Anti-piracy memory chip arrives --Mercury News

SANDISK INNOVATION COULD EASE TENSIONS OVER ENTERTAINMENT

By Dean Takahashi

Mercury News


Memory chips are supposed to be commodities. Especially the flash memory chips that SanDisk makes for storing digital photos, music files, camcorder videos or other content. But the Sunnyvale company will unveil today a new kind of chip, contained on a storage card, that it hopes will set its brand apart and usher in a new era for enjoying portable entertainment.

The chip design company is introducing TrustedFlash, a memory chip with built-in security that prevents illegal copying. That could help calm the tension between the entertainment industry that wants strict controls on intellectual property and technology companies that want digital content to be freely transferable to cell phones, music players, computers and other gadgets.

Eli Harari, chief executive of SanDisk, said in an interview that the new chips create more options for both entertainment companies and consumers alike. The entertainment companies can sell their songs, movies or games in different ways, and consumers can buy and view the entertainment where they want and whenever they want, as long as they pay for it.

``We have worked on this for three to four years,'' Harari said. ``The toughest thing was to convince the studios that this was more secure than anything else out there.''

SanDisk has persuaded some industry players to use ``gruvi,'' which will be the brand name for TrustedFlash in the entertainment category.

Among the music industry providers adopting it are EMI Group and Yahoo Music. Meanwhile, cell phone maker Samsung Mobile Communications, pay-TV company NDS, and portable video software company Packet Video are also supporting SanDisk's technology. Samsung's phones, for instance, can play music on the memory cards.

Harari said his firm worked with companies in the entertainment, security and cell phone industries in order to pull together its product. To create the device, SanDisk had to build a lot of computing power into what would otherwise be a dumb memory chip.

``This is going to accelerate the shift of music into cell phones,'' said Satya Chillara, an analyst at American Technology Research.

With the TrustedFlash chips, music studios can release albums or whole collections of musical groups on a single memory card that consumers could buy at stores and insert into their phones, MP3 players or laptops. They can listen to the music tracks they paid for, or pay additional money to get a security code that unlocks additional songs. The unlocked song might be already stored on the memory card, or the consumer could download it from a Web site or phone service onto the memory card.

Today, much of a consumer's digital content is held hostage on a particular kind of device, such as an iPod or a PC, because that is the only way to prevent massive piracy. But with the SanDisk flash memory card, a consumer can move the digital content to another device. If the music company insists the data can only be copied five times, the memory card itself enforces that policy in the new device, be it a cell phone or music player.

Harari says this is SanDisk's latest effort to set itself apart from much bigger rivals, which include Samsung Electronics, Micron Technology, Toshiba and others.

Harari founded the company as SunDisk in 1988 to popularize flash memory -- which stores data permanently on a silicon chip -- as a replacement for hard disk drives. In 1991, the company shipped its first chip, which stored 4 megabits. Sun Microsystems complained, so after seven years Harari changed the name to SanDisk.

For many years, hard disks outran flash memory's storage capacity and speed. SanDisk licensed other chip makers to make flash memory cards, but as it grew, it decided to ship memory cards directly to retailers under its own brand. SanDisk's memory cards are now in more than 100,000 stores.

Today, a flash memory card, which can contain multiple chips, can store hundreds of songs or dozens of digital pictures.

SanDisk's latest flash chips can each store 8 gigabits, or more than 2,000 times the amount they could store 14 years ago.

Because the flash chips are so small, they're the storage medium of choice in many MP3 players, camcorders and digital cameras. Better still, many mobile phones now include the slots for cards like SanDisk's as a standard feature. SanDisk, accordingly, generated $1.8 billion in sales last year and it now employs 1,000 people.

And, in direct competition with Apple Computer's iPod Shuffle, SanDisk started selling its own SanDisk-branded flash-based music player. The product is struggling to gain market share, but SanDisk gets its chips at half the cost other companies pay, and that should benefit it in the long run, Chillara said.

Now the company's newest TrustedFlash chips could help it pull away even further from its rivals, Harari said.

``This is an important step up the food chain,'' Harari said. ``We can become a much more important link in the delivery of premier entertainment content in mobile devices.''


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Contact Dean Takahashi at dtakahashi@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5739.

So far, no technical information on the system is available. Also, SD cards have actually supported a form of DRM since they were introduced - it is what the 'secure' in 'securedigital' refers to. Its just that very very device manufacturers have found any use for it, instead depending on creating their own modules to plug into the Windows Media DRM framework.

hmm.. I fail to see the exact harm in this. I have a memory stick with a protected storage area. Unaccessable except via a program installation and security key...

The harm is, if they put 'special' tracks on one of these and say you need to buy a code to unlock them, then what's to stop them from sending a signal to your cellphone to disable another part of the chip.

What I'm saying is, if you buy a chip with 20 songs and two special songs, then the record label could decide that you can only ever access 20 songs at a time and if you buy the code, then two songs are disabled until you buy another code at which time the process repeats.

And, New DRM technology will protect electronics as well.

Sony's new CD players will come with DRM that requires you to pay for a license fee per series of CD playes. And, new computers will require you to pay a monthly fee to use it, whether it's for homework, or music listening, or whatever. And the next iPod will come with these fetures as well.

