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."

Comments

not protects

[Lord Ender]

content encryption scheme that protects data

It restricts data. It restricts my rights. It does not protect anything.

Re:not protects

[Andorin]

Where is there any indication that "pirates" were behind the leak of this master key?

Re:not protects

[dotgain]

You seem quite informed. While I've got you here, could you please tell me what the "R" in "DRM" stands for?

Re:not protects

[aoteoroa]

Not everybody who uses DeCSS is a pirate....some of us just want to watch our legally obtained DVD's from our linux laptops. As a side note does one need DeCSS to read a VOB file then convert to AVI (I've never tried). Or can it be done on a windows computer using a legally obtained DVD codec?

Re:not protects

[hairyfeet]

Uhhhh...I hate to break the new to you dude, but this "cracking" stuff? Damned useful to those of us who AREN'T pirates. Want an example? I have a lovely complete collection of Joss Whedon's series right in front of me on a shelf, with a cool Buffy and Spike collectible figure on each side for bookends given to me by my late sister. Now here I am, with frankly an assload of HDD space at nearly 1Tb, yet thanks to their DMCA bullshit I can't just walk into Walmart and buy software that'll let me rip these discs, which I fricking paid nearly a grand for, to my HDD. Instead I'm supposed to break them open and go through the hassle of loading them each time I want to watch an episode of Buffy or firefly. That sucks! WTF is the point of having all this space if I'm not allowed to put my fricking media on it??

So until some sanity comes to the media and game companies I'm ALL FOR the pirates. It is the pirates that made the older games I PAID FOR work on my new windows 7 X64, thanks to their No-CD/DVDs making it so the non x64 DRM crap isn't called. It is the pirates that come up with the software that lets me rip my movies and convert them into formats that makes them easy and convenient FOR ME, the customer!

I personally could give a flying crap about what content producers, who frankly thanks to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting are often screwing the artists as bad if not worse than they screw us consumers, want anymore. I fricking paid for it, its mine, and if I want it in Xvid or H.264 or whatever then that is none of their business. Remember these very same content producers who you are championing say ripping YOUR CD to your iPod is NOT fair use because you didn't cut the greedy pigs a check for the privilege. After bribing our congress and trying to force 150+ year copyrights on the planet I personally hope the whole lot DIAF myself.

Re:not protects

[gringer]

could you please tell me what the "R" in "DRM" stands for?

Restrictions, according to RMS (the Rights Management System).

Re:not protects

[JustNilt]

The R stands for the copyright holder's Rights.

Re:not protects

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever had a lot of "shiny discs" that aren't so shiny after your wife and/or small kids get their hands on them? I don't want to keep repurchasing the same stuff over and over. If I can put it on DVD-Rs or my HDD attached to a video player, the original discs can stay safely put away.

Yeah, there's people not paying for it in the first place, but it's not all of us. And on that note, have you never felt ripped off by paying for a crappy movie after seeing a trailer that (IMHO) fraudulently led you to believe it would be good? The "thieving" goes both ways.

Re:not protects

[cynyr]

great, then i can stick it on my iPod to watch it, if i have a license to the content. ohh wait, it's a license to watch it from the dvd only? needs to be in readable text on the outside of the case, or you can shove it.

Re:not protects

[the linux geek]

You may have the "right" to use it how you see fit (highly debatable in this context under US law, specifically the DMCA), but the manufacturers also have the "right" to put encryption on media.

Re:not protects

[sjames]

It could well be rights. Waste Management takes your waste away, so Digital Rights Management takes your digital rights away.

Re:not protects

[turbidostato]

"Yeah, and there are five people who legitimately want to back up their blu-rays. So what? You know and I know, this is primarily a tool for piracy."

Maybe he knows and you know. But I don't know. What I do know is that there are whole countries where ripping a DVD for private use is perfectly legitimate. That surely makes for more than five people.

"I'm not expressing an opinion, just a simple fact."

"Simple facts" can become quite complex upon deeper inspection.

Re:not protects

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no need to pay 20 or 30 thousands to fill a terabyte, even with DVDs.

Just ask your family, friends, neighbors... I bet there's more than you expect that are going to have 180+ DVDs. Even at $10 per DVD, that's only $1800, spanning 15 years if they bought one DVD per month. Most people pay three, four, five times that amount just for cable or satellite. It's not far-fetched at all.

It's even cheaper to fill a terabyte if we talk about TV shows, since you get more minutes of media for your money.

Re:not protects

[Dr. Hellno]

You're not expressing a fact, just the opinion of a simpleton.

Re:not protects

[TheLink]

That's funny coz the "pirates" in my country don't need this key to copy stuff.

They just copy the entire disks as is, and any player that can play the original can play the copy.

It's like making a photocopy of a book in a language you don't understand. It doesn't matter if you can't understand it, all that matters is the end-user (player) can.

Re:not protects

[cusco]

Sure, you BOUGHT a disk, a round piece of plastic with no function other than a coaster. If you want to want to watch the movie/install the software/listen to the music contained on it the act of reading that disk is considered your legally binding agreement to the license contained on it. The RIAA and SBA make the bizarre claim that while you can sell the round piece of plastic if you want, the purchaser may never read its contents. Welcome to the bizarro world of software licenses.

Re:not protects

[ultranova]

It's nothing to do with rights. If you don't like it, don't buy it. That's the only right you have.

You do, however, have the ability to get it, but this violates a government-granted monopoly known as copyright. So the question is: do you have some kind of obligation to respect government-granted monopolies?

Re:not protects

[pieisgood]

The acronyms, please no... no more. I can't handle the compression!

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[oljanx]

Those of you who think nobody really backs up their CD/DVD/BlueRay discs for legitimate reasons must not have young children. You have no idea how quickly a team of three year olds can extract the "frisbees" from their cases and distribute them across 3,000 square feet.

Re:not protects

[syousef]

Yeah, and there are five people who legitimately want to back up their blu-rays. So what? You know and I know, this is primarily a tool for piracy. Mod me down to oblivion, that changes nothing. I'm not expressing an opinion, just a simple fact.

I'm not the one who has to pretend I'm saving the rights of "The People" or sticking it to "The Man" while I gorge myself on free entertainment.

You obviously dont' have kids. DVDs, or any kind of disk media is just NOT suitable for an entertainment system used around children. Keeping the shiny colourful box and disc out of their reach is the only way. I'd rather spend my time keeping DANGEROUS things out of their reach (like knives) than worrying about having to rebuy my whole collection if the kid somehow gets to them. This isn't the only use case where a backup is a good idea either. The fact that you're so dismissive makes you either a shill or a fool or both.

Re:not protects

[Ethanol-fueled]

"One likes to believe in the freedom of music" - Peart, Spirit of Radio

How romantic. but don't forget how the song ended.

"...and it echoes, with the sound of salesmen...of SALESMEN...OF SALESMEN!" - Peart, Spirit of Radio

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[mysidia]

Just because you call it a "fact" does not mean it is a fact.

Fact (n) a concept whose truth can be proved; "scientific hypotheses are not facts"

Therefore, I challenge you to prove that there are no more than five people alive today that legitimately want to back up a piece of blu-ray media.

If you cannot prove it, then it is not a fact at all.

Re:not protects

[mysidia]

Actually... I think of it more like this... the real name should be DRD: Digital Rights Denial.

The idea is to 'manage' the right to access what is stored on the media, in order to deny the user rights or access they would have if not for DRD.

They call it DRM, because it sounds more palatable, and consumers can swallow it. "Rights Management" is just a marketing term or euphemism

Re:not protects

[Gabrill]

Says anonymous coward. Every 3 year old CAN be taught properly, AFTER they ruin up to dozens of original copies. By that time they are 4 or 5.

Re:not protects

[Andorin]

> but the manufacturers also have the "right" to put encryption on media.
Cool. We have the right to try to break it, and to succeed.

Re:not protects

[Facegarden]

That's funny coz the "pirates" in my country don't need this key to copy stuff.

They just copy the entire disks as is, and any player that can play the original can play the copy.

It's like making a photocopy of a book in a language you don't understand. It doesn't matter if you can't understand it, all that matters is the end-user (player) can.

That's probably not what's happening. Blu Ray disks won't even let you read them unless you have the key. Only "Legitimate" players (software, or hardware) are allowed access to those keys.

Most Blu Ray copies exist because an indivdual key for that particular disk was sniffed. Then "Illigitimate" software can load the key to make a copy. But you can't even access the data without some kind of key. Your pirates probably DO rely on "Illigitimate" software that uses sniffed keys.

This new leak is the *Master* key with which they made all those individual keys that the disks are protected with.

Which means we can now generate good keys on the fly. Which, I'm led to believe, lets us copy any Blu Ray disk without first having to sniff the key. Though that last part I'm still not sure about. But thats what it seems like.
-Taylor

Re:not protects

[zmollusc]

Erm, a blueray disk's data is just a sequence of bits, I believe. Surely some clever clogs can build a machine to look at the data track(s)? How can the disk 'not let you read it' ?

Re:not protects

[Facegarden]

The disk drives are also controlled. The disk drive don't let you just get the bits out - they will only give you data if you have a key, etc. I don't know the specifics but this is a *well* thought out system. They have serious control over this shit.

So unless you're going to start writing firmware for blu ray disk drives (which are certainly also protected in some way from attacks like that) i don't see how you're going to get the sequence of bits out.

I can tell you one thing - that kind of hack is nothing I've heard of; its always people getting the key.
-Taylor

Re:not protects

[Vegemeister]

That might have been funny had you not misspelled Rohypnol.

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[Lemmy Caution]

All the parrot poop on the floor, the indentations left by a peg leg, and the stench of rum are a dead giveaway.

Re:not protects

[PeterBrett]

Ever had a lot of "shiny bicycles" that aren't so shiny after your wife and/or small kids get their hands on them? I don't want to keep repurchasing the same stuff over and over. If I can get it for free from my neighbor, the original bicycle can stay safely put away.

I suggest you go and watch this excellent video, which explains why you're being disingenuous in a way a that five-year-old can understand.

I'm sure your neighbour would have no problem at all with you copying his bicycle.

Re:not protects

[Farmer Tim]

Of course, this is the newer term or pirate that means one that violates copyright, not the definition that means one that raids ships

Sigh. It's only slightly newer, and I think a definition of a word that dates back over three hundred years can be considered legitimate.

Re:not protects

[h4rm0ny]

Not anymore, so you can stop worrying. Your right to free entertainment is now saved by the heroic pirates.

