Microsoft furious at $2,000 bounty for open source Kinect drivers
techeye.net
techeye.net
That's exactly what I would say if I actually did want a bunch of hackers trying to create drivers for other platforms.
Nintendo pioneered this in the 80s, with their connector patents and weird, proprietary chips that cartridges required, learning from Atari's "mistakes" of not locking it down hard enough. They were rewarded with big sacks of money and developers that got used to the rough treatment. The industry still hasn't recovered.
It's why I love GamePark so much. Fun little handhelds and open development. I've bought two of their products so far. But they file for bankruptcy more often than Shigeru Miyamoto flashes his trademark smile; it isn't an industry that is easy to break into, and there's not much incentive for the big players to start playing nice.
Consider the ethics of (a) using the Wiimote to drive my set-top box and (b) getting DirecTV without paying for it. The situations are clearly different. The former drives innovation [1], the latter doesn't.
[1]: http://hacknmod.com/hack/top-30-wiimote-hacks-of-the-web/
If they do they are going to be on the wrong side of the bars.
Article 6 of the EU convention on software prohibits anything which stops you reverse engineering hardware or software for interoperability.
From what I can tell Kinect is a seriously cool piece of technology without a problem to solve. Every review has been the same "it's pretty neat, but the launch titles are a bewildering array of uninteresting crap" (paraphrased of course).
Hackers are a group that are just uncanny at finding creative uses for hardware like this. Hell, I'd attribute much of the iPhone's success to those early hackers who built apps long before any official SDK was available. They pushed things in all sorts of creative directions. Apple undoubtedly learned a lot from that...Kinect needs the same.
The problem comes because the reverse engineer hackers don't have a business model to protect. It doesn't matter if that month long project doesn't return any money, because it was damn cool to do. Compare that to Microsoft who requires people to pay them money for the privilege to write code that takes advantage of it. I don't have any numbers, but a large group of small to medium game companies buy SDKs and Development tools for platforms they don't actually produce titles for. This is a significant number of people they don't want "trying" before they buy.
I'm curious as to why MS thinks that this is going to hurt them.
I think the real point in the original comment was that "serious" business is unlikely to build products competing with 360 on other platforms based on an open source driver for Kinect. E.g. Activision are extremely unlikely to build video games for PC based that require a Kinect.
While there might be a small cost to Microsoft in selling a few Kinect bundles to hackers who don't have, and therefore buy games for, XBox 360 in the grand scheme of things it's hardly a threat to Mircosoft's new business model and this is just the standard corporate answer to anyone tampering with their products.
It's anticompetitive, distortionary, harms interoperability, and tempts businesses into spending endless amounts of money in an arms race that could better be spent making their products better.
So, I have a hard time sympathizing with arguments that boil down to "if company X makes cool peripheral Y, I am entitled to use it in way Z that is contrary to X's business interests".
My unfounded suspicion is that if the tables were turned, and Microsoft focused its (considerable!) systems research capabilities on, say, disrupting Wattvision's business model, Hacker News wouldn't be leaping to the defense of forced interoperability.
Er, yes? Claiming the opposite eviscerates property rights even more than the DMCA already does.
My unfounded suspicion is that if the tables were turned, and Microsoft focused its (considerable!) systems research capabilities on, say, disrupting Wattvision's business model, Hacker News wouldn't be leaping to the defense of forced interoperability.
Barring antitrust issues I have no legal or moral issues with that.
I see the right to design, build, and offer a product to the market under whatever terms I'd like.
These rights are in conflict, and I see that, but let's not pretend that there's no other side to this.
Patents exist not to lock out competition or allow total control over an invention, but as a method for making sure your work isn't stolen (for a limited time) and thus give you a commercial incentive to innovate. It is outright abuse to say that it gives anyone the right to dictate how devices are used, but is sadly an abuse that has become the status quo.
So I'm not particularly sympathetic to people feel like they shouldn't have to pay for a copy of something just because the marginal cost is zero. Leaving aside details like perpetual copyrights on the installment plan, we have a decent legal framework that only works if everyone contributes (cf. taxes).
But game consoles, to borrow your phrasing, are a field notorious for generating a feeling of entitlement among corporations. Same with printer cartridges, mobile phones, and, yes, razorblades. There is no societal need for these pricing schemes when we have an efficient consumer credit market, and they're frankly anticompetitive.
