Distrobution, Mass-quantities Of Sd Cards, Copy-protection, Etc.

[thantik]

I have been thinking, and while thinking about it I thought of a theoretical "situation" with the pandora that I'd like some input on just because I have no early clue how one would go about doing something like this:

With the Nintendo DS/PSP they have a physical distribution channel. The Pandora is going to be open source.

In a theoretical world where the Pandora needed a physical distribution channel, how would one protect against just copying data off of an SD card? I'm pretty sure write protection for an SD card is as simple as removing the little switch kind of like those old VCR tapes so that's not an issue, but you have to read the data to load a game/application, how would you keep it from just being copied over to another SD card - can/do SD cards have any kind of unique identifiers that software could look for?

But also - where would one obtain mass quantities of 100-200mb SD cards if they wanted to go with a "traditional" route of game distribution? Would SD cards even work?

Disclaimer: I know the pandora wasn't developed to include any intentional lock-downs for this kind of scenario and won't ever be, but I just thought it interesting to tackle this as a subject. Any thoughts?

 

[mindlord]

This has come up before, repeatedly. SD cards have a special area that can be used as a encrypted storage area where the executable can reside. Attempts to copy the exe onto a non-protected card with either result in no exe being copied at all, or an encrypted copy that won't run. Bottom line. SD cards already have a good copy protection scheme for commercial apps to use, so no fear.

 

[lulzfish]

There's also said to be a unique ID attached to every SD card which you can check in the software.

 

[thantik]

Ok, so the unanswered question:

Where would one go about obtaining crazy-cheap 128/256mb SD cards in mass quantities for such a purpose if they were to want to do something like that? - I'm talking like $1/card.

Because honestly I can see someone setting up a commercial website to sell pandora games in physical format (even maybe openpandora.org itself), and selling plug-and-play sd cards that are as simple as turning on the pandora, plugging in an SD card and either the game starting up, or an icon for the game appearing on the desktop. The *general public* doesn't really care what Angstrom is, what linux is, why they should care if the system is "open" or not, they just would like to play games.

I also figure it's possible (should I get back into my old coding groove) that I could use this as a channel for revenue should the pandora become a hit

 

[HackModford]

I personally would love it if some reputable company went this route and made Pandora Games that were distributed on SD cards. But... It'll probably never happen.

 

[WizardStan]

If I want a lot of something for really cheap, http://surplustraders.net/ is a great place to start. Unfortunately all I can find on there is 1GB cards right now.
ebay is also an excellent place for find huge quantities of junk for cheap.
I did an advanced search for "256 sd card" with "Multiple Item Listings" from 5 to 200 to get that result.

 

[benjiro]

A other easy way is to contact company's like Sandisk, Kingston, etc, ask them what the price will be if you take bulk orders off x cards.

Also, you don't need to specify them being 128/256MB, you might actually pay more, the just buying 1GB versions. It all depends on how much stock the have off 128/256MB version, and how much there production is for the higher volume cards...

 

[Eniko]

So how would this hypothetical company sell boxed versions of Pandora games? I assume they'd offer a boxing service to Pandora devs, where said devs can sign up for the service and the company adds a mark up for profit?

 

[thantik]

There actually seems to be a lot of interest in this. Much more than I anticipated so I might as well flesh out some ideas. I've gotten more PMs than I can shake a stick at.

If someone were to go about this "theoretically" - I would expect that it would be much like you say Eniko, a front-end for a website would be placed for a store either using paypal, or possibly even a regular credit card processing company. Games & Applications could be separated by genre and so forth. For a dev to get these apps sold they would probably collaborate with whoever was running the site and work to ensure a proper product page was displayed to a user. Things such as a small flash demo video, pictures and explanation of the game title or application would be put in place.

Whoever was running the site would probably batch a couple of SD cards and work with the developer to ensure that the product was secure from being copied and that everything ran fine on real hardware after it was all said and done.

I would also expect that whoever did this would probably negotiate with the dev on how much he/she's looking for per-purchase, along with any other pricing options, along with of course, mark-up for shipping, boxing, etc. That's why I was so interested in what it would take to get huge batches of 128mb/256mb SD cards, because there will be at least the markup from putting it on the media.

I wouldn't suggest doing vacuum-packs with art and such unless someone had connections to that sort of thing. Primarily because vacuum-packs suck, and it adds to the complication of production. It could probably be a 1 man job using standard SD-card sleeves, and the proper printing equipment. There would probably be 2 stickers to be printed for each sd card that went out the door. One for the SD card sleeve, and one on top of the SD card itself. Boxing and shipping would just be as simple as packing it in a small box, lined with some cut-out black foam and shipping it. The end product wouldn't be much to look at, but it would keep the overall cost down and give someone the physical media and plug-and-play use that they're looking for.

