The Register: Gilmore, Hedrick differ on anti-CPRM gameplan

“Gilmore wants members of the public to join the T.13 standards
committee. And while acknowledging that the Phoenix proposal is
innocuous (“there is nothing controversial in this new proposal –
there is nothing in at all,”) it may be a Trojan Horse for “secret”
standards, he writes.”

“But Linux ATA driver guru and T.13 committee member Andre
Hedrick, who has watched CPRM for several months, strongly
disagrees. His concern is to ensure that CPRM doesn’t go
underground, he says, into the nether world of undocumented “Vendor
Unique” commands used by manufacturers, which are far more
difficult to identify and that could criminalise attempts to break
it. He wants it above ground, identified, and where folks can see
it.”

“Hedrick has issued his own “suggestion” to the T.13 mailing
list, promising to give away a command parser that bounces unknown
new commands, so obliging a CPRM-vigilant OS to track and reject
all such command sets. His threat poses a dilemma for drive
manufacturers which may be inclined to sneak CPRM in through the
back door: they’ll effectively lose the Linux market.
Hedrick’s parser will include trap-doors for vendors who try to
circumvent known command sets, too.”

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