TCPA / Palladium FAQ

[Roland Postle]

> I'm still not seeing how any of the TCPA stuff prevents copy once use
> everywhere.  A TCPA machine has to support existing formats, MPEG4,
> MP3 etc so all that is required is one person to first re-digitize
> from analog output or capture digital stream somewhere on the chain to
> the monitor or inside the TCPA monitor and re-encode in MPEG4, and
> you're away.
>
> So then we have this Document Revocation List (DRL) idea where they're
> going to send around a digest of forbidden documents.  As the poster
> below noted this is trivial to break -- his break works just fine,
> just flip a few bits and the DRL digest won't work anymore.  The
> watermark if any was in the original in addition to the TCPA
> encryption will be long gone due to the re-encoding.  All it takes is
> a little patch to Kazza / Limewire or whatever is being used by then
> to stir re-encoded documents to make the DRL fail to work.

Theorectically...

Your hardware might refuse to re-encode the stream (unless you can prove /
get some license etc... that your stream isn't copyrighted). If you can
re-encode, it will almost certainly be stamped with your hardware's unique
IDs so they know who to arrest when it gets out into the wild.

You most likely won't be able to patch Kazza / Limewire, assuming you can
run them at all.

A large revocation list doesn't need to be circulated, rather they can now
insist you have a net connection, so a signature of the suspect stream can
be sent to a remote server which will compare it against a list which could
potentially be trillions of megabytes big.

Although it's a very difficult problem, it's not impossible to develop
better watermarks that will survive the analog gap and/or recognition of the
media regardless of it's format or any filters applied to it. If most humans
can recognise famous copyrighted pieces of music, it surely won't be that
long before a computer can also do it with ease.

How it all works in practise is anyone's guess. Mine is that it won't, not
till TCPA generation 3 or 4 at least. It seems to me more like a long term
plan that'll incorporate not-yet-developed technology, rather than something
they expect will solve all piracy problems tomorrow.

- Blazde