DRM Server Updates

[Ben Russell]

Captains,

I have just performed a significant upgrade to the DRM server software.

It is now capable of serving you up with multiple hardware keys per purchase with NO support requests or intervention.

For now you are automatically granted 3 hardware keys for any DRM protected product you purchase.

Simply copy your product to any 3 machines(or operating systems) and perform standard Gizmo activation.

Your patience while this new version is burned-in is appreciated.

Working towards the best DRM I can make for you all. Vendors, Producers, Customers. All of you.

I would like to reiterate that the DRM server lives on Googles App Engine which provides it with as good as infinite life span as I can hope to ever provide.

For more information on App Engine please see this page:

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/whatisgoogleappengine.html

In 5 seconds:

App Engine costs nothing to get started. All applications can use up to 500 MB of storage and enough CPU and bandwidth to support an efficient app serving around 5 million page views a month, absolutely free. When you enable billing for your application, your free limits are raised, and you only pay for resources you use above the free levels.

[Kesomir]

For a longer term thought -  it would be nice for a user to be able to regain keys to deal with moving to future hardware.

While one method is to deauthorise in-use keys, I appreciate that this would not work as your drm doesn't dial home after activation.

The alternative is how adobe does it for digital editions - over time, keys accrue to a max level to handle machine upgrades. Something like 1 key per 6m / year up to the max of 3 or whatever - technically this could be achieved by only counting keys issued within a set timeframe (year - whatever) against the total.

Any beyond this could be handled by support.

[Cameron]

For a longer term thought -  it would be nice for a user to be able to regain keys to deal with moving to future hardware.

For various security reasons (both for our own and yours), we won't be doing something like this, especially anytime soon if we were to even consider. Our reasons are our own, but for a user, it's simply the point, as you've stated, that we don't wish for a user to have a constant connection to our server. We'd get slammed for such a tactic.

The alternative is how adobe does it for digital editions - over time, keys accrue to a max level to handle machine upgrades. Something like 1 key per 6m / year up to the max of 3 or whatever - technically this could be achieved by only counting keys issued within a set timeframe (year - whatever) against the total.

We have a similar system in place. Not to a T, but similar. We are doing our best to minimize any potential hassle to a customer, and to move from one key to three without having to contact us is further leeway already.

More announcements will be made in time.