Slashdot Mirror
ATI Claims HDCP Then Covers Its Tracks
BigControversy writes "It looks like a big can of worms is being opened. The DailyTech.com is reporting that ATI sold millions of video cards knowing that HDCP support was not enabled. Despite that, the cards were sold and advertised to its customers as having HDCP capabilities. A day or two after this information was revealed, HDMI.org went completely password protected and ATI is now modifying key areas of its website, removing any mention of 'HDCP-ready'."
an opportunity for a class action!
I think ATI is going to have to do more than cover its tracks to get out of this one. Now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag there's no way some enterprising lawyer and disgruntled techies aren't going to start up a class action law suit. And this shouldn't even be hard to prove since it's obvious it just doesn't work/isn't supported unlike some lawsuits where they argue a product didn't "live up" to expectations.
It looks like the cached copy on Google will be the copy submitted in court. I just bought a new ATI card, one of the reasons was because they claimed to support this feature.
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
Making a mistake? Fair enough. Treating your customers like idiots and trying to hide what you've done, though, is not something that is going to fly in this day and age. ATI are going to pay through the nose on this one and doing stupid things like this to try to paint over the damage done is just plain stupid.
Come clean, apologise publicly, recall products, do whatever you can to ensure that you have supported and looked after your customers. But to do this sort of thing smacks of burying your head in the sand.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
--- Nick, hard at work
If sufficient chaos ensues, perhaps this can be the issue that pulls HDCP requirements out of Windows. Without support from Microsoft (who has no real financial interest in HDCP), HDCP will probably fail in the marketplace.
Hopefully this little 'mishap' will be the thing that makes it such that all our new LCD monitors aren't obsolete after all.
This appears to be a serious mis-step on the part of ATI. It's not clear that they intentionally tried to mislead people, but the signs sure point in that direction. It's possible some marketing wonk put out a memo that ATI is now "HDCP ready", and that propogated to all press releases without proper oversight or anyone picking and choosing which cards support it and which don't. Somehow, I doubt a company that has dealt with bleeding-edge technology for so long would make such a mistake. The alternative explanation is they pushed the fancy new buzzword, hoping that the average user would see it and say, "Oh, HDCP, I saw a PC-Magazine headline with that term, it must be good!" and buy the card. These users will never even know that they were duped. The more tech-savvy users are the ones that will really care.
And therein lies the rub. We, the "geek community" are making progress in educating the general populous about the importance of understanding technology, but there is a long way to go. Until more people learn to read advertisements critically and learn that knowing exactly what you're buying is important, companies will continue to perpetuate these deceiving business practices. In this case, ignorance truly is bliss, but it's the average consumer's ignorance that leads to ATI's bliss.
My guitar chord generator.
That being said, of course ATi should roll out a driver that has hardware HDCP enabled, or offer some form of compensation to previous buyers whom were mislead.
/dev/random
Well, it's time to admit something: I loathe "HD-ready" and all that surrounds it. DRM, TCPA, all that 3-4 letter acronyms that smell like "hand over your consumer rights".
Now, I'm normally not a person to hop onto FUD and vent it 'til it stinks, but can't we hype that a little 'til no moron buys that crap anymore, and see the whole DRMism bomb like a tacnuke? It would certainly help prevent stripping us of any of the few rights left on our scale in the "balance between producer and consumer" when it comes to content.
So far the consumer drones would buy it for the simple "booooooyehy, look at the stunnin' crystal clear display!" without realizing what comes behind it. They don't care that the content industry dictates what they may see and what not, after all, what they want to see is that latest blockbuster movie and not some small movie maker's gems.
But hearing that their $500 piece of hardware ain't gonna do it should surely be an argument.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can't hide what was on the website; there are too many archiving mechanisms out there that will reveal the truth. Then, if a fraud has occurred, there'll be class-action litigation undertaken.
If you have ATI stock, dump it, now, before the Chapter 11 filing; you might get a few cents out of it. Otherwise, make plans to obtain another adapter. If ATI can make good on the adapter, it'll be a miracle for them.
But if the info in the article is true, it's the harbinger of the end of ATI as we knew them. Pity.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Between HDCP, HDMI, Blu-Ray, DRM, DCMA, and HD-DVD, I just get a feeling that its all about to crumble. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will both fail I believe and a 3rd technology will emerge at some point that doesn't have the backing of Hollywood. When will technology companies start producing technology again and stop trying to be the pawns of Hollywood.
Like the first post said, it'll end up as a class action suit most likely. Nvidia has the luxury of blaming the board manufacturers, ATi can't hide behind that. Vertical Integration isn't that bad until you screw up and get caught lying about it...
Now, this doesn't make nvidia the smarter purchase choice at this point, because none of their boards support it either. Maybe when the 7900 comes along in about a month or so though. Hopefully the board makers (evga, bfg, xfx, etc.) realize that they'd better get it out there after this fiasco.
I have strong suspicions that the original plan was to enable HDCP via internal chip "debug" (non-public) interfaces. This of course lowers the board cost and increases flexibility.
In fact, original HDCP specs don't mention anything like a "special" chip - I still have them somewhere. I suspect the HDMI guidelines have changed at some point, probably pretty recent, to a "separate chip" and it is being added in a hurry to reference board designs. (You can't see a place for it on any existing nVidia or ATI reference boards, that's for sure.)
So the cards were meant to have HDCP activated via software, but HDMI changed it's mind getting both nVidia and ATI into hot water.