Fuck the freeloading pirates. All I want is to be able to stick a Blu-Ray that I've bought into my Linux box and play it properly. Admittedly I've got it working now, but it certainly wasn't easy at the time (I imagine it's a bit simpler now, but still not trivial).

Re:not protects

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

The disk drives are also controlled. The disk drive don't let you just get the bits out - they will only give you data if you have a key, etc. I don't know the specifics but this is a *well* thought out system. They have serious control over this shit.

That's not actually true. You can absolutely get almost all of the data off of a Blu-ray disc without breaking AACS. What you can't get (without a hacked drive or an un-revoked player certificate) is the volume ID, which you need to decrypt or duplicate the disc.

Note that Blu-ray drives have basically been irrevocably broken at this point, so this is sort of moot.

Re:not protects

[pacinpm]

Most likely there was no leak. Master key can be calculated if you have access to 50 different keys extracted from BlueRay players.

Re:not protects

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Reach puberty
2. Have a kid
3. Wait three years
4. Come back and post a correction

Re:not protects

[m50d]

Writing firmware for the drives (or rather, dumping the existing firmware and tweaking it slightly) has been one of the standard techniques in bluray ripping for at least a year now.

Re:not protects

[P0ltergeist333]

So you claim there is no right to fair usage?

Re:not protects

[profplump]

AACS has been cracked in a way that's practical enough for non-technical users. Check out MakeMKV . It's two-click simple to rip a Blu-Ray to MKV files without losing any A/V streams or recoding. You can even stream live to HTTP if you'd like to do from-disk playback in a system that accepts web streams but doesn't yet have AACS decryption.

You can also rip complete disk images, if you prefer to keep the original stream wrappers and whatnot.

The only part that's really missing is a Blu-Ray menu playback system, which isn't surprising because there's actually a good deal of software necessary to run Blu-Ray menus.

Re:not protects

[houghi]

Grandma, did you hack Blue-ray?

Re:not protects

[Mikkeles]

From the preface to the 1703 (corrected edition) of 'The True-Born Englishman':

I should have been concerned at its being printed again and again by pirates, as they call them, and paragraph-men; but would that they do it justice and print it true according to the copy, they are welcome to sell it for a penny if they please. [Emphasis mine]

Note that he was much more sanguine about the piracy after three years (the poem was originally printed for sale in 1701) in that it provided a vast audience for his work who, otherwise, would not have been able to afford it. This helped lead to his becoming celebrated during his lifetime.

Re:not protects

[TheRaven64]

The rights in question are fair use / fair dealings rights. You have the right, for example, to extract short clips from a video and quote them in commentary and so on, for example including screen captures in reviews. DRM on BluRays prevents you from exercising this right, among others. In some countries, you have the explicit right to format shift, which DRM also prevents.

DRM is vigilante action by the publishers, and it should be treated as any other vigilante action.

Re:not protects

[Lord Byron II]

The key is probably not copyrighted. US law usually restricts copyrighted material to original works of authorship. However, the key is most likely the output of some algorithm. In this case, since an algorithm "wrote" the "work", it's probably not covered. It's also highly unlikely that their bitstream is unique. But more importantly, facts are never copyrightable. For example, a phonebook may be copyrighted; you can't take the pages, copy them, and sell them legally. However, the phone numbers (the facts) are not copyrightable; you may copy all of the phone numbers into your own phonebook and sell that. In this case, the fact is the particular digits of the master key. It doesn't represent a work of authorship, but a fact generated by a computer.

Re:not protects

[MightyYar]

Of course, this usage of piracy is still used to describe those looking to profit. I'd be interested to see when the term was first used to describe people making personal copies.

Re:not protects

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a lawyer, but in some countries, copyright law does indeed regard "fair use" (or whatever the local term is called) as a specific right of users that goes along with the rights that creators have in copyright law. This was recently clarified in Canada by the Supreme Court, for example, where the decision refers to the exceptions in copyright law as "a user's right". The two sides of copyright law (the limitations and exceptions) are meant to be complementary rights. If a creator of a work sticks a copyright message on their work, they get certain rights that give them limited control over the material, and users of that material get certain rights that are exceptions to the control that the rights-holders have. To put it more specifically, in many countries users have the right to copy short excerpts of copyrighted material for purposes of criticism, education, scholarly research, and so forth, regardless of the wishes of the copyright holder. DRM and other protection schemes restrict user rights regardless of the intended usage. I suppose you could say the rights are still there, but you can't exercise them legally if there are laws against circumvention of DRM.

Now, if your point is that none of these "rights" in copyright are inherent rights in the same sense as, say, human rights, that's fine. But keep in mind that user rights in copyright law are essentially exceptions to the artificial limitations on copying imposed by copyright, so it could be argued that when people exercise legal exceptions to copyright law (such as "fair use"), they are, in fact, exercising their ordinary human rights to do whatever the heck they want. It's copyright limitations that are artificial. The fact remains that user rights have as much validity as the rights of the copyright holder regardless of whether you call either of them "rights".

Incidentally, the reason why your quotation of Inigo Montoya from one of William Goldman's copyrighted works is not a violation of copyright law is due to the rights you have as a user.

Re:not protects

[queazocotal]

This is of course why you should use a longer key.
One with a sample of a major artists work in, so the DCMA can be used to suppress copies of the key.

Re:not protects

[corser]

I've got un-skippable chapters on my DVDs telling me not to steal them. They're hostile towards the people who purchase their shit already.

Re:not protects

[SloWave]

Actually, the expansion of corporate monopolies by use of DRM and DMCA restricts what used to be inalienable rights of both artists and users far more that most people imagine. It is a very dangerous situation right now. Anything to weaken DRM and DMCA is good, at least until the the political process starts working for the people again.

Re:not protects

[Pharmboy]

You pay for the right to view and use their data on their own terms.

That is the flaw in your argument. The content providers have the right to control the distribution of their product, and have a monopoly on the profits from their product, but they don't have the right to limit my fair use of the product. The real pirates are the guys that are copying the DVDs bit for bit and selling them. This is not the same as ripping it to your hard drive to watch on your computer. No one is arguing against punishing those that are profiting from other people's works.

The argument is simple: Once I buy the media, I should be able to watch it any way I want as long as I don't infringe on their rights to profit from it. This means I am not supposed to sell copies, I'm not supposed to show it in a theatre or pub or other public venue. Whether I watch it on my laptop, TV, or work computer doesn't affect them as I have already purchased the item. If I want to include a short clip for commentary or criticism on my blog, the law says I have the absolute RIGHT to do so, but the technology effectively blocks me from doing this.

You are worried about THEIR rights, which are based upon the (valid) idea that they have the right to exclusively profit from their work. Once I have purchased that DVD or BD, they no longer have a vested interest in the profits of that one disk, they already have it.

Re:not protects

[brix]

Are you speaking of a moral right or a legal one? A moral right can be debated either way. However, in the United States at least, the legal right doesn't exist. That, as you probably know, was removed by the DMCA.

Re:not protects

[guyminuslife]

Raspberry. As in, "Delicious Raspberry Marmalade."

Although I still don't know why you'd put it on your Blu-Ray disks.

Re:not protects

[mcgrew]

No rights to back up? I'd say rather than protecting your data, it prevents your data from being protected.

Re:not protects

[mcgrew]

No, DRM is correct: Digital Restrictions on Media, as someone here has named it before. It fits a whole lot better than digital rights management, because it doesn't manage digital rights, it adds priveleges that the "content creator" has no right to, while restricting the rights of the person who bought the item.

Re:not protects

[Anonymous Coward]

The DMCA is illegal. Why you ask? Because it illegally attempts to extend copyright to infinity. How you ask? By not allowing for the encryption to fall away after a certain date.
Ever try bumping your system clock ahead 100 to 200 years and try reading a dvd or blu-ray? yup - it's still encrypted.

Any device or software that causes an illegal activity is (to use their terms and definitions) is illegal, therefor the DMCA and with it any form of encryption without time based unlock is illegal.

Re:not protects

[cmiller173]

I don't legitimately want to back up my blu-rays ... I WANT to back up my blu-rays legitimately!

Re:not protects

[b4dc0d3r]

Your negativity is not funny, not insightful, and definitely not helping.

When the copyright expires, and it will, I should not have to spend time cracking a protection scheme in order to access public domain works. Creators have a temporary monopoly in exchange for agreeing to give it to the public at some time.

At the time of creation, the creator has the right to copy the work, or allow copying, and I do not. At the time of expiration, the right to copy passes from the creator's hands into mine. There should be no lock which prevents me from exercising my fully legal right at that time.

If you're feeling like adding something about effectively perpetual copyright due to extension, that's fine, but know that copyrights at least in USA are constitutionally limited. It might be a thousand or a million years, but when that time comes the Constitution says it's public domain.

I have seen arguments that, while public domain status is guaranteed there is no requirement that the work be accessible. That might be true. However, I can easily see a court battle which establishes that locking away expired works is abuse of copyright. Unfortunately we won't be able to have that established for 100 years, until someone shows actual harm, and therefore standing to sue. Ultimately, I believe it will be illegal to lock away content due to agreeing upon entering the copyright protection agreement one also agrees to its public domain status once expired. Either that, or the Library of Congress exemptions will water down DRM breaking enough that it's irrelevant. That has already begun.

It's not like a company can claim they were surprised that copyright is limited. Until the US constitution is changed, the *IAA have to accept that their works will be public domain at some point.

Re:not protects

[Farmer Tim]

Sorry, just nitpicking your usage of "only slightly." :P

Yeah, it's the same "only slightly" as in "a nuclear war is only slightly more inconvenient than being shot in the head": on a personal level it makes little difference.

Re:not protects

[denis-The-menace]

It would not work.

Let's say the KEY is the score (A,B,G#, etc) of a song converted into a HEX string. The song and score are copyrighted but the FACT that the HEX string created from the score cannot be copyrighted. The HEX string (the Key) is still just a number.

Re:not protects

[webheaded]

Not that I don't agree a lot of parents are lazy assholes, but you'd be surprised what those little kids can get themselves into. Sometimes you just don't think about it. It's kind of (excuse the comparison) when you have a dog and you leave something on the counter, come back later, and they've ripped it to shreds. Yeah, you could have put it way up on a shelf high as hell, but you just didn't think about it, you were in a rush, etc. Shit happens. It's not always a lazy parent and unless you're literally hovering around watching every movement the kid makes, that kind of thing will happen. It only take a few seconds for them to get a hold of that case and rip it open, unfortunately.

I'm not a parent but I have 2 much much younger siblings (I'm 24 and the older one just hit 10 years old) so I've seen my share of this stuff like any parent. I was really vigilant (most people are especially watchful when it isn't their own kids) so it's not like I just threw them in a room to watch TV and ignored them.

