HDMI Licensing Working with US Customs to Crack Counterfeits

[admin]

HDMI Licensing, LLC, the agent responsible for licensing the High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) Specification, today announced its successful collaboration with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to enforce intellectual property rights and trademark protection for the HDMI standard and help CBP frontline personnel identify counterfeit goods and prevent them from entering the United States. Since January 2010, 32 shipments containing counterfeit HDMI products such as cables and adapters, DVD players and electronic projectors have been seized or destroyed at U.S. ports including Alaska, California, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Texas, Washington State and Virginia.

Discuss "HDMI Licensing Working with US Customs to Crack Counterfeits" here. Read the article.

 

[sholling]

What a scam. A hardware standard designed to drive up costs and complexity, and create compatibility issues now used to drive up the price of cables. The FCC should be disbanded for allowing this to be shoved down the throats of the public.

I'm not a lawyer but I think the cable makers can probably get away with "compatible with HDMI" because the term HDMI has become generic for a style of connector - possibly voiding trademark protection. The firmware inside of a player is a different story because that's protected by copyrights.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I think the real deal here is this :
After master HDMI key has been discovered and confirmed , Big content is $h1t scared of new wave devices which could facilitate copying digital content like HD realtime H264 encoder with hdmi interface and usb 3 to connect to pc/mac.
Modern DSP chips could handle this without sweat....

 

[sholling]

I have no doubt that big content is a big part of the push but that doesn't explain going after cables. What ticks me off is you (the purchaser) don't own anything anymore - you buy a license to use the hardware and software. Sony apparently owns your PS3 and M$ apparently owns your XBox and can sue you for hacking the box that you paid for. Should Ford be able to limit where you drive or limit you to approved brands of tires and gas? HDMI requires development and I can see the need to protect a revenue stream however since Big Content jammed it down our throats they should pay for it. On the other hand a cable is generic and I can't see any possible way that they can block production or imports or the use of the descriptive term compatible with HDMI. But I'm not a lawyer.

The FCC should be gone after allowing a proprietary encrypted standard to be shoved down the throats of the public.

 

[krzywica]

Yeah because this will stop piracy.....idiots.....I swear these laws get dumber and dumber. Hey FCC maybe start with Usenet. Idiots....

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Yeah because this will stop piracy.....idiots.....I swear these laws get dumber and dumber. Hey FCC maybe start with Usenet. Idiots....

The first rule of the usenet is you don't talk about the usenet....

but yea - "counterfeit" hdmi cables ??? who they are kidding?