HDCP (Copy Protection) Revealed  

Big Companies will use this first, then consumers, well they probably never will. The repeater idea and the company who invented it was used by Time Warner Inc. during one of their stock shows a few months back. I remember cuz I saw it during a business trip to NYC. They used live video streamed, but had difficulties with audio, so they went via satellite for that. Overall, the head CEO of the transmitting company expected only to get business from Companies on dedicated lines, etc.. due to technical (cost to rollout) issues.

I can very much understand why the intellectual property middlemen would like this much control over a user's activities. There is a very big push to force this.

Thankfully however it will probably never fly, at least on computers. Even if implemented, the horror stories from early adopters of problems with backups, extra licensing requirements, DirectTV type escaped key cancelations, upgrades, 3rd party support, migrations, false violation accusations, open source problems, etc., would be enough to disgust everyone.

Remember that security on computers is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. A computer designed with no weak links (from the MPAA view) would not otherwise really be very desirable to most people.

- Tom



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As the security people say, its very easy to make a completely secure system. Just don't provide any way for the outside world to interact with it. That somewhat reduces its usefulness, but it is definitely secure.


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Dean Roddey
The CIDLib C++ Frameworks
droddey@charmedquark.com
www.charmedquark.com

On the other hand, the majority of security threats are internal rather than external.

You can certainly get data from a secure system out...on sneakernet if nothing else...

As far as the MPAA goes, nothing is going to stop someone in Asia from breaking the system and bootlegging large quantities of HD material if there's a buck to be made. And it's not likely that this hacked material won't make its way to a Napster of the future...

Nigel

If all this protection actually came into being then it's likely that a pirate using a DV Cam with a close up lens pointed at a small protected screen could sell me a copy that was better than I would be legally allowed to view with my current analog input RPTV.

And by that time I would probably be mad enough that I would buy it too.
http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif

- Tom



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(This sentience has tree errors.)