Re:not protects

[hairyfeet]

THANK YOU! It is nice to see some real geeks still come here! I've been messing with media and HTPCs since before that word existed, when I'd spend half the night in DOS stripping a Win9x install to scrape every ounce of performance so I could record MPEG 2 streams with an ISA capture card. I think the point that everyone is missing, and why this is frankly a dangerous precedent to allow to stand, is that I don't want the cartels help to convert as a geek I can figure that out myself just fine I just don't want the government using their power to stop me from tinkering.

Imagine what the world would be like if MSFT paid the government back in the day to have creating a "non approved" OS made illegal? Imagine if using GNUTools or Linux was a crime? Don't think that can happen? Just look up things like trusted computing to see that is exactly the kind of BS they wanted to hoist on us in the past. Do we really want our society to be nothing but passive consumers, who take whatever junk the cartels hand us and blindly do as they say? Already there is plenty of things that could make the average Joe's life better, like an easy to use HTPC that rips your DVDs to the drive automatically, but they can't be bought. Not because they don't work, but because they do and the cartels have paid the government to ban them.

In a way we geeks are the canary in the coal mine, as it is WE that think up "why it would be cool if..." and make it happen. We are the dreamer of dreams, and all I'm asking for is the iron boot of the government not to crush those dreams and ideas before they bare fruit. remember folks if the cartels had their way there wouldn't have even been VHS or Betamax, as it was "nothing but a tool for piracy!". Yeah, a tool which ended up making them billions.

G'huh?

[DeeKayWon]

What does this specifically have to do with Blu-ray? The discs themselves use AACS for encryption. The link from the player to the display is what uses HDCP.

Re:G'huh?

[tentimestwenty]

So you record the stream from the player to the display. No big difference.

Re:G'huh?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So you record the stream from the player to the display. No big difference.

It implies a lossy decode and re-encode rather than a bit-for-bit copy.

However, 99.9% of all bluray pirating seems to be lossy re-encodes anyway - mainly for the size reduction. When done well, those re-encodes are essentially indistinguishable from the originals (It helps that x264, the pirate's encoder of choice, just happens to be the most efficient h264 implementation that is generally available - so the pirated versions have a better picture-quality-to-size ratio than then legitimate releases which are used as source material for the pirated versions).

Re:G'huh?

[adolf]

So you record the stream from the player to the display. No big difference.

It's the difference between copying an unmodified MPEG (or VC1) stream at whatever rate your machine can muster, or recording the uncompressed output of such a stream at no faster than real-time.

The former is lossless, smallish, and fast. The latter is lossless only if you can keep up with and store the intense datarate, or is lossy if you recompress it, and it always takes as long to record as the playing-length of the source.

Big differences. Huge, giant, overwhelming differences, in fact.

Re:G'huh?

[pcx]

Ripping a blu-ray is a hellacious experience. Once you rip the disk to the hard drive you may have totally unprotected data but figuring out how to package that data can be a real challenge. A dvd can barely hold a movie, a blu ray can hold a movie and features that are as long or more-so than the original movie, so you just can't pick the file with the longest play-time. Getting sub-titles and chapters involves using several ( let me stress several here ) user-un-friendly programs in a long-tedious and very error-prone workflow. And the studios haven't even begun to exploit java to further obscure how to piece together the myriad bits and pieces of 50gigs of data into a single movie file.

Now someone can build a little PCI card with an HDMI in jack, press play on your player software, press record on your computer and ~2 hours later you have a perfectly encoded movie file that can be a perfect copy of the original.

Unfortunately it will take an act of a luddite congress to make accessing your video collection as painless, effortless and legal as accessing your music collection.

Re:G'huh?

[Jahava]

It's the difference between copying an unmodified MPEG (or VC1) stream at whatever rate your machine can muster, or recording the uncompressed output of such a stream at no faster than real-time.

The former is lossless, smallish, and fast. The latter is lossless only if you can keep up with and store the intense datarate, or is lossy if you recompress it, and it always takes as long to record as the playing-length of the source.

Big differences. Huge, giant, overwhelming differences, in fact.

Maybe I'm missing something here. It seems to me that you don't need to re-encode the huge data stream on-the-fly. The only thing you have really have to do in real-time is buffer the raw data stream to some persistent storage. After that, you can re-encode it however you like at your leisure.

I'm too tired to do the math and calculate how much storage a full Blu-Ray disc stream would require. Whatever it is, though, It only takes one guy with a hard disk array and an Internet connection and the media's toast.

Re:G'huh?

[Kjella]

It has already been done, there were HDCP exploits before AACS was cracked which allowed people with DVI/HDMI input cards to make perfect digital copies for reencodes. It took a quite hefty raid array and hundreds of GB of space - and the input cards were rare and expensive too, but it could be done and was done. Or so I read about on a forum I visited ;)

Re:G'huh?

[Psyborgue]

You're implying a player has to play the movie back at full speed. Frame by frame capture at a reduced speed (or even on demand a-la frameserver) works just fine. DVDs could be ripped that way before deCSS. All it would take is network or even bluetooth control of the player and a hdmi capture card. The only thing that has to be played back at full speed is the audio, and that can be done on a separate pass and re-muxed when the video is finished encoding.

Re:G'huh?

[thegarbz]

and it always takes as long to record as the playing-length of the source.

Judging by this I take it you haven't ever encoded a x264 file before. If it could be done in real time frankly I'd be quite happy. Given how it takes about 8+ hours on my quad core machine for 1h of 1080p footage I don't think you'll hear anyone complain.

Re:G'huh?

[zeropointburn]

It matters for those of us making legitimate backups of our optical media libraries.

Re:G'huh?

[wagnerrp]

15K disks don't provide high sequential throughput. Their high rotational speed is offset by reduced density and platter diameter. Their purpose is to provide low latency for more random access.

challenge

[TheSHAD0W]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/16/confirmed-intel-says-hdcp-master-key-crack-is-real/
(original article /.'d)

"For someone to use this information to unlock anything, they would have to implement it in silicon -- make a computer chip," Waldrop told Fox News, and that chip would have to live on a dedicated piece of hardware -- something Intel doesn't think is likely to happen in any substantial way.

I think we've got a new challenge here! Props to the first person to post an easy hardware/software system for intercepting and decoding HDTV signals.

Re:challenge

[jcr]

they would have to implement it in silicon -- make a computer chip,

Or buy themselves an FPGA evaluation board from Xilinx, Altera, or any other FPGA vendor...

-jcr

Re:challenge

[biryokumaru]

Bonus points for using an Arduino, ya?

Re:challenge

[mrmeval]

You are hysterical! A mega coupled with a real FPGA perhaps.

Re:challenge

[tdelaney]

Or maybe implement a "virtual display" driver that claims to support HDCP ...

Summary left out one important detail

[Dr_Banzai]

Where can I buy the t-shirt?

Re:Summary left out one important detail

[bm_luethke]

I've purchased a few geek/nerd shirts over the years and most are just to pass away the time - there have really only been two I truly liked (I have a few that were given to me that mean more to me).

The second place slot was an OpenSSH shirt that the front said something along the lines of "SSH, it is a secret" and the back had a blowfish with rsh, ftp, and telnet gravestones and freshly dug gravestones. It was something that other people that knew about OpenSSH got immediately and something that generated questions in other people. Having been asked enough I had an answer that most people didn't have their eyes glaze over, though few were interested in it.

My favorite was the DeCSS shirt with the the CSS logo and the red circle with a slash and the source on the back. It garnered an *enormous* number of questions and was an easy sound bite whilst standing in line to the cashier in the grocery store. By that time most had DvD's and most could understand the issues - indeed it was a time when most could go back and try what I said and then look it up and be angry. I regularly shopped the same places (being in college at the time limited my shopping to mostly k-mart and wal-mart) so they tended to remember me by my shirt and make comments on what they had discovered. Unlike the OpenSSH it was something they could understand *and* be irritated at when pointed out.

IMO that was a perfect shirt at the perfect time for a politically active geek in the US (be they Republican, Democrat, or Something Else). It was something we could all get behind, was fairly easy for non-geeks to understand, and there was *clearly* a civil rights violation going on (though it each "side" blamed the other). Not to mention the whole amusement factor of the shirt being illegal to wear. Sadly a great deal of those issues are still being fought today but in a way that a simple shirt can't express.

Re:Summary left out one important detail

[Jugalator]

Here:
http://www.cafepress.co.uk/HDCP

Based on this:
http://jedsmith.org/hdcp/ (see the bottom for info on how it should be interpreted)

This just in...

[symbolset]

Intel now approaching release on an even newer, even better DRM system developed with secret AI Heuristics obtained in their recent acquisition of McAfee. A spokesman, who asked not to be identified, said "Trust us! This time we'll defeat those nasty pirates for sure!" The Intel technology is rumored to be based on quantum cryptography, 2Gbit keys, and something which is referred to as a "negative entropy hash".

In response we've asked Tim Jones of The Pirate Bay to comment. "Goodness. Whatever will we do? We'll never be able to decode that. Oh, wait. Those torrents come from unencrypted masters before they went to production. They're not cracked, they're leaked. Never mind. No worries."

Sony, BMG and Viacom are said to be in negotiations to license the technology.

TFS is confusing

[adolf]

TFS talks about using the HDCP master key to decode Blu-Ray.

But, really, HDCP has nothing to do with Blu-Ray in particular -- it's protection for a transmission format, not a storage format. The availability of this key means nothing with regards to Blu-Ray.

So, I've been wondering for the past few days: What, exactly, can this HDCP master key do for folks? Does it automagically allow us to decode HDCP-protected content on a DVI or HDMI cable? Or does it allow us to merely sign our own HDCP devices given an appropriate amount of hackery?

Re:TFS is confusing

[adolf]

Lies, deceit.

it means that while bd discs still cannot be cracked, the digital data that is being transferred to the device can be tapped and perfect digital copies can be made.

Since HDMI can transfer up to 10.2 gigabits per second of data, I don't think these "perfect digital copies" are going to be made any time soon. 1920x1080x60 + 8 channels of uncompressed audio == lots of bandwidth. More than anyone, currently, wants to store -- it'd be cheaper to buy the movie than buy the storage for a copy of it it, in the case of a direct HDMI lossless rip. And nevermind actually achieving these datarates on any commonly-available storage medium.

Unless, of course, the copies get compressed with something. And then, plainly, they're not perfect anymore.

Re:TFS is confusing

[je ne sais quoi]

What, exactly, can this HDCP master key do for folks?

