Intel Threatens To Use The DMCA Against Anyone Who Uses The HDCP Crack
from the that'll-win-them-over dept
Well, isn't this nice? Intel, who recently confirmed that the HDCP master key was, in fact, leaked, has also decided that it's going to threaten to sue anyone who makes use of it, under the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. The last gasp effort of those who still want to believe in DRM: after it's cracked, they'll wave the DMCA at you. Perhaps rather than falling back on DMCA threats, Intel could spend its efforts explaining to Hollywood why DRM is a mistake.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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EPIC
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Intel is making DMCA threats to cover its own ass, because its technology has failed at its intended purpose. Of course they saw this coming since the beginning, and this is just to make sure Hollywood doesn't hold them responsible in any way. Standard procedure, I'd say.
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Re:
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figures
And there is one hell of a long list of scoundrels in the US.
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Of course.
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Re:
Blurays use a different encryption that already broken and can be copied freely, the HDCP is just for live streams and such.
But as many have pointed out, is easier to use the own equipment HDCP to do copying, so HDCP broken was not that important to many. It is more of a statement, because in practice it didn't work anyways.
How else would Intel fool the suckers?
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Re:
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Why?
If it is used to generate a key pair, it is the correct, intended use. No circumvention whatsoever.
What am I missing?
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Re: Why?
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Re: Why?
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Re: Eric
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Re: Re: Eric
Unless you want to watch it directly, to which I'm certain someone will make an illegal patch any day now.
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Re: Re: Eric
Sadly it's not even a possible use this is a different part of the scheme. To play a disc on Linux you need to crack the AACS encryption on the disc itself.
What this enables you to do is to make a box that will take HDCP encrypted data from a blu ray player and put that into plain digital video format - allowing it to be recorded on an HD recorder.
Only one person in the world needs to have such a device to enable every Blu-ray that is released to be reformatted in unprotected form and copied across either the internet or sneakernet.
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Re: Re: Eric
NOW that DRM is broken I might finally begin to buy blu-ray discs. Its ironic, but its true. DRM is a disaster and I will not support any product that has unbroken DRM. It now appears that blu-ray (from my perspective) is ok to use.
Intel's being idiotic in its desire to now use the courts to, in my case at least, continue to make me not want to buy blu-ray discs.....
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Re: Re: Re: Eric
As stated earlier its just bluster to get the studios off their back. Intel won't actually bring one case to court.
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Re: Re: Re: Eric
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Re: Blue-Ray vs “Upscaled” DVD
Oh, and “upscaled” is just a marketing term.
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Re: Re: Blue-Ray vs “Upscaled” DVD
If you have references to prove that, you could go edit the Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_scaler
But I have a feeling you don't.
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Put a tax on blank BluRays and be done with it.
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Re:
Most pirated movies go to hard disk, smartphones, iPads, and other devices. Downloadedd movies rarely make it to blueray. You could try taxing all the things it does go to, but a couple of years from now it would be going somewhere else we never thought of. Meanwhile everyone owning a smartphone or hard drive would be paying the tax and piracy would continue unabated.
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Re: Re:
Probably make it worse. If I'm paying for it, I'm damn well going to be using it. My only exception to that rule is car insurance. I hope to never use that.
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No longer efficient
Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection
and effective legal remedies against the circumvention
of effective technological measures that are used
by authors in connection with the exercise of their
rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and
that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are
not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted
by law.
How effective is a protection if everyone knows how to decrypt it?
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Who cares?
For a non-American this means that sooner or later our devices will bypass this form of DRM "out of the box"...devices supporting the DRM will be (are) worth less than devices which just work.
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OHHHHHH canada
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Re: OHHHHHH canada
I agree, many countries around the world don't have the DMCA, but the sword of Damocles called ACTA is hanging above our heads, all because of the greedy asshats from the RIAA and the MPAA.
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I'd be shocked if they didn't
Of course Intel will sue to make sure everyone (or at least all those that can be sued) will continue to be forced to use the Intel-controlled standard and continue to pay Intel license fees. As long as they can do that, whether or not that standard has been cracked is irrelevant to Intel.
Supposed you had a business plan that relied on cracking HDCP. Do you think any VC would fund it knowing that Intel's legal department would come down on you like a duck on a June bug? Not likely.
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Not simple (but not tough)
On the other hand, if some asian company makes a magic box that just lets you connect your blue-ray to any monitor, people will not understand why that is so "bad", and that will make our case even better to "joe-six-pack".
Intel will not be the heavy. They have no standing. Anything they say now is to cover their behinds. They are speaking to their customers, not us.
The only reason Intel is speaking now is because their customers are now "deer-in-the-headlights". Somebody had to say sumptin!
(As you sow, so shall you reap!)
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Re: Not simple (but not tough)
The most likely scenario is a monitor that has HDMI outputs for daisy chaining. It is cheaper if that output doesn't do HDCP - but just sends out unencrypted HDMI data (like my camcorder does).
Having said that - why are we bothering to even discuss this in a world where you can get hold of Slysofts anyDVD - HD software with a couple of mouse clicks?
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software emulation WILL be released.
Most likely it will be written/release from some part of the globe where the DMCA and it's enforcement will be totally useless. Beside which the first adopters of this knowledge do not really care or worry about any stupid laws and their consequences.
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HEHEHHE sue me
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