Slashdot Mirror
HDCP Master Key Is Legitimate; Blu-ray Is Cracked
adeelarshad82 writes "Intel has confirmed that the leaked HDCP master key protecting millions of Blu-ray discs and devices that was posted to the Web this week is legitimate. The disclosure means, in effect, that all Blu-ray discs can now be unlocked and copied. HDCP (High Definition Content Protection), which was created by Intel and is administered by Digital Content Protection LLP, is the content encryption scheme that protects data, typically movies, as they pass across a DVI or an HDMI cable. According to an Intel official, the most likely scenario for a hacker would be to create a computer chip with the master key embedded it, that could be used to decode Blu-ray discs."
You seem quite a pedant. The fact that there is the word "rights" in DRM doesn't have anything to do with you having any rights beyond what the seller offers you in exchange for your money. That's exactly what DRM is there to enforce (not very effectively in practice so far but I am talking about the principle).
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
People cracking the code and opening up BluRay? Impressive. Your melodramatic commentary on commercialism you willingly participate in? Not so much.
While I am no friend of DRM, there is a genuine ethical dilemma here. If someone (movie makers) is selling a product, should they be forced to sell at the same price to everyone? Especially when said product is not necessary for life and health? Note that this would harm people in the poorest countries because the seller would then set a price optimized for the more lucrative western market and would not be able to sell at a discount price in the poorer countries.
Outsourcing is a different thing - no one is being forced to do anything. It sucks for the local workers, but if the cheap labor abroad is treated fairly I do not see an ethical problem. Buyer's choice, just like you yourself can choose whether you shop at the local mom-and-pop store or at the big outside-town supermarket. Some people support the local store, others go there for convenience or buy there just those products which are better than at the supermarket, but most people just go to the supermarket because the prices are much cheaper. The corporations do exactly the same. Some feel social responsibility and hire local people, others hire locally only for jobs that are difficult to outsource, and the vast majority look at bottom line only. Supporting the community / local store is nice and often has long-term benefits, but I don't see why people not doing so should be condemned.
Everyone makes this about movie makers being the evil guys and the consumers being the victims, but isn't this essentially about consumers wanting to dictate to the movie makers the terms under which they can sell their product? I mean, it sure is nice for me as a consumer to be able to play my content anywhere I want, but I don't think that it is my god-given right. We can of course take the position that the public benefit (consumer benefit, faster development of new services, new innovative businesses, etc.) outweighs the rights of the movie makers, but that is a very complicated comparison. The state should not take away rights lightly.
It is arguably part of growing up.
Or it's a part of living in a society with too many unethical laws.
it is fair to circumvent arrangements that clearly punish the wrong people
As the judicial system and legislature has long since detached from common ethics, it's a moral imperative to ignore such arrangements and help anyone who needs help to circumvent them.
No, you have it backwards. It's the media producers who live off other people. Is it not they, who expect to profit forever, without bound, from a limited amount of work? They, who don't want to accept the market as it exists, and want to impose their own rules on the general population, so that they can live off them without effort? We owe them nothing. We surrender our natural born right to copy bits as we please, for a limited time, to encourage these lazy persons to produce our music, but they have abused our trust and taken it to the extreme. They deserve no pity. The problem is not solved by forcing the population to spend all their extra money on copies of bits. It is solved by introducing sane copyright law, that brings balance back into the game.
If you "can find" them you should show them to us, because in my opinion, which I think is shared widely, Etymonline is second only to the OED as a reliable source for etymological information.
To be absolutely clear, by "show them to us" you would need a site showing an "earliest reference" for this use of "pirate" being "the opposite" of 300 years old (as given by another nearby post). What "the opposite" means isn't obvious, but let's say that means less than, oh, a hundred years or so, and hopefully less than 75 years.
Basically, what I'm saying is that I'm aghast that you have defamed the reputation of Etymonline, which to me would be like saying Snopes is a shill site full of rumor and speculation. Etymonline is my go-to resource when I want to know the history of a word, which is pretty often because I'm a language dork. If it's a bad resource, I need to know, because I rely on it.
Seriously. That fifteen-second unskippage screen is literally the number-one reason why I never watch DVDs, I only rip the contents then watch the video files. Much more than the average consumer (apparently), I am deeply bothered when an economic transaction makes me feel like a chump. I hate that feeling, and it has driven me away from making purchases I would otherwise make. (For instance, I stopped buying Apple products a couple years ago when I discovered that my new iPod wouldn't use the $2 video cords I had from my previous iPod, and now requried $50 cables from Apple. I love those shiny, easy-to-use iProducts, but I love my integrity even more.) I have never, ever purchased a DVD specifically because of the unskippable copyright screen, and now even worse there are often unskippable commercials. That is not acceptable to me.
The number-two reason I don't buy or watch DVDs is that the menu systems are often frustrating and difficult to figure out. I just want to put in the disc and have the movie start in under three seconds with no interaction, just like my VCR did in 1986, and it blows my mind that consumers in 2010 accept a lesser standard. It is a significant pain in my ass to have to rip all my Netflix DVDs, but I do it, and it also benefits me because I can time-shift my watching schedule and buffer many shows for selection later.
I'm not a lawyer, so I won't say this with the authority of certainty, but I'm pretty sure that it would count as a "trade secret", not as a copyrighted work; and that in fact trade secrets can't be copyrighted, by their very nature. There are certain specific protections for trade secrets, but copyright is explicitly excluded, because copyright only covers published works, and trade secrets of course can not be published.
Again, I accept any corrections on this statement, as I'm not particularly well informed.
Devil's advocate here:
* What's the point of all this space? I dunno. You should have thought of that before buying it.
* You also bought an assload of space in the form of, apparently, multiple shiny discs, conveniently pre-encoded with the media you are fretting about.
Seriously, though, I don't actually proffer either of those points, but some daft people might.
Hi. I'm replying to your tagline, which I think is awesome and spot-on. It would indeed be horrible for the government to leave me alone. Who else would solve crimes against me, build roads for me, and protect my borders? Thank goodness for big government, I love almost all of it, well over 80% for sure. So, I totally absolutely agree with you: I fear that libertarians will get their way and take us back to the days when there were lots and lots of problems which, over the last century or so, we have solved with big government.
Luckily for his conscience, he is nevertheless acting ethically, even righteously. I'll go even farther and say that to cowtow to a bad law is unethical, which means that he is doing what is necessary to remain at peace with his sense of goodness.
Probably the guy who leaked the code.
Yeah I'm not talking about Watch Instantly, I'm talking about the regular DVDs which arrive in the mail.
Oh, thanks for asking, but I don't want to review all of human history through the prism of your ideology.