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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!"
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.
I wouldn't say hooray for freedom. If this is a win for freedom, it's only in the sense of breaking out of jail for as long as it takes them to catch you and toss you back in. The answer isn't to keep cracking these "protection" schemes, it's to stop buying into them at all until the companies behind them realize that customers are tired of paying for hardware that actively works against their interests. There seems to be a really dominant mentality among people in the know about these things that it's alright to keep supporting this nonsense monetarily because we'll always find a way to break it. That's all fine and dandy for now, but what happens when they start to get really serious about "protecting their content," and start introducing devices that can't be so easily broken?
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.
"Because it's always good to make it easier to break the law and steal movies."
Most places explicitly allow backups and format shifting, in addition to excerpting and other fair use exceptions. All of which now become possible where it was not before. No stealing or anything immoral involved.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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."
he more permanent freedom is a matter of time. At some point, lawmakers will be from the generation that also posts on forums, that downloaded mp3's when they were younger (or still do), and that watched 2 or 3 movies illegally when they were students.
I'm from that generation, more or less, and still think it's pretty rude to download stuff that you didn't pay for. I'm against supporting broken business models that don't let you store the media in the format that's most useful to you (eg on a media center) but that still doesn't mean that you get to download stuff illegally.
The smart thing to do would be to concentrate less on prevention - people are always going to copy stuff no matter what - and focus more on detection. Find the people who are downloading your stuff and get them, rather than making stuff harder for the rest of us.
And it doesn't matter what generation you are from. There will always be someone who's willing to take the media empires money to tow their agenda through the lawmaking process.
At some point, lawmakers will be from the generation that also posts on forums, that downloaded mp3's when they were younger (or still do), and that watched 2 or 3 movies illegally when they were students.
Current lawmakers all smoked dope when they were students. That doesn't mean that they are all in favor of legalizing marihuana.
Have they implemented a region scheme for books? Can a book be rendered illegible by a scratch? Is there some scheme in place to prevent you from quoting an except from a book verbatim?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The answer isn't to keep cracking these "protection" schemes, it's to stop buying into them at all until the companies behind them realize that customers are tired of paying for hardware that actively works against their interests.
I agree with your post except for this sentence. The problem with that argument is that most people, quite frankly and quite unfortunately, don't care whether or not something has "DRM or GPL or whatever crap you're trying to convince me to have or not have" (in the paraphrased words of everyone else). Most people don't care about region-lockout, SecuROM-style DRM, HDCP or any of that so long as it "works" for the time being. Most people, instead of caring whether or not their media will play on some out-there FOSS player, just buy whatever player can so they can watch it right then without caring or even thinking about whether or not that DRM will be around long enough for them to not have to re-buy all of their media. I'm almost as anti-DRM as you can get, and it's the depressing truth from what I've found.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
A DVD is a tangible good, no different than a book.
But DRM doesn't prevent anyone from shoplifting DVDs.
I think your problem here should be with people who choose to buy pirated copies of movies, not the technology that allows for copying. Might as well make pen and paper illegal if you want to go down that route. Quit whining.
which is totally what she said
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.