Does HDCP Herald The End Of Time-Shifting?

Kagato writes: "HDTV is starting to roll in many markets now, and the question on many peoples' minds is how do I record all this high quality content? Two years ago Panasonic made a HDTV recorder for the consumer market, but for some unknown reason the product was pulled from the market. Now JVC is bringing out its D-VHS recorder, but instead of using the conventional Y/Pr/Pb inputs they now use a DVI input. On the surface DVI (similar to firewire) is a good thing: high speed audio and video all on one cable. However, it seems the express reason for using DVI is for high-bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP). Hmm, sounds a lot like CSS..." One of the more disturbing aspects of HDCP is that it has a blacklist of devices that it will expressly not work with that can be updated by the manufacturer. If your VCR is on the blacklist...no video for you.

"In researching HDCP I've found that HDCP encrypts the content between the HDTV tuner and the Display and/or HDTV recorder. HDCP allows the content provider to choose if you have the right to record the programming that comes into your home. According to this article HDCP also allows supports a master lists of devices not to work with (a.k.a. Key Device Revocation). For example if the APEX of the HDTV recording world is unleashed the content provider can instruct your HDTV tuner not to send it any content. That's a least what I'm reading into it.

Are we on the verge of having our right to timeshift taken away? Will all the consumers have won with the Sony Betamax suit be lost in one swoop that is the DMCA and HDCP? Or, am I reading too much into this and the MPAA has our best interests in mind?"

Comments

Re:Has copy protection ever really worked?

[sjames]

Can anyone name an incident where copy protection really worked and there was no way to get around it. I can't even think of something that wasn't fairly easy to get around. Of course I am only 19 and don't have the history that some slashdot people do, but I can't remember anything that was really impossible to manipulate.

So far, none. However, all of those were broken when it wasn't a felony to manufacture the needed devices. If you read the ads for the various devices you'll notice that they all claim to be useful for some other purpose. Macrovision defeating devices claim to be video stabilizers. When the content is being delivered with crystal clear digital quality, what excuse will there be for a device that tricks the VCR into letting you record something the broadcaster explicitly set the 'no copy' flag on?

Keep in mind, under the DMCA, if the excuse doesn't hold water, it's a felony with very little wiggle room. Look at what has happened so far with DeCSS in spite of having a legal use!

This *HAS* to be a Troll

[the red pen]

• when you are watching a PAL or NTSC television set, you are unconsciously aware that what you are watching is false, at some deep level.

...and when you are watching a SECAM television set, you are unconciously aware that you might be in France.

• However, at high framerates and definitions, this is not the case. The id can no longer seperate fantasy and fiction

Wow! If I could invent an extremely high resolution image with no flicker at all, I could control the world! I'd give this terrifying new technology some kind of fancy name, with a Greek root or something... How about photograph?

Not the end of time shifting

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Fortunately, two decades of ordinary VCR's will prevent The Industry from putting an end to time shifting. Consumers have gotten used to the idea.

The bottom line on this kind of stuff is that consumers will eventually win. The free market demands it. From a technology perspective, bulletproof copy protection is impossible. Every single attempt has been defeated. From the errors on Track 40 of a Commodore-64 floppy (and the copy programs that put those errors on the duplicate), to Macrovision on VHS (and the sync repeaters that worked around it), to CSS (and DeCSS), technology has proven time and again that you can't give a consumer access to some sort of media and completely lock out the ability to copy it. The only sure-fire way to prevent copying is to deliver all pay-per-view programming with an accompanying lawyer, policeman, or whatever in the consumer's living room. And that ain't gonna happen.

Big Media scumbags tried to prevent the consumer public from gaining access to cassette recorders, and later VCR's. Why should this round be any different?
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Re:We will have to buy

[FFFish]

The consuming public has ultimate power. If enough people refuse to participate in supporting a product through its purchase, the product will disappear from the market.

The key, as with anything, is that enough people have to do it.

If the public would get half a fucking clue, it could enact real, significant, positive and long-lasting change in the way our governments and corporations operate.

But it's the frog-in-boiling-water thing: until things get so excrebly untolerable that the mass public literally can not stand it any more, they'll put up with the moderately intolerable.

Which is to say, that which is untolerable, generally isn't. People adapt, get used to it, suck it down, and live with it.

It's a pretty fucking sorry state of affairs, and it certainly makes one worry for the fate of future generations. Will the mass public demand ecological change, in time to keep the environment from going kaput? Will the mass public demand government change, in time to keep democracy from becoming lenient corporate dictatorship? Will the the mass public demand freedom to view/listen to media as desired, in time to keep it from becoming a pay-per-view, each-view, each-person event?

Frankly, I doubt it. The mass public is too apathetic. It's gonna be a bugger apologizing to our kids for letting things get as bad as they will...

--

Oh, it will backfire soon enough.

[Nemosoft Unv.]

Just imagine the uproar that will ensue when half a nation comes home from work, school, dancing lesson or whatever, and finds out their favorite show or the NBA game of their team has not been recorded on their VCRs because the broadcaster decided to flip the "Nay" switch. It may be too late for a refund, but it will be the last time they will buy such equipment!

Frankly, I don't really see the point of forcing customers to be at home to watch a program; the only reason I can come up with is that they can't fast-forward through the commercials. We are so used to taping programs for our use, no-one will accept such measures.

As for the video-blacklist: yes, that's a shame. And no, I don't think the MPAA has the best intentions for the consumer's right, only their own.

