[mythtv-users] Time Warner & Firewire

Mark Knecht markknecht at gmail.com
Wed May 18 20:05:31 UTC 2005


On 5/18/05, Brad Templeton <brad+myth at templetons.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 11:40:33AM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> > Brad,
> >    First, I'm sorry to have apparently upset you off so much with my
> > observations and comments here. They are not intended to do that. All
> 
> Odd. What did I say to suggest I was upset at all?  Fear not.
> 
> > I am doing is relating some of the information I garnered from
> > attending a number of meetings when 5C was released and the company I
> > worked for at the time in the semiconductor industry asked me to go
> > learn about it. I worked on 1394 for a number of years and helped in a
> 
> Right, that's why I want to learn more about what people's motivations
> were.   I don't like it when the evidence points to hidden agendas, as
> it does here, so it's better to try to really understand if people just
> made an error visible only in hindsight, a bizarre blunder, or had some
> other agends.  (Or hypothetically, were actually right while I'm wrong, but
> naturally that's not possible in the real world.)

I really have never thought there were hidden agendas in any of this
technology. Maybe I'm too trusting and naive. Wouldn't be the first
time I was accused of that. ;-)

> 
> > 2) The view at the time was vendors in 3rd world nations selling DVDs
> > on street corners. The movie industry understood (I think, again from
> > the outside) that it would never eliminate bad copies (camcorder
> > level) or ever completely eliminate apps like dvdrip from making a
> > limited number of copies. It generally seemed to want to address the
> 
> This I want to be clearer on.  My perception was that street DVDs came
> from only a small number of sources, perhaps even just one source.

No, not at all. I purchased a couple of street DVDs in Mumbai, India
and brought them home to compare with the ones I bought here. Two of
the three were dead on Region 1 copies. No difference as far as I can
tell. Cost me about 50 rupees each as best I remember and I probably
got ripped off compared to the locals. No packaging, just a disk.

> Certainly once somebody generated a quality rip or camera-copy the other
> underground street sellers would just copy that one (since there is
> not typically CSS on street DVDs.)  Is this false?   If it's true,
> what led to the perception that street DVDs would be hindred?

I think what you are referring to as street DVDs weren't what
Hollywood was worrying about but that's just my impression.

> 
> > 3) The use of encryption is not 'protection' from copying. It is
> > simply a deterrent. If a new key is exchanged every 30 seconds (or so)
> > then even if you have the encryption algorithm you'll have a very
> > difficult time figuring out the keys and decrypting the stream. Since
> 
> Well, the change-every-30 system is just one of many approaches one can
> take to improving security.  My own taste is that this is too complex
> as a copy prevention scheme, a stronger cryptosystem in general is a
> better approach.   "Change keys frequently" is more common, I thought,
> for live systems (like satellite broadcast) where you are afraid people
> might be quickly distributing new keys.   To make a copy, what matters
> is the effort to break the whole system.   Changing keys frequently isn't
> really so different from having a stronger system to start with, as far as
> effort is concerned.
> 
> However, that's not that important.  As the working groups know, the
> more likley threat comes from the "analog hole" since Moore's law is
> going to give us analog capture at a modest price fairly soon, I suspect.
> Certainly 1280x720 capture (with 1080i downscaled to that res.)

Sure. I don't know whether it was implemented but MacroVision
demonstrated watermark copy protection that could be embedded in the
digital stream but didn't become activated until the stream became
analog. The TV would have composite type inputs with some extra
circuitry that would mess up the picture if this wasn't copied
perfectly which at the time it couldn't be. Anyway, once the info is
analog it's not a 'perfect digital copy' anymore and TTBOMK not really
covered by 5C at all.

> 
> Again, the determined pirate will be able to afford this equipment sooner
> than the consumer.

That's fine. You know, I really don't think Hollywood would have ever
cared if I bought a copy of the movie and then made a perfect digital
copy for my own safety. What they didn't want was people making them
for sale, and especially not where you could be streaming a 1394 bus
to hundreds (assuming 1394 bridges) of recorders at the same time.
TTBOMK that's what this was always about.

<SNIP>
> > less the encryption algorithms that Hitachi keeps under wraps, please
> > do not mistake this for advocacy. It's just information. Like everyone
> 
> Understood.  But I still want to know what they were thinking, even
> if you didn't agree with their thinking.
> 
> Hollywood walked in to the much larger CE companies and said,
> "Hi, we want you to cripple your products and make them considerably
> more complex, harder to use and harder to make interoperate.  If you
> don't we'll pretend we won't release our movies and songs in a format
> that plays on your equipment even though we've always done so in the
> past without protection when it finally came down to it."
> 
> And the CE companies said, "Sure? Where can we sign?"

That's not what happened. In 1996 M$ gave their annual presentation on
'The windows PC'. They do this every year at WINHEC. At that time it
was all about 'convergence'. Home Theater PCs, etc. M$ talked about
making the PC the center of the living room. Tivo was just getting
started, Andy Grove was talking about 'eyeballs'. It was pretty hyped
up. Remember - this was the start of the bubble so money was starting
to flow - etc., and the electronics companies in Silicon Valley were
looking at how they were going to reap huge rewards. The problem was
that Wintel wasn't Sony. They weren't known for this stuff and they
went (apparently, I don't know much) to Hollywood and talked about all
this coming DVD technology as a way to sell more movies. Hollywood
wanted the revenue, but it also wanted to protect it's content.
Remember, most of Hollywood was still pretty pissed off about VCRs.
They didn't want that to happen again.

It is my understanding that Hollywood studios, in a pretty raw show of
strength, united and told Wintel that they wouldn't allow unencrypted
data running around in digital formats. 5C was born out of that, not
the other way around. (Again, as best I know.)

Anyway, I think this conversation if pretty far afield for most people
on this list. Maybe we should finish any more of it offline.

- Mark


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