Society benefits from competitive markets, and competitive markets work best when things are forced to be priced at what they're worth. So I would argue that society benefits when loss-leader schemes are rendered infeasible.
Selling hardware may not actually hurt them, but it obviously their goal is to create a platform on which to upsell games.
http://www.develop-online.net/news/35198/Source-pins-Kinect-...
http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/11/04/what-kinect-looks-like-...
Note: I'm not making any statement about the possible awesomeness or lameness of the system. All I'm saying is the parts aren't expensive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/12/johnny-chung-lee-joins-pr...
Edit:
Kinect is part of Microsoft’s continuing quest to bring to market natural user interface (NUI) technologies, like touch, voice and gesture-recognition. Maybe it’s also part of a grand plan to force users to continue to exercise (even if that just means by waving a hand) while being increasingly tied to our PCs?
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-kinect-for-gam...
I don't necessarily agree with DMCA restrictions on reverse engineering, but I do support Microsoft's right to sell a closed platform.
In general, though, yes, I think there is a lot of room for improvement in the technology that supports presenters (but that's still no reason not to practice and get comfortable with the tech you have)
(All under the assumption that making unauthorised use of the Kinect does not require copying a work that Microsoft owns the copyright to, of course).
Porn industry adapts open source Kinect drivers into new, immersible adult entertainment experience. Act in one of your favorite movies and get "intimate" with your favorite porn stars.
As some may know, the POV (point of view) genre in adult entertainment is a huge segment. Being able to act in the movies and dictate the positions and movements of the actor would be a big marketing driver
What makes you think this case is any different? Microsoft can't keep Office or Windows under wraps, nor the XBOX, nor anything else.
The hackers will win, as always.
You're falling into a narrative trap. It's not actually "hackers vs. Microsoft". Microsoft pays some of the best in the world. Most examples of hackers beating companies involve companies that did not invest seriously in countermeasures. That's not a problem Microsoft has.
What does it cost now?
(b) Limor isn't putting a bounty on pirating a game. She's putting a bounty on forced interoperability with a hostile proprietary peripheral. The bounty is great (even though I think "her team" will lose). I think it's kind of insulting to compare it to pirating games, which is indefensible.
They did something with consumer hardware that made tampering with it economically infeasible.
The exact same technique they use is available to Microsoft, should they be willing to pay to integrate and (more painfully) license it.
What Pay TV providers did to stop Pay TV hackers is an open secret, but I don't work in Pay TV and don't know exactly how "open" the secret is, which is why I'm dancing around this argument rather than just killing it with facts.
The utility of Kinect is a physical piece of equipment. There's no service (although it may be used with a service), therefore there's no requirement to receive updates once hacked. Microsoft only gets one chance to deploy their defences: when the Kinect is in the factory.
(Microsoft could use the exact same scheme by bricking their devices with fuses when they fail some routine checkup; they could also brick every device and then issue a recall/reissue. They have better options than that, though).
Once the Kinect is in my house, who cares what I do with it? I can smash it with a hammer, I can send it USB commands. My Kinect, my house, my rules.
DirectTV is the same. Once the radio waves are in my house, why can't I decrypt them to watch TV for free? If DirectTV wants me to pay for TV, why are they sending the signal into my house!?
Otherwise, this argument is a bit more nuanced than either of you are acknowledging.
The difference between cell phones and DirectTV is that you have session keys for your phone calls, but there is one global key for every user in the country for DirectTV. Such is the nature of broadcasting.
They chose a "cheap" method to distribute TV to users, but it's also very "insecure". The cell-phone companies, on the other hand, developed a very expensive infrastructure, and it's more secure as a result.
What just about all consumer electronics companies have failed to do is lock down their hardware from being hacked in the first place - after all, Sony and Apple also pay some of the best in the world, and the PS3 and iPhone have been cracked wide open with software.
Microsoft is certainly better than most (the 360 doesn't yet have a software patch - there are hardware solutions - that can be used for piracy), but they are by no means immune to hackers.
