About Gilmore's letter on IBM&Intel push copy protection into ordinary disk drives

[Dave Emery]

On Sat, Dec 23, 2000 at 07:04:17PM -0800, David Honig wrote:
> At 10:19 AM 12/22/00 -0500, Peter Wayner wrote:
> >I don't see how they will be able to distinguish between the truth 
> >and a lie when a guy calls up and say, "uh, my hard disk crashed. I 
> >need to install it on a new machine." They either authorize it or 
> >they don't. In fact, they'll probably have to automate the process 
> >because it's so expensive to have an actual human on the other end.
> 
> Just a historical anecdote.  Back in the old days, software
> could be linked to the unique ID on Sun motherboards.  To move
> software to a new machine, you called and maybe faxed something
> signed (with a pen) to the effect that you weren't ripping them off.
> 
> This was before the software-based floating licenses became 
> popular.
> 

	A note on this note - I was told back in that era by Sun field
service people that the standard thing to do when a motherboard failed
was to swap the ID prom from the old motherboard onto the new one, thus
avoiding the whole license conversion problem in the first place (but of
course also  doing wonders for the ability to track specific pieces of
hardware and document ECO levels and the like, since a significant number
of motherboards had swapped ID proms in which all the other information
in the prom didn't match the actual board).

	Unfortunately, if the secret disk serial number hashed with the
authentication domain key to generate the actual encryption key for
the data is not readable or writable by the user this trick will not
work for restoring bad disks.   And if it did, it is not clear that 
the overall secure disk system could serve its purpose of protecting
copyright.



> dh

-- 
	Dave Emery N1PRE,  die at die.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. 
PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2  5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18