DRM for batteries

Stephan Somogyi cryptography at lt.gross.net
Sat Jan 5 18:28:50 EST 2008


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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