A peek into the curious world of HDMI copy protection

If infringement goes to court, the content owner needs to prove that they took adequate measures to protect their property and that they tried their best to alert the consumers of what constitutes the violation.

This is why there are technical updates to DRM systems (they need to be reasonable, but in the interest of consumers backwards compatibility can waive that requirement) and also why there are the non-skippable FBI warnings on discs.

If decryptors are criminal then only criminals will have decryptors. The legal side of things isn't going to bother the commercial rippers one single bit; they'll just stream from somewhere that hasn't signed up to the Berne convention. Burma is close to both Thailand and Bangladesh no? You want to buy a cheap copy of movie mister? Top quality! Work in US and EU.

Clearly true, as stripping HDCP, while useful for interoperability with noncompliant devices, is an obviously fussy and inefficient way to store or distribute video supplied in a compressed format with cracked DRM (e.g., Blu-ray, iTunes).

Well, that and inertia, HDMI being the digital evolution of the old "analog hole".

I still can't understand why they even bother.

The problem with software-based DRM is that you can always, in the worst case, run the whole thing in a virtual machine and capture the output the software thinks is going to a display but is really going to a video encoder.

The problem with hardware-based DRM is that you have a hundred million devices in service when a vulnerability is discovered. Then you can't even securely issue a firmware update as a result of the exact same vulnerability you're trying to patch, and if the vulnerability is in the hardware itself then you're totally screwed.

Normal cryptography is Alice sending a message to Bob without Eve being able to read it. We know how to do that pretty well at this point -- and even then, look at the regularity we see security patches to e.g. OpenSSL. DRM is not even that. DRM is Alice sending a message to Bob that self-destructs after Bob looks at it, even if Bob doesn't want it to. It isn't clear that this is even theoretically possible against a determined attacker, and in practice it hasn't even held up to amateurs and hobbyists.

All they're doing is just pissing money away and inconveniencing their paying customers. I'm pretty sure the only reason we still have new DRM systems at all (as opposed to faux DRM whose sole purpose is to invoke the DMCA) is that there are still companies who make money peddling it and the people paying them haven't yet been able to see through the lies.

>DRM is popular not because it makes the possible impossible (not even the least technical people at the studios think this), but because it makes copying more expensive.

Except that it doesn't. The user who downloads pick-your-favorite-DVD-ripper doesn't even have to know that it contains code to remove CSS, they just download it and it works.

At the same time, DRM is costing them money. If I go to the store and buy a shiny plastic disc for $30 and take it home and it doesn't play because my $2000 TV from two years ago doesn't have HDCP version whatever, I am not going to go straight out and buy another $2000 TV. I am just going to spend my money on something other than plastic discs that won't play on my TV until the time comes when I would have replaced it anyway. And two months after that happens, someone breaks the new DRM and they come out with new content that won't play on my new TV.

The net result of DRM is to make piracy more convenient relative to purchasing. As far as I can tell its continued existence has only two causes: The first is the DRM snake oil salesmen bamboozling people into thinking it isn't a net negative, and the second (which I imagine is the real reason) is that it allows major content producers to better control content distribution channels and thereby exclude, tax or penalize smaller competitors. But that doesn't require the DRM to be effective in any way, it only requires the DMCA and lawsuits against anyone who attempts to challenge them in the market for content distribution.