“Steve Jobs told us during the unibody Macbook keynote that Apple will integrate DisplayPort in all Mac hardware down the road, but he forgot to mention out that HDCP is part of the deal,” Christian Zibreg reports for TG Daily.
“Developed by Intel, HDCP stands for ‘High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection’ and is generally viewed as the movie industry’s insurance policy against mass piracy of HD movies on Blu-ray media. Blu-ray playback requires a chain of HDCP-equipped devices, including an HDCP graphics card and HDCP monitor. But since we know that Apple will not adopt Blu-ray, why would Apple need HDCP? Some believe Hollywood is forcing Apple to integrate HDCP into iTunes content,” Zibreg reports.
“Indeed, Hollywood will likely not allow HD movie streaming or purchase on anything beyond Apple TV until Apple transitions the entire Mac lineup towards a DisplayPort+HDCP environment.”
Full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: DRM only inconveniences paying customers while the thieves just laugh, strip it off, and resume pirating.
“It’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.” – Steve Jobs
Whiners: “We want Blu-Ray! Why can’t Macs have Blu-Ray? I can go down to Beast Buy and get a Windows notebook with Blu-Ray…”
Apple: “OK. We will put the pieces in place that are required for Blu-Ray playback. Step 1 is HDCP. You’ll be happy to know we have begun to implement this in the new notebook line, so you should get your Blu-Ray soon.”
Whiners: “Oh wait…”
This is nuts. Once a HandBrake-like program comes out that strips DRM from a BlueRay drive (like they already do on Windows), normal people will decode their movies overnight, watch it on their non-HDCP screens, then delete the 20 Gb QuickTime HD movie file.
In other words nothing but pain for legitimate users, slowing adoption of HD.
Maybe all this talk will die when they crack hdcp.
2 words: It sucks.
Remember that it is the movie studios that are requiring this, not Apple, just like the record industry is doing with music.
“But since we know that Apple will not adopt Blu-ray”
Really? This guy knows something that everyone else outside of Cupertino knows?
Stop buying products that promote the movie industry. Other wise, let yourself be screwed. Apple is a company, they sell stuff. If you are still buying it then they won’t change.
This from the guy who used to make boxes to hack the phone network for free long distance calls.
“DRM only inconveniences paying customers while the thieves just laugh, strip it off, and resume pirating.”
Another fine example of MDN editorializing about something they know nothing about.
For 99% of users DRM is not an “inconvenience”. It just is. Apple has emerged as the leading source of revenue for the music industry WORLDWIDE. Where is the “inconvenience” that should limit sales, and iTunes success?
The only people that are “inconvenienced” by DRM are the 1% that believe their rights are superior to the author’s rights.
HDCP will not inconvenience 99% of the market, because they aren’t thieves. For the others, you know the ones, they are the ones that feel they shouldn’t have to pay to get content, HDCP will make it harder for them to steal what rightfully belongs to others.
Believing that Hollywood charges more than they should is not a valid justification to steal. Your legitimate choices are to pay, or not to pay. Nowhere in those choices is the alternative to steal.
HDCP will not inconvenience 99% of the market, because they aren’t thieves
Seems like a lot of effort to go to for only 1% of the market that are thieves.
@HolyMackerel:This is nuts. Once a HandBrake-like program comes out that strips DRM from a BlueRay drive (like they already do on Windows), normal people will decode their movies overnight, watch it on their non-HDCP screens, then delete the 20 Gb QuickTime HD movie file.
That’s an interesting definition of the word “normal”. Trust me, no one “normal” is going to go to that much trouble. Hacker kiddies will do what you describe. “Normal” people, with “normal” jobs that limit the amount of time and effort they want to put into watching movies, will either buy an HDCP-capable system, or just do without.
I’ve used Handbrake. It works great — does what it claims. But convenient it ain’t. I don’t want to put any more effort into obtaining a movie than I do watching it. Not enough time in my day, and besides, it’s just a movie. I can pass the time in other ways.
——RM
“It’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.” That’s such a San Francisco thing to say.
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@Alec:Seems like a lot of effort to go to for only 1% of the market that are thieves.
The point of good DRM is not to make piracy impossible, it’s to make it sufficiently difficult so that only the geekiest of hackers will do it. If it weren’t for DRM, that 1% would be 10%, or 20%, or worse, because it would simple to make copies.
That was the problem with the original Napster, BTW — it made piracy easy. Your grandma could use Napster. Can you imagine your grandma figuring out Handbrake?
——RM
@Gregg Thurman
Perhaps you missed the news story that began all this discussion about HDCP on the new Macbooks: a customer who bought content on the iTunes store — not a pirate — found he couldn’t view his content played from the Macbook through an external projector because — wait for it — the HDCP prevented him from this perfectly legitimate act of viewing his legally purchased content. Now how is it again that you think HDCP won’t inconvenience us non-thieves?
How about YOU stop editorializing about something YOU know nothing about?
“For 99% of users DRM is not an “inconvenience”. It just is. Apple has emerged as the leading source of revenue for the music industry WORLDWIDE. Where is the “inconvenience” that should limit sales, and iTunes success?”
Your argument does not support your contention that DRM is not an inconvenience for 99% of people.
Further, your argument that only “thieves” would be inconvenienced by DRM reveals a lack of understanding of the issue.
As in the example given by Galloway, there are a number of ways that consumers might want to engage in an activity not allowed by the DRM and, therefore, the EULA, but are not in any sense of the word attempting to pirate or steal the content.
Regarding your contention that DRM has not negatively affected the growth of iTunes: it should be obvious that Steve Jobs’ open letter on DRM was implicit admission that, despite market the dominance of iTunes, Apple views DRM as having a negative effect. That is, without DRM, the growth of legal downloads would be even further ahead than it is now.
I do think piracy is an issue that robs the media corporations and artists of money. However, MDN’s main point is that actual pirates, ie not the consumer trying to watch a blu ray movie through a non-HDCP compliant projector, will still be pirating. DRM does not materially affect the rate or prevalence of piracy.
@DRM Sucks:
A follow-up to your excellent note:
I used to buy music content from the iTunes store. Bought a couple hundred dollars worth of songs, actually. I also like to make, for personal use, mix CD’s… who doesn’t? But I prefer to use Roxio’s Toast (or the older Jam) because, unlike iTunes, it lets me introduce crossfades between songs and control them very precisely. After an iTunes update (either to v. 6 or v.7 I think), I found that Roxio’s products would not work with iTunes purchased music anymore; Roxio stated Apple had pressured it to stop allowing purchased content to work in order to satisfy the record company contracts it has. As a result I had to burn all my iTunes purchased content to CD and re-rip it — at a resultant loss of quality — in order to use my preferred program to perform a legal act with my legally purchased music content.
I no longer buy music from iTunes.
So counter to Gregg Thurman’s argument that DRM has not limited iTunes growth, it certainly has limited its growth with me.
DRM is fundamentally a financial construct with ulterior motives and I find it to be an inconvenience (although Apple’s implementation is actually relatively good). It tends to lock consumers into certain vendor tracks. It also tends to squash fair use law, making it difficult to fully utilize a video or audio product.
Don’t you think that DRM has “inconvenienced” the people who “purchased” DRM’ed music, but can no longer access said music because the DRM server has been shut down? I have purchased only a small number of DRM’ed songs, and only because I received iTunes gift cards. Otherwise it is CD and rip to Apple lossless. Then the songs are mine.
I can’t use floppy drives, parallel ports, ADB, or serial port printers/monitors,scanners/modems/keyboards, etc., any more. I had to upgrade those items to USB, and/or Firewire. Soon all Apple monitors will be using their new connector, and my 22″ Cinema Display will have to be upgraded.
After February 2009 TV antennas will not work without a digital converter box.
The argument that someone could not use their existing projector is not an issue, BECAUSE ALL TECHNOLOGIES BECOME OBSOLETE, sooner than later.
But I’ll amend my statement, taking into account the limited anecdotal stories posted here: 98% won’t be inconvenienced, 1% will be inconvenienced and 1% are thieves that aren’t going to pay no matter what.
To put it simply, electronics manufacturers and customers have both been screwed by movie studios/RIAA and their legion of attorneys. Audiophiles and videophiles have no problem with reasonable anti-piracy measures, but HDCP is a flawed concept that increases incompatibility. Gullible consumers may be buying into the forced-replacement program, but many are not. Planned obsolecence isn’t acceptable when it is rammed down your throat due to legal fears instead of real technical progress. There is no reason in the world that one should not be able to display high definition content on his high-definition DVI-connector display. Neither Apple nor DisplayPort is the problem – adapters work fine. HDCP is the problem.
That said, electronics manufacturers pick crappy interface standards. Audio and video should never be combined in one connector!!!
@Gregg Thurman:
Until my Jam issue, I was of your opinion. DRM hadn’t inconvenienced me, and probably hasn’t inconvenienced most people, so what’s the problem? I’m sure you could find a hundred or more ways it inconveniences a few people here and there, but only a few, so why worry so much about them, right? They’ll find solutions, so why throw out the baby with the bathwater?
But the worst offense of DRM is its core assumption: that all people are thieves.
In the days of Napster, I quite frequently told my friends that the first company who made buying music easier than stealing it would own the market, because most people don’t want to steal, but they are also tired of being ripped off by the record companies and having to buy whole albums to get a couple of songs. Behold iTunes. Behold the new age of “the single”.
Most people aren’t thieves. But DRM assumes they are.
If DRM doesn’t inconvenience 98%, inconveniences 1%, and 1% are thieves — but it doesn’t STOP the thieves, why bother having it? If 99% don’t steal and you don’t stop the other 1%, why spend all the money to create and maintain DRM — costs that get passed on to the legitimate consumer, by the way — when DRM doesn’t DO anything? You certainly haven’t helped the content creator. Visit almost any Asian country and you’ll find out how REAL piracy, legitimate large scale piracy that DRM does nothing to prevent, hurts content creators.
I have a 23″ Cinema Display that I have used with my laptop since my old PowerBook G3. Still works great. I’m sure I can soon buy an adapter to continue to use it for a couple more years with any further MacBooks I wish to buy. But hearing that I won’t be able to watch any HD content I buy from iTunes on it doesn’t make me want to buy a new monitor that supports HDCP, it makes me want to only buy SD content — or none at all — from iTunes. That’s less money in the content creator’s pocket. And you can be sure my friends will be warned about this as well, as will their friends. Once again, DRM has helped no one, and hurt both the legitimate consumer and the content creator.
I can go on: how many people has Microsoft annoyed or worse with their “Windows Genuine Advantage” nonsense? I don’t encounter Windows much, but I know at least two cases of people whose legitimate copy of Windows XP were tagged as pirated, to deep consternation. I’m sure it’s not an insignificant percentage of users that are affected. Yet I can find pirated Windows XP for $3 in Thailand that pass with flying colors. Who is that DRM helping?
IMHO, MDN’s take on DRM is spot on.
All Intel Mac’s already have the workings for stringent DRM
It’s called EFI.
A firmware that loads before the OS, has it’s own partition on the drive, can read the hard drive and connect to the internet.
You won’t be able to do squat unless your computer has a internet connection to verify your content and/or software.
Forget your privacy.
This is the first intelligent discussion I have seen in about 5 years of MDN viewing. My congrats to those that participated.
Still, my point is that DRM has always existed. Having to replace technologies has always existed. Changing formats has always existed.
Most music was originally record as mono 78 RPM vinyl. That became 45s, then stereo 33 1/3 albums. The playback technology changed, and the DRM was in the fact that the ‘record’ couldn’t be copied (at least not without concerted illegal efforts).
Then came magnetic tape which led to 8 track cartridges. Again not easily copied. Cassettes made vinyl obsolete and could be copied (stolen?), but still the industry sold millions.
But then came the internet and digital music. Copying was never easier, and for the first time music sales declined. The only complaints about DRM today, come from those that want to do more than the owners of the content imagined, or could easily be managed with effective copy protection. The problem isn’t DRM, its the flexibility/capabilities that digital technology gives us. Figure out how the content producers can protect their intellectual property rights, and give legitimate owners of that content the flexibility they want, and I guarantee that you’ll be richer than Bill Gates.
Until then some are going to be inconvenienced, but that digital music sales now account for over half the music sold, that number isn’t very high.
HDCP is embedded in HDMI as well. Tell the owners with TV’s that use the original HDMI 1.0 spec, that were told they had to buy a new TV because some newer HDMI source device used HDMI 1.3, and didn’t work right with v1.0.
And wait for when 2010, or 2011, when the ‘analog’ high-def hole is defined to be arbitrarily closed (as now, you can output hi-def signals as unprotected analog). Some HD TV’s only have analog inputs, which will suddenly stop working (well, the ports will work, you just won’t have anything that will send it a signal).
And in the name of ‘protecting their revenue stream’, the movie industry wants to use part of HDCP to disable your PVR and analog outputs NOW, in the name of releasing movies to TV earlier.
This is the first intelligent discussion I have seen in about 5 years of MDN viewing.
@Gregg
Agreed. The exchange provided plenty of food for thought.
If Reality Check had checked in sooner, I’ve no doubt the conversation would have devolved into chaos after the third post.
@For Pete’s Sake!
Sorry, wrong.
My neighbor’s iMac didn’t have an internet connection for two weeks after she got it, we worked just fine.
The most EFI does is limit modding/OCing, and a company figured out how to do that much with Mac Pros and Xserves awhile back.
Apple doesn’t like people messing with their things, and so has always made it a bit of a pain (from kinda-sorta to unbearable) to get one open, all the way back to the Apple II.
I hate DMR because I keep forgetting the passwords.