Discussing "licensing" in a thread about coffee. Fuck. This is not what the future was supposed to be about. The future was supposed to bring us infinite possibilities through the means of technology. It was meant to be awesome. It was not meant to be artificially limited through the means of technology which could have been used to make our lives better instead. Where did we go wrong?
I applaud the fact that they don't seem worried about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that makes it illegal to create devices that bypass DRM. DMCA is supposed to apply only to protecting copyrighted works, but prosecutors and lawyers in general try to extend the laws in all sort of crafty ways, and usually companies are too fearful to try anything proactive.
That depends. Does Keurig even consider this to be DRM and protected under the DMCA? Or is that just what we call it because that is what we talk about on HN.
Keurig has already tried to use patent law to prevent competitors from selling pods.
Their failure there feels like the reason their trying to make a device that they think can be protected under DMCA.
That's a really nice hack, I fear though that the next generation of "broken by design" consumer electronics devices will make use of much more sophisticated DRM technologies to make sure you only use them as intended by the manufacturer.
An example is the German startup Bonaverde (http://www.bonaverde.com), which manufactures a coffee machine that not only grinds but also roasts your coffee beans. To make sure that you use only their certified (and pricey) coffee beans they include an RFID chip with each package that you have to scan in order to start the brewing process. No tag, no coffee.
There is also a Gizmodo article that nicely sums up the Bonaverde story:
I paid $11 for my drip coffee maker, in the local branch of a national chain grocery. I've had it for two years. It makes one to twelve cups of any kind of coffee you care to put in there, from $5 store brand to dont-even-ask café whose beans were grown on a free-trade farm in Guatemala under the supervision of the executive committee of Juan Valdez' estate's charitable trust and staffed by former independent coffee…
Yeah, well, it doesn't compare at all. You're talking about a filter coffee machine whereas Keurig sells an espresso machine. Your filter doesn't put out the same coffee as an espresso machine; there's pressure involved, temperature, etc.. Your coffee will be "longer" (more water) and contain way more caffeine. You also won't ever be able to produce the foam and taste of an espresso with a filter machine. I'm not say…
That's a really nice hack, I fear though that the next generation of "broken by design" consumer electronics devices will make use of much more sophisticated DRM technologies to make sure you only use them as intended by the manufacturer. An example is the German startup Bonaverde ( http://www.bonaverde.com ), which manufactures a coffee machine that not only grinds but also roasts your coffee beans. To make sure tha…
Can't you just save an empty bag, and then fill it with any beans you want?
My general thoughts about companies trying to implement DRM is that there's always some stupidly simple hack around it. Like this Keurig hack. I guarantee that within a week or two of this coming out someone will just find another way to hack around the DRM.
Discussing "licensing" in a thread about coffee. Fuck. This is not what the future was supposed to be about. The future was supposed to bring us infinite possibilities through the means of technology. It was meant to be awesome. It was not meant to be artificially limited through the means of technology which could have been used to make our lives better instead. Where did we go wrong?
Not siding with Keurig, but just out of curiosity, how would you to create a DRM scheme that can't be bypassed with this replay attack? Apparently [0] the DRM works by shining a light on an ink marking and registering the wavelength of the light reflected back. I figure one simple scheme would be to 'burn' the key after it is read. i.e. physically disable the DRM ink by heat/perforation/other ink, so that once used,…
And hoping Keurig doesn't get any ideas from this.
If Keurig wanted to they could get plenty of ideas from the consumer printer industry, where cartridges have embedded chips in them. Apparently the latest models include some form of crypto too; the older ones were just an EEPROM and were fairly easy to defeat (http://eddiem.com/photo/CIS/inkchip/chip.html) But they should also keep in mind that despite all these countermeasures, plenty of refill kits/aftermarket cartridges/chip resetters/etc. continue to be available, so they're fighting a losing war.
That's a really nice hack, I fear though that the next generation of "broken by design" consumer electronics devices will make use of much more sophisticated DRM technologies to make sure you only use them as intended by the manufacturer. An example is the German startup Bonaverde ( http://www.bonaverde.com ), which manufactures a coffee machine that not only grinds but also roasts your coffee beans. To make sure tha…
Can't you just save an empty bag, and then fill it with any beans you want? My general thoughts about companies trying to implement DRM is that there's always some stupidly simple hack around it. Like this Keurig hack. I guarantee that within a week or two of this coming out someone will just find another way to hack around the DRM. Better mousetraps just breed cleverer mice.
Not sure about this, but from reading the article the answer is probably no. I hope of course that there will be a workaround, as you say even very sophisticated DRM schemes eventually get cracked, it just makes me sad to see that instead of building technology that empowers the end user, these companies deliberately choose to cripple their products for the sake of higher profit.
I paid $11 for my drip coffee maker, in the local branch of a national chain grocery. I've had it for two years. It makes one to twelve cups of any kind of coffee you care to put in there, from $5 store brand to dont-even-ask café whose beans were grown on a free-trade farm in Guatemala under the supervision of the executive committee of Juan Valdez' estate's charitable trust and staffed by former independent coffee…
Yeah, well, it doesn't compare at all. You're talking about a filter coffee machine whereas Keurig sells an espresso machine. Your filter doesn't put out the same coffee as an espresso machine; there's pressure involved, temperature, etc.. Your coffee will be "longer" (more water) and contain way more caffeine. You also won't ever be able to produce the foam and taste of an espresso with a filter machine. I'm not say…
This is how someone can sell a Keurig machine. That's not espresso and the coffee is a poor value. Seriously folks, is it that hard to make your own coffee that's better than these things?