[sdiy] Lockout / DRM chips?

[John]

On Thu, 10 Sep 2026 18:19:42 +0200
cheater cheater via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:

> One thing that I'm curious about is things like updating encryption,
> in order to be able to repudiate compromised keys, eg from
> manufacturers who have decided to start leaking them to companies who
> shouldn't have them.

Yes, it's yet another complicating factor; between the steady advance
of cryptographic research and human-factors issues like trusted parties
breaking trust (how many CAs have been coopted by malicious actors over
the last ~30 years?) it's a practical inevitability that DRM breaks (or
is broken) over time...

...which means that maintaining control via DRM is a ceaseless struggle
against this process, a Looney Tunes arms-race where the participants
are continually one-upping each other until you find you're lugging a
cannon around just to keep up with the demands of the bit.

Take HTTPS or SMTP encryption, f'rexample. I could browse Web forums
and send e-mail from an Amiga with a 40 MHz 68030 no problem, but once
forum hosts and mail providers began requiring encryption the poor CPU
just wasn't up to the task. And that was with SSL 1.0; these days, even
a 900 MHz laptop from 2008 struggles to negotiate a connection to the
GMail servers. The machine still works, and the underlying technology
hasn't changed, but the burden of keeping up with security is too much.

Of course, you might say that's worth it for a secure connection, and
maybe it is; some of those websites are ones I punch my credit-card
details into, after all. But who needs that in a modular synthesizer!?
Who wants an instrument that may end up bricked in a few years because
its am-I-in-the-club-guys protocol is obsolete and the manufacturer
can't/won't update it!?