I spoke with an Intel rep about this. Their position, as explained to me:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46091,00.html
>The official Intel line follows, as explained by company spokesman Daven
>Oswalt: "We have no problem with Mr. Ferguson presenting his research. The
>information that he's saying, it's certainly his right to say it."
>However, when it comes to the DMCA itself, Intel's position appears a bit
>harder. Continues Oswalt: "Even if Intel entered into an agreement (not to
>sue), we'd have no control of what other government authorities would
>decide. It's hard for us to tell what the legal ramifications (were of
>publishing)."
Background:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02393.html
Below message forwarded to Politech by jono_at_microshaft.org.
-Declan
*********
Niels Ferguson has found a weakness in the HDCP content
protection system. However, he can not publish the
results due to DMCA issues.
He has written a paper regarding this issue here:
Censorship in action:
why I don't publish my HDCP results
http://www.macfergus.com/niels/dmca/index.html
<quote>
HDCP is fatally flawed. My results show that an experienced IT person can
recover the HDCP master key in about 2 weeks using four computers and 50
HDCP displays. Once you know the master key, you can decrypt any movie,
impersonate any HDCP device, and even create new HDCP devices that will
work with the 'official' ones. This is really, really bad news for a
security system. If this master key is ever published, HDCP will provide no
protection whatsoever. The flaws in HDCP are not hard to find. As I like to
say: "I was just reading it and it broke."
</quote>
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Received on Aug 16 2001
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