[112517] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: DRM for batteries
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephan Somogyi)
Sun Jan 6 12:00:40 2008
In-Reply-To: <E1JAdNn-0004q8-Qt@wintermute01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 15:28:50 -0800
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
From: Stephan Somogyi <cryptography@lt.gross.net>
At 16:38 +1300 04.01.2008, Peter Gutmann wrote:
>At $1.40 each (at least in sub-1K quantities) you wonder whether it's costing
>them more to add the DRM (spread over all battery sales) than any marginal
>gain in preventing use of third-party batteries by a small subset of users.
I don't think I agree with the "DRM for batteries" characterization.
It's not my data in that battery that they're preventing me from
getting at.
Given that illicit replica batteries can have particularly mediagenic
failure modes, I posit that manufacturers are increasingly motivated
to make sure that if the battery says NameBrand on it, it actually is
a NameBrand battery. Counterfeit failures lead to brand damage and
other unpleasant economic side-effects.
Not that real NameBrand batteries don't ever behave badly, but this
type of countermeasure should also provide legitimate manufacturers
with additional incentive not to screw up. Which is actually to the
end users' benefit.
s.
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