I'll preface this topic by saying that this has been approved to look into but not yet approved to implement on the chart plotters. This topic is designed to gauge interest in what we think is the only way to implement this on the chart plotters for user generated charts with the IMC.

Currently, encryption is a tricky subject. The control that is in place that a user can not distribute charts to friends that are already encrypted is necessary to make sure that we can manage sales. For this reason, it represents a conflict of interest to provide a method where end users can do this outside of a toolkit agreement or outside of a controlled chart production environment (read: Insight Genesis). We currently allow for charts to be distributed unencrypted using a standing flag but a limitation that has been raised by a few people is there is no solution in place to allow cards to be encrypted to friend's devices. They only way we can offer this functionality is through a special encryption that would allow cards to be distributed in a ready to be encrypted state and once they are inserted into a chart plotter (with the necessary software), the ready to be encrypted AT5 files on the card could be encrypted to that device. Before the AT5 files are locked to the device, the files would be effectively unencrypted. Note that like all future changes, this change would only be implemented on chart plotters that are still getting software updates.

Before we approve the idea to be added to the chart plotter software, it's important to gauge interest from the public to see if this would be a well enough received functionality to justify the work that would be required. I'm looking for feedback in this thread for whether or not this functionality would be well received to meet this functionality or if the requirement that the cards be distributed initially unencrypted would defeat the purpose.

For my use, sharing with friends without risking that they keep on sharing, this would defeat the purpose. For this to be meaningful for my use, the encryption would have to work like it does in IG, ie I would ask my friend for his units serialnumber and/ or content-ID and encrypt the file before emailing it to him.

Yes, it must work exactly like Insight Genesis.

The only problem with IG is that it does not share charts on the same network (multiple displays - bow/console), which I'm sure can be corrected.

I agree with Team Colibri: serial number secured is fine, but maps should be shared in a network environment. Going back (like IG maps are behaving now) would be a pain.

I have exactly the same opinion as Danny. A lock on the serial number would be a very good idea.

The share across network portion is a separate issue. This topic is only considered with getting it to the device not whether a valid device with the correct identifier validates the file's use across the network.

Works for me: 0
Defeats the Purpose: 4

Greg,
I'm sure a lot of people would be interested in a user-level encryption option, but I can't see that your proposal would be workable. Just to be clear, are you saying that the map files on a card would be unencrypted at first, but once the user has put this card into a unit then the files would become locked to that unit? The problem being, of course, that the user could copy the files beforehand. For this to work you would have to trust your friend not to make this pre-copy - but if you could trust your friend to do that, I guess you wouldn't need to encrypt the map in the first place. Of course, you could enforce this requirement by being physically present when the card is handed over, but that doesn't seem very workable either.
I think unless the map can be pre-locked to a specific machine then it is probably not worth implementing.
Just my thoughts,
Matt

It was actually my assumption before the thread. This thread was more about whether people didn't trust their friends to not intentionally share cards or whether they didn't trust their friends to protect their cards from unintentionally being distributed (stolen, etc.).

The complication in enforcing the encryption is the very thing that makes the card unsellable. Any method that would make cards be sellable would have to be monitored to ensure that it wasn't being used for this purpose.

On a side note, Matt is it possible to implement polls on the other forum categories. It appears to only be on the News category.

Greg - polls enabled for this category now, and also feature requests.

Matt wrote:
thanks. I can see this being useful in the future.

Greg,

I'd be all for locking to a device based on a serial number. The same as Danny etc. I feel Matts point is valid about the pre copying. This would effectively allow for group non-commercial closed projects or commercial testing without having to be too concerned about control.



T

Team Colibri wrote:

Serial is OK, ID is a bad idea. The older units incl. HDS Gen-1 don't have an ID (big disadvantage for IG!!!!). ID by no means.

I propose to include a short table (comparable with icon dat):




You can better solve the following 2 problems (source of error: serial number input):
1. Chart update and/or new charts for all my friends.
2. A friend with a new unit and now an update for all his Charts.


Thanks and best wishes
fjordfisher