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Intel Threatens DMCA Using HDCP Crack
mikesd81 writes "Intel is apparently threatening to use the DMCA against anyone using the HDCP crack under the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. 'There are laws to protect both the intellectual property involved as well as the content that is created and owned by the content providers,' said Tom Waldrop, a spokesman for the company, which developed HDCP. 'Should a circumvention device be created using this information, we and others would avail ourselves, as appropriate, of those remedies.'"
Which would explain why DRM schemes rarely last any significant amount of time...they want people to hack them, so they have a legally binding way to go after them.
Living With a Nerd
What about those people in countries that don't have a DMCA, don't have software patents and have "interoperability" clauses in most things?
Can't I just buy my HDCP stripper from them, instead? Fortunately, that tends to be the same countries that make lots of cheap electronics. Surprising, that, isn't it?
(Not that I care - I don't own a single piece of HD equipment, and don't feel like I'm missing out either)
So if the Library of Congress says jail-breaking is okay, and the DMCA says it's not, which one takes precedence in U.S. law?
(You do not need to point out that this is Slashdot, not a legal firm. I do not expect all responses to be from lawyers. I will not take any responses to be authoritative. Heretofore therefore nonesuch nevertheless notwithstanding and yadda yadda.)
If I understand this correctly, the BD encryption has NOT been cracked. THIS hack only opens the communication over the HDMI cable between the BD player and your TV. Cracking the encryption on the BD disks themselves is another matter that has not yet been fully cracked. However, this exploit should allow reading the digital data flowing out of the BD player to be captured and saved to disk. This might require some hardware hacking, I don't think there are any PCI video cards that have HDMI INPUTS available.
Even if China or someother NON-DMCA country builds such devices they will (eventually) be destroyed by customs and whoever smuggles them into this country will be treated the same as a drug dealer.
The EU version of the DMCA specifically only provides protection for effective encryption measures. So for example the first time the CSS wast taken to the European Court the ruling was that it was not an effective encryption measure and the case was thrown out. The fact that due to flaws in the scheme an ordinary PC can crack the CSS encryption in less than a second makes it ineffective and thus not eligible for protection.
If HDCP simply required gathering 40 public keys from 40 different bits of hardware to work out the master key then it is highly likely that it would be ruled and ineffective encryption measure and thrown out.
Similarly your two bit scheme would also fall foul of the requirement to be effective.
The OpenGraphics project are building a graphics card with a big-ass FPGA on it. Seems like the right tool in the right place...
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
All that has to be done is for a company to make a module with a flashable keyspace. Then the end-user can add the master key to the device themselves, and nobody gets in trouble (unless they start sharing the content).
Unlike DRM which is present within media upon its receipt, HDCP does not exist on a BluRay or cable/satellite TV transmission. HDCP is something that is added by the user's machine. DMCA says:
And since we're talking about a process/treatment that occurs after access, it's not something that is needed to gain access.
Just an idea. (Probably won't work.)
Another tack here, is: how easily can you tell your equipment to use HDCP even when it's not playing DRMed media? Can you have your computer use a HDCP connection to its monitor all the time even when you're surfing Slashdot, typing your great novel, etc. Is this something that is happening all the time, anyway? (I just don't know.) If so -- if non-DRM-colluders can enable HDCP -- then 99.999999% of the time that someone uses a HDCP cracker, they would not be doing to circumvent a technological measure that controls access to a work without the authority of the copyright holder, since the user is the copyright holder. Likewise, the intended market and primary use of such a device, would not be to remove HDCP without the authority of the copyright holder. It would be legal to use and traffick.
(This is why there can never be a real standard for DRM, because you have to prevent non-colluding parties from being allowed to apply that DRM, lest they authorize access.) Cracking HDCP and distributing cracks, is only prohibited if HDCP is normally only used when a copyright holder demands it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Upload it to their completely legal hardware HDMI converter that doesn't decrypt HDCP and has a very easy to write firmware upgrade system.
That depends on its colour.
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