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HDCP Master Key Revealed
solafide writes "The HDCP Master Key has allegedly been revealed. If true, this information will allow anyone to create their own source or sink keys, essentially making HDCP useless for content protection permanently. No word yet on how it was obtained, but if true, this is a great day for content freedom around the world!"
And hooray for common sense. You knew it was hopeless.
Further proof that DRM is, for all intents and purposes, completely useless other than pissing off "honest" consumers.
Living With a Nerd
There's just one key, and they never expected this to happen? "But.. but, well, we just never expected someone to give it out. It was umpossible."
What kind of security is that? Quite frankly I hope corporations continue to be stupid, so we can continue to break their stupidity with our key mastering abilities.
Why is I when I read "content freedom", I have a feeling you mean your ability to copy movies from torrent and avoid having to pay anyone for the huge investment and hard work they put into making movies. Sure, that's not what everyone will use it for, but it seems like most will. That's not something to cheer about in my book, but to each his own.
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. - B.F. Skinner
Monetize your content all you want. Prosecute illegal distribution. Just let me play it with my own device and software.
Bruce Perens.
There are plenty of picture-perfect copies of digital media out there already, that's the bitterly ironic thing about DRM as it sits today; the people just trying to play by the rules are getting stuck buying more expensive, less compatible equipment while the pirates use software techniques to get whatever content they want, however they want it, with relative ease.
If HDCP didn't exist, there would still be legal battles over what kind of hardware was legal to sell (like bluray copiers, "open" DVRs, etc). If it were to go away tomorrow, the possible upside would be more software tools available to do things like media backups, software DVR of "protected" content, and more choices when it comes to what kind of TV/monitor you can use with a media source like a bluray player or cable box. Again, ironically, I wouldn't expect genuine piracy to be helped at all by this, and by and large people buying gear off the shelf at Best Buy will never know what happened.
Some one had made a similarly named account with regards to BP during the height of the oil spill issue and used it to basically be a dick about various things, or so I heard on NPR. I quit using twitter months ago. I would expect its a fake account name. That doesn't sound like the sort of name that the "official" Intel twitter account would use.
I paid for my home with my share of Pixar's IPO. And I'm an Open Source evangelist. So, I'm in both worlds where this is concerned.
What I think is fair is for infringing redistribution of copyrighted content to be prosecuted as necessary. You really don't have the right to give all of the internet a copy of that Hannah Montana song. But when I have paid or done whatever is appropriate to gain the right to view that media on my LG TV, I should have the right to view it on my Linux system too.
So, basically I am for content creators having the right to monetize their work and against having an electronic cop in my TV room. And I'm against having Free Software locked out of being a player.
I hope the key is real and that it's really this simple. I am not equipped to test it today but I'm sure someone here is.
Bruce Perens.
No, because it makes it easier for you to use your content that you paid for with your hard-earned cash the way you want to instead of how some third party who doesn't have your best interest at heart (and who only wants to get their greedy fingers on the aforementioned hard-earned cash, whether they've earned it or not) would like to make you pay for it over and over for making personal copies, displaying on alternate devices, etc.
The ability to infringe copyright is simply a side effect. Yes, some people may use it for that purpose. I won't.
When they invented the car, are you the type that sarcastically would have said, "Because it's always good to make it easier to to get away after robbing a bank. What other law-breaking things can we invent? Maybe someone should add sound to our good ol' silent films so that people can break the law by singing copyrighted songs."
it's 2010 and we have netflix with it's so so instant streaming. along with a few other buy/rent online stores that offer content at decent prices. we even have blu ray's coming out with a digital copy so you can watch it on your phone, ipad, laptop without an optical drive, etc.
it's not the ideal where any blu ray or DVD should come with a digital copy and iTunes is not the greatest place to buy/rent from but they are all good enough not to steal with the excuse that the media companies aren't offering an easy way to consume media. only excuse you may have is that you're outside the USA and want US content
If you hooked your HTPC to your non-HDCP compliant display, you could possibly modify your device driver to decode the HDCP encryption and be able to view content at full 1080p on your non-HDCP compliant display. Alternatively, someone might be able to implement it in hardware and provide a cheap device to lay in between your device and non-HDCP display to decode the stream on the fly. All of this... just so people can watch content at full HD on the monitor they legally paid for.
"The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec^2" -Marcus Dolengo
As you say, there are two separate issues, the issue of respecting copyright and the issue of doing what you want with your devices. Well HDCP does nothing to stop copyright infringement. The pirates just nab a copy earlier in the chain, just rip the disc. Sometimes they do it later in the chain, just record a movie in a theater. Either way the fact that they can't nab a signal from the wire doesn't matter at all, they don't even try.
What this does do is prevent legit uses. I really want to build a HD DVR for my living room. I don't want the one the cable company sells. Not only do you pay a monthly charge, but I don't care for its features or its tiny drive. I want to build my own. The capture card I want is already on the market, the Blackmagic Intensity. Expensive, but worth it. ...
Except HDCP stops all that from working.
So I could go and just download the content online, any and every thing I could want is out there, free for the taking. I cannot legitimately just record it off my expensive ($80/month currently) cable TV connection.
I'm very fed up with copy protection these days because this is what is happening. It isn't protecting anything, it is hurting normal users. It is so overbearing that it interferes with normal usage, and still it does nothing to stop infringement.
Another thing, along those lines, is I can't play Blu-ray movies on my PC. I have a BD-RW drive, 1920x1200 monitor and HDMI soundcard out to a massive home theater system. Seems like the tech is there. However because of the way my system works, the display output is mirrored, one copy via DVI to the screen, the other via HDMI to the soundcard, since it need a video signal to get clock from to send its sound. All devices HDCP enabled, but Blu-ray disallows playback in the event of a mirrored screen.
They've done a great job of protecting me from myself, but nothing to stop me from downloading a program and ripping and uploading their movies, if I so chose.
It has other uses too: dissuading casual pirates from ever jumping ship and buying into the medium.
A friend of mine couldn't play a couple of Blu Ray discs he'd bought because of various compatibilty issues to do with updated keys or whatever. It convinced me that Blu Ray just wasn't ready for the living room. Why would I want to give these fools my money when it results in a crapshoot? No Blu Ray player for me, no discs either. I decided to spend my money on something that's not so flaky.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I think some forget how hypocritical people can be. This is even easier when you are talking old people being hypocritical with regards to what they did in youth. For one, we tend to remember the past through rose colored glasses. Not only does this mean we think things were better back then, but we kinda white wash our own histories. We forget some of the shit we did, the positions we held, and remember a more idealized version of ourselves. So "I smoked pot daily and loved it," may morph in to "I tried pot a few times socially and don't think it was a good idea."
Also people get overly cautious about what they did in the past. They see things as "stupid" and they are "amazed they survived." Of course you look further and it turns out that most people did that kind of stuff, so maybe it really isn't as dangerous as you think. However that isn't considered, instead the "protect the children" instinct takes over and they want to restrict things for their own good.
So I can perfectly well see people who are currently massive downloader growing up and getting power and then fighting against it. They'll remember it as something they did a bit and what a bad idea it was and how bad it is to do, and be all the more convinced it has to be stopped.
> The MAFIAA/RIAA ...
They game governments to get laws passed which enrich themselves at the cost of depriving society of: the use of the public domain, due process, and other privileges like anonymity on the net.
They use their legal muscle to try to prevent independently created content from becoming competitive with their product (e.g.: Veoh).
1) is clearly a problem, but I don't think you have to worry about 2) losing the master key.
From a mathematical standpoint, if I understand the linear algebra right, the key-generating authority could ask each manufacturer to send back a copy of their individual key: it would be easy to construct a new master key matrix which is compatible with all the manufacturers' keys. It might not be exactly the same as the original, but it wouldn't matter.
From a practical standpoint, bureaucracies are pretty good at not losing important pieces of paper. Keeping them *secret*, on the other hand, is more difficult.
I have been broke for a while, but have also become sick of most of the stuff on TV, so have not been and am not in the market for buying a flat panel TV. I have a CRT, and it works, so no need to "upgrade" - but that's the point, is a modern TV actually an improvement when it comes with so many anti features?
I totally reject DRM too, so whilst TVs support DRM systems I will not be buying one. I have thought about the future, and can see myself wanting a new TV somewhere down the line, and I have assumed that professional grade equipment won't have the DRM. I would bet that there are monitors in video production facilities with just simple DVI interfaces, and if I do want a new TV in the future I will try to track down 2nd hand pro-kit.
The choice does suck, but if you can bring yourself to question rampant consumerism then the whole premise of abandoning computers doesn't look so grim. Realising that consumer electronics generally means proprietary software is important, and if you can pick around the consumer junk there is still fun to be had.
You are apparently also of the generation that prefers ignorant mob rule and lazy scapegoating to spending even modest effort on understanding copyright law.
Hint: Start by finding the part of copyright law that criminalizes the receipt of information. Then find the section of law that allows an individual or corporation to enforce a contract against someone not a party to it.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Yes, it does sound strange. Perhaps that's because the parent meant "watched 2 or 3 illegally obtained movies."
But, you were smart enough to figure that out on your own, weren't you? Or, were you relying on your misnomer to push your agenda, you filthy copyright infringer?