It will allow me to watch my legally purchased blu-ray discs using my legally purchased blu-ray drive on my old, non-HDCP compliant monitor. I am forced to break the law just because my monitor is too old: In the past, I couldn't use a program like powerDVD to watch my blu-ray discs at full resolution because it would notice my monitor wasn't compliant. That meant obtaining an AACS key for the blu-ray disc and using a program like dumphd, anydvd or dvdfab to make a copy of the data on the disc to my hard drive which didn't had HDCP. Now, I could conceivably still have to violate the DMCA, but by faking my monitor's HDCP compliance so powerDVD or another program can watch the video.*

* I'd just like to point out that I'll still break the DRM because there is not a blu-ray reader for linux that works reliably.

Re:TFS is confusing

[earthforce_1]

Any DRM system is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. BD+ doesn't have to be broken, only one link in the chain and the whole thing falls apart. You just need a little HDCP stripper box between the legal blue ray player, and whatever you are using to copy. And there is now no physical way to invalidate the keys in the HDCP stripper box. They box could identify itself with an infinite number of working keys generated each time it is powered up. As mentioned in an earlier thread, the unencrypted raw stream can then be recompressed/encoded into any desired format. (Including BD+ and AACS free Bluray) As mentioned earlier, any good HW engineering student armed with the specs and an FGPA could make one.

The only way to stop this would be to start over with a new master key, which would brick every existing HDCP encumbered piece of hardware out there.

Re:TFS is confusing

[cynyr]

This does open the way for a way around older highres LCDs not being hdcp compliant.

Re:TFS is confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

I am forced to break the law just because my monitor is too old

No it doesn't. You're still making a choice to break the law.

Coercion is not a choice.

Re:TFS is confusing

[spire3661]

An unjust law is a crime unto itself. There is no doubt that the DMCA is an unjust law. The complete ban on breaking encryption is just plain wrong and is a product of lawmakers not understanding technology.

Re:TFS is confusing

[clone53421]

No he isn’t. He’s being forced to go to extreme lengths to exercise his fair use.

Re:TFS is confusing

[kimvette]

Hint: the DMCA exception clauses allow for bypassing restrictions for the purpose of interoperability, which is exactly what you're doing. Your actions are 100% legal, per the DMCA itself. :)

Re:TFS is confusing

[Khyber]

"Since HDMI can transfer up to 10.2 gigabits per second of data, I don't think these "perfect digital copies" are going to be made any time soon. 1920x1080x60 + 8 channels of uncompressed audio == lots of bandwidth"

25-50GB of space used no matter what doing a fully perfect Blu-Ray rip right from the cable.

Re:TFS is confusing

[KeithIrwin]

DHCP is used to protect the digital signal which flows over HDMI between the Blu-Ray player and the TV or other monitor. The Blu-Ray disc is encrypted with AACS and optionally BD+. Blu-Ray players decrypt the AACS and BD+ and then decompress the video and, if necessary, scale it to match the display resolution of the TV. Then that unencrypted, decompressed, scaled signal is reencrypted using DHCP and sent to the TV. The TV then decrypts it and displays it.

This is done for two purposes. The first is so that a pirate can't record the stream between the Blu-Ray player and the TV. This signal would be uncompressed, and therefore huge, but pirates could recompress it before sharing it over the internet, so it would still be valuable to them. The second is so that you can't build a TiVo like device to pretend to be the television and just record everything rather than display it. All device manufacturers have to guarantee that they won't do that before they are given the keys needed to authenticate themselves to the players and decrypt the signal. This break means that the second point is now entirely null and void. You can now build any device you want and using the provided information make it so that your device will authenticate to the Blu-Ray player as being a valid, approved device.

Because the specification allows for repeaters and splitters which have their own keys and actually do a decryption/reencryption step, it also means that the first point is pretty well null and void because you can build a device which looks like and authenticates as a repeater and then records the signal as a side effect while also displaying to the television.

Now, this crack doesn't mean that tomorrow you'll be able to buy that sort of device. There's still a lot of engineering which would be needed to make such a device practical, especially if it's going to compress things on the fly at HD-level resolutions. However, it means that there is now no information barrier to building such a device. Intel isn't worried because they don't think that pirates will be able to build chips to do this. But if they don't think that pirates can build the chips, why have the encryption to begin with?

In the long run, they'll probably wind up replacing the whole HDCP encryption with some new scheme which will be added to the HDMI standard and making players no longer accept HDCP as a valid output encryption scheme. But they'll have to do it really, really slowly, otherwise there will be a massive consumer backlash. I should note, of course, that the encryption schemes used will need to be implemented in hardware, not software, so a firmware update isn't going to cut it. So, realistically, it's most likely that they'll try to make the change if and when the next consumer video format with studio support comes out, which will likely be a decade, at least. They could try replacing all the keys for all devices as a stopgap, but that's pretty problematic and could well just lead to the same leak happening again.

Re:TFS is confusing

[amb5l]

Coincidentally I was asked yesterday whether it would be possible to distribute video from a satellite STB via a wired home network. I read up on MythTV and various other solutions to streaming video, then realised the STB has an HDMI output. Ouch, I thought, that's the end of that - for protected HD streams anyway.

But today things have changed: it's now possible (in principle) to build a HDMI video capture card, or an HDCP stripper out of an FPGA.

Most of the discussion here assumes people with use the key for ripping/piracy but I think opening up media streaming to HDMI sources is the most important breakthrough. Although HDCP strippers do alread exist (e.g. HDfury) they must rely on black market parts (buying HDMI silicon requires signatures on legal agreements). I am going to tell my friend that my answer to his question just changed from "no" to "sometime soon". (Assuming I can come up with a real time encoding solution, which will probably not be trivial...)

I never could see why the content protection agenda needed to include restrictions on how you wire up your video sources and displays, and am glad that part of it has been defeated.

Honestly, is anyone surprised this has happened?

[xystren]

Did they honestly expect that no one would get a hold of the key, reverse engineer it, or even just brute force it - when will they realize that locks only keep honest and unmotivated people out.

Hear that MPAA?

[Culture20]

Now I'm finally willing to invest in purchasing Blu-Ray movies. Now that I can archive them to protect from wear and tear.

Re:Hear that MPAA?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, that would be the master AACS key, if one exists.. HDCP is the component interconnect encryption.. from player to receiver to display..

Re:Hear that MPAA?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have kids do you?

Re:Hear that MPAA?

[codegen]

I have yet to see a protective coating that will stand up to a 3 year old child.

Re:Hear that MPAA?

[bakdor]

Ah, just like CDs that last forever. Good to know.

You mean this one?

[sethstorm]

Unless /. mangles it, it should be the exact same.

HDCP MASTER KEY (MIRROR THIS TEXT!)

This is a forty times forty element matrix of fifty-six bit
hexadecimal numbers.

To generate a source key, take a forty-bit number that (in
binary) consists of twenty ones and twenty zeroes; this is
the source KSV. Add together those twenty rows of the matrix
that correspond to the ones in the KSV (with the lowest bit
in the KSV corresponding to the first row), taking all elements
modulo two to the power of fifty-six; this is the source
private key.

To generate a sink key, do the same, but with the transposed
matrix.

6692d179032205 b4116a96425a7f ecc2ef51af1740 959d3b6d07bce4 fa9f2af29814d9
82592e77a204a8 146a6970e3c4a1 f43a81dc36eff7 568b44f60c79f5 bb606d7fe87dd6
1b91b9b73c68f9 f31c6aeef81de6 9a9cc14469a037 a480bc978970a6 997f729d0a1a39
b3b9accda43860 f9d45a5bf64a1d 180a1013ba5023 42b73df2d33112 851f2c4d21b05e
2901308bbd685c 9fde452d3328f5 4cc518f97414a8 8fca1f7e2a0a14 dc8bdbb12e2378
672f11cedf36c5 f45a2a00da1c1d 5a3e82c124129a 084a707eadd972 cb45c81b64808d
07ebd2779e3e71 9663e2beeee6e5 25078568d83de8 28027d5c0c4e65 ec3f0fc32c7e63
1d6b501ae0f003 f5a8fcecb28092 854349337aa99e 9c669367e08bf1 d9c23474e09f70

3c901d46bada9a 40981ffcfa376f a4b686ca8fb039 63f2ce16b91863 1bade89cc52ca2
4552921af8efd2 fe8ac96a02a6f9 9248b8894b23bd 17535dbff93d56 94bdc32a095df2
cd247c6d30286e d2212f9d8ce80a dc55bdc2a6962c bcabf9b5fcbe6f c2cfc78f5fdafa
80e32223b9feab f1fa23f5b0bf0d ab6bf4b5b698ae d960315753d36f 424701e5a944ed
10f61245ebe788 f57a17fc53a314 00e22e88911d9e 76575e18c7956e c1ef4eee022e38
f5459f177591d9 08748f861098ef 287d2c63bd809e e6a28a6f5d000c 7ae5964a663c1b
0f15f7167f56c6 d6c05b2bbe8800 544a49be026410 d9f3f08602517f 74878dc02827f7
d72ef3ea24b7c8 717c7afc0b55a5 0be2a582516d08 202ded173a5428 9b71e35e45943f

9e7cd2c8789c99 1b590a91f1cffd 903dca7c36d298 52ad58ddcc1861 56dd3acba0d9c5
c76254c1be9ed1 06ecb6ae8ff373 cfcc1afcbc80a4 30eba7ac19308c d6e20ae760c986
c0d1e59db1075f 8933d5d8284b92 9280d9a3faa716 8386984f92bfd6 be56cd7c4bfa59
16593d2aa598a6 d62534326a40ee 0c1f1919936667 acbaf0eefdd395 36dbfdbf9e1439
0bd7c7e683d280 54759e16cfd9ea cac9029104bd51 436d1dca1371d3 ca2f808654cdb2
7d6923e47f97b5 70e256b741910c 7dd466ed5fff2e 26bec4a28e8cc4 5754ea7219d4eb
75270aa4d3cc8d e0ae1d1897b7f4 4fe5663e8cb342 05a80e4a1a950d 66b4eb6ed4c99e
3d7e9d469c6165 81677af04a2e15 ada4be60bc348d dfdfbbad739248 98ad5986f3ca1f

