[mythtv-users] OT: CableCard, MythTV, and the Future. Is there a Future?

[Brad Templeton]

On Sat, Jan 22, 2005 at 10:25:13AM -0500, Jason Gabriele wrote:
> The cable card pci cards will probably be sold at the store. They will 
> just come with windows software thats all. You wont have to go 
> underground to buy the hardware. And as far as illegal drivers, well 

It is predicted that hardware won't come with the keys to convince the
cablecard to talk to you.   But yes, if they sell it this way, people
will be able to reverse engineer those keys (well, short of requiring
that you buy a "Palladium" computer to run the card in.)

> just look at other linux software with less-than-legal status. Some 
> distros refuse to ship either NTFS drivers or mp3 playback because they 
> were both reverse-engineered. IIRC the gatos project has also reverse 
> engineered drivers for ati cards. It depends on how the card works. If 
> the drivers only let you do things the cards were made for it shouldnt 
> be a problem. As long as you cant steal PPV or encrypted digital 
> channels you dont subscribe to I cant see anyone getting too mad about it.

Ordinary reverse engineering is not illegal (as in gatos or NTFS.)
It's only breaking content protection that they made illegal with the DMCA.
(The reverse eng is technically not illegal, it's doing something with it,
sigh.)

As to how mad they will get about it, look at the huge amount of money
and effort they spent to get the broadcast flag to make the pcHDTV3000
card illegal!   That's for content that isn't even encrypted.  They will
fight pretty hard to make sure you can't legally get at their
encrypted content in a way they don't like, that's the pattern.   What
makes you feel they won't get too excited this time?