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Apple's New MacBooks Have Built-In Copy Protection
raque writes "Appleinsider is reporting that the new MacBooks/MacBookPros have built-in copy protection. Quote: 'Apple's new MacBook lines include a form of digital copy protection that will prevent protected media, such as DRM-infused iTunes movies, from playing back on devices that aren't compliant with the new priority protection measures.' Ars Technica is also reporting on the issue. Is this the deal they had to make to get NBC back? Is this a deal breaker for Apple or will fans just ignore it to get their hands on the pretty new machines? Is this a new opportunity for Linux? And what happened to Jobs not liking DRM?"
Built-in copy protection is a bag-of-hurt.
Sincerely,
Mac Fan who wants Blu-ray
I don't think that's ever happened to me before.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
I don't buy any videos from iTunes: I prefer to rip my own.
in order to get Blu-Ray playback licensing
Monstar L
Is this the deal they had to make to get NBC back?
It seems likely enough to me. I guess I have no proof either way, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least to find that this was NBC's idea.
Is this a deal breaker for Apple?
No.
Will fans just ignore it to get their hands on the pretty new machines?
Yes. Just like they always do.
Is this a new opportunity for Linux?
No, since it won't hurt Apple.
And what happened to Jobs not liking DRM?
Nothing. That was a lie then, and is still a lie. Apple puts DRM in their flagship product, and you actually believe them when they spout bullshit about disliking DRM?
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
If you remove the cloud of the the hipster-doofus lovefest for Apple you realize that Apple only has one obligation as a publicly traded company
Making a profit for shareholders
Why anyone is surprised that Apple (and Google) act like real companies is always a surprise to me.
Apple needs to turn a profit and make concessions to satisfy stockholders.
I wonder if this will help jolt people towards reality: Apple's just like Microsoft. The only real difference is that Apple makes somewhat better gear.
Oh, Steve Jobs is still an asshole.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
I don't think you can buy a mid to high end vid card these days that doesn't have HDCP baked in; I'm not surprised.
Note that I didn't say I was enthralled, just not surprised.
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
will fans just ignore it
No. They'll start explaining why it's actually an advantage for the user.
If you don't buy crippled content in the first place, it's just wasted, unused, hardware.
For someone like me who has a Dell 20" screen that supports HDCP, but also an Apple 20" screen that does not, we're expected to unplug one screen every time we want to watch something protected in this manner? Get real!
Steve, whose care for his children passes understanding, knew that many buyers of new macbooks yearn in their hearts to purchase new Apple monitors to go with them. He knew further that for the many crying out, oppressed by old Apple monitors that they already owned, following their desire would be difficult.
And thus, by his hand, a gift was bestowed. His people would, with Him as a purveyor of protected premium content by day and by night, be led away from the old and to the new monitor of their desire.
This article is totally misleading. It's just HDCP. The media has to be HDCP aware in the first place.
If you don't by defective DRM laden media, then you do not have a problem.
In some ways, this is actually a GOOD THING. Now the hardware can actually communicate with other media devices that demand a HDCP connection.
So to SUM UP, all the PIRATED MEDIA WILL STILL PLAY.
This is all part of DisplayPort, the display connection. Like HDMI, the digital display connection for HDTV gear, DisplayPort includes an end-to-end encryption mechanism. (Take a look at HDMI/HDCP.)
The end-to-end secure data path is something the HD content providers insist on.
Playback protection is part of a strategy of copy protection, but it's not the same thing.
Playback protection can hurt me even if I'm *not* trying to copy the media in question, which is my main objection to it.
Copy protection is arguably more legitimate, but it does depend on the specific copyright laws of your jurisdiction.
Up here in Canada the fair use doctrine suggest that it *should* be legal for me to rip a copy of a DVD for my personal playback in another medium (it's roughly the same as making an audio cassette copy of a vinyl record.)
I'm generally of the view that the companies that market media products should focus on improving the quality of those products in order to encourage us to buy them, rather than branding us as criminals. Then again, I still buy music whereas some people seem to not do that at all anymore.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
Outside of Slashdot's readership, nobody cares about DRM.
There are vanishingly few "screwed over" customers "angry" about HDCP. Most people never even see the "restrictions" on their "freedom." They subscribe to cable, buy their BluRay players, buy their disks, and it all works just fine. If they didn't, then these stories would be in Time Magazine (or, better yet, TV Guide) and not on Slashdot.
The more I hear about Apple, the more I like Microsoft because they did the same thing years ago, thus proving they have a better understanding of the business.
I didn't really mind when Apple locked their hardware. After all, it's their hardware. I didn't really mind when Apple locked their iPods. After all, I could use a Creative Zen. I didn't mind when they refused to remove the iPod-only DRM on ITMS. After all, I prefer buying CDs and ripping them myself, since it's almost the same price, with virtually no hassle or copy "protection". But now, one of the best OS on the market will feature built-in, OS-level DRM? Fuck that. I won't be buying an Apple any time soon, which is a shame because I was planning to do just that with the Chrismas money.