971d02ada31b46 2adab96f7b15da 9855f01b9b7b94 6cef0f65663fbf eb328e8a3c6c5d
e29f0f0b1ef2bf e4a30b29047d31 52250e7ae3a4ac fe3efc3b8c2df1 8c997d15d6078b
49da8b4611ff9f b1e061bc9be995 31fd68c4ad6dc6 fd8974f0c506dd 90421c1cd2b26c
53eec84c91ed17 5159ba3711173b 25e318ddceea6a 98a14125755955 2bb97fd341cea2
3f8404769a0a8e bce5c7a45fb5d4 9608307b43f785 2a98e5856afe75 b4dbead4815cac
d1118af62c964a 3142667a5b0d14 6c6f90933acd3d 6b14a0052e2be4 1b1811fda0f554
12300aa7f10405 1919ca0bff56ea d3e2f3aad5250c 4aeeea5101d2ec 377fc499c07057
6cb1a90cdb7b11 3c839d47a4b814 25c5ac14b5ec28 4ef18646d5b9c2 95a98cc51ebd3b

310e98028e24de 092ffc76b79f44 0740a1ca2d4737 b9f38966257c99 a75afc7454abe4
a6dd815be8ccbf ec2cac2df0c675 41f7636aa4080f 30e87b712520fd d5dfdc6d3266ac
ee28f5479f836f 0bf8ee2112173f 43ae802fa8d52d 4e0dffd36c1eac 3cbda974bb7585
fb60a4700470e3 d9f6b6083ef13d 4a5840f02d0130 6c20ef5e35e2bf dad2f85c745b5b
61c5ddc65d3fc9 7f6ec395d4ae22 2b8906fb3996e2 e4110f59eb92ac 1cb212b44128bb
545afda80a4fd1 b1ffea547eab6b fac3d9166afce8 3fe35fe17586f2 9d082667026a4c
17ffaf1cb50145 24f27b316acfff b6bb758ec4ad60 995e8726359ef7 c44952cb424035
5ec53461dbd248 40a1586f04aee7 49ea3fa4474e52 c13e8f52c51562 30a1a70162cfb8

ccbada27b91c33 33661064d05759 3388bb6315b036 0380a6b43851fb 0228dadb44ad3d
b732565bc37841 993c0d383cfaae 0bea49476758ac accc69dbfcde8b f416ab0474f022
2b7dbcc3002502 20dc4e67289e50 0068424fde9515 64806d59eb0c18 9cf08fb2abc362
8d0ee78a6cace9 b678

Re:You mean this one?

[Archangel Michael]

HEY!! That's the combination to my luggage!

Re:You mean this one?

[jpapon]

I think that's going to require one extra beefy t-shirt

Huh?

[DDLKermit007]

No hacker is going to give a crap about this. It's so much easier to just rip the data directly from the disk. Plus, anyone in their right minds is usually going to just get the DVD anyways if they are going rip it. Likely going to downsample it anyways since the full resolution file is obnoxiously large. All this realistically would allow for is for people to make an HDMI to Component conversion box which is one of those DMCA grey zones. The underlying technologies of DVD & Blue Ray encryptions were compromised ages ago.

Re:Huh?

[Lehk228]

since every player has to have a key, breaking a DRM does not mean they crypto is weak, just that you can't hand someone a key and a lock, and expect them not to be able to open the lock

Eh?

[wampus]

Now we all need to buy new TVs and Blu-Ray players with HDCP2 support. You fuckers should have just caved and got a new 3D TV when they were trying to drive uptake the polite way.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if we will see a HDCP $YEARNAME format. Oh, your Avatar II Blu-Ray movie has HDCP 2012 on it. It won't work with HDCP or HDCP 2011. Go and upgrade your flash ROM on your display devices? Gee, no upgrade? Time to buy a new BD player and TV!

Sad thing, Joe Sixpack would go out and do this.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You fuckers should have just caved and got a new 3D TV when they were trying to drive uptake the polite way.

SONY? Is that you?

Re:Honestly, is anyone surprised this has happened

[Sir_Lewk]

reverse engineer it, or even just brute force it

Provided sufficiently large keys (1024 bits or more in the case of RSA), brute force is infeasible. "Reverse engineering" only really applies if the details of the cryptographic primitives are not already publicly known (pretty much never the case).

Mod parent up, wtf. "flamebait?"

[lindseyp]

A strongly worded opinion. Well written, with references and links. It's not even a controversial topic, From what I see this is rather a majority opinion on slashdot.

Who the hell modded this flamebait?

Re:Mod parent up, wtf. "flamebait?"

[darthdavid]

The RIAA ;)

Weve seen that argument before

[Weaselmancer]

You know and I know, this is primarily a tool for piracy.

No, it's primarily a tool. How you use it is up to the user.

Much like a gun is a tool. You can use it for target practice, hunting, home defense - and murder. The tool doesn't get to decide how it is used. The user does. The tool is blameless.

Another point. Most people aren't pirates, and most of the people "content protection" screws with are the paying customers. It absolutely is about rights. You buy it - you own it. That's how it used to be. Now the industry is trying to change that. It is important to let those people know they are selling snake oil. That's how I see this event. It's not about a BluRay player for Linux, it's not about piracy. It's about stopping snake oil salesmen from infringing on our rights with these increasingly bogus copy protection schemes.

That's why I love watching things like this happen. I love it when people who are clearly in the wrong (both philosophically and mathematically) get called on their hubris. It fills me with joy.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[srothroc]

most people aren't pirates

Really? I would be very hard-pressed to name even one person that I personally know who has never downloaded a movie, a song, or a game that they did not buy.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[spire3661]

I would be very hard pressed to name even one media corporation who has not attempted to re-write law in its own favor.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[ubermiester]

You buy it - you own it. That's how it used to be

not true. you bought the medium, (record, printed paper), but even back in the "good ol days", you did not purchase the right to the actual content. And today almost all of our information is encoded digitally and much of it is transmitted across the internet, so there is no longer any natural limit on infringement.

I agree with you concerning the effect copy prevention has on the "average consumer", and i tend to shop for more open formats. But people will always choose free over not free. And "retailers" like the Pirate Bay don't charge for the service (they make their money from ads) so they facilitate people's instinct to get something for nothing, and make millions doing it. All the while saying that they are defending free speech or whatever. They just make it easy to walk right past the producer of the content and take their shit without paying. And that seems really, really cool. Until you think about it a little.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[Jafafa Hots]

Exactly. I don't own a blu-ray player, I don't intend to ever own a blu-ray player, I don't rip blu-ray movies, I don't intend to ever rip them, I don't download ripped blu-rays (and of course don't burn them, since I don't have a blu-ray burner.

Yet I am thrilled by this news. Why? How does it effect me? I've never played a blu-ray dics, legit or otherwise in my life and never will... so why do I care?

BECAUSE. There is a trend to remove rights from people, to get people to pay multiple times for the same content (the head of the RIAA even admitted in a 1980s interview that they were aiming towards a play-per-play model)

They create artificial scarcity through region codes and corrupt legislation to allow them to sell a product which costs a fraction of a percent of what it used to cost to "manufacture & distribute" while using law & restrictions to force people into paying essentially HIGHER prices for it - and the end product actually has less tangible value and "permanence" than what came before.

All because they determined that there would be higher profits in this business model - but it's an unnatural business model that is illogical and would not WORK, without them purchasing laws to FORCE people to adhere to it.

This is immoral and corrupt, and would never stand in a true free market or for that matter in a socialist one either... can ONLY exist in a corrupted "democracy" and would require draconian police powers to enforce.

This is a blow against that. This is a blow against a propped-up failed business model.

More like this and eventually they will have to figure out a LEGITIMATE business model, or die.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[Jafafa Hots]

Oh incidentally, re: region codes - this is particularly slimy.

They take advantage of the "global market" to reduce their costs and increase their profits by offshoring production to a society where wages are less, then shipping their product to a society where they can charge more. Using region codes, they prevent their customers from doing the SAME THING.

The customer is NOT allowed to take advantage of the global market by "outsourcing" THEIR suppliers of media by ordering from a different, cheaper region.

This is the ultimate in hypocrisy, this is the ultimate FUCK YOU to their own consumers - we'll deprive YOU of the jobs making your own consumer items, not shit you can do about it - we'll charge you the same as if they WERE made locally, not shit you can do about it... and we'll prevent YOU from going offshore to get the same benefit we do.

I can't think of a much sleazier business practice.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[HungryHobo]

You know I sometimes wonder if the world would be a richer or poorer place without copyright, pleanty of things would be different certainly and those who make their money from the current system will of course tell you the world would be a poorer worse off world for it.

It's almost taken as a given that the world would have less creativity without copyright but I do wonder.

If the chef at your local restaurant had to pay royalties whenever he used a recipe published by a celebrity chef would you have a tastier and more enjoyable meal?
What if he risked being sued into the ground if he created a derivative work by altering the recipe slightly without a liscence?
or would you just have a more bland, unoriginal, uninspired and ultimately vastly more expensive meal.

If your hairdresser had to pay royalties whenever some kid comes in with a magazine picture and says they want their hair to "look like that".
Would everyone have far more interesting hairstyles or would it just cost far more and see people getting sued for doing their own hair at home in a copyrighted style?

Both these things are creative and also involve a skill much like storytelling or playing a musical instrument and in both cases I've heard of people trying to get copyright protections extended to cover them.

Imagine a world where in the 17th century someone had decided that recipes and cooking should fall under copyright along with books.
You can be sure that were someone to call for it's repeal 300 years later there'd be no lack of "professional recipe composers" who would talk about how much work they put into working out new recipes and the time and effort it takes and how we're bad people for implying that they haven't worked hard and that they somehow don't deserve a cut whenever someone follows their recipies.

of course in a world where we're all free to take someone elses recipe, use it, copy it, publish it or even claim it as our own we know very well that fuck all harm has been done to the industry for the lack of legal protection on such creativity.
We live in a world where everyone has family recipes but hardly anyone has family music.

In a world where such legal protections existed and nobody ever knew such an open and unprotected situation as we have in this world it would be very easy to claim that there would be no creativity, no well paid chefs and that setting up a kitchen would be pointless since someone else would just copy the chefs recipes.

Similarly it's taken almost as a given that the world would have less good books, less good stories and less without copyright but try questioning that even for a moment.

Of course no someone is going to complain that composing and cooking a good meal can't be compared to composing and playing a good piece of music because..... well just because!

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[Osgeld]

wow so your closed group of friends are pirates SO that should ruin the rights of every legit customer on the face of the planet. Thanks for clearing that up!

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[MrNaz]

If the law is so out of sync with reality that everybody find adherence to be too difficult to do, or too invasive to want to abide by, then isn't that an indication that the law is out of sync with reality?

The purpose of art is not the enrichment of media companies, but the recognition of artists. If the entire system requires the militant enforcement of government in order to prop it up because people cannot or will not play by its rules, then in my books, the entire system is the problem, not the people.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[tftp]

I would be very hard-pressed to name even one person that I personally know who has never downloaded a movie, a song, or a game that they did not buy.

