Mac OS X Intel Kernel Uses DRM 1399
An anonymous reader submits "Several people have discovered that the new Intel kernel Apple has included with the Developer Kit DVD uses TCPA/TPM DRM. More specifically, it includes "a TCPA/Palladium implementation that uses a Infineon 1.1 chip which will prevent certain parts of the OS from working unless authorized."
And this is surprise because... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Isn't this expected? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hence my comment.
However, I am hopeful that now that standard motherboards are used, costs may be lower which means that Macs may cost less in the future than they do now. However, of course, I don't know whether that will happen.
Don't get your panties in a bunch. (Score:5, Interesting)
These boxes aren't even for sale yet. I'm sure that it'll be cracked before that even happens.
Re:Hands up all the surprised people (Score:4, Interesting)
everyone know how those uncrackable chips fared... well every time they tried to do something like this. it failed miserably.
i know what you'll say. "microsoft managed it with the xbox". which is bogus, microsoft's problem is the complete opposite as this one. microsoft is trying to prevent unsigned code from running on "their" hardware.
apple is trying to prevent their code from running on "unsigned" hardware. that implies the private key is in the paladium chip so it can "sign" a token sent by the OS. that's the worst case senario, and it will just take a few months to reverse engineer and distribute apple's private key along with pearpc (yes, you can read the key from that suposedly secure chip).
another possible implementation is that the chip just sends an "apple" id. maybe s string of text or something like that. that's even easier to circumvent.
don't be fooled by their marketing, pearpc will work just fine, albeit maybe illegally in the US (and canada soon). thanks to the DMCA
Re:Isn't this expected? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because quite frankly, people are fucking idiots.
HP iPods are unsupported by Apple. They clearly state this. They are constantly revieving complaints that HP iPods aren't being supported.
Apple doesn't cover user stupidity in Apple care. This is also clearly stated, and yet they continue to recieve complaints about this as well.
Non-Apple RAM is not supported by Apple, if the memory turns out to be the cause of a problem, then you need to buy new memory if you want Apple techs to probe deeper into the problem, and no Apple will not install third party stuff. This is clearly stated, and yet again, is another complaint source.
Apple does not support transfering music from the iPod, this is again clearly stated. Care to guess what Apple recieves about this?
Apple does not do repiar or waranty work and service for any third party products, and yet you would be amazed at the number of people that come into the stores looking for Apple to fix their third party product.
Simply put people are stupid and don't understand the concept of something being an unsupported hack. As far as they are concerned, it has X company name on it, so no matter what they do with it, X company should support it.
This is even further compounded by the fact that Apple continualy emphisises it's "Whole Widget" philosophy where you go to one company for your hardware and software problems.
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you sure? Why don't you give (Ku)|(U)buntu a try? You might be pleasantly surprised...
Oh do stop panicing (Score:5, Interesting)
I am beginning to think companies put these copy protection things in the hardware for a variety of reasons:
1) They get free advertising with the protests.
2) They get free advertising when it is cracked.
3) They get free advertising when they chase the crackers.
4) They get free advertising when they chase the cracks' distributors.
And maybe it gives the content providers a warm fuzzy feeling.
Re:Not to be an Apple apologist... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are other reasons for using the TPM. I'm sure someone with a vivid imagination will come up with more reasons, but here are a couple I came up with when I read the article title:
I don't think Apple is overly agressive when it comes to licensing and DRM. If anything, they'll likely follow their tradition of using products like this to not only render accesible new content, but to provide new features.
As with USB, Apple is employing a new technology that will cause some disruption to be sure, but it'll also help to overcome the inertia that comes with the commodity PC/Windows market.
People who scream about the DRM sky falling are being shortsighted. The TPM provides for much more than copyright enforcement - it also provides a way to avoid entering serial numbers, inadvertent per-CPU licensing transgression, and could make finding stolen products easier.
IBM <3 DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
No big deal then. I'd expect them to port all the code to x86 by the time they release those things anyway, and other software vendors will surely follow soon.
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:4, Interesting)
Ugg. How many times does it have to be said?
THESE ARE DEVELOPER MACHINES AND DO NOT REPRESENT HARDWARE THAT APPLE WILL SHIP.
There's a word for people like you: a useful idiot.
Sure, Apple has coded up this DRM implementation for fun and has no intention of using it. Apple and Jobs has sold you out... get over it. They jumped to Intel to get this Trusted Computing stuff and now they are using it.
