Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

techradar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 49 posts

Re: New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

#31

Post by khafra »

codingthewheel wrote: post #19
kia wrote: post #15

Isn't DRM on noninteractive content (not games) doomed to failure?

Yes. If a human can view it, you can always, always, always copy it, reproduce it, and share it. No matter how much HDCP you throw at it, no matter what specialized hardware you devote to it...in the words of Mr. Universe..."you can't stop the signal." (And all the King's horses, and all the King's men, couldn't put the industry's shitty paranoid ineffective wannabe DRM back together again.)

My favorite quote on the matter:

> For Alex, the impossibility of making digital information copy-proof is a central truth of our age: something to be explained, and then re-explained, to judges, reporters, and businesspeople, in amicus curiae briefs and interviews on NPR. For me, it follows from the fact that the set of n-bit strings constitutes an orthogonal basis for Hilbert space.

-- http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=32

Re: New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

#32

Post by jrockway »

winternett wrote: post #30

And so the closed web begins! I am sure these new chips will have magical "flaws" in them that prevent regular content from being shown for unforeseen reasons, and they will also prevent copying DVDs and using certain share apps. It was only a matter of time. Prepare to have to pay every time you want to watch content, instead of being able to buy individual copies of DVDs, prepared to get milked for your dollars eve…

I am willing to bet a lot of money on the opposite side. My guess is that all existing x86/x86_64 code will continue to work just as well as it did before.

My guess is that CPU microcode designed to detect that h264 decoding being offloaded to the GPU was from a Usenet post instead of from Hollywood would be difficult, if not impossible, to implement. (My point: the CPU doesn't even see bits from the video to decode anymore. So it probably can't fuck them up, even if it wanted to, which it doesn't.)

Re: New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

#34

Post by jrockway »

vetinari wrote: post #29
robertk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Axel Boldt's idea diary, 1/24/2007 10:13 PM Defeat any copy protection on video/audio: play the content on a certified software player in a virtual machine, copy material from the virtual screen/loudspeaker. http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/Diary.txt

Not that easy - any virtual machine, that allows copying material from virtual output devices will break the chain of trust and the certified player will refuse to play.

The problem with the "chain of trust" is that most of the links are held by Chinese companies who bid the lowest. All it takes is one employee with access to the key to leak it, and then everyone has it.

Note the ready availability of HDCP-strippers, for example.

Re: New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

#35

Post by lukeschlather »

aplusbi wrote: post #25
lukeschlather wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this different from Netflix only making movies available via Windows DRM? Netflix has expanded, but initially it was the same deal. And it remains entirely at Netflix's discretion whom they trust. I agree it's a Bad Thing, but the content industry is entirely predicated on artificial monopolies.

If I'm not mistaken, Netflix uses multiple types of DRM (for iOS, PCs, Wii, PS3, etc). The Windows DRM is for PCs and the XBOX, possible some others (Roku might use it, I think the NXP-chip uses Microsoft DRM). This is actually the problem with Netflix on Android - Android doesn't have any DRM standard, so it's up to the hardware manufacturer to include it.

That wasn't always the case.

And even so, this is just another DRM tool that Netflix will use, unless they opt to only use Intel's built in DRM (which would be strange given the wide competition Intel's hardware DRM faces from TPMs and the like.

Re: New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

#36

Post by javanix »

jrockway wrote: post #33
javanix wrote: post #21

I for one can't wait for the high-quality new film rips to show up on BitTorrent once this is inevitably cracked.

Why wait? Blu-Ray is about as high-quality as it gets, and nobody is having any trouble pirating those.

Oh, never mind. I misread the article - I thought it was promising films before they come out on DVD.

My point still stands though - there is absolutely no way this doesn't get cracked.

As long as watchable images are displayed on a screen, someone will figure out a way to "archive" them for later.

Re: New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

#37

Post by JonnieCache »

I seem to remember last time someone tried something like this (Trusted Platform Module) a researcher burned the top off the chip and read the private key with a Focused Ion Beam workstation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk73ye2_g4o (WARNING: extreme hacking ahead!)

You would've thought people would have worked this one out by now.

Who fancies running a HN pool on how long until the root keys are public? (I'm serious - how funny would that be. We just need someone with enough trust from the community to handle the money. And someone who lives where online gambling is not regulated...)

Re: New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

#38

Post by wmf »

protomyth wrote: post #28

I gotta wonder about this and their relationship with Apple. Apple can't really use it because they also have a large ARM presence and Intel isn't going to give it to ARM. Heck, Microsoft is in the same boat. Who exactly is going to be able to use this? set-top boxes?

It's never a good idea to tie yourself to one DRM provider. Assuming that Apple wanted hardware DRM support (which they don't seem to care about), they could use Intel DRM on Macs and TrustZone on ARM.

Re: New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

#39

Post by coderdude »

robin_reala wrote: post #6
Zak wrote: post #2

As one of the comments suggests, this seems doomed to failure. Paying for a streaming version of a movie doesn't seem very desirable, as it's inherently non-portable. There's a good chance I want to watch somewhere I don't have real[0] broadband. If it's too difficult to do that, I can always find a torrent. This situation does not seem likely to change. [0] Mobile "broadband" doesn't count. In most places, it is ent…

Even with my ‘real’ (out-in-the-country 5.5mbit) broadband I’m still not yet convinced by streaming films. Nothing like a stutter to jerk you out of your immersion.

That's weird. The net connection at my dad's house is ridiculously bad. You'll be lucky if you can download at 60kb/sec, and this is what they call broadband (AT&T in Yorba Linda, CA). Yet Netflix movies stream without a hitch or a hiccup.

Re: New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

#40

Post by pierrefar »

DuncanIdaho wrote: post #27
nkassis wrote: post #4

I would hope this constitute anticompetitive behavior. If only intel can decrypt movies and studios only make them available for intel procs, this can seriously hurt all other chipmakers.

AFAIK Intel and AMD cross-license everything. And its not that tech runs just from Intel to AMD. x64 is AMD tech that got adopted by Intel. Monolith multi-core technology is also something Intel adopted from AMD. Intel wouldn't dare destroying AMD. Since AMD got created for sole reason to prevent Intel from being torn apart. But Intel will do everything to keep AMD's market share somewhere comfortably below 20%.

And what about ARM and Apple chips (like the A4)?
Post reply on HN