What if the movie, the song or the game were so awfully bad that the pirate wasn't even able (or willing) to consume the material? Why should he buy it?

A close analogy is a book store. You walk in, pick a book and start reading. If after a few pages you discover that a hard sci-fi that you were after is, in reality, a pink romance that some other reader put onto the wrong shelf ... you just put the book back on the shelf and walk away. The store won't charge you for the book or even for a part of it. The charge comes only if you decide to keep the book.

One may argue that in some traditional sales one the content is sold it won't be taken back (you buy a movie ticket, and that's it - even if you hated the movie.) But in many other traditional sales the content will be taken back - books and games are certainly in this class, movies are available for sampling through trailers, and songs can be heard on radio and in stores before you buy them.

There is also a situation with games when you buy a game and it is unplayable for one reason or another. It may not work on your PC, or it may require dexterity of a 5 y/o child on the PS3, or (like some GTA games) it may require insanely complicated, one-shot-only sequences (everyone raise your hands who remember the RC helicopter with demolition charges) that take 30 minutes to play through with no save and with thousand ways to screw up. If the game was downloaded for free it can be justly tossed, and the developer shouldn't be entitled to any money for producing such a horrible episode without a way to skip it. The dance sequence in GTA San Andreas is another example; was Rockstar totally insane by insisting that only people with a kind of a musical talent should be allowed to proceed through the game?

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[Eivind]

Yes you did. You did -not- purchase the copyright, true. But you *did* purchase a single copy of the content. For you to do as you please with, within the constraints of copyright law. Like the name says "copy"-right, the main right authors retain is the right to make COPIES. (there's also public performance, and some other stuff like the right to be recognized as author)

But though there are certain restrictions on what you can do with the content, that single copy IS yours. You can sell it. You can shred it. You can (in most jurisdictions anyway) format or timeshift it. You can even, (again in many jurisdictions, the world isn't totally homogenous) make a limited number of copies for friends and family, or for purposes such as backup.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[dhalgren]

You can stick them in the esophagus. You give them a ballpoint tracheotomy.

Esophagus? If I ever need an emergency tracheotomy, please be far, far away from me at the time.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[dhalgren]

Wrong--it's a tool with two uses: copyright violation, and copyright protection. The buyer is also granted certain rights under copyright law. DRM seeks to prevent those rights from being exercised.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[wizrd_nml]

I hate posts with selectively capitalized words. It's so jarring. Really breaks up the the thought you're trying to convey.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[arivanov]

Not surprising if it takes more effort to buy and use than to get a pirated copy.

Amazon MP3 has done more for weeding out music piracy than all XPAA efforts combined.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[Jafafa Hots]

I am TRULY SORRY.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[xtracto]

I think that in a world without Copyright (and the like) the only think we would not have is the crap copyrightable stuff (e.g., Britney Spears, Eminem, etc...) mainly because such media is only famous due to its heavy marketing and not its quality.

For example (borrowing from your analogy) how many really bad recipes do you know that are famous? I know none (except the ones for food I don't like) and I have lived in 3 countries, traveled to more than 12 and I like gastronomy.

The interesting thing is, I am sure in 200 years people we look back at our time and will see efforts like PirateBay, RlsLog, Gigapedia, the Scene, etc as the "good guys" who made a very strong effort to share our culture. In the same way we see Kings,Queens and Fathers of ancient empires who either wanted to have control of information or encouraged its dissemination.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[spazzmo]

Bingo. Any discussion like this on slashdot is riddled with coporate shills, shrieking on about evil pirates and THEFT.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[spazzmo]

This quotes sums up the morals of the entertainment "industry": If Coca-Cola accidentally created 100 million cans of faulty Coke, you know for sure the entire 100 million cans would be dropped in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, without a second thought and irrespective of what that did to the year's profits. What do we do with a crappy movie? We double its advertising budget and hope for a big opening weekend. What have we done for the audience as they walk out of the cinema? We've alienated them. We've sold audiences a piece of junk; we just took twelve dollars away from a couple and we think we've done ourselves no long-term damage. — David Puttnam, movie producer; GQ magazine, April 1987

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[KlaymenDK]

I would be very hard-pressed to name even one person that I personally know who has never done anything criminal. It is arguably part of growing up.

Personally, I have never shoplifted or stolen a bike, but I'm absolutely positive that I have, during the years, done a number of things that weren't exactly legal. Now, however, I am (in the view of my friends) almost painfully legit. I can say that I do not own a single piece of software, prose, film, or music that I did not obtain legally. That means free software, public domain e-books and store-bought paperbacks, tv-recorded shows or store-bought dvd's, and store-bought cd's (I like to have the covers, even if I rip them to flac first thing).

I would think that the majority of the media of the majority of the population is legal. Further, I concede that I also expect the majority of the population to possess a minor amount of illegally obtained media.

Therefore, I believe your statement that "most people [are] pirates" is false, and that it is fair to circumvent arrangements that clearly punish the wrong people (a perfect example being the (otherwise) unskippable "do not copy this dvd" message).

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[mr_mischief]

It's generally easy to crack games to play for free, but people buy them because they think they have value.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[The Wild Norseman]

You need intensive psychiatric treatment.

You might want to be careful of this particular AC; he might just turn your pseudonym into your reality.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[PeterBrett]

And "retailers" like the Pirate Bay don't charge for the service (they make their money from ads) so they facilitate people's instinct to get something for nothing, and make millions doing it.

I don't think there's actually been any evidence published other than "the media companies say so" for the supposed "millions" that The Pirate Bay has earned, has there?

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[wvmarle]

You would be hard pressed to not even find a PERSON who hasn't put in an attempt to change the law in his/her favour - as that's what elections are about. At least I for one when I have the chance to vote will vote for a person/party that wants laws to work in the same way I want it to.

The goal is the same, just the process is a bit different.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[MadKeithV]

Car analogy time:
Pretty much anyone I know who has a car and a driver's license has speeded at least once. You can't even pretend that most drivers have speeded, and a lot do so regularly.


I don't see the world or even the car industry clamoring for speed-limited cars though. The speed limit is different in different places because sometimes circumstances allow more or less. So far, it's been more than enough to say "you can't go faster than X here" and do a few spot checks.

For software and music/movies there isn't even a legal requirement. And yet people just put up with it? I don't see the world falling over themselves to buy cars that are limited at the lowest possible speed limit (which is like 5MPH).

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[h4rm0ny]

GP wasn't attempting to hype up piracy. He was attempting to legitimise it with the "everybody does it" argument. Which he is unable to support with statistics, incidentally. The media we enjoy is funded by those of us who pay for it. The freeloaders do nothing but live off other people.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[h4rm0ny]

It's almost taken as a given that the world would have less creativity without copyright but I do wonder.

I think that's a strawman. I don't think anyone is arguing that there would be less creativity, or else you've really picked the wrong word for what you mean. Ideas flow. What copyright does is enable people (whether the producer(s) directly or an organisation such as a company) to invest effort in bringing that creativity to its limits. Your recipe analogy is a very bad one. It's instructions for how to do something. (And no, that's not the same as software). Writing a novel takes a long time and is a lot of work. Producing a movie, even a cheap one, takes much more money than most individuals have to spare. Leaving aside why should anyone put all that effort or money in to bring a concept to fruition, you can't even solve the how if people aren't willing to commit to paying for viewing / listening to / reading the final work.

Of course no someone is going to complain that composing and cooking a good meal can't be compared to composing and playing a good piece of music because..... well just because!

No, we'll point out that it's a naff comparison. The analogue to someone pirating music is not that person saying: "hey, I like Lady GaGa's new song. Let's also rent a studio, arrange the musicians, record it and mix it". And you must know this.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[LambdaWolf]

The customer is NOT allowed to take advantage of the global market by "outsourcing" THEIR suppliers of media by ordering from a different, cheaper region.

And if you've ever bought used textbooks on the Internet, you'll probably quickly discover what a sweet discount you can get when the global market stays global for you. I've bought plenty of (English-language) textbooks that were originally sold to the Indian subcontinent; they're exactly the same between the covers as the American editions but priced quite differently, and you can often save some good money. (Competitive pricing keeps the prices all pretty much the same, but the foreign editions are often the cheapest, sometimes by as much as $10-$20. And I'd have to guess that they pull down the prices of the other editions.)

The catch is that there's a small but visible red box announcing that the book was for such-and-such countries and that any sale outside those countries is "UNAUTHORIZED"—which is true, but it refers to the publishers' contracts with their own retailers. They indeed do not authorize secondhand sale to the U.S., but that doesn't make it the least bit illegal or unethical. (They also don't authorize me to scribble in the margin or dip the book in peanut butter or whatever, but who's asking their permission? After the publisher sells the book to a contract-bound vendor, who sells it to a private citizen, the publisher's power to authorize anything is null.) But they sure as hell don't mind letting some Westerner assume that they'd be buying stolen property, so they're no clearer than they need to be about whether such an "UNAUTHORIZED" sale is actually dishonest.

The parent poster is absolutely right about what the region codes do: divide the market into pieces where each one can be charged a different price, while keeping the pieces from trading with each other and benefiting from a free secondary market as I did with my books. To criminalize breaking the codes has no purpose other than to help publishers make more money in a sickeningly anti-capitalistic way. Good for whoever cracked the codes: they've done something for the little guy and his ability to buy and sell his own property like a capitalist. (And perhaps you thought that "capitalist" always meant "pro-corporation"...)

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[L4t3r4lu5]

he's a nerd, not a doctor

You missed a pristine opportunity for a "For God sake's, Jim..." joke.

Nerd card please.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[Mathinker]

Writing a novel takes a long time and is a lot of work. Producing a movie, even a cheap one, takes much more money than most individuals have to spare. Leaving aside why should anyone put all that effort or money in to bring a concept to fruition, you can't even solve the how if people aren't willing to commit to paying for viewing / listening to / reading the final work.

Frankly, I'm sure that if Paulo Coelho publicized that because copyright no longer exists he needs his fans to finance the writing of his next book, he'd manage to raise enough money to get by. And some people would still pay him for his works. I'm not sure how much more of less money he'd raise this way, than he raises now, however. Independent movie developers would probably be releasing short clips of the beginning of their movie on places like YouTube and gathering contributions to finance the rest of project.

Yes, as the GP already stated, things would be different. Very different. For example, the minute CreativeGuyNo1 releases the first chapter of his book, there would be nothing preventing CreativeGuyNo2 from publishing a competing second chapter, trying to steal away the audience from CreativeGuyNo1. People would probably coin new words for concepts like "creator who released a good teaser but never actually paid back anything for the flood of money he got to continue" and "someone who is great at polishing the great ideas of others but has few original ideas of his own".

