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Comment by azalemeth | Hacker News Reader

This is a wonderful example of how deeply ingrained Hollywood is into design cultures. The whole reason for this is to preserve the 'security' of HDCP – an anti-consumer technology at its finest.

Note that, despite this, you can still find basically any movie you want on popular websites – the only people who suffer are paying consumers.

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DRM is a lot more about manufacturers than consumers. This isn't a justification, but rather adding a wider view of the issue.

See the licensing costs here.

    What is the cost for express processing?
    
    $5,000 USD per "Multiplier".
    
    
    What is the smallest number of Device Key sets that can be purchased?
    
    The quantities and prices for key orders are listed below:
    
    Description  Cost (USD)
    HDCP 1.x Transmitter or Receiver Key - Qty of 10,000  $2,000  USD
    HDCP 1.x Transmitter or Receiver Key - Qty of 100,000  $5,000  USD
    HDCP 1.x Transmitter or Receiver Key - Qty of 1,000,000  $10,000  USD
    HDCP 2.x Annual Source Key Fee - Up to 100/year  $500  USD
    HDCP 2.x Annual Source Key Fee - Up to 1K per year  $1,000  USD
    HDCP 2.x Annual Source Key Fee - Up to 10K per year  $2,000  USD
    HDCP 2.x Annual Source Key Fee - Up to 100K per year  $5,000  USD
    HDCP 2.x Annual Source Key Fee - Up to 1M per year  $10,000  USD
    HDCP 2.x Annual Source Key Fee - For quantities over 1M per year  $20,000  USD
    HDCP 2.x Receiver Key - Qty of 10,000  $2,000  USD
    HDCP 2.x Receiver Key - Qty of 100,000  $5,000  USD
    HDCP 2.x Receiver Key - Qty of 1,000,000  $10,000  USD

https://www.digital-cp.com/faqs

Totally, DRM technologies aims to control the distribution, the consumer side is almost irrelevant here.

the DRM industry gets away with it since consumers don't care about openness or libre, they just want to watch videos in hi definition.

What choice do you think consumers have?

Consumers have the choice to pirate. Nay. The moral imperative. Fuck hollywood.

Or watch a lower quality Widevine certified (L3 is easy to reach), or watch linear TV, or circumvent copyright protection such as DeCSS.

Arg!

They have to choice to elect representatives that will legiferate on it, such as the EU with Apple regarding USB-C or app store sideloading.

So should I be voting Democrat or Republican to get that? /s

You should vote to join the EU, maybe it'll work!

Theoretically, "thrown away" votes for the Pirate party would get attention from red and/or blue both if there were enough of them.

Ask for ranked voting so you don't have to throw away your vote.

The licensing costs you list are tiny and irrelevant as a revenue stream, and seem just like something in the ballpark to cover the overhead (legal, etc) of that licensing and distribution. For a manufacturer making a million devices, a literal 1 cent per device is not a major change, and on Hollywood scale collecting a five-figure amount per manufacturer isn't meaningful either.

"digital-cp.com" is kind of an unfortunate domain name.

Heh, yeah. But one form of cp isn't socially accepted at all, while the other one is. The one which is, is much much much easier to find.

Now that I think of it: it (rampant piracy of audio and video) is a great practical example to teens why they should not share pictures of themselves naked. If someone wants to, it gets spread. Even if there's 'copyright protection'. In some circles, Snapchat is seen as seriously private. Which is very ignorant, and has lead to situations like blackmailing and retaliation porn.

My previous company made monitors, and my chinese colleague told me this rumor that some of the mainboard vendors would offer "real" or "fake" HDCP, fake meaning that you could turn the monitor mainboard into a HDCP stripper.

Now I don't know how they could offer this, and I don't know how a new HDCP key is issued when a leaked one is blacklisted. I assume the engineer just didn't care or maybe the key was already old.

HDCP is broken so thoroughly that keys don't matter any more, and revoking them would break hardware on a scale that would put the F00F bug remediation cost to shame.

Can't say FOOF without thinking about: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

Undoubtedly the whole HDMI implementation will be unlicensed, and they will be using the master key that's been leaked since 2010.

There are reportedly lots of HDMI "splitters" that defeat HDCP too.

Some HDMI splitters commonly sold online are reportedly capable of stripping HDCP protection. I could never verify that, so I cannot point to a specific model, but a simple search seems to confirm that.

They do, I got one for an old TV (I say old, it had hdmi) when a new Amazon fire dongle wouldn't work.

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