Where's Don Knuth?

[Captain Zion]

Now JVC is bringing out its D-VHS recorder, but instead of using the convent.ional Y/Pr/Pb inputs they now use a DVI input.

Wow. I bet the TV shows are written in TeX!

Here's some good news

[VFVTHUNTER]

that I saw on TechTV yesterday. Although manufacturers can build content protection of public television streams into their devices, Dvorak and others made reference to a Supreme Court case a few years old that gives consumers an absolute right to record these public streams. Dvorak et al seemed baffled that the FCC had let HDTV copy pretection pass, since this ruling effectively nullifies it.

What does this mean to us geeks? It means that although manufacturers can make copy-protected TV's, they don't have to. Companies (e.g., Apex Digital, makers of the best $170 DVD player ever made) can simply choose to make TV's and VCR's etc that ignore this copy-protection scheme, just and Hedrick has gotten T.13 to do with CPRM.

Re:Here's some good news

[Speare]

This is similar to a California ruling where the judge upheld a Californian resident's right to descramble satellite broadcasts, stating if they didn't want him to see their content, then get it off of his property. This doesn't mean that the judge said satellite broadcasts cannot be scrambled, just that if they aren't scrambled sufficiently, then they cannot prosecute home users that descramble the signal.

It would seem that this is thrown out the window by the DMCA, however.

Previously, if I went to the retail store and bought a piece of glass-plastic-and-burnt-aluminum, I was able to do whatever I wanted with that glass-plastic-and-burnt-aluminum, for my own noncommercial use. I wanted to read the content on it, descramble it, and view it. I was rightly allowed to, and the courts upheld that notion. Paraphrased, "if they don't want me to use the content inside, they shouldn't let me bring the media home."

(As an aside, I'd say that I would go along with the notion that I couldn't make revenue off content that I bought at retail. Retail is for private end-consumers. If I want to become a distributor, I should acquire a business agreement with the distributor(s) higher up the chain.)

But the DMCA changes this world. Congress has altered the law, and the courts are charged with interpreting the current law, not the old case law. Akin to the bedroom laws, these media laws senselessly restrict what I can do with people and objects I bring into my own home.

Re:Here's some good news

[Fjord]

Although manufacturers can build content protection of public television streams into their devices, Dvorak and others made reference to a Supreme Court case a few years old that gives consumers an absolute right to record these public streams.

This is an incorrect interpretation of the ruling. We do not have an inalienable right to timeshift, but the Supreme Court said that individuals cannot be brought up on criminal charges for recording a public broadcast. If the MPAA can come up with a way to scramble the recording, then it doesn't violate this ruling. But this ruling does say a home user recording content is are within their rights, even if that recording is scrambled to the point that it is not viewable.

This is similar to a California ruling where the judge upheld a Californian resident's right to descramble satellite broadcasts, stating if they didn't want him to see their content, then get it off of his property. This doesn't mean that the judge said satellite broadcasts cannot be scrambled, just that if they aren't scrambled sufficiently, then they cannot prosecute home users that descramble the signal..

A lot of effort for nothing

[luckykaa]

These "Casual pirates" DON'T cause a problem. If people subscribe to a TV channel, its a lot of effort to tape things for any purpose other than time shifting. Very few poeple are interested in recording PPV movies since people really only want to see it once anyway.

However, this will most likely add to the price. Surely the people who are having their content protected should subsidise this.

So don't buy 'em.

[OverCode@work]

You're a customer. Don't put up with this crap. I've bought one DVD in my life, and that was for the purpose of testing the Linux DVD players. The DVD CCA pisses me off, so they don't get my money.
Same goes with any manufacturer who supports SDMI (I've already returned one portable player). High-definition TV that limits my freedom to timeshift or make copies for friends is no different. A certain dorm room at Georgia Tech will not be equipped with one of these.

If enough people do this, it'll stop happening. If enough people don't do this (the likely case), we deserve what we get.

-John

Only One Answer

[Fatal0E]

The days of simple PnP pirated video are prob coming to an end.

As the hardware gets smarter and smarter that only means that the game of cat and mouse between the pirates and broadcasters are is going to get more and more heated. As boradcasters get smarter and start adopting new tech, the people supplying the public with the means to circumvent are gonna have to catch up. Remember all those early copies of Phrack that had all those HOWTO-Cable Piracy tx files?

RANT

The worst part is that the paradigm of "pirate" is shifting more and more towards the mainstream, instead of on the fringe as it always was. It's gonna be John Q. Sixpack with his pirated (made in China) VCR that can record everything he wants, watching TV on his pirate TV (made in Taiwan) connected to his pirate Sattelite dish (modded in the good ole US) that lets him watch East Coast NBC and West Coast NBC.

I guess the assumption that Corps are only worried about the "big time" pirates are over. Even I myself had the assumption that they were only worried about the rings that were dupeing their movies across the Atlantic/Pacific in bulk and that reg ppl were small potatoes and could only be prosecuted (picked on) at a loss. Are those days over? Will the FBI bust into trailer parks across the US under FCC/DMCA/UCITA/CPRM laws? Stayed tuned....
"Me Ted"

Divx

[flafish]

How long did it take for Circuit City to drop Divx ? Same will happen here if people don't buy into it? As bandwidth and computer speeds go up, the lenght of time that a code works to lockout ( the use of your equipment) goes down