DirecTV uncrackable in practice. The fact that here in Mexico I cannot find someone selling a fully unlocked US smartcard shows that in a way DirecTV has won. It used to be the case that for US$300 you could buy this fully unlocked DirecTV card to watch all USA channels here in Mexico. This was about 10 years ago when I was in college (and my flatmate used to buy that stuff).
minikites 14y ago
Replying to myself, here's the much more exciting retelling of the story: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/revisiting-the-black-sunday-hack.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/revisiting-the-blac...

deleted 14y ago

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