MacComedy

HDCP blocks content from people with eyes

In an attempt to curb piracy, Apple’s new aluminum MacBooks feature High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) that prevents anyone from viewing HD content downloaded from iTunes — whether they try to watch it on an external monitor, a projector or even the MacBook’s screen itself.

“I don’t like teaching, so I decided to play the movie Hellboy 2 on the projector for my class so I could focus on my online gambling,” said John Simpson, a high school science teacher in Phoenix.  “But all that showed up was a bunch of garbled text, like something out of The Matrix.  At first I thought it was some sort of copy protection interfering with the projector, but even when I unplugged the projector and looked right at my MacBook, it was the same thing.  Kinda gave me a headache.”

The technology that prevents the HD content from being viewed may be better referred to as RCCP, or Retina Cord Content Protection.  RCCP was designed as an open standard for computers to transfer video directly to the eye.  It also offers optional 128-bit AES encrypted copy protection to make HDCP-enabled videos appear scrambled by messing with your rods and cones.

“RCCP is a form of HDCP that doesn’t just encrypt data being sent over wires, but it actually encrypts the images being sent from any screen to your eye,” said Scott Crosby of Carnegie Mellon University, an expert on HDCP.  “This ensures that no one, not even the person who bought the movie, can view it.”

But why would Apple want to prevent people from viewing movies they purchased?

“Apple is vehemently against piracy,” Crosby said.  “Who’s going to illegally download or copy a movie they can’t watch?”

Movies with this form of digital rights management can still be heard, however.

“Blocking out sound would require a completely different algorithm,” said Crosby.  “Not to mention a brand new acronym.”

Apple may face lawsuits due to unintended consequences of the RCCP protection scheme, which some say is only in beta and shouldn’t have been rolled out to a commercial product yet.

“A lot of my students had an adverse reaction to seeing the encryption,” Simpson said.  “One girl started screaming profusely as blood poured from her eyes.  Another kid jumped out the window.”

Currently, only a portion of iTunes HD movie content appears to be encoded with HDCP/RCCP/DVDA/whatever-the-hell, whether they’re wrapped in FairPlay Version 3 DRM or not.  Simpson stated that most science fiction movies he downloaded seemed to screw up his retinas while movies that focused on high school hi-jinx and geriatric love seemed to run “sweet as butterscotch candy.”