Intel confirmed that the High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) master keys posted lst week on pastebin.com are authentic portending the end of the Consumer Electronics industry's most-favored copy protection method. Unlike CSS and Macrovision HDCP is a link encryption protocol. It is used to protect content as it is moved from one device or system to another. The most common use today is to encrypt the HDMI signal from your set top box or Blu-Ray player to your TV set. This leak will inspire new (illegal) hardware and software products that will allow users to record HD programming directly from these devices.
Many in the press this week have attempted to downplay the impact of this leak claiming that most consumers want to do the right thing and wont make use of the tools based on this leak. That may or may not be true, but what this will surely impact is Hollywood's (a generic term to describe all Movie and TV content producers) continued reluctance to make their products available via the internet.
From their perspective, this is further proof that anything they put on the internet will simply be stolen. I'm sure the music (and publishing) company executives had these same thoughts as their industries withered and died.
What happens when the internet kills the current model before a new model can stand up?
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