The cost: some CD players will cost you 10 bucks for 10 CD plays or 100 tracks, 50 bucks a month per computer, and other forms of fees per usage. So, DRM is here to infect gadgets as well as media.

I won't buy music containing DRM, and certainly won't buy any new player or computer infested with it either.
It's a matter of principle with me. It's not that I can't circumvent DRM on a CD, for example. It's just that I refuse to buy into it, literally speaking.

I have indie music (obviously, no DRM).
I have analog vinyl (along with two sets of audiophile equipment and plenty of spare parts to go along with it).
I have non-DRM CD's.
I have non-DRM players.
I have non-DRM computers.

Eventually, I'll buy another computer, but it will have to be a used one with no DRM.

My friends call me a rebel.

I call you smart grumpygeezer.

Hey grumpy,
Why not go all the way and run linux on an old box. Get with me if you want I can send you a non LOL DRM cd with a complete operating system that weighs in about 50MB.
Actually I have a couple to choose from to name a few I have Puppy linux, Feather linux, DSL< (damn small linux).
Matter of fact I have over 400 different flavors of linux to choose from some weigh in about 699MB.

JD: If your describing potentially evil DRM systems, you should name the schemes you describe. Just because DRM can do something doesn't mean it will be used to.

Thanks, nitedreamerxp. That's very interesting!

BTW, I've been using Mac OS9 for my computering.
I seldom go to my Windows machine.

It would be nice to learn linux when I get the time.
That would be great, using both Mac and Linux.

I also have several different versions of knoppix operating systems that boot off of the CDs no need to install to the hard drive.

There is also a few different linux operating systems that run on Macs, yellow dog is one.

"I call you smart, grumpygeezer."

Thanks for the affirmation, Shmoo.

You're a good guy.

Hmm, maybe I'll try to find time for the learning curve on using "yellow dog."
Thanks.

I just want to thank nitedreamerxp for sending me that bootable knoppix cd a couple of months ago. I've used it about a dozen times and considering everything you want is right there in one neat little package it's amazing. The only thing is that I use this laptop with my wireless router and the internet won't work( not unless I directly plug into the cable modem). Maybe I'm doing something wrong or need to change some setting after it boots up knoppix. It works just fine otherwise and most times I just use it in the old desktop and a couple of times at work.

I do thank you pinemikey and your welcome I'm glad you still enjoy the knoppix cd.
If you ever need more info on solving a problem using linux check out the linux documentation project.

Raid,
I checked out your web page looks good you should take every Opportunity to let people know you have something that can help them sort of sell yourself on it.

As for SANDISK I don't use those I use USB 512 MB memory sticks .

They probably use the same chips.

"Today, much of a consumer's digital content is held hostage on a particular kind of device, such as an iPod or a PC, because that is the only way to prevent massive piracy."

wow, they accuse/insult the general population so cheerfully.

The idea of memory modules opposed to copying is about the funniest thing i've seen on the internet since that photoshopped car with square tires.

...but is DRM good or evil?...

DRM in it's vast and interoperable form has the potential of flexibility once digital is in full force, everything's wireless, and one consumer has a licenses in the centeral computing. The licenses are protected in a chip that is immune to computer viruses. The license file is also encrypted to protected from hackers. But digital music is constantly flowing around the whole world, copied, shared, and distributed. Everything is DRMed, including all electronics, speakers, and everything. The DRM also is under each and individual's name of the electronics, so that it will enable consumers to freely stream, share, copy, or pass on from device or device. It has no cost to you since you are simply transferring it from device to device under your same name. Hoever, if I copy my file from my system to his system, than I can buy him one, or I can share the file with him to "try once", and he/she can have the choice to buy it. If he/she likes it, he/she has options and purchases it from any retailer out there. Than, she owns the same license. Then he/she can menuver the song file through her network and do the same thing to consumer C. If I implement this in the "DRM-ed CD", than I can rip and burn the protected CDs in any way I want, because I have the "key" to the song, as well as being able to play, mess with, or edit the song in any way I want to. I can pass the license to my friend free of charge, but if I pass the license, the database changes the rights of the song to my friends, and all my songs won't play anymore, including my CDs and copies that I have on my network. However, if I get the license back by some friend giving it to me or if I repurchase it at a retailer, than the CDs and the songs will work again. If all this is interoperable, all with assigned machines that interoperate as consumer's networks and DRM is compatible on any device, this flexibility the consumers have in this market is just compelling. Put this, and with blanket licensing, and these copy protected CDs and this generation of DRM will be a thing of the past. That's the future on what we'd like to see, and I hope that this will be with movies and other media, such as e-Action figures, game levels, and all sorts of media.

But if the RIAA wants to object to this, well, I say to you RIAA: You are stifling innovation, and I think it's time for you to listen up and take this broad opertunity.

wow.. that rant does not reflect on the impact of the infrastructure you propose on the grounds of:

a. civil liberties
b. infrastructre costs
c. infrastructre feasibility
d. infrastructure practiciality

Computers are not magical things that can simply do this for you, especially in the way you're talking about.

A central database? how would your ipod connnect to it from 30,000 ft? it would require a trillion dollars to implement worldwide wireless and require that the internet be made a social service!

"Is DRM evil?"

Yes.

I sneer at Ivory Tower, pie-in-sky political mindsets that holds no regard for the common man. So JD, get bent... you inane hairspray-snorting shitstain of a fairy.