You can put your hands over your ears and sing lalalalalala, but it won't change anything. The message that has to go out from here is simple and the same one that should go out to any software/hardware company that involves itself with this anti-customer bullshit: Don't buy Apple. If their sales drop because of this action, then perhaps they'll listen... but if idiots like you continue to defend their actions with ever more ludicrous excuses that won't happen.
Re:Before you freak out... (Score:3, Interesting)
HP was selling HP iPods there for a while (stopped recently - it was dumb idea), but obviously Apple is willing to license other vendors to sell stuff... so while you might not see OS X whitebox edition, you might see HP featuring MacOS X. There may be a few laptop vendors like Toshiba interested as well. I have a feeling Dell is too cosy in their arrangements to do any such thing.
The point is that Apple doesn't have to release OS X into the wold for us to see OS X on non-Apple hardware: they just have to hammer out license deals with other vendors. Presumably any such deal would involve said vendor being responsible for support. I doubt HP or Toshiba could significantly undercut Apple on hardware, especially if Apple has control over the license agreement on how the vendor gets to use OS X.
I'm not sure this is really likely, but it is definitely possible. It would be interesting to kno who Apple is having talks with...
Jedidiah.
Imagine Bush's "Free Speech Zones" on the Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
I still think the problems raised by DRM are greater and more severe than those it purports to fix. Obviously, fair use and doctrine of first sale are the first to disappear. But also, common carriage is at risk, and if DRM gets into routers and switches then it will be possible to make the Internet into the same mess the telecommunications network is in.
The nature of DRM and the clumsy attempts we have seen so far also indicate that there is great potential for human rights abuse, too. There is of course the ability to monitor who is interacting with whom, the DRM software has to track this to work. There is also the ability to block or censor communications. After all, restricting access or dissemination is what DRM is all about. And that directly affects both the right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble -- after all what can be published or organized without the Internet or the Web these days, without them you're shut off.
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:2, Interesting)
There's no doubt that the poster you are replying to has missed something. But it seems to me that you also miss something. Apple is a hardware manifacturer. Why should you be able to buy Apple's OS and run it on other hardware, if it is NOT intended for that use? It is not like having an obscure data format for your data, a la Microsoft. It is not giving up the right of accessing your data the way you want. Apple is a hardware manifacturer and they have an OS for their hardware. The OS is there to drive customers to their hardware. Only a part of the development costs comes from OS sales, the bulk of their money comes from hardware.
Now, you would like to have Apple continue to develop their OS but you want to strip them of their main income source by allowing the OS to be installed on non-Apple hardware. It seems to me that the word ``idiot'' can at this point applied also to you, not as an insult, but in the ethimologic meaning: from the greek ``that cannot see'' (i-diot, then the word entered latin, old french, and finally came to english).
You propose to boycott Apple until they agree to give up on income, so that you can use their products in a way they are not envisioned. Sure, bankrupt firms develop their software actively...
Learn programming and start contributing to GNOME development instead, and do not complain, please, if Apple has some features you are not able to implement...
Win/win for non-crippled systems (Score:2, Interesting)
So if Apple goes TCPA and MS follows, then the only non-crippled system left is Linux (sorry BSD guys, your OS is still hostile)
That might be good news. And my current iBook might be my last Apple.
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Interesting)
This guy is no techie (christ, he asked me to help him hook his monitor up last week), but he listened in and asked us to explain exactly what Trusted Computing was. We sketched out the very basics - media files dialling home before play, your rights/viewing-licence agreement changing after purchase at the whims of the content producer, other theoretically possible restrictions that DRM allows for, files refusing to play on non-trusted platforms and your PC dynamically downsampling future DVDs if it detects your monitor isn't Trusted.
At the end of the five-minute conversation (again, attempting to inform rather than frighten) the guy was more pissed off than I've ever seen him - practically kicking furniture and swearing he'd never buy a bit of TCA-compliant electronics. Ever.
As I said, while this guy isn't stupid, he's not even remotely technical. And when he appreciated the actual, real-life restrictions Trusted Computing would place on him he was angry.
There is hope for these people, if they can be educated before the fight is over.
