[quadlock]

The perfect recipient would still have to be sent backdoors from many creators. Many more people would be handling the secret, each one a target to be social engineered into handing it over. I imagine when a more typical backdoor is made, very few people even know it exists let alone know the key to open it. Mandate backdoors and everyone knows they exist so more people will work to find and crack them. They would be very high value targets. Once opened, a backdoor would take a lot of work and expense to be closed, if you even know it had been opened.

[kristopolous]

Yes, the whole idea is about as plausible as this april fools joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit ... but it's been put forth and implemented too many times for comfort.

Each time these silly systems like DVD-CSS broke down and became worthless or like DIVX, were widely panned and rejected by the consumer.*

Showing how this will always and forever be the case at a more fundamental level to stop trying this deadbeat idea with different gift-wrapping would be great.

* Even in MP3, you have bits 29 and 30 which are for copyright. What were they thinking? people would re-implement /bin/cp to look for that and fail if the bit is set? Really? AAC has something similar. silly.

[ashmud]

If all the vendors participate in the scheme, it works?

Ex: SCMS copy bit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Copy_Management_System