Help with removing HDMI encoder chip.

[james_s]

The chips themselves aren't illegal. However, selling them without having a license can get you sued under DMCA and similar for trafficking in circumvention devices. That's not the same thing.

I think China has pretty clearly demonstrated that they don't care. The Western authorities can hardly even make a dent in the sales of blatantly counterfeit goods, take one seller out and they pop right back up under a different name.

[janoc]

The chips themselves aren't illegal. However, selling them without having a license can get you sued under DMCA and similar for trafficking in circumvention devices. That's not the same thing.

I think China has pretty clearly demonstrated that they don't care. The Western authorities can hardly even make a dent in the sales of blatantly counterfeit goods, take one seller out and they pop right back up under a different name.

Whatever. I don't care. The point was that I wish good luck to whoever suggested complaining to eBay about receiving a fake chip when it is illegal to sell in the US. If you want to whine about eBay not policing Chinese sellers or eBay being full of counterfeit goods, fine but I don't see how is that related to the topic.

[james_s]

Try to read the entire text you are replying to before you hit reply - I wrote exactly this thing too. However, what you don't realize is that when HDCP has been designed, downloading "from a torrent site" was not an option for most, because the broadband simply wasn't there yet. We are talking year 2000 here, 18 years ago! Stuff like Bittorrent didn't even exist at that time. It has been pretty effective at what it was designed for about 10 years, making sure that the studios got their investment in the tech back. Today it is a pointless anachronism, I agree, but that's irrelevant. It has played its role already.

When HDCP came out, streaming was not yet a thing either due partly to that very reason. Media came on DVDs and later Bluray, and I was ripping DVDs onto my PC so I could watch them on my laptop while on vacation and such. They were pushing HDCP encryption on the disc player to TV link and like most people I simply bypassed that whole chain, ripping the disc from the source. I don't know how much piracy was going on at the time because I never bothered, even back then used DVDs were cheap as dirt from Amazon. Some years later studios made several laughable attempts at releasing digital versions of movies which were so encumbered by copy protection that it was still easier to rip the DVD and get a completely unprotected file that could be played on any device.

When I worked at a company that made devices with HDMI output, the HDCP stuff caused huge problems, it was one of our biggest issues getting our stuff to work with all the broken firmware in various TVs and other devices. Lots of effort, and one of the biggest sources of customer complaints when their TV wouldn't work with our stuff. Usually it was a bug in the TV but of course the first blame came to us. Meanwhile for our automation rack we had a bunch of $14 splitters to strip the HDCP so the video capture servers could "see" the output from the boxes.

[james_s]

Whatever. I don't care. The point was that I wish good luck to whoever suggested complaining to eBay about receiving a fake chip when it is illegal to sell in the US. If you want to whine about eBay not policing Chinese sellers or eBay being full of counterfeit goods, fine but