Hands in the ears? (Score:4, Interesting)
You try to pretend TCPA and DRM can be killed at birth and you are wrong. You try tto pretend DRM cannot be made to work and you are wrong. The same technology that protects HOLLYWOODS data can protect YOUR dat and MY data. DRM will allow computing to move into a new paradigm where conversations can be reasonably assured of being completely ephemeral OR where "data" can be moved from point A to point B with the relative security and geographic displacement of a physical object. But people lie and copy and cheat and forge and so to do this requires a *trusted platform* - a system you and I can both agree has been verified for honesty by a disinterested third party to our exchange.
If you don't want to buy DRM media then don't buy it. But insisting someone is trying to "take your rights away" because they are asserting *their* rights is, at best, disengenuous.
The open source community at large needs to take off the tinfoil hats and start doing some real development on these platforms. Like it or not DRM is coming and if you sit out the party no one is going to listen to you complain that everyone else already got all the cake and ice cream.
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:1, Interesting)
And I can remove Internet Explorer, the application, from my system very easily by dragging IEXPLORE.EXE to the Recycle Bin and emptying it, although I generally find pressing the "delete" button on my keyboard is more efficient than flailing about with a mouse.
Quicktime the framework I can't easily remove because it's part of the OS. This isn't like Microsoft stopping you uninstalling IE or WMP. It's a well documented API that handles media content for the OS. Most media apps will use it. Even Realplayer uses quicktime.
Internet Explorer the framework-equivalent I can't easily remove because it's part of the OS. This is just like Apple stopping you removing Quicktime. It's a well-documented API that handles HTML rendering for the OS. Most programs that render HTML use it. With the exception of one or two which use an alternative like Gecko or whatever Opera's rendering engine is called.
The fact that you can remove the application is different to the microsoft problem because users can have a choice of what media player they have installed. They can remove Quicktime player and replace it with VLC or MPlayerOSX.
This is identical to the situation on Windows, where - amazingly enough - users also have the choice of which web browser they have installed. They can remove IEXPLORE.EXE (though there's absolutely no point doing so) and replace it with Firefox, Opera, Mozilla, etc.
Try not to think of this as groupthink. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, but that power is being abused... It says copyright for limited times... If I can pass retroactive copyright bills (Copyright Act of 1976, Copyright Term Extension Act) then can one really say that term is limited? (Note: the Copyright Act of 1976 had it's good parts).
Importantly, it has the clause "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" - once copyright is no longer filling that role, it should not be in place...
Rebuttal: How does a software patent (amongst other things) promote science? Art? What about content which is still copyrighted, but not "profitable"? It will be locked up, and eventually age until it's destroyed. (See the story behind Eldred vs. Ashcroft).
And, to bring this post somewaht more back to the OP topic... When the media protected by DRM finally does enter the public domain, how will we access it and make it freely accessable to everyone? If the publisher doesn't create a DRM-less copy, we'll have to devise tools to crack the DRM, and if that DRM is still used by copyrighted media... WHOOPS! Just broke the DMCA!
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:3, Interesting)
Our reason for drug testing (Score:4, Interesting)
Our insurance rates are cheaper if we do them.
It is a VERY simple cost/benefit anaylysis. We save money by requiring drug tests. Not in productivity or anything like that. Just our insurance rates.
I suspect we are not the only ones who are faced with this choice.
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd also like to add that, originally, copyright gave a limited monopoly on "publishing". Copying from your own copy of a book was not covered by the law - and at the time, the extent of protection was 7 years
You are actually entitled to do many things, like reverse engineering (excpting where the DMCA is involved), and making copies of small amounts for various purposes (like education), without any permission from the copyright owner
What most software vendors do, is force you to agree to a "license agreement". Agreement as in contract, which is used to actually restrict you further than copyright alone would.
Objectivity (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's assume (perhaps falsely) that the RIAA/MPAA aren't literally Satan's spawn. They have a good reason for wanting DRM: they spend a lot of money to make music/movies. They'd like to get paid for that, and the current environment makes it easy for people to get the full benefit of their work without paying for it.
You know all this, so I'm not going to explain any further, but the question is, did you explain this to your friend? It's easy to get people angry when you explain only one side of the story. And if you want to use him as an example you have to be extra-careful to present their side as persuasively as possible, because you're obviously coming to this with a bias.
Look, I agree that the DRM they want to use is too restrictive. But the absolutely-no-DRM environment is also not completely fair to them. So the attitude of simply getting angry at them for proposing an alternative is just wrong. The proper attitude is closer to, "Gee, neither situation is tenable, let's figure out what's genuinely fair."