[sdiy] Lockout / DRM chips?

[H.Sergio Alves]

I work in a subsea wireless communications company. We laser etch our MCUs
and memory chips and all our code is downloaded to the MCU with read
protection… the reason is the millions we spend yearly in R&D and we rent
out the tools except the ones that are buried in concrete. Those we don’t
laser etch anything.

For Behringer case… fuck them. RIP them as much you can but they will win.
They don’t believe in the right of repair neither they care about customers
that can fix equipment…
Together with InMusic group they all should be boycotted. This new age of
Neo liberal savage capitalism is only going to get worse.

On Wed, 9 Sep 2026 at 20:39, Didrik Madheden via Synth-diy <
synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:

> > the one guy bootlegging people in his massive factory complex in China
>
> To me, that sounds very much like a company that starts with Beh and
> ends with ringer? Who else could it be?
>
> I'll mirror John's question. How would this even be possible, on a
> technical level? Even if the consortium of "good guys" decide to
> exclude the "bad guy" what could you do to detect the "bad guy's"
> product in a rack? If this a whitelist, where somehow only allowed
> modules are allowed to interact, this would essentially not be an open
> standard because a newcomer couldn't enter without first getting
> approved by the "consortium". If this is a blacklist, it seems like
> the "bad guy" could easily change their id, cryptographic signature,
> whatever makes it detectable, using a firmware update. And that's
> before getting into the technical details of how to even implement
> such a control. Is this some kind of bus (like CANBUS, RS485 or
> whatever) where devices broadcast their presence using a manufacturer
> id? Something like MIDI over patch wires? For example, the
> hypothetical cryptographic challenge over an analog cable would make
> this incompatible with every existing analog module, which would be a
> detriment to everyone. (Or more likely a detriment to devices
> requiring the signature since they would be practically unusable in a
> rack so nobody would buy such modules.) And conversely, if anything
> without such a cryptographic signature is allowed for backward
> compatibility, the "bad guy" would have a compatibility mode which
> doesn't negotiate the signature so it's exempt.
>
> I don't see how this lock would work to its intended effect without
> also being a massive hassle to both users and manufacturers. So I
> don't see how this idea would ever be a workable prospect in practice.
>
> /Didrik
>
> On Wed, 9 Sept 2026 at 19:37, cheater cheater via Synth-diy
> <synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi John,
> > Good questions, and they're the kind of questions that I would be
> > asking as well in this situation.
> >
> > My reason for starting this thread is mostly about the practical
> > technical methods of implementing a lockout, rather than the (still
> > completely valid) business and marketing related questions you ask,
> > but let me try to answer them real quick.
> >
> > So, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that I can't go
> > into specifics, but there are good reasons to expect a new modular
> > format showing up sometime in the not extremely distant future.
> >
> > That said, even without revealing anything, I can tell you that in my
> > life there have been about ~10 viable, lasting, new physical formats
> > for audio gear and interconnections, and of those, about 5 remain
> > currently: Eurorack, API 500, 1U modules, 19"/2 audio processor racks,
> > usb c, and the various networked audio systems. People thought dotcom
> > and fracrack were going to stay here forever and scoffed at Eurorack
> > as being cheap garbage (on this list too) that will never become
> > popular and is only used by idiots.
> >
> > Regarding enforcing things in an analog interconnect format, that's
> > not too much trouble, you can encode data over analog pretty easily,
> > and a cryptographic challenge can take mere milliseconds to negotiate.
> >
> > Regarding "you can just replace it" - sure, but at some point if the
> > lockout is built-in well enough, then it becomes uneconomical to
> > modify things. How many people do you see modifying existing potted
> > circuits, like in the Yamaha and ARP synths? Etc. Even if it's just a
> > DIP, somewhere on the PCB, for almost all people it's going to be too
> > much work to be worth it, they'd rather just buy the thing and support
> > their favorite non-soulless companies. Piracy is a service problem,
> > not a pricing problem.
> >
> > I don't know what you mean by lock-and-key. Do you mean a
> > cryptographic handshake? But, like I said, there's certainly going to
> > be a new format in the foreseeable future, so "disadvantage compared
> > to the other guy" doesn't exist if the whole format contains this
> > restriction. At this point there also isn't "pre-lockout" gear.
> > Whoever proposes a new format, it's an interesting consideration on
> > whether it's possible to lock it down so that _this one_ doesn't get
> > smothered by unscrupulous mass manufacturers.
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 9, 2026 at 7:01 PM John <commodorejohn at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wed, 9 Sep 2026 17:54:27 +0200
> > > cheater cheater via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > > I'm a huge opponent of lockout chips and DRM measures in all sorts of
> > > > hardware, and essentially I hate it everywhere, but I believe in the
> > > > case of tiny audio and synth manufacturers, one manufacturer in China
> > > > is acting in a manner that simply does not let small businesses exist
> > > > for the most part. One way of getting rid of this sort of behavior is
> > > > to create an alliance of manufacturers where the modules check each
> > > > other and exclude the one guy bootlegging people in his massive
> > > > factory complex in China.
> > >
> > > There's not much in the way of specifics here, so it's difficult to
> > > say, but on the whole I can't see how it'd help. If you're working with
> > > DSP synths, the hardware is pretty fungible since it's only a platform
> > > for running the algorithms; if you're working with analog, I can't see
> > > how you even *would* implement any kind of "lockout" on the actual
> > > synth circuits - and any digital hardware is just a means to control
> > > those, which could be subbed for by anything that can run a program and
> > > drive a DAC.
> > >
> > > Or are you suggesting that a modular *standard* be fitted with a lock-
> > > and-key system? Then you're shooting yourself in the foot, since your
> > > stuff won't work with everything while his stuff is free to do so -
> > > which puts you at a *disadvantage* compared to the other guy.
> > >
> > > And how do you propose to differentiate non-conforming pre-lockout gear
> > > from "unauthorized" post-lockout stuff? Or are you under the impression
> > > that "here's an incompatible standard we created solely to keep people
> > > we don't like out of the treehouse, everyone re-buy all your existing
> > > gear in the new format plzkthx" is anything but a laughable
> non-starter?
> >
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