All DRM on anything but totally tamperproof hardware can be cracked

[Natanael90]

http://lwn.net/Articles/483555/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole

If you can't trust the hardware to do exactly what it's told by a trusted entity that isn't the current hardware owner, then you can't trust any DRM scheme to work.

And since practically every known DRM scheme that people care about so far has been cracked, there's no reason to believe it will succeed in the future. Everything we know about physics says you can't give somebody a box with both the content and the key and stop them from extracting enough information about the content to recreate it. There's always some way to find out what's in there.

And besides, how would you be able to trust the manufacturing process in the first place? And identification of the hardware? On a global scale?

As long as the entire processor and RAM is untrusted, you've got no chance, and it will stay that way forever.

Also, it doesn't really count as "open source" if the user has no ability to modify how it works on his own devices.

[aaron-lebo]

I appreciate your response, as I stated, the whole point was to generate discussion, especially the technical issues of such a project, and your response helps.

I would only say that apparently being perfect isn't really a need of these systems, after all even current systems are cracked. What is needed is something good enough, something that keeps your average consumer from innocently copying their game to 20 friends and actually hurting the developer in the process.

[Natanael90]

There's nothing good enough. It will get pirated. What you can do is to make an "honor system", nothing else.