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Why Linux HDCP Isn't the End of the World (collabora.com)
"There is no reason for the open-source community to worry..." writes Daniel Stone, who heads the graphics team at open-source consultancy Collabora. mfilion quotes Collabora.com:
Recently, Sean Paul from Google's ChromeOS team, submitted a patch series to enable HDCP support for the Intel display driver. HDCP is used to encrypt content over HDMI and DisplayPort links, which can only be decoded by trusted devices... However, if you already run your own code on a free device, HDCP is an irrelevance and does not reduce freedom in any way....
HDCP support is implemented almost entirely in the hardware. Rather than adding a mandatory encryption layer for content, the HDCP kernel support is dormant unless userspace explicitly requests an encrypted link. It then attempts to enable encryption in the hardware and informs userspace of the result. So there's the first out: if you don't want to use HDCP, then don't enable it! The kernel doesn't force anything on an unwilling userspace.... HDCP is only downstream facing: it allows your computer to trust that the device it has been plugged into is trusted by the HDCP certification authority, and nothing more. It does not reduce user freedom, or impose any additional limitations on device usage.
HDCP support is implemented almost entirely in the hardware. Rather than adding a mandatory encryption layer for content, the HDCP kernel support is dormant unless userspace explicitly requests an encrypted link. It then attempts to enable encryption in the hardware and informs userspace of the result. So there's the first out: if you don't want to use HDCP, then don't enable it! The kernel doesn't force anything on an unwilling userspace.... HDCP is only downstream facing: it allows your computer to trust that the device it has been plugged into is trusted by the HDCP certification authority, and nothing more. It does not reduce user freedom, or impose any additional limitations on device usage.
When Game of Thrones gets interrupted in the middle because the HDCP checks fail, it takes away my freedom!
Copy protection almost always comes at a cost to usability.
#firstworldproblems
We've seen what Intel's Management Engine did, it made systems less secure while keeping a backdoor to your system open at boot. Now, nothing to concern yourself with here either. No thanks, Intel.
HDCP, like any form of DRM, ends up doing more harm than good to the user. As far as I know from the Windows machines, HDCP is enabled by DVD and Bluray players - probably 4K Netflix too. I cannot think of any other reason to enable HDCP other than licensed multimedia archives. I would not enable HDCP on my computer for most of the typical usage scenarios of any personal computer.
How stupid do you think we are?
DRM does not work. If you doubt this, name for me one piece of copyrighted material HDCP is intended protect that is not already available for piracy online. This cannot be done, therefore, anything I could watch if HDCP is supported, I can already watch without it. So if there's no value-add for the user, and no value-add for the media companies, and it contradicts the open nature which has made Linux so successful in the first place, why should it be included?
The are many problems with this, in no particular order:
1) HDCP imposes restrictions on what users can do with content they've legally purchased. I should be able to record content that I'm sending over an HDMI cable to my TV, but HDCP prevents this.
2) It's an inconvenience to users, while not actually impeding piracy. HDCP encryption has been broken, so it's not secure. There are also some HDMI splitters that can remove HDCP encryption.
3) If HDCP is supported by more systems, it does provide convenience to users. However, many of those users are likely to tolerate HDCP, further allowing DRM to become entrenched.
HDCP stops me from recording the HDMI signal that comes out of my cable box. Most of the channels are protected by setting the CCI flag to copy once, which prevents me from recording them on any software other than Windows Media Center. Were it not for the DRM, it would be completely legal for me to record content through either of those means. If I can easily record the content myself, it takes away the incentive to pirate that content from the internet. I might share the content with friends by giving them copies on flash drives, but small scale piracy has been around at least since the days of VHS. However, it reduces the incentive to participate in large scale piracy like obtaining the content from torrents. I hypothesize that DRM like HDCP actually encourages piracy.
Every single time I've heard the phrase, "...does not reduce freedom in any way...." it ALWAYS turns out to be a lie. The context is almost irrelevant.
It's a red flag- if they're telling you they're "not doing XYZ" or that "XYZ won't affect you", you can usually bet your ass that they are in fact doing "XYZ" and/or it does indeed affect you in some way.
Much like net neutrality- Comcast would never ever throttle your connection or block certain sites, they just want the ability to do so, even though they would never ever do that. But they want to be able to anyway. Hmmm.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
People have replaced perfectly working video connectors/standards (VGA and DVI) with DRM-laden, controlled up the wazoo stuff like HDMI and DisplayPort. People have replaced perfectly working, and safe, boot firmware - BIOS - with shit that is controlled not by the user but by a third party, and it is not safe, and it can be altered from userland (UEFI). People are in the process of replacing a decent if closed-source OS (Windows 7) with an ad-laden, telemetry-laden OS that reboots when uncle Microsoft says so - Windows 10.
It is amazing that people are OK with taking all this crap up the ass and after a while, actually feel happy about it. I am glad there are exceptions, but we are a tiny, insignificant minority.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Please select from one of the following options:
(1) Never Requires Encryption
(2) Accept Encryption / Unencryption
(3) Does not accept Unencrypted Data
the linux kernel - used in the majority of TVs, PVRs, STBs and Android devices - used to be at level (1). it's now moved to level (2). this is the "Green Light" for manufacturers to start producing HDMI devices at level (3). so tell me: in what way does this decision NOT reduce user freedom?
DeCSS let you reclaim the format of DVD. You no longer had to watch DVD content on devices "approved" by the coalition. It broke the power of the distributor to limit the way you or I can consume content.
HDCP is precisely the opposite, handing over control of how and where you watch media to the middleman. Like CSS, HDCP in this case is useless without the specter of the DMCA and other "anti-circumvention" legislation, as you could easily create a side channel in the driver to dump video streams to disk. Unless upstream providers only intend to enable content on devices already locked down with a RIAA rootkit, in which (highly likely) case the code is useless to anyone not already in a strong middleman position with their own custom devices (Google, Verizon, Amazon...)
And you can like the content of the artists, writers, and performers without liking the methods the distributors and investors use to squeeze out every cent of profit they possibly can out of a work, especially when they reduce the average person's control over their own devices.
If the studio requiring HDCP on the output of a PC running a free operating system expects HDCP to be effective, the video will need to be decoded by a non-free executable on the video card in order to keep free software from seeing (and teeing) the cleartext decoded RGB or YCbCr output of the decoder. This is acceptable to some operating system distributors (Debian, Fedora, and the like), because all the non-free stuff happens out of the CPU's address space, but not in any distribution recommended by the GNU project.
and doesn't even provide any beneficial functionality
Well, at a minimum you can use it to test used monitors and determine if they support the feature. So recyclers might have a use case.