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warning: this is not a surprise

Intel Not So Subtly Threatens to Sue Any Device Maker Who Would Take Advantage of HDCP

by Susana Polo | 12:55 pm, September 18th, 2010

As if anyone wondered what their stance on the issue might be, Intel has clarified its stance on anyone who would use the leaked HDCP Master Key to create devices that would be able to circumnavigate HDMI, DVI, and Blu-Ray DRM.

That was a bit alphabet-soup, wasn’t it?  We’ll put it another way: somebody cracked the protection that was keeping people from easily making copies of Blu-Ray players and cable television.  However, in order to implement this crack in a way that would be easily usable by the average consumer, someone would have to make a computer chip with the crack in mind.  Software alone won’t do it.  Though they earlier downplayed the potential of this possible use of the HDCP crack, yesterday Intel spokesman Tom Waldrop made sure every body knows what Intel would do if, you know, somebody tried it. Just in case.

From Wired:
There are laws to protect both the intellectual property involved as well as the content that is created and owned by the content providers… Should a circumvention device be created using this information, we and others would avail ourselves, as appropriate, of those remedies.

Let that be a warning to all you… manufacturers in countries with less rigorous copyright enforcement.  Intel will do exactly what you already knew it would do if you take advantage of its current losing stance in the DRM wars.

Waldrop also did our favorite corporate-entity-talking-about-computers thing: describing hacking and cracking in unnecessarily ominous tones.

[He] said Intel did not believe that a “human source” entrusted with the master key leaked it because the master is “created and structured that nobody sees it.”

“Someone has used mathematics and computers to be able to work back to what the master key is,” he said, declining to elaborate.

Those damn machines!  So vulnerable to the alluring temptations of electronic mathematics.

(via Wired.)

  • Polynomials

    I don’t really see how Intel could have a case. HDCP is a product that Intel sells licenses for. This makes the devices more expensive because it is the industry standard. Now, correct me if I am wrong here, but I’m pretty sure you can’t sue just because someone does not want to buy your product or think that it is necessary. While it would be infringement for a device to make use of HDCP without a license, it isn’t clear that a device which implements a crack is infringement because it does not implement HDCP’s functionality, and in fact negates it. Sure you need to know the master key, but any device created using the master key to crack it would be a new piece of hardware not created by Intel. The selling point of HDCP and all encryption is that people do not know how it works even when presented with the full functionality. All the intellectual property that they are claiming was protected has been broadcasetd to the world in the hardware that uses it. The more widely used it is, the more you run the risk of someone deciphering it and having it become useless. I see this as Intel’s fault for producing encryption schemes for years with the same master key. But I won’t be the judge when this inevitably goes to court, so we’ll see.


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