4 ms·

I'm not so optimistic. Yes, you can never "plug the analog hole" completely, but you can definitely lock stuff down to the point it's impractical for 95% of pe

I'm not so optimistic. Yes, you can never "plug the analog hole" completely, but you can definitely lock stuff down to the point it's impractical for 95% of people. For instance, imagine some sort of audio / video fingerprint system that resides in Intel and/or nVidia's GPU drivers. Content gets played through the on-GPU HEVC / h.264 decoders already. Doesn't seem like a huge stretch to add a fingerprint authentication system to that stage. Have a list of content IDs that are protected, and require a valid license to play. Yes, your source file is unprotected (video camera in front of monitor), but all of your devices are unable to play it. Yes, your ancient, circa 2024 desktop PC will still play it, but your new 2030 model TV implements this fingerprint system as well so you can't just cast this file to your 100" display in your living room. This is to say nothing of other forms of content (applications / games / web pages) that actually could require attestation / DRM HW / always-on internet to run.

jandrese 2y ago
I was thinking of someone hacking a capture device that sniffs the output matrix of a display in order to capture the video and has a line-in plugged into the drivers on the speaker. Way out of reach of most people, but only a very small number of people need to be have the wherewithal to do it to keep the pirate scene going, especially if they live in countries that don't care about your DRM laws. The analog hole exists so long as people don't have DRM directly implanted into their eyeballs.
- dlgeek 2y ago
  As I understand it, that's common now - cheap HDMI splitters do the HDCP negotiation on the first port, and then the unencrypted digital video and audio signals are cloned to both ports, ready to be captured.
  - jandrese 2y ago
    Oh yeah, I had to buy one of these (I called it the HDCP defeater) because my receiver was otherwise unable to forward the negotiation between the Roku and the TV fast enough. I would turn on the TV and the screen would blink on and off for several minutes before the HDCP handshake managed to win the race. In theory those devices might be defeated with newer versions of the protocol, but that part that drives the matrix of pixels can never be encrypted until you have DRM built directly into your eyeballs.
fc417fc802 2y ago
[dead]

jandrese 2y ago

I was thinking of someone hacking a capture device that sniffs the output matrix of a display in order to capture the video and has a line-in plugged into the drivers on the speaker. Way out of reach of most people, but only a very small number of people need to be have the wherewithal to do it to keep the pirate scene going, especially if they live in countries that don't care about your DRM laws. The analog hole exists so long as people don't have DRM directly implanted into their eyeballs.

dlgeek 2y ago
As I understand it, that's common now - cheap HDMI splitters do the HDCP negotiation on the first port, and then the unencrypted digital video and audio signals are cloned to both ports, ready to be captured.
- jandrese 2y ago
  Oh yeah, I had to buy one of these (I called it the HDCP defeater) because my receiver was otherwise unable to forward the negotiation between the Roku and the TV fast enough. I would turn on the TV and the screen would blink on and off for several minutes before the HDCP handshake managed to win the race. In theory those devices might be defeated with newer versions of the protocol, but that part that drives the matrix of pixels can never be encrypted until you have DRM built directly into your eyeballs.

fc417fc802 2y ago

[dead]