Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 35182
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2024/12/24 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
12/24   

2004/12/6 [Computer/SW/Languages] UID:35182 Activity:high
12/6    Is there any way to place/enforce DRM on an application written in a
        scripting language, short of having it "phone home" to decrypt itself
        each time it runs?
        \_ Die.
           \_ I dislike DRM as much as the next guy, but I'm still curious.
              No need to be a knee-jerk jerk.
              \_ Depends on what you mean by "enforcing". There is no way
                 to produce uncrackable DRM without an external control
                 mechanism or the aid of the hardware. If you just want to
                 make it harder, you can use those scripting language
                 to bin programs and then apply an executable encrypter
                 or successively more complicated schemes, but with enough
                 work, it's still crackable (and there are some very
                 enterprising crackers out there).
        \_ Yes.  Will it be cracked in minutes?  Maybe.  Hours?  Most likely.
           Days? Without a doubt.  The fundamental problem with all DRM
           mechanisms is that, at some point, you give the user the decryption
           key.  At that moment, you (the DRM vendor/fascist content owner)
           lose.  This is true regardless of how obfuscated your mechanism for
           transmitting the key is.  Aside from their hard-on for extracting
           (even more) money from consumers by granting themselves new rights
           that don't exist under conventional copyright law, one of the
           reasons content industry execs bought into DRM was that they were
           too technically clueless to recognize that the ``give the user the
           key'' flaw that is inherent to all DRM systems.  The empirical
           evidence of numerous trivially cracked DRM systems (hold down the
           shift key, use a black sharpie on the edge of the CD, etc.), and
           the 20/20 vision of hindsight has made their obvious `Whoopsie'
           clear to them.  The DMCA and the continuing legal onslaught is a
           crass and sorry attempt to use to law to patch over a gaping
           technical hole.
           -dans
           \_ You sir, are a moron.
              \_ Care to expand on that?  What are the flaws in his argument?
        \_ Use rot26 encryption, anyone who cracks it will be violating
           the DMCA and you can ask the feds to put them in jail!
           \_ Crap!  Merely by reading this sentence I violated the DMCA!
2024/12/24 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
12/24   

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