So Microsoft is barely starting to play ball. Apple is locking it's products more and more, and locking the users of the products. Google starts forking Open Source projects to proprietary code (OpenID). The IT world is becoming more and more confusing.
I think it's time to read In the Beginning was the Command Line again.
if MacBooks have copy-protecion now, does this mean I'll no longer be able to copy and upload them to Pirate Bay?
Please go back to Digg. Slashdot is not better than Digg because of the timeliness of the stories. Slashdot is better than Digg because of the user community.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Yet another example of the grip proprietary corporations will continue to impose on their users.
That's certainly true, I'm not defending Apple's choice to make this a requirement. It's just that, aside from the analog portion, this really isn't anything new. When you buy DRM-encumbered media, you should expect some degree of jerking around. Which is why you shouldn't buy DRM-encumbered media :)
1) I thought that it was permissible under the HDCP spec for the video to be played downscaled to 480p? If so, why isn't this happening? If not, what does Vista do/when did that change?
2) Especially without wall-to-wall TPM, why on earth are we worrying about the display as a digital hole? Scraping frames as they pass over the display connection seems about the _worst_ way imaginable to rip a protected stream. There are issues with audio/video sync, dropped frames and recompression that are all avoided by getting at the decrypted but not decoded stream - something that simply can't be controlled without TPM (and probably not with TPM, either).
Vista compatible computers have had this for years. It's called HDCP and if you want to view HD content at an actual HD resolution, you need to have HDCP compatible hardware. Apple is obviously readying themselves to start offering Blu-Ray video, probably at Macworld this January...
Next month?
Early next year?
It's really kind of stunning how stupid they think people are.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This is NOTHING like the all-pervasive DRM that infests Visturd(TM) at every turn
I run Vista and I'm not really sure what you are talking about. What extra DRM does Vista have that XP does not? Whatever it is, it is definately not "all-pervasive", or I would have noticed.
Without seeming to flame (flame mode if you like), we've had experience of locked down platform with Apple's iPhone. Now Apple join Microsoft in having a locked down OS for media playback, nobody can feel smug or superior (apart from Linux users).
Linux users can feel superior for not being able to legally play HD Blu-ray titles or for not being able to buy HD video from iTunes??
Yes Linux users can use software employing AACS and BD+ hacks, but so can Mac OS X and Vista users - even on HDCP enabled hardware. So what's the advantage of Linux regarding this now again?
Just ignore it, it's a Slashdot myth that Vista has some magical form of DRM that "slows down" everything on your computer. That's as specific as it ever gets. If you ask for evidence of it, they always link to the same one article that refers to MP3 playback on a beta release as "proof."
I've asked about this about a dozen times, and I've never gotten a satisfactory reply. I've also asked for repro instructions for a series of actions that would result in the magical DRM blocking a user action. The simple fact is that the only DRM in Vista is in WMP; the same way the only DRM in OS X is in iTunes. There's no horrible conspiracy, and your computer isn't being "slowed down".
Comment of the year
We've discovered that well-heeled snoops using sophisticated radio equipment can, from a non-trivial distance, pick off the EM signals coming out of your monitor and reconstruct the image you're viewing. HDCP would thwart this, protecting the user's privacy. So HDCP can be seen as a pro-user security measure.
By re-casting HDCP as a system security feature, it then becomes obvious where control of HDCP should lie: In the user's hands. If HDCP were under my control, and didn't cost any extra in terms of CPU cycles or power consumption, I'd turn it on and leave it that way. Extra privacy for free!
But more importantly, by re-casting HDCP as a data security feature, applications attempting to manipulate it are correctly seen as hostile. If J-Random-Videoplayer tries to flip the system HDCP settings one way or another, they should get smacked down with EPERM and go no further. Even better, a dialog should pop up and say, "An unprivileged application is attempting to discover the current settings of display encryption (HDCP). This is a system security setting which should be accessed only by administrative programs. How should the request be handled? ()Report as enabled ()Report as disabled ()Report current setting ()Reject request"
Discuss :-).
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I'm a mac user. I've used Linux for 11 years now, I've used Windows back in the day for StarCraft or when it was neccesary for work (and on my jobs workstation) and I use OS X today whenever I want zero-fuss integration and need to run the Flash IDE to draw up some RIA components. I still use Debian and Ubuntu aswell, however.
I'm typing this on my Mac Mini with Tiger - with the pricey but neat new aluminum mac KB attached - and my last computer purchase was the famous classic 12" G4 macbook, trusted subnotebook of hackers and geeks all around the world. The fluorescent light needs longer time to fully light up, but after 5 years it still is a piece of integrated hard- and software that I love to use on a regular basis. In a nutshell: I'm a computer expert and I like my macs and I can name solid reasons why I do.
