First pangolin hardware and software located in a datacenter (worlds first!)

[masterpj]

correct certainly the first in that

[chad]

While I can't say for certain, I strongly suspect that the people Bill hired to do the encryption probably did exactly this. And as I said before, the fact that it's withstood the test of time suggests that they did indeed do it right.
Adam

Really the only reason that it has withstood the test of time is because no one cares enough to really try to crack it. It serves it's purpose, it keeps the honest people honest. Look at DVD, Blu-ray, games, software, playstation, xbox, windows, mac os and every other form of DRM, all cracked. Any of these guys have spent more on security than the entire net worth of pangolin. If you threw a group of talented crackers at the pangolin drm it wouldn't take long to break it I suspect. The thing is for our tiny niche of laser shows it is just not worth the effort.
So pangolin DRM does just what it is supposed to do. Keep people from sharing show content.

chad

[masterpj]

Really the only reason that it has withstood the test of time is because no one cares enough to really try to crack it. It serves it's purpose, it keeps the honest people honest. Look at DVD, Blu-ray, games, software, playstation, xbox, windows, mac os and every other form of DRM, all cracked. Any of these guys have spent more on security than the entire net worth of pangolin. If you threw a group of talented crackers at the pangolin drm it wouldn't take long to break it I suspect. The thing is for our tiny niche of laser shows it is just not worth the effort.
So pangolin DRM does just what it is supposed to do. Keep people from sharing show content.

chad

BINGO! and thats exactly why I did care about the protection!

[buffo]

Really the only reason that it has withstood the test of time is because no one cares enough to really try to crack it.

And yet someone cared enough to crack the Mamba Black dongle encryption... Despite the fact that Mamba Black has far less market share than Pangolin does.

I understand that no encryption is truly unbreakable (with the possible exception of quantum encryption, which is still in it's infancy), but the Pangolin secure file format has proven to be remarkably robust, even when compared to other formats that have been introduced (and subequently discarded) within the laser show industry.

As to your statement that game software companies spend more money on copy protection than the entire net worth of Pangolin, I call bullshit: 1) you provided no cost estimates for what game companies spend, and 2) you have no idea what Pangolin's entire net worth actually is. I don't doubt that companies like Microsoft and Electronic Arts have more money to spend on copy protection than Pangolin does, but I'm not going make wild speculations about how much they actually do spend.

Adam

[chad]

Jesus, I am not trying to start a pissing contest. I am just trying to illustrate that we play in a tiny pond.

As for pangolins net worth, you are right I don't know what they are worth. But I stand my my assertion.

"A market research report, “Digital Rights Management – An Industry Outlook (2005-2008)” prepared studies the increasing worldwide demand for online protection rights and thereby demand for digital rights management software. The latter is expected to touch a peak of US $3.6 billion by 2008 along with a growth rate of 106.1%."

from here : http://www.researchandmarkets.com/re...dustry_outlook

So, could I be wrong? Yes. Am I wrong, probably not. It doesn't matter either way. The point is, whatever level of drm they use it serves it's purpose. It is not some super secret squirrel un-hackable uber drm. It is enough o keep people from casually sharing content.

chad

[flecom]

Really the only reason that it has withstood the test of time is because no one cares enough to really try to crack it.

I think this is pretty much it right there...

plus if you really want to make a copy of protected pangolin content there are MUCH easier ways to do it than breaking the encryption

[masterpj]

I think this is pretty much it right there...

plus if you really want to make a copy of protected pangolin content there are MUCH easier ways to do it than breaking the encryption

`

Right... well I dont want to crack content, but since I'm protecting stuff.. would you care to PM me more details on this?
thanks

[polishedball]

`

Right... well I dont want to crack content, but since I'm protecting stuff.. would you care to PM me more details on this?
thanks

I would assume, that he is thinking the same as I. You record the output to ADAT and then frame capture it back in using pangolin's own LCADAT or Laserboy. No secret everyone know this.

[Pangolin]

WOW, first we have someone who admits to having never laid a hand on a QM2000, and yet calls it a phenomenally bad design. Then we have a whole lot of negativity from Heroc about another PL member and encryption? Geez!!

All of this is just a bunch of negative blah blah blah. The fact of the matter is that the QM2000 and the LD2000 series has sold more than all other similar systems combined. Of course selling is not the most important metric -- it's number of companies helped. Almost 2/3 of all ILDA Award winners were won using the LD2000 series, with almost the entire remaining 1/3 going to LOBO.

We've sold a factor of six times more QS systems this year than LD2000, and this has been our best year for LD2000! And QS uses the same frame file format. Seems like a ripe marketplace to me! I think Pieter is on the right track. (Hehe, but that's just an ILDA Career Achievement Award winner speaking...)

We've helped a lot of folks, and we're proud of that. Our work has been, and continues to be, the most highly recognized and awarded in the history of the business. We can say the same about Pangolin users.

As for encryption and such? The bottom line is that there's a big wall protecting folks who want to create content and distribute it among a limited audience, and one that they control. Is it perfect? Well, when compared with video distributed on DVDs, that has of course has been cracked to be viewed on PSP and iPods.

As for what Pangolin can and can not afford, how does anyone outside the walls of Pangolin even know what we can afford? The people making these kinds of statements really show their wisdom.

And FYI, I personally cracked DES in 1988. Probably takes someone pretty smart to do that ;-)

Bill

[masterpj]

Glad you made that clear Bill
I'm also certainly thankfull you guys at pangolin are helping me making this possible.
I also was pretty much surprised people even dared to make such accusement of the LD2000 suite dispite even never have seen it.
I also do believe a protection does help simulate the trust to prevent lasershow piracy and I also do defend that protection is better then no protection at all, hence I thought of implementing an automated protection system.

Thanks for your comment!

Best regards,

Pieter