Personally, I think it would be ideal if there would be some kind of compromise --- say about 20 years of protection, with little punishment for not-for-profit infringement (the definition of profit not including receiving other copyrighted works). Unfortunately, I don't have billions of dollars of income out of which to allocate funding for lobbyists. So the chance I'll see it in my lifetime is minuscule.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[imakemusic]

For God's sake, Jim. He's a doctor not a nerd.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[taff^2]

In the example of a chef "copying" another chefs recipe, you're right in that the world would be a worse place if we couldn't use one anothers recipes. It was also be ridiculous to think that a hairdresser could "copy" another persons hairstyle because it had been copyrighted. The difference here is that the copied recipe and the copied haircuts are not copies, but attempts at imitation. The amount of work required of an individual to produce the imitation would be approximately equal to the work put in by the original creator. This is not the case when you copy a film or album.

The distribution companies have invested heavily in coming up with ways to make the duplication of a single recording as easy as possible for themselves in order to spend less effort duplicating and more money distributing. The problem lies in the fact that when we as consumers buy a copy of that media, we are not buying the content itself, but the distribution media it comes on along with a right to enjoy the content it contains.

The "Media" industry (and really, they should be called the "Content Distribution" industry) want us to buy more "Media" containing the same content as previous "Media" we have purchased. Having once paid for the right to enjoy that content, why the fuck should we as individuals be forced to pay to enjoy that same content again and again, when it's plain to see that by doing so, we are not supporting the people that create the content, but only those who profit by copying and distributing it. They are the fucking pirates! And they don't like it when someone muscles in on their turf. Fuck 'em!

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[h4rm0ny]

No, you have it backwards. It's the media producers who live off other people.

Yep. Just the other day, a "media producer" came to my home and ate all my food. Sarcastic? Yes, a little. But providing me with something that I want in exchange for an agreed price is not "living off me". If someone publishes a book or releases a movie and says they're selling it for X amount of money, that's my choice. Are they offering me something I think is worth X money, yes or no. If yes, I buy it. If no, I don't. If that's living off other people, then so is pretty much any job, and many much more so than the "media producer".

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?

Wow. That's some dramatic prose in defense of taking for free what others who paid to produce. It's pirates "who don't want to accept the market as it exists" as they are the ones bypassing the market and setting their own conditions on others without that party's agreement. A "market" is agreed exchange. If author Jane offers her work for amount X, that imposes nothing on you. You are free to negotiate or walk away, and that is the market. If some freeloader says to Jane: you have no ability to negotiate with me - I'm taking this and there's nothing you can do about it, then that meets your flowery language of "imposing their own rules" does it not? That meets your definition of "living off them without effort" does it not?

We owe them nothing.

Someone produces a book, movie, song, game that you enjoy and you say you "owe them nothing".

to encourage these lazy persons to produce our music

The "lazy persons produce our music", eh? You see no contradiction in that sentence? You condemn as lazy people who write novels, record albums, film movies, develop games. You have no conception of how much work or expense any of these things involve, clearly. If it's so trivial, and you're so not lazy, why don't you make your own novels, albums, movies and games? Surely not because that would require effort / money / expertise.

but they have abused our trust and taken it to the extreme.

How, in precise words, has someone abused your trust? Because I've always been under the impression that movies / novels / music / games, were being sold to me. I was never "trusting" that these things were all being thrust into my hands for free only to suddenly find that my trust was broken because someone asked for money as I left the shop or clicked the "Confirm Order" button.

They deserve no pity. The problem is not solved by forcing the population to spend all their extra money on copies of bits

Yes. They are demons, irrevocably damned. We must not pity people who spend their time or money on producing things.

The problem is not solved by forcing the population to spend all their extra money on copies of bits.

Disingenuous in the extreme. When was the last time anyone forced you to spend your money on a movie or TV show or a novel or whatever? Really - when were you forced to spend this money?

It is solved by introducing sane copyright law, that brings balance back into the game.

After the illogical, unsupported and self-contradicting post you just made, you have as much right to talk about "sane" as King Herod does to talk about "child care"

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[Bing Tsher E]

No, you're just using a crutch (caps lock) to dress up your prose. Here's a tip: when people use 'tricks' to add emphasis, it detracts from the quality of their arguement.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[mcgrew]

The difference here is that the copied recipe and the copied haircuts are not copies, but attempts at imitation.

Yet bars the hire cover bands have to pay ASCAP for the music the songwriter wrote, despite the fact that the cover band's version is derivative and an "imitation".

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[StikyPad]

No, it's primarily a tool. How you use it is up to the user.

Much like a gun is a tool. You can use it for target practice, hunting, home defense - and murder. The tool doesn't get to decide how it is used. The user does. The tool is blameless.

Much like a fully automatic weapon. Much like an atomic bomb. Much like lockpicks.

Tools can be and are regulated based on their *primary* function, regardless of whether there are other, legitimate uses. This holds true for both physical objects and intangibles like software.

Now, you could go on to argue that the primary use of a firearm is to kill, which is true, but it's also the only tool that's specifically addressed by the U.S. Constitution, which makes it a unique case, and is probably the sole reason it's still legal to own one.

Re:Weve seen that argument before

[Jafafa Hots]

I was following you right up until you put the word tricks in single quotes. Then you lost me, trying to be all fancy like that.

Use how you want to

[microbox]

There is not a chance in hell that I'd buy a blu-ray unless I could store and back-up the contents on a regular media server. I hate all those little plastic boxes, and I also hate the anti-piracy messages and studio branding.

Net result: I've found better things to do with my time.

This is the universal hack.

[anUnhandledException]

All digital content ultimately ends up as an HDMI stream protected by HDCP.

With HDCP compromised that stream can eventually be captured. All that needs to happens is for a company to make a NON-HDCP compliant capture card which just happens to be easily flashable. Think they might end up selling a lot of those? Think some companies in asia would be willing to make that "mistake".

This goes beyond Bluray. Want to get HD quality capture of your favorite HBO show, or maybe some first -release movie rentals (movies rented while still in theaters)?

Everything ends up as an HDMI stream protected by HDMI

The claim that it would be too much bandwidth or too large is just silly.

1920 x 1080 x 24 bits per pixel x 24 fps = 145MB/sec. Fast but not beyond a RAID.
120 minutes of 1080p 24fps uncompressed is roughly a terrabyte. Large but once again not beyond current disk systems.

1) capture the stream
2) dump it to disc
3) re encode with a good multi pass encoder to any format, size, resolution, and bitrate you want.

While not 1:1 it can be virtually indistinguishable from the original.

Sure hacking the compressed copy makes duplication easier and faster but the media protection is always changing. This is the unversal hack. If it is video it can now be captured *nearly* perfectly.

Re:This is the universal hack.

[Impeesa]

All digital content ultimately ends up as an HDMI stream protected by HDCP.

With HDCP compromised that stream can eventually be captured. All that needs to happens is for a company to make a NON-HDCP compliant capture card which just happens to be easily flashable. Think they might end up selling a lot of those? Think some companies in asia would be willing to make that "mistake".

Kind of funny, when you think about it. Used to be that the shady Chinese knockoffs were the less useful hardware, because they wouldn't go to the extra effort to make them work right. Now, it's easy to conceive a scenario in which the cheap stuff is the most functional, because they won't go to the extra effort to properly break them.

Re:This is the universal hack.

[Jiro]

Used to be that the shady Chinese knockoffs were the less useful hardware, because they wouldn't go to the extra effort to make them work right. Now, it's easy to conceive a scenario in which the cheap stuff is the most functional, because they won't go to the extra effort to properly break them.

This has long since been true for DVDs just because of region coding. Cheap Chinese manufacturers think nothing of hiding a secret menu or option which lets you make your player region-free.

Re:This is the universal hack.

[TheGratefulNet]

google the 'rigol scope hack'. a chinese oscilloscope that can be firmware hacked (with linux/usb serial driver and a usb cable - that's all!) to run at 2x its speed. instead of a 50mhz scope, you get a 100mhz one.

many people believe the chinese company, itself, disclosed that hack in order to sell more of its scopes. it never 'fixed' the bug and its still do-able (I have one, of course).

lets hope that some chinese vendor leave some menu in their product and that that unit becomes a nice 'embedded break-it board' for the world.

No not so much

[Sycraft-fu]

They've already had trouble selling HD technology. Were they to just invalidate everything and declare you had to buy new stuff this would not only lead to lawsuits, but just difficulty on the consumer market. If someone already has their TV and Blu-ray player they aren't going to rush out and buy a new one. The content producres will release for what people have, or they'll get no business, thus they'll keep making older formats.

You might notice that DVDs aren't gone, nor for that matter are CDs. The media industry loved the DVD-Audio idea because they had better protection (CPPM) and of course CDs had none. Problem was they couldn't move DVD-A players. Very few people outside of audiophiles bought them. As such the content kept being produced for CD because it was that or have almost no sales.

As I said, Blu-ray is proving to be somewhat of a hard sell as it is, since all it offers is a better picture (DVD offered a ton of better features). If they just said "Nope, you have to buy all new hardware," it would be a total non-starter. People wouldn't buy the HDCP2 players, since they'd have HDCP1 TVs and they'd want them to work. Thus electronics companies wouldn't be interested in selling HDCP2 players. Since people wouldn't have HDCP2 players, you couldn't make discs require HDCP2 or nobody could play them.

Things can be forced on consumers only in certain circumstances. All the encryption on Blu-ray worked because nobody really noticed, it was just a part of the format. Likewise HDCP wasn't something most people encountered problems with only the early adopters got fucked. However you now have a massive installed base of HDCP TVs, and growing every day. Try to screw that over and it just won't work. Your shit won't sell and if it won't sell, companies will stop making it.

Re:No not so much

[wampus]

Yes, this is all true. This is also slashdot, so I needed to karma whore to make up for expressing a Microsoft neutral point of view. A DRM consipiracy theory seemed likely enough to garner upvotes. Reverse trolling, if you will.

well thats that then

[saiha]

Just like digital audio and DVDs, Blu-ray will no longer be a profitable media.

Re:well thats that then

[Locke2005]

Right. The motion picture industry is now doomed to quickly go bankrupt and shut down, just like the fashion industry, which has no copyright protection whatsoever, did. Oh wait...

Re:Captive market.

[Darkness404]

He isn't a Libertarian, real libertarians either believe in A) Incredibly limited copyright or B) No copyright. For example, see the Ludwig Von Mises article (http://mises.org/daily/4575) because property by nature is scarce and not unlimited.

