Anyone have Garmin's City Navigator NZ?

**Shaggie** · 17th December 2007, 21:16

V2 or V3 and be interested in allowing me (for a fee) to use your second unlock code for a second gps?

Ping me offlist at shaggienz@gmail.com

MUCH appreciated

Shaggie
Christchurch

**jrandom** · 17th December 2007, 21:33

You know... indirectly, it's all my fault.

Really.

You see, before Navman's iCN630, nobody used unlock codes for road mapping GPSs.

I was on the team that did the first software version for the first release of that product, and I forced through the map licence protection feature. Coded it up myself because nobody else gave a shit or knew how to. RSA and SHA1 for the motherfuckin' win, baby. I thought I was so cool, mister hacker man hackin' it up.

After that, Navteq and TeleAtlas realised that such things were possible, and started insisting that all their clients who were selling maps by region implement DRM to ensure that customers couldn't share data that they hadn't paid for a licence for.

Now you can't buy a road navigation GPS anywhere in the world without dealing with licencing and unlocking shit.

Sometimes I wonder whether if I'd never spoken up about it back in 2003 and insisted on implementing that feature at the last minute, the iCN 6-series would have been released without DRM, and a lack of software update and map copy protection would have become the accepted market norm.

Maybe that was my Warhol moment, and I didn't even know it.

I don't particularly want to die knowing that the only significant thing I ever did with my life was make every user of an in-car GPS go through a small additional amount of pointless, annoying hassle.

**xwhatsit** · 18th December 2007, 01:33

You're a cunt, JRandom. What sort of sick, twisted person, voluntarily works on (even insists on!) enabling DRM features?! What's more, DRM with a decent level of encryption and security?

I'm ashamed *shakes head*

**-df-** · 18th December 2007, 07:45

Originally Posted by jrandom

You know... indirectly, it's all my fault.

Really.

You see, before Navman's iCN630, nobody used unlock codes for road mapping GPSs.

I was on the team that did the first software version for the first release of that product, and I forced through the map licence protection feature. Coded it up myself because nobody else gave a shit or knew how to. RSA and SHA1 for the motherfuckin' win, baby. I thought I was so cool, mister hacker man hackin' it up.

After that, Navteq and TeleAtlas realised that such things were possible, and started insisting that all their clients who were selling maps by region implement DRM to ensure that customers couldn't share data that they hadn't paid for a licence for.

Now you can't buy a road navigation GPS anywhere in the world without dealing with licencing and unlocking shit.

Sometimes I wonder whether if I'd never spoken up about it back in 2003 and insisted on implementing that feature at the last minute, the iCN 6-series would have been released without DRM, and a lack of software update and map copy protection would have become the accepted market norm.

Maybe that was my Warhol moment, and I didn't even know it.

I don't particularly want to die knowing that the only significant thing I ever did with my life was make every user of an in-car GPS go through a small additional amount of pointless, annoying hassle.

Whats your name if you don't mind me asking...been working for Navman for the last 4 years...prob know you and don't even realise it!

**jrandom** · 18th December 2007, 07:54

Originally Posted by xerxesdaphat

You're a cunt, JRandom. What sort of sick, twisted person, voluntarily works on (even insists on!) enabling DRM features?! What's more, DRM with a decent level of encryption and security?

Well, if I hadn't, we would have been raped, because the morons who negotiated our licencing agreements with the map data providers locked us in to paying the data companies based on the number of users using each region. If we hadn't been able to prove that users in certain regions couldn't just use maps copied from devices bought in other regions, Navman could have been up for a fairly big bill.

Still. The correct solution would have been to negotiate a licencing deal that didn't rely on region-based mucking around, not to knuckle under to TeleAtlas and then fuck our customers over with a whole heap of hassle to get their devices running.

There were some real bone-heads running the commercial side of things...

Originally Posted by xerxesdaphat

I'm ashamed *shakes head*

So am I.