Apple has a rock-solid multiplier in me, as I - as most geeks - am the opinion-leader in all things concerning IT and computers for at least 50 people that know me well enough to know my profession. I can inmediately think of at least 3 people who have gotten macs also due to largely my influence on their decision.
That aside I can only say: Get pissy with me and I'm right back to Linux on x86 only. As soon as I have to fuss around with media not playing on my computers I'm gone, mac mini and 13" unibody MacBook be damned. I'd rather fuss around with half-finished OSS projects or crappy printer integration on a dell laptop that looks and handles like a piece of shit than having some DRM scheme wasting my time. If Apple even thinks about pressing the lock-in game, I'm gone and I will stop recommending Apple instantly. And I'll start discouraging people from buying them.
My 2 Euros.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I'm thinking the easiest way around it is to just download a copy. Seriously, wtf, people - do you not like having customers?
I damn near gave up buying media of any kind because of copy protection, and so I do without. Yay Amazon MP3 store to the rescue. But I'm getting completely sick of this.
It's time to push Congress for a Consumer's Digital Purchases Bill of Rights that forces compatibility. If you want DRM so bad, it's your job to make it work.
File this under "depressing but true."
For all those slashdoters that work at apple: Make sure you let your Marketing department know that this has cost them a long time customer.
I have a powerbook G4 and I recently bought a mac mini for my wife.
I was planning to get a new Macbook for Xmas.
However hearing about this has changed my mind. I will not let a company dictate what my fair use rights are. I'm disappointed, its so short sighted on Apples part. Technology companies should stick to technology and let our courts and elected members of government worry about our rights and rights of content producers (admittedly they haven't done a good job either).
I moved away from Windows because of this (that and stability issues). I know from the Windows media player 10 or higher behaviour that it won't let me play is my own content (I created it, I own the copyright) and home videos over a projector...
It's bad enough when I have to change software, in this case an open source player (VLC) solved the problem for me. If the "crippleware" is OS and hardware based the only thing at that point is to chose an uncrippled product.
It's too bad. Apple does do a good job with hardware etc.. I've been very satisfied with the Powerbook G4 I have.
I will now be looking at a nice small laptop with an AMD CPU running Linux (probably Ubuntu). If anyone has any suggestions let me know. :)
Thanks.
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
... will be EXACTLY like 1984... Twenty four years. Oh well. They had a good run.
If that's their definition of "legal", then fuck legality.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
The way that works (correct me if I'm wrong here) is that each title has a "title key" (randomly generated exclusively for that release) that is used to encrypt the content.
Sony has created a set of "vendor keys", lets say 1000 of them, to give out to anyone that wants to make a bluray player and agrees to play by their rules.
When a movie is pressed to bluray, the movie's titlekey is encrypted separately 1000 times, once for each vendor key, and is stored on the disc in a title key dictionary. As long as you know at least one vendor key, you can retrieve the title key. Now after apple signs on the dotted DMCA line, they are assigned and given one of the vendor keys. (lets say it's key #256) 256's private key is placed on the bluray player firmware apple ships with. The player uses that key to decrypt copy #256 of the title key from the title key dictionary on the disc. It can't decrypt any of the other 999 copes since it only has private key for #256.
Lets say the firmware is hacked.
Once sony figures out that key #256 is being used by a hacked player, they "revoke" it. This means that every title released after this point will no longer have an entry in the title key dictionary for key # 256. So anyone with an older apple bluray player will not be able to view the new movie because it cannot get the title key from the disc.
Every disc they have that they bought up to the point of revocation will continue to work indefinitely on the older player, because the old discs will all still have a title key in position 256 in their title key dictionary.
At that point if apple wants to get back into the game, the RIAA will force them to strengthen the security in their player firmware to make it more difficult to hack, before they give them a new vendor key. Apple will push this out as a firmware update and once again all their bluray players will work with all titles, old and new.
If it gets hacked again, it's possible sony will just say too bad so sad and refuse to give them another key regardless of what apple is willing to do. At that point all the players with the vulnerable firmware will cease forever to work with new releases.
I know I'm missing several layers of other nasties such as the bluray player vm, but this is the part that's relevant here. Sony can't remotely brick or otherwise damage your bluray player, and cannot prevent it from being able to play discs that it already can play. They can only prevent your player from working on discs released after they decide to drop the hammer.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
> So what's the advantage of Linux regarding this now again?
Linux won't suddenly cripple your output hardware because
it thinks you are doing something that the MPAA disapproves of.
Once you allow the MPAA into the core of your OS, then that
becomes a very real problem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
a 2007 crack is irrevocable.
this is why we have things like anydvd HD, etc, and why they pushed out BD+, which was ALSO cracked.
For further reference on the ease of ripping BLU-RAY for naive users, see this link
Game over, and once again, the MPAA loses.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!