Here's a pic of the sd card sleeve I'm talking about:
https://www.pacificgeek.com/productimages/x...SDCARD-CASE.jpg

Hopefully this is exactly what happens with the Pandora and I would love to see a shop opened on OpenPandora.org once the device was released on a regular basis. This would be the most logical point of return because someone could buy a pandora, and at the same time either decide to leave it vanilla or to go ahead and buy some games for it. It would be great to see some sort of collaboration on a project such as this so all of our fabulous developers have a central store for distribution of the work they have done.

A beauty of the pandora that I see is also the fact that while it may cost more than a nintendo DS or PSP, but I have a feeling that our developers aren't so money-hungry and aren't going to be asking $50/game or $50/application using this method so even to a "normal" user you can see a major value in the purchase.

Further down the road the same site could sell things like colored pandora-shells, addons/modified hardware, new keypads, colored joysticks, maybe some stickers that were cut for the pandoras shell. Lots of ideas.

 

[fischju2000]

Downloaded games can also have DRM if they utlilize the hardware based M-shield/ARM TrustZone. Somebody has to figure out how to use it...

 

[thantik]

Downloaded games can also have DRM if they utlilize the hardware based M-shield/ARM TrustZone. Somebody has to figure out how to use it...

Is it possible that someone could create a "wrapper" for this kind of thing to facilitate exactly what this subject is discussing?

 

[j.pickens]

I would purchase good games and other applications in this format.
However, to be realistic, there would have to be A LOT of Pandoras sold for this model to work.
How much could you charge the game maker to perform this task?
Let's call it $10.
If there are 4000 Pandoras out there, and a really, really good game comes along and sells to 10% of the market, you're talking $4000 made by the distributor, minus costs.

Now, if there were 100,000 Pandoras out there, that number would be $100,000.
That would support one person for a year, I'd guess, after costs.
If you want to run an office, with four employees, well, you do the math.

 

[thantik]

This has come up before, repeatedly. SD cards have a special area that can be used as a encrypted storage area where the executable can reside. Attempts to copy the exe onto a non-protected card with either result in no exe being copied at all, or an encrypted copy that won't run. Bottom line. SD cards already have a good copy protection scheme for commercial apps to use, so no fear.

As per wikipedia:
The SD card DRM scheme is however almost never used and often not supported by card reader hardware. All card manufacturers are required to implement it however.

If something like this were to ever happen - we need an answer from the actual hardware guys - Is this supported by the pandora? - If not, is it in the interest of open-ness? - Can it be implemented via software?

From what I read to implement it, it actually requires a license of some sort...which would be a hindrance to securing any kind of software on an SD card for those who might want to. We would probably have to come up with some sort of alternative.

 

[Username]

This isn't a good replacement for a steady job.

 

[thantik]

I would purchase good games and other applications in this format.
However, to be realistic, there would have to be A LOT of Pandoras sold for this model to work.
How much could you charge the game maker to perform this task?
Let's call it $10.
If there are 4000 Pandoras out there, and a really, really good game comes along and sells to 10% of the market, you're talking $4000 made by the distributor, minus costs.

Now, if there were 100,000 Pandoras out there, that number would be $100,000.
That would support one person for a year, I'd guess, after costs.
If you want to run an office, with four employees, well, you do the math.

But for the most part, the developers on these forums are solo-coders and most like to stay that way. I've seen solo-coders put out better quality things than 50 person in-house teams. The way I look at it is if a person can put out something that is fun, is built on a quality platform then they deserve to reap the benefits of it.

A good example: Eniko is making an MMO - glance over the topic and you'll see rapid prototyping, a quick design, very good art and as far as I know this was originally being done by just herself. She's since taken on 1 guy to help with some of the art as far as I know. With what I've seen - I would easily pay $20-30 in this format for her game once it was in a finished or even semi-finished state. (provided the pandora market wasn't the ONLY market playing her game of course) Now, this is one of the better examples but it still stands true. I'm waiting to see what the pandora market looks like before I start doing anything too serious with this but it's still something to think about.

 

[j.pickens]

I agree with what you've just said.
I'm just pointing out that unless there are lots of Pandoras out there, this probably won't work very well.

 

[habib15]

I think digital distribution is the way to go. Have the customer create an account with a Credit card and password on your website and then have them download the application with a activation key that is their user name and password for their account. If they want to give out that information to the world for piracy they risk getting their Credit Card numbers stolen. That would deter people from giving out activation keys but keep it fair if you have multiple Pandoras or something like that.

Some people are probably going to say but some of us are youngins and we don't have credit cards, but outside of having pandora games being sold in stores I'm not sure how you would take car of that problem.

 

[thantik]

I think digital distribution is the way to go. Have the customer create an account with a Credit card and password on your website and then have them download the application with a activation key that is their user name and password for their account. If they want to give out that information to the world for piracy they risk getting their Credit Card numbers stolen. That would deter people from giving out activation keys but keep it fair if you have multiple Pandoras or something like that.