Interesting

[dcposch]

It seems to me that many media companies are in denial about a simple fact--you can't share a secret with a million people and expect them to keep it.

Want to send your account password to your bank? One sender, one trusted recipient, and a world of potential eavesdroppers. That's a problem crypto can solve.

But if the final destination of your precious content is every Joe's TV, iPod, and computer screen, any "encryption" you have between here and there is fundamentally futile. It only takes one of those Joes to start seeding it on BitTorrent, and the more annoying you try make the DRM, the more likely people will be to simply use that as their source instead of paying you.

Besides, after all that work designing and implementing a complex DRM scheme, every single frame of that movie you just sold me is gonna be rendered to my computer's framebuffer. Which gets sent to the display driver. Which is... drumroll... whatever I felt like installing. In theory, I can make my own driver that writes an AVI. So even in theory, DRM is broken.

It's the same kind of denial that leads companies to think streaming video is meaningfully different from just giving me a file to download. If you're sending the bits to my computer, you cannot possibly control what I subsequently do with them.

IMO, the RIAA could make so much more money if they just accepted filesharing as fact and focused on monetizing it. They should look at the bright side--way more people are listening to way more music now than they did back in the day when songs came in plastic cartridges and brick-sized Walkmen roamed the earth. Organize some shows. Sell some merchandise. Sell me a DVD that has awesome-quality 24K soundfiles on it. Get your song on the next Rock Band.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Lollapalooza 2010. It was awesome, worth every penny of the $180 I paid. How did I decide to go? I found a bunch of the lesser-known artists on Youtube, and liked what I saw. They earned their cash. The record execs, trying to prop an obsolete business model with lawsuits, did not.

Am I missing something?

[falken0905]

The fine folks at Slysoft have had HD/BD ripping capability in their AnyDVD-HD product for quite some time. If the object is simply to be able to rip your Blu-Rays to hard drive, why is this key such a big deal? Or, do some users have other reasons that actually involve the data stream between the player/device and their display? Or, maybe I mis-understand the whole thing.

Re:Am I missing something?

[Darkness404]

Because I think it simply used leaked keys that would then be revoked, rather than this key which is permanent and can't be changed.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Chinese Player

[aepervius]

Chinese player will care, and will be able to CHURN out *CHEAP* Blue ray player and undercu5t the big boy which paid their license. Some country might restrict the import, but you know as well as me that they will fight a losing battle as people will find way to buy those in neighbor lands and import them illegally.

So. Yeah. Putting the code in a chip is what is the immediate danger for the big player, not the oft cited "copyer" which bit torrent stuff.

Why confirm?

[Loconut1389]

What I don't understand, and maybe this has been answered already, is why did intel even confirm this? What did they stand to gain? People will confirm this on their own, confirmation by intel only speeds things along to HDCP++ or something doesn't it?

Side Effect

[tabdelgawad]

Perhaps they can now stop worrying about plugging the analog hole.

Hear that sound?

[goodmanj]

Somewhere, right now, in a corporate office somewhere, the wrong heads are rolling.

"Content Protection" ONLY screws with licensees

[scrib]

Content protection ONLY "screws" people who have the content legitimately.
A copyright violator isn't "screwed" by not having access to something they haven't got the right to. The only people who can get screwed are the people who parted with money and may be unable to use the product in a legal, desired way.

Once it gets past the paying customers, the content protection has been removed anyway.
(By the way, I originally wrote "owners" in the title but corrected myself...)

People seem to think this was done for Piracy

[MassacrE]

People seem to think that this was done for piracy, or done by extraordinarily clever hackers through a lot of time and pain.

Thats all bunk. The whole reason people hack these master keys is to sell a butt-load of t-shirts.

Re:People seem to think this was done for Piracy

[muphin]

"I cracked the HDCP Encryption
and all I got was this lousy shirt"

Shall we have a little poll?

[Hognoxious]

And you have no idea how easy it is to teach a three year old how to handle a DVD properly.

Let's have a little poll. Who believes the above was written by a parent?

Re:Shall we have a little poll?

[mcgrew]

Well, I clicked the link under your comment that said "parent" and his comment popped up ;)

Clueless about what HDCP does

[gnasher719]

It seems these guys don't know what HDCP actually does.

With the HDCP master key, one can build hardware that decrypts HDCP encrypted signals (that is the easy and well documented part) and is accepted by the HDCP encoder on the other side (that is the hard part). You still need rather sophisticated hardware. Not that easily built by your average software hacker.

That in turn allows you to record the signal coming out of your video card or Bluray player. That's about 200 MB per second. I don't have any hardware lying around that can record the output of a DVI card for two hours and neither does your average slashdot poster.

So this doesn't allow _you_ to backup your Blu ray discs. It will allow some rather sophisticated pirate organisation to pirate Blu ray discs, and they will produce Blu ray discs that again you cannot copy. So you as the end user won't gain anything from this.

Okay

[ledow]

Right, now all I need is for someone to build a complete HDCP stripper, emulate/strip BD+ completely, supply cheap BD-R/RW drives and media, give me a few cheap HDMI cables, a new "HD-ready" TV, and a free voucher for the BluRay version of every movie that I already "own" on DVD and I'm ready to join the HD era.

Hell, I still can't see the extra pixels at my comfortable viewing distance (so I "must be blind"), but I have to get with technology apparently. Apparently my 1440x900x32-bit display, fed via a VGA cable, or SCART, or composite, is "obsolete" and not as good quality as me having a digital cable, despite decades of viewing to the contrary. Apparently being able to watch *anything*, not having to worry about where I bought the disk, not having to fight with new cabling that does a lesser job of simply putting some images on my screen, and being able to backup all my movies is "old-hat". Oh, and I have to pay an extra X amount per month, plus new decoder hardware, in order for them to send me a slightly higher quality signal down my aerial/satellite dish/cable. In the case of FreeView, that means second-generation hardware too. Not wanting that apparently makes me "cheap".

I don't own Blu-ray hardware, don't own "HD ready" kit, and I don't miss it. My normal computer monitors have been "HD" for decades, you just want to add fancy definitions and restrictions so that it's "Movie Industry HD" instead of "HD". When you solve these problems, you'll see the boom in HD adoption that you are desperately hoping for.

Movie companies: The deal in the past was always "I give you about £20, you let me watch that movie wherever I take the disc/tape, on whatever hardware I want, and I promise not to copy it". That sufficed for about 40 years. If you're not willing to keep up your end of the bargain any more, then I won't keep up mine. My morals and job require me not to break the last promise, so I just won't give you the £20 (which is creeping closer to £40 now) OR watch your movie. Deal? Last time I went to the cinema was over a year ago, and that was because I was passing, was bored, was with someone and we needed to fill a few hours until the restaurant opened. The movie we saw was a heap of crap but wasted a few hours. I can't even *name* any movies that come out in 2010. I don't feel I've missed out, though.

breaks HDCP, not AACS

[AceJohnny]

People are confusing this master key that breaks HDCP, saying it can help decrypt Blu-Ray discs. That's not the case: Blu-Ray is encrypted with AACS, which has a similar concept of device keys derived by a master key. AACS has a mechanism of revoking compromised device keys. Getting the AACS master key would bypass that mechanism, and would be great news.

This key isn't the AACS master key This is an HDCP key, which would allow one to create a "unauthorized" device that can connect to HDCP-encrypted HDMI and succesfully decrypt the HD stream.

HDCP has been known to be nearly broken since 2001, in that obtaining the device keys of 40-50 devices is enough to calculate the master key.

Re:Why confirm? Two words: British Petroleum

[DrJimbo]

Intel is manning up and admitting that something terrible just happened. It is the smart thing to do. If they had hemmed and hawed and delayed admitting the key was genuine then all their customers who had bought in on this DRM scheme would have gotten pissed off and felt jerked around.

Look at the metric shitload of bad press BP got when they tried to lie and evade regarding their recent oil leak. I believe the people responsible for that are no longer with the company.

It is interesting that someone would question why on Earth Intel would step up and do the right thing that will be best for the company in the coming weeks and months. I think this is because we have come to expect large corporations to act with all the integrity and intelligence of a retarded dinosaur after it has had its brains knocked out by a piece of asteroid shrapnel. Apparently real engineers continue to work at Intel and for some unknown reason, at least one of was placed in a position of authority.

Re:Yes there is. And that government action requir

[Curien]

>But your work in someone else's hands, given validly cannot.

>Unless government get involved in what you do with your stuff in your home in private.

In your fantasy world, if I lend my buddy a lawnmower and he never gives it back, I should have no legal recourse.

Cost per region

[Half-pint HAL]

Once we start talking about parallel imports, we have a problem. Intellectual property is only as valuable as the customer is willing to pay. But at the same time, it has base costs. If we talk about academic textbooks, the customer in India, Kenya or Peru is not willing or capable of paying as much as the customer in the US or the UK. So we cut the price in their region so that they can afford it, and this gives them access to education. If import protections didn't exist, the publishers would have a straight choice between losing their developed-world profits by selling at developing-world rates, or losing their developing-world profits by selling at developed-world rates. The big money's in the developed word, so if we were to ban import protection on IP works, education in the developing world would suffer.

Of course, the opposite is true in the case of Hollywood cr*p -- if that wasn't available, education would improve, but you've got to take the rough with the smooth.

HAL.

Re:Cost per region

[Half-pint HAL]

Well I'm not from the USA, so...

Anyway, the reason us in the western world are so rich is that we have enslaved other countries by military might (in colonial times) and by exploitative contracts backed by bribes or threats (in modern times). We make ourselves rich by making others poor. Our cheap consumer goods are only possible by making sure that their wages stay inhumanly low.

What you consider protection of jobs is merely the continuance of economic suppression.

Or in simpler words, greed and exploitation.

HAL.

I rip to get rid of unwanted content.

[maillemaker]

I don't have a blue-ray player yet, so this is just about DVDs for me.

I rip the DVDs I own because so many of the DVDs are filled with tons of crap that frequently you are not allowed to skip through or over. Commercials. FBI warnings. And frequently, many of the main menus are actually a little animated "movie" before it "solidifies" into the actual menu, and you have to wait for it to finish doing its song and dance before you can hit play.

It's easier to rip the content to a hard drive, and then when I sit down to watch a movie it goes straight to the movie.

Another thing that's great about ripping movies, especially children movies, is I can set up a play list on the computer and let it go all day long for the kids, without having to stop what I'm doing to change out discs.

Before people freak out about the "all day long" we only let our kids watch TV on the weekends, and seldom do they actually watch the TV all day long.

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