Comments on: MacBooks enter a golden new age of anti-piracy cruft: HDCP for all

By: HDCP : Copyright Protection sneaked in on iTunes | The Babbling Blog

HDCP : Copyright Protection sneaked in on iTunes | The Babbling Blog — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:52:29 +0000

[...] MacBooks Enter a Golden Age of Anti-piracy Cruft: HDCP For All [...]

By: Mark Pender

Mark Pender — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:02:51 +0000

It never ceases to amaze the lengths iBoi’s go to see no evil from Cupertino.

Honestly, if you’re dumb enough to have all your media walled away in iTunes then this really shouldn’t bother you. If it does then maybe you’re lucky and the iLobotmy is reversing.

Btw, I feel bad for the new MB owners owning something that so on the “forefront on technology”.

By: ][ stefano maffulli » New MacBooks are Defective by Design

][ stefano maffulli » New MacBooks are Defective by Design — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:59:02 +0000

[...] and miss a FireWire prot, but they also hide a stupid DRM locks in the video signal called HDCP. CrunchGear reports: What is HDCP? It’s essentially a digital standard that tells your OS what you can [...]

By: Santa Clause

Santa Clause — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:38:46 +0000

The movie / music distributors are demanding that Apple apply the DRM to the files distributed through iTunes, then selling unlocked rights to Amazon to create competition to iTunes and regain their power over their content so they can jack up the prices… This all started after Steve Jobs publicly told the record monopolies (to their chagrin) that he wasn’t going to raise iTunes prices (ie. ‘get stuffed’).

So stop blaming Apple, Apple is a hardware company that’s doing the best they can.

Sony forced manufacturers to accept HDMI and spent billions killing off HD DVD. Now any HD content you buy has HDMI built in so you can’t watch it in > SD format without a completely HDMI compliant system (that Sony gets a cut of). Since just about the whole world sat on the fence while Sony rampantly bribed everyone to kill HD DVD, eat the dogfood you’ve cooked or stick to SD.

Either way, right now there’s little Apple can do for you. Next time, do something for yourself BEFORE it’s too late … or stick to SD, it really is GOOD ENOUGH (!!!).

By: zorroxl

zorroxl — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 03:36:06 +0000

So that everyone understands: it’s not MS or Apple’s fault, but Hollywood forcing them to use such mechanisms, or they will not provide the premium content people are interested in. I work in this industry and deal with the same issues every day. Don’t blame the people at the end of the chain, blame Hollywood for this particular case. And trust me, this is not the worst. Example: if you want to record or provide premium content on external hard drives, people like Fox force vendors to uniquely encrypt movies for that particular device. Want to take your content everywhere? Good luck.

By: Pat

Pat — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:26:57 +0000

If it wasn’t for the DMCA, lapdog government, and our lame anti-trust enforcement, some *customer* focused company would have simply come out with a dongle to bypass all this nonsense.

As for me I discovered, that there were a lot of interesting things to do that did not involve being in front of a TV.

No cable (or TV) + no comcast = more life + less bills

By: griffon

griffon — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:55:57 +0000

I was pretty annoyed that the new direct tv PC software will only let you stream if your card and monitor are HDCP (on dvi). What does this sort of thing do to legitimate customers? It maks us say ‘FUCK YOU’ and off to a not authorized download site we go. Brilliant.

By: Brian K

Brian K — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:51:03 +0000

Apple is certainly messing this up. Buy apple for the well crafted hardware and cool gadgets and buy the media else where. I was buying my music on Itunes but nothing is compatible with other MP3 players (like my google phone). I have recently moved to Amazon for music and Vudu for movies and mac pro for my computer. Poor Apple, screwing up a great opportunity.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:54:02 +0000

Totally agree with your point here. Personally i think that media (yes including copyrighted material) should be a LOT freer,I think an important point her is *IF* you can cheaply buy a high-quality (legal) copy of a song or movie then there would be no need to go and download the high-quality (and yes i know the adverts claim they are bad quality but it is possible to get just as good a quality) totally free to use copy off a p2p network?

For instance if they halved the price of ALL music and video, i would bet a hell of alot of downloaders would go an buy the real copy instead of downloading it.

But then again whats the chances people buy something find they cant play it on a moniter they like think o thats stupid and then go and download a copy they can use any way they like.

By: Pandrogas

Pandrogas — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:04:34 +0000

The point isn’t about paying for something, the point is that after you’ve paid for it, the file has specific protections against watching it on the TV or monitor of your choice. This is a protection that doesn’t make any logical sense, even for copyright holders.

The problem with the whole business model impact is that they have to care about the market to respond to it. As it is, most places just blame pirates and enforce even more controls thinking that will solve the problem. It’s a lose / lose for everyone involved.

It’s one thing to protect your rights as a copyright holder, it’s quite another to be an ***hole to your customers and claim that they made you do it.

By: Eduardo Casseano

Eduardo Casseano — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:43:44 +0000

I just don’t care … why do we need Apple Store ?
I’m not a big fun of Apple, I mean, i do have an iPod, and i think it’s a good product. You may say it could be better, yes it could, even so it is years ahead the competition, but that’s all. I don’t think Apple is the best, smartest, coolest company in the world, and i’m not planning to purchase any Apple gear in the near future (unless my iPod breaks).
If you all feel bad about Apple’s strategy, stop giving them all the attention, why bothering about every single step this company takes ?
Instead of spending time hating Apple, goo to Amazon, PirateBay, wherever you wanna go, and grab your stuff, they aren’t the only place you can get multimedia content, smartphones or expensive laptops.

By: Cristhian Bedon

Cristhian Bedon — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:34:28 +0000

Wow, what extents people will go too, either way people will try to find a loophole for this.

By: MacBook

MacBook — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:20:16 +0000

Shame on Apple, they might not be at fault here but it’s still their responsibility to fight for the consumers.

By: Monterey

Monterey — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:56:49 +0000

What happens when you play the same movie on the last generation of hardware (macbook/pro) with a non-HDMI projector/monitor? Does the movie play, is it lower quality? It is hard to tell if this is strictly a hardware issue or software control and part of the frequent iTunes/ Quicktime updates.

By: David Sterry

David Sterry — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:11:46 +0000

It’s just this sort of thing that makes it important to join the EFF, FSF, DefectiveByDesign, BadVista or do what you can to protect your freedoms in this digital age. Many technologies are well suited to applying near-absolute control by vendors and media companies and we’ve got to work to keep the power evenly distributed.

By: Righteous Marketing

Righteous Marketing — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:26:58 +0000

Oh Apple, the Microsoft of the next century.

By: Righteous Marketing

Righteous Marketing — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:26:58 +0000

Oh Apple, the Microsoft of the next century.

By: Jsiz

Jsiz — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:18:57 +0000

So then, we have yet another TC anti-DRM post and legions of choir to preach to.

God forbid you should actually have to pay for anything and follow the copyright owner rules. If you want a teacher to be able to exhibit this in a classroom, tell the studios that, not apple and MS et al.

While you’re at it, start complaining about other relevant copyright controls like what pharma uses to protect their investments.

If your argument is that they’re only shooting themselves in the foot by making digital distribution more cumbersome for customers, well then that will impact them won’t it. But to seriously suggest that protecting a copyright holders rights is reason for you to go to PirateBay is the same old selfish TC entitlement run amok.

By: HDCP nei MacBook. Un grosso passo contro la pirateria, un limite per gli acquirenti | Blog Next

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:08:37 +0000

[...] se la maggior parte dei contenuti digitali disponibili su iTunes non sono protetti, CrunchGear ha notato come alcuni dei più recenti lo sono. Questa “scoperta” limita la [...]

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:05:36 +0000

You should became familiar with Linux soon, apple fanboys!