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Comment by Sakos | Hacker News Reader

Feels like it's time for governments to get involved. It's not reasonable for a ubiquitous format like HDMI to be restricted like this.

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I agree. It should be illegal to restrict people from making open source implementations of industry standards like this.

I don't expect that to ever happen, of course. But I can dream...

I'm with you in principal, but cleanroom reverse engineering is legal. The issue here is AMD signed the NDA's to read the secret spec and write the code, hence they cant release it.

The solution is to not buy proprietary standards[0], in this case, I'm looking for DisplayPort when I buy... and a big + to AMD for trying.

Hey Intel! Come back!

[0] Pile of comments here pretending it's sooo difficult.

> in this case, I'm looking for DisplayPort when I buy

That's an option if what you are looking for is a normal computer monitor. If you want a big TV then good luck finding one with DP, especially if you have other requirements (emissive pixels with real blacks, HDR, etc) that further limit your options.

Are you saying it's a lost cause? If so i'm totally switching back to Windows 2033 so I can play Simnpc in full res and buying one of those smart cars.

I wonder if the HDMI forum can be considered a gatekeeper in terms of the EU's DMA. Their influence on the market is rather indirect, but I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of the EU uses HDMI every single day.

Between patents, trade secrets, and DMCA, the government is the source of the problem here. Arguably the FTC could step in here but I think they have bigger problems to tackle.

>Between patents, trade secrets, and DMCA, the government is the source of the problem here.

The government created the playing field. The only entity that can fix the situation is the government: they created a bad playing field, and they need to fix it.

That's true but I think the US's overall IP regime is not going to change and they also aren't going to carve out many exceptions.

But not all governments, thankfully. Remember DVD-Jon? He won the trial for breaking DVD crypto, because consumer rights stood above trade secrets.

I think it's actually pretty typical for important electrical interfaces to not be public or royalty-free, as much as I wish that wasn't the case.

That's not to say the government shouldn't get involved. I think the bigger thing here is that if an industry group is specifically setting things up so that Linux is shut out of having high-end video support, then it looks an awful lot like cartel behavior -- industry incumbents are working together to lock out a competitor. Maybe it could be the basis of an anti-trust lawsuit?

Presumably Apple and Microsoft would have the most to gain. Microsoft is a member of the forum. Apple doesn't appear to be, but an Apple guy is on their board of directors.

I'm not a lawyer and I don't know how such a lawsuit would work. Who represents Linux in this case, since it's not owned by any one company. Linus Torvalds? AMD? And would all the companies involved in the HDMI forum be liable for the behavior of the forum (which would include AMD)? Does intentionality matter? I.e. if Linux was excluded accidentally rather than deliberately?

https://hdmiforum.org/about/hdmi-forum-board-directors/ https://hdmiforum.org/members/

Seriously, we managed to standardize charging ports by law, maybe we can also agree on using an open standard for displays.

That is the real issue, because ultimately, this is about the memory hole. A re-upload of a camcorder copy of a VHS is no threat; it will be degraded (again) when the digital archivist who saved it's re-encoded copy[1] (from whatever video platform deleted it) posts it again. Intercepting a exact bitstream circumvents this modern camcorder copy deliberate problem, and would ultimately obliterate the non-arguments to keep the original file unavailable.

On the other hand, a signed sha3-256 digest along with the original[0] file before YT re-encoded it (and stripped it's metadata) is unobtanium for the plebs. It is the _most_ important data for the host. It's the first thing they backup. As far as I know, they (YT/Rumble/Tora3) never talk about it. Some would love to only serve hallucinated (when convenient) upscaled derivatives.

Power is threatened by persistent lossless public memory.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20427179

[1]: (Mr. Bean, 2024) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUezfuy8Qpc

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