Engadget: Lawsuit Over 4K Copy Protection
According to Engadget, Intel and Warner Bros are suing LegendSky (makers of HDFury devices). The Engadget article claims, "it's not very likely that people are buying HDFury solely to reclaim some convenience". Actually, analog gamers, like myself, depend on HDFury devices to drive CRTs from more modern devices which lack VGA outputs. It is a 100% legitimate usage case which has nothing to do with illegal ripping and distribution of encrypted content.
I'm not following how going after this company has any effect on movie piracy. First, anyone using the Integral 4K would also need a 4K video capture setup. Based on a quick browsing of bhphotovideo.com the total hardware investment is going to be pricey enough to cull out the casual would-be pirate with intent to distribute. Second, I'm assuming there are plenty of countries in which LegendSky can continue to legally sell devices like the Integral 4K. So at best they would be blocked from selling the device in places like the US. Ultimately it just takes one rip, it makes no difference if that rip originated in the US. Third, I'm going to take a guess that the more serious rippers are always going to find another way to rip 4K movies, regardless of the existence of the Integral 4K device. Perhaps via 100% software crack, or pulling the signal from display hardware after decrypt, etc.
Shooting Yourself in the Foot
4K was a great opportunity to do the opposite of what the industry ultimately did. The alternative I'd like as a consumer is losslessly compressed original quality content on physical media, with TVs which display unmolested (aka unprocessed) pass-through video, with some baseline factory color calibration. What the industry did instead is focus on higher amounts of compression, more random image molestation in the TV, cheaper streaming costs, more ads, less ownership, less freedom, and now putting my CRT obsession at risk by suing LegendSky. In many ways the industry eroded the quality difference between the purchased content and pirated re-compressed content, to the point where the consumer doesn't know the difference.
In my opinion this is another example of the wrong way to attempt to solve the problem. Instead of focusing on limiting freedom to force consumers into some revenue stream, how about using technology to provide legitimate advantage which consumers actually desire to buy into...
According to Engadget, Intel and Warner Bros are suing LegendSky (makers of HDFury devices). The Engadget article claims, "it's not very likely that people are buying HDFury solely to reclaim some convenience". Actually, analog gamers, like myself, depend on HDFury devices to drive CRTs from more modern devices which lack VGA outputs. It is a 100% legitimate usage case which has nothing to do with illegal ripping and distribution of encrypted content.
I'm not following how going after this company has any effect on movie piracy. First, anyone using the Integral 4K would also need a 4K video capture setup. Based on a quick browsing of bhphotovideo.com the total hardware investment is going to be pricey enough to cull out the casual would-be pirate with intent to distribute. Second, I'm assuming there are plenty of countries in which LegendSky can continue to legally sell devices like the Integral 4K. So at best they would be blocked from selling the device in places like the US. Ultimately it just takes one rip, it makes no difference if that rip originated in the US. Third, I'm going to take a guess that the more serious rippers are always going to find another way to rip 4K movies, regardless of the existence of the Integral 4K device. Perhaps via 100% software crack, or pulling the signal from display hardware after decrypt, etc.
Shooting Yourself in the Foot
4K was a great opportunity to do the opposite of what the industry ultimately did. The alternative I'd like as a consumer is losslessly compressed original quality content on physical media, with TVs which display unmolested (aka unprocessed) pass-through video, with some baseline factory color calibration. What the industry did instead is focus on higher amounts of compression, more random image molestation in the TV, cheaper streaming costs, more ads, less ownership, less freedom, and now putting my CRT obsession at risk by suing LegendSky. In many ways the industry eroded the quality difference between the purchased content and pirated re-compressed content, to the point where the consumer doesn't know the difference.
In my opinion this is another example of the wrong way to attempt to solve the problem. Instead of focusing on limiting freedom to force consumers into some revenue stream, how about using technology to provide legitimate advantage which consumers actually desire to buy into...