It's not the crime that gets you into trouble....it's the cover up. ATI is foolish to try to cover this up. They should have just announced a "mistake" and made some offer to existing customers to make things better. They are a public company and the SEC is going to be very interested in this since they are listed on the NASDAQ exchange in the US.
Rather than remove the information. Denial is not a defense (there's water in de nile and creosote on de fence)!
It's everyone, not just ATI. Plenty of nVidia cards advertise it and don't have it. In fact, no video card in public release truely supports HDCP. So anyone who advertises it is lying.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
While what you describe might be occurring, I refer you to a basic lifesaving mantra:
ATI may just be stopping the bleeding, that is, first taking steps not to deceive any other potential customers. In fact, if they were to do anything else there would be a situation where they'd be saying "Sorry, we were wrong" while continuing to allow customers to get the wrong idea.
Watch their public statements and what they do next before rushing to judgement.
sigs, as if you care.
This whole HCDP thing strikes me as being very anti-consumer; I don't know of anyone who would actually want such a thing, since it essentially makes perfectly good equipment obsolete for no (technically valid) reason. The way I see it, it's a way for a few rich people to get even more rich, at our expense.
So, I put forth the question: can it be made to fail?
If you purchased the card for its qualities, then found out that you were LIED to, how are you going to justify purchasing again from that vendor?
For you and the couple of hundred people who bought this card and care about HDCP support, perhaps it will affect their decision to buy ATI in the future. Luckily for ATI the other millions of consumers and OEMs who couldn't give a rats ass will continue to purchase ATI. ATI wont even notice this screwup as a blip on their share price. No one is going to be off-loading ATI stock in a panic.
I can't predict whether they'll suffer enough to go into Ch11, but it's not out of the realm of possibilities.
In the same vein it's not outside the realm of possibility that aliens from the planet Zog will invade tommorow and enslave all humankind, but no one is going to take such a proposition seriously apart from the tin foil hat brigade and those who are bad at statistics and risk analysis. You seem to fall into at least one of those catagories, by the way.
Actually, wrong.
*IF* the driver is trusted, the chip is not needed. But, such a driver *may* be trusted by Microsoft, but won't be trusted by the "copyright industry".
So, no content for you. The CI has spoken.
If Microsoft said "HDCP" will be supported in Vista, why wouldn't the video board manufacturers believe it? Microsoft cowed to the CIs, and ATi and nVidia can't put the feature in the driver, and customers are left holding the bag of shit.
Go ahead -- sue suE SUE!!! It will be fun to watch. Class action against ATi (and nVidia). Who, in turn sue Microsoft, who, in turn, sues (?) in the CI business.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
People said the same thing about CSS. I don't buy it.
HDCP has already been broken. You can buy hardware descramblers (spatz's DVIMAGIC), and I suspect there'll be a libhdcp for linux and OSX that vlc/mplayer/xine will use to descrambled the disks.
All it really means is that my linux/os x installs will be more functional than your Vista install. On all hardware that is technically capable, I'll get hidef blu-ray/hd-dvd playback, complete with the ability to rip/backup/whatever, while you'll be stuck with the latest and suckiest HDMI hardware that obeys all disk manufacturer flags.
Enjoy watching the 2.5 hours of commercials that come on a blu-ray disk; i'll be fast forwarding through them, the same way I do now on my DVDs.
The support of HDCP is not an optional thing -- the content will not be available without it regardless of what chaos ATI may or may not create through questionable marketing of their products. Since most, if not all, computer monitors do not support HDCP right now, that'll be the place there will be issues. But none of them will cause HDCP to fail.
HDCP currently has worse manufacturer component support than DiVX did in its hayday. What makes you think HDCP will be more successful, especially because it is so easy to circumvent?
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
HDCP has already been broken. You can buy hardware descramblers (spatz's DVIMAGIC), and I suspect there'll be a libhdcp for linux and OSX that vlc/mplayer/xine will use to descrambled the disks.
On all hardware that is technically capable, I'll get hidef blu-ray/hd-dvd playback, complete with the ability to rip/backup/whatever,
Not unless you have a HDMI loopback cable and very specific hardware to process it. Being able to remove HDCP means nothing for intercepting it before it exits your gfx card's HDMI output. What you're asking for is a breach in "Trusted Computing".
Also, you'll want DeACCS not DeHDCP to be able to rip/backup discs. Without HDCP you can capture the decompressed signal in real time (yay) and reencode it (double yay) which currently takes far longer than real time. It'll eat a ton of disk space then consume your CPU for many hours.
Besides even if all that was the case, you do realize once freed of the DRM it is freed? As long as Windows is able to download and play whatever comes of P2P, Windows will be just as "free" to most people. So despite the DRM, I don't think it'll lead to any mass exodus to Linux/OS X...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"The server rejected one or more recipient addresses. The server response was: 550 unknown user (contact@hdmi.org)".
Clever am I to notice that the pages are .asp... okay.... I (shuddering with self loathing) use... MSIE . Same error ;-) I notice that this is the same page that you are directed to when you select "Contact".
:
Checking further (with directory assistance) there is no listing for a phone contact for HDMI.org in beautiful Sunnyvale, CA....
Okay, so maybe their server is being slashdotted(dededed), so I try DIRECTLY emailing those shy fellows and get (drum roll please):
"Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
72.32.30.237 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 unknown user
Giving up on 72.32.30.237."
It just keeps getting more funny...