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

[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

[sjames]

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

[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.

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?

[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.

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

[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?

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

[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. :)

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

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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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"

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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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: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...

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?

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.