Some of the best. And most of the best are "out there" and not on their payroll. Plus it's not impossible that some of these supposed best on their payroll may also contribute, on the side, to helping hack/crack their products, anonymously. Regardless though, I bet for every 1 world-class hacker inside Microsoft there are 100+ outside of it, and some of the latter will have the interest and time and skills to hack it.
These arguments make sense if you believe that "DRM" (software protection) has lost the technological war. But it hasn't! You just don't see the high-end stuff deployed in places where hackers care about it --- with the possible exception of the hypervisor-secured game consoles.
They have access to talent of that caliber, but apparently ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems ) they aren't willing to pay for it.
1. No doubt there are incredibly intelligent, motivated people working for Microsoft, but talent requires an appropriate environment to reach its potential. 2. The mistake is often made of assuming that the "good guys" are the only ones with smart people on their side. This mistake is most frequently seen in discussions of national security and nuclear technology. 3. All it takes to defeat a non-service-based DRM scheme is one vulnerability. If the Kinect has to continually stream motion data to Microsoft servers for processing (kind of like Android speech recognition), then Microsoft can keep changing the protocol and encryption. If Microsoft's 100 talented engineers leave just one gap, and one talented hacker finds it, then hackers "win." 4. "Might makes right" should absolutely apply to what talented hackers do with products they own. I value individual property rights above corporate business model preservation. It is the duty of the giant and powerful corporations to ensure their business models aren't vulnerable to the whims of talented hackers, and using the law to make it so is unethical.
Where is it, then? And if it's where I think it is, don't most such places keep tight control of their hardware? (As opposed to letting random consumers buy and own it.)
BD+ in particular, I thought some commercial program was already able to emulate. And I haven't heard of any movies where there are no pirated versions available, but I don't watch them at all, so I might be out of the loop.
And mere Blu-Ray (for those disks without BD+), is pretty well cracked at this point if one is to believe the hexadecimal numbers going around the internet.
With a bounty you don't hand it over until it works
Of course that could start a bidding war, and draw more attention, and no doubt encourage more hackers... so actually never mind, probably a really bad idea.
A 10k bounty to not release this might stop a few people from doing so, but all it takes is for a single individual to say "fuck it, I have a steady job and a nice place to live, giving MS the finger is worth more than just a measily 10k to me", and it's game over. Once that single person releases their work microsoft has paid out (no doubt numerous times) 10k for absolutely nothing.
Being able to put this down on your resume could possibly overshadow any possible lump sum that would be offered. Long term, this is possibly chump change if you factor in what it could do for you career wise long term.
Also, I wouldn't be doing this for the money and I doubt many would. You do it because you want to, it's fun, hacking on things like this is just plain enjoyable.
The exposure of such keys or a process to avoid the use of them would be of significantly more value to software bootleggers, unlicensed peripheral manufacturers and homebrew folks than any amount of money this open source group is likely to offer. And they'd be requiring a fully functional driver for a set of complex hardware with no documentation on top of the cryptographic attack. Nobody on earth would do all that work to claim that bounty. Not to mention, defeating the protections would surely fall under the DMCA circumvention rules, meaning revealing the coders identity would open them up to significant legal risk.
While it's fun blame microsoft for their behavior, it should be noted that this kind of peripheral protection is becoming significantly more common. Among others, I'm under the impression that this style of on chip cryptographic protections drives the new class of "made for iPhone" officially licensed bluetooth enabled gadgets and certain other "made for iPhone" hardware. I'm unsure if they use as tamper proof a solution, but the intent is the same.
"To demonstrate the driver you must also write an application with one window showing video (640 x 480) and one window showing depth."
Here's a video of a guy looking at his room with IR goggles. This observation makes me think that there is a Lot of data to be crunched to get an accurate use of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7nRKU0nFxA
On the gaming application side, it's just a glorified Eye Toy. If you've played it, you know how foolish you feel playing it.
So if I write a linux device driver for a USB mouse with a proprietary interface, I am "tampering" with the mouse and "modifying" it?
This is a human interface device. I highly doubt that even the DCMA could kick in on it, since it is not used for recording, storing, or displaying content of any kind (but I could be wrong). How, then, does Microsoft have the right to say what can and cannot be done with a piece of hardware that I rightfully purchased?
Whether the Kinect is a loss leader is irrelevant. Once I buy the thing, I own it, and I can do whatever I want to with it.