Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I love the way that Steam won't let you log in twice, so you can install 
> the same game on two PCs, but you can only play it on one at once...
> 
> ...unless you put Steam into offline mode. *facepalm*

Sure. Steam keeps the honest people honest. It's sufficiently easy to bypass 
that nobody really feels the need to *crack* it. But it's hard enough to 
bypass (in that you actually need the steam account that bought the game to 
play it) that it keeps them earning money.

>>> (This of course leads directly to high quality content no longer being
>>> made, which would be very sad.)
>>
>> But that's my point. High quality content used to be made before it was
>> easy to make copies at all.
> 
> Given that copying becoming easy is the problem... what's your point here?

That presenting things only in forms that are impossible to copy does not 
spell the end of high quality content.

> Yeah, pretty much. I gather zero-day cracks are a relished challenge for 
> some people. (Then again, most of the DRM I've seen surely can't be 
> *that* hard to crack in the first place...)

You would be surprised. Almost every crack of modern DRM requires someone to 
void their warranty.

> I don't think that's how it works. I thought the idea is that the 
> encrypted content is decrypted inside your graphics card, processed as 
> necessary (e.g., colour balance, or compositing it with the rest of your 
> Windows display), and re-encrypted before leaving the pins of the chip 
> in the circuit board. So the encrypted link from the graphics card to 
> the monitor is a completely seperate cryptosystem from the encryption on 
> the disk (or whatever).

Yes? And your point is?

> Ultimately, what it all boils down to is that the piece of electronics 
> in front of you knows how to decrypt the video data. Which means that, 
> in theory, you can do this too. The keys must be stored somewhere. 

Sure. If they're stored in the silicon, that's not going to be easy to get out.

> People paying money for computer systems that purposely prevent them 
> doing stuff? Not gonna be popular. :-P

Game consoles? Blu-ray players? DVD players? No, none of those are popular 
at all.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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