Some people are probably going to say but some of us are youngins and we don't have credit cards, but outside of having pandora games being sold in stores I'm not sure how you would take car of that problem.

I figure digital distribution is probably the way things are going to be handled as well should the community remain small. (which is likely) Our small community here DOES care about what linux is, we do care about free (libre & gratis), we do have the ability to load our own software and tinker about with things.

Others don't.

If you - and by "you" I mean a standard run of the mill redneck from kentucky - were to buy this purely as a gaming system (let's face it, to the consumer that's what it looks like; just a fancy gaming system), they wouldn't know what to do with it after they had explored what will come packaged with the angstrom distribution. For the pandora to really be a device that an average user can get behind, it would need something like this. Something physical. - OR - As a community we would need to follow the herd and do as the G1/iPhone have done and offer our devs a "Pandora Marketplace" included with the distribution where they can purchase software digitally. I'm sure people will want both. There will be those who want the physical, in their hand copy - and there will be those who won't mind just installing it via an account they can log in with.

But it IS an issue for us as a community to decide where we want to take this thing. Lots of great coders here, I'm sure at least a few of them would like to see some sort of cash-return on the things they are producing. How are we going to provide that for them? ARE we going to provide that for them?

This is also hitting 2 birds with one stone. Most of the umph behind the pandora is emulation. Emulation isn't illegal but if that's 90% of what we're touting with no "proper" release channels per-se, I can assure you there are some industry execs who will be pretty mad. There are a lot of nails that haven't been hammered all the way down yet. I'm very excited about the pandora and I'd like for us to have all available options open to us while also covering our asses.

 

[Butterman]

The only way to secure digital distribution is via checking that the user has a valid license by connecting to a server (and even this can be cracked). Any other form of digital distribution is easy to crack, even if you use hardware keys.

Again, a secured area on the SDHC card can be cracked as well.

Nothing is truly un-crackable, as the "scene" has proved time and time again, as DRM in EA Games has only slowed down legitimate users from being able to access their games, the DRM was cracked before the game was released (in the case of Spore).

What I'm trying to get at, is that you can't really ever secure your release, you can only hope that there is not enough interest in it for it to be cracked, but then again, you want as much interest in your game as possible.

You really have to hope that you just get more legitimate sales from users that have morals.

Personally, I don't think that we should sell our applications for the Pandora. Firstly, SDHC cards mean that if I want something, it's going to take time to get to me. Secondly, this console is targeted at enthusiasts, most of the people here know a programming language and enjoy using it, I code in my spare time for fun, I'm making TINCS for fun, I really enjoy it, I'm not going to say, TINCS took me X hours to make, so I'm going to charge Y amount of monies for it. It's like saying, I waste time watching TV and I want somebody to pay me for that.

I'm trying to help build up a larger community with TINCS, I want people to look at the Pandora and say, "Hey, this thing has everything, emulators, internet, some really cool free games, I want it!" I'm not going to help by charging money for my work.

That's my take on this topic.

 

[Zeno Arrow]

If you - and by "you" I mean a standard run of the mill redneck from kentucky - were to buy this purely as a gaming system (let's face it, to the consumer that's what it looks like; just a fancy gaming system), they wouldn't know what to do with it after they had explored what will come packaged with the angstrom distribution. For the pandora to really be a device that an average user can get behind, it would need something like this. Something physical. - OR - As a community we would need to follow the herd and do as the G1/iPhone have done and offer our devs a "Pandora Marketplace" included with the distribution where they can purchase software digitally. I'm sure people will want both. There will be those who want the physical, in their hand copy - and there will be those who won't mind just installing it via an account they can log in with.

I think this sums up the crux of your argument, all the rest around it is just fluff. Basically you're looking for a way for people who aren't comfortable with digital downloads to get into the Pandora, right?

I, for one, don't like to think of the complete waste that would go into producing SD cards for every purchased app/game. Are you thinking that Mr Kentucky is already comfortable purchasing items online? If so, then it makes no sense to use your model for individual SD cards, the physical aspect has already been taken care of by the SD card where the digital download could be stored, Mr Kentucky wouldn't need to think about much more than passing on payment details.

If you want Pandora users to be able to walk into a shop and buy a Pandora game, why not use a kiosk in a video game shop for this? That way you get to browse through more apps/games than a shop could hope to physically store on-site, there's less wastage with unneccessary SD production costs taken out of the equation and the purchase can still be locked down to a single SD card (or a single Pandora).

Digital downloads offer so many benefits (for developers and Pandora owners) over traditional retail channels, if Mr Kentucky has to move with the times a bit then it's good for everyone, I'd rather not encourage ignorance in the pursuit of an easier sell.

You might want to search these forums for information on PXML, running apps/games on the Pandora is going to be simple enough for virtually anyone to be able to do because of it.