[sdiy] Lockout / DRM chips?

[David Kantowitz]

John's points about arms-race or cat&mouse are exactly correct.
It is a commitment to a continuous effort, not a one time solution.
Which leads to a constant re-assessment of what is the value of what you're
protecting.
As much as it pissed off everyone involved, sometimes it was easier to pay
damages or replace equipment at our cost.


On Thu, Sep 10, 2026 at 10:19 AM John via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org>
wrote:

> 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 its am-I-in-the-club-guys protocol is obsolete and the manufacturer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!?
> ________________________________________________________
> This is the Synth-diy mailing list
> Submit email to: Synth-diy at synth-diy.org
> View archive at: https://synth-diy.org/pipermail/synth-diy/
> Check your settings at: https://synth-diy.org/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy
> Selling or trading? Use marketplace at synth-diy.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://synth-diy.org/pipermail/synth-diy/attachments/20260910/38dbae8f/attachment.htm>