Hardware security in PCs to accompany new Windows

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 10:05:25PM -0400, Christopher Browne wrote:
> The particular danger is in the notion of "next gen" disk drives
> having 'copy protection' technology pushed into them.

They tried to do that a few years ago in the ATA standards, and then it
was pointed out to the standards commity just how bad an idea this would
be (by I believe the linux ide driver guy who is on the ATA standards
comitee as far as I know) and suddenly the manufacturers that were
behind the proposal didn't want to back it anymore.

> Thus, instead of an ATA interface, you get to talk to a "smart drive"
> that speaks some sort of Microsoft file networking protocol.
> 
> This gets the RIAA/MPAA folk behind it, as this can help enforce the
> "Preventing Mickey Mouse From Becoming Free Acts."

I really doubt they will convince the drive makers to do it.  MS needed
to get a harddisk with custom firmware made for the xbox to do excatly
that kind of lockdown, while I am sure they would love to have had the
ATA DRM proposal pass so they could have used stock drives instead.  Too
bad for microsoft.

Lennart Sorensen
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