[mythtv-users] Time Warner & Firewire

Brad Templeton brad+myth at templetons.com
Wed May 18 18:00:42 UTC 2005


On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 09:37:26AM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On 5/17/05, Brad Templeton <brad+myth at templetons.com> wrote:
> It's not unbearably harder for small entrants. They can sign the NDA,
> get a copy of 5C and do what they want.

You underestimate how much of a barrier to innovation having to get
permission from a licencing body is.  Compare the innovation in the
following 3 media technology areas in the last 10 years:
        DVD Video players
        Video recorders/Players (Tivo, Myth, etc.)
        Music players (Mp3 players, iPod, internet radio, etc.)
        Cameras (Digital cameras and camcorders)

Today's DVD player is almost the same as the one 10 years ago, just cheaper.

Compare those other fields.  It's staggering.  Absolutely staggering.

> Not my understanding but I could be wrong. None the less I'm sure we'd
> agree that they think that should they stop DVD piracy in certain
> countries they believe they will make more revenue than by not doing
> so.
    http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/table2.htm

What does 5C have to do with stopping DVD piracy anywhere?  First of all,
a lot of that is sourced from camcorders in cinemas or stolen prints.
After official DVD release, determined DVD pirates will always be able
to get at the clear stream, if by no other means than the optical hole but
probably by much easier means.   As they noted, no system is likely to be
fully secure.

> If you go back to one of the original DTCP papers
> (www.dtcp.com/data/wp_spec.pdf) you'll see that the issue contemplated
> was not (IMO) 'keep a lock on the tech' nor even unlimited copies of
> analog data which degrades from copy to copy, but rather unlimited
> copies of digital data which does not degrade. No one in the DTCP
> community ever said it would be impossible to crack 5C but rather it
> would be suitably difficult and slow that at least it wouldn't happen
> on a grand scale where every movie ends up seeded in a bit-torrent
> like they do today.

Well, they are hardly going to write down that their motive is keeping
a lock on the tech!

I don't understand this logic.  5C will stop some casual folks from
copying a video, but all it takes is one cracked copy to spread everywhere
in perfect digital form.   Why would the scale of such P2P copying reduce?

One could argue, that by making it harder for legitimate customers to
do what they want with the video in their own homes, you _increase_ demand
for cracked versions.

> I don't think so. I think it precludes copying. Nothing more. I never
> saw anything in the specs that made it technically impossible to do on
> a Linux machine what is allowed to be done on a windows machine. Truly
> they were far more worried (at the time - I know nothing of recent
> importance) about Windows boxes since in 1998 there were about a
> million more Windows boxes than Linux boxes.

You are perhaps misunderstanding what a "linux" machine is.   People in
the FOSS community believe it is essential that the user be able to
get full access to their system, including source code and have the
ability to change it.

All DRM regimes with robustness requirements, including 5C/DTCP, forbid
this for any software that has access to the cleartext version of the
video stream.


> providers. 5C was not targeted at making life particularly difficult
> for Open Source. Far from it.

Well, I am sure many of the people on the 5C WG did indeed not have this
intent.   The result is the same.   And sadly, some of the people involved
did have this intent.

Right now, I only see a limited number of motivations for a CE vendor
to agree to put DRM into their tools.  Because it cripples your tools
and disables rather than enables functionality, it's certainly not the
customer demanding it.

    a) They believe Hollywood when it says that they will not release
    music and movies unless there is DRM.    I can understand believing
    this for a little while, probably some Hollywood people even believe
    it, even would do it for a short while.   But the history is they
    have always been either lying or incorrect about their own intentions
    every single time this has come up.

    b) They believe they gain an advantage over their competitors for
    some other reason.   Right now the only reason I've seen is the fact
    that DRM stabilizes the market, slows innovation and burdens smaller
    competitors.

I am keen to hear other motivations.    In the PC space, I understand
the general TCPA motivation of making more secure computers and trusted
kernels.  That has valid uses customers could want.   But in the media
space?


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list