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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
Monetize your content all you want. Prosecute illegal distribution. Just let me play it with my own device and software.
Bruce Perens.
How come movie industry hasn't died after the invention of VHS tapes?
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.
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."
only excuse you may have is that you're outside the USA and want US content
Or if I want to use it under my terms and my choice of file format. On my choice of device. Using my choice of "unsupported" operating system.
It's people like you who let us get into this sort of situation in the first place.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Because, as in all things, most people are honest.
If I want a movie, I buy it. That might mean buying it second-hand, or buying it from a friend, but I don't do the shady deals in pubs with strangers. Most people are like me, and most people actually pay for stuff. VCR's and DVD-R's are, of course, used for piracy - because they are recording devices. But if you didn't have those, people have camcorders, or webcams, or any one of a million and one recording devices.
The recording device, or the technology built into any recorded media, does not stop anything, at all, ever, except genuine, honest customers doing something quite reasonable. Anyone who wants an illegal copy can get one in any one of a million different ways. Hell, the early DVD rippers basically screenshotted the screen of a DVD player so many times a second and recorded the audio. It's not hard at all, because of the "analog hole". But the only people who bother to go to that amount of effort are established pirates and those who genuinely believe they are doing something quite reasonable and should be allowed to do it.
Despite popular opinion, that's NOT the majority of people.
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.