Much has been written about the demise of physical media. Long considered the measure of technological progress in audiovisual and computing fields, the 2000s saw this metric seemingly rendered obs…
Piracy is resilient but there is no natural law that says piracy will always be available.
There will be a TPM 3.0. All those mechanisms in XBOX Series and PS5 that are actually effective for extended periods at preventing mass piracy, like one-directional fuses and minimum software updates for new releases with per-device keys, are not going to disappear. Tech and media companies are now working together to bypass the user in trust chains, so they only have to trust each other.
In a streaming-only world, I predict there will be a time soon where pirated content is not a bit-perfect copy because the digital environment is fully locked down. Maybe an analog reencode of display output will be a workaround. But like TPM, HDCP will advance, and maybe that avenue will be cut off too.
HDCP isn’t DRM’s ultimate form of course. HDCP “3.0” or its successor will not be so easily cracked, and Widevine is not as cracked as past protection schemes have been.
All of our non-Linux platforms will tighten DRM over time. Apple is already locked down. Android is moving to require boot-lock strong encryption and authentication to access sensitive apps, which is very difficult to spoof. Media companies will require that for future versions. Windows is on the TPM train. HDCP is just part of that “trust” chain, and it absolutely will be strengthened to match the base protection.
Piracy is resilient but there is no natural law that says piracy will always be available.
There will be a TPM 3.0. All those mechanisms in XBOX Series and PS5 that are actually effective for extended periods at preventing mass piracy, like one-directional fuses and minimum software updates for new releases with per-device keys, are not going to disappear. Tech and media companies are now working together to bypass the user in trust chains, so they only have to trust each other.
In a streaming-only world, I predict there will be a time soon where pirated content is not a bit-perfect copy because the digital environment is fully locked down. Maybe an analog reencode of display output will be a workaround. But like TPM, HDCP will advance, and maybe that avenue will be cut off too.
Once we lose physical media, we may be cooked.
I am not knowledgable about it but why care about HDCP if some already cracked Widevine?
HDCP isn’t DRM’s ultimate form of course. HDCP “3.0” or its successor will not be so easily cracked, and Widevine is not as cracked as past protection schemes have been.
All of our non-Linux platforms will tighten DRM over time. Apple is already locked down. Android is moving to require boot-lock strong encryption and authentication to access sensitive apps, which is very difficult to spoof. Media companies will require that for future versions. Windows is on the TPM train. HDCP is just part of that “trust” chain, and it absolutely will be strengthened to match the base protection.
Edit: Didn’t realize HDCP is already at 2.2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection . Some interesting developments - namely a reminder that movie studios will also use lawsuits under the DMCA to try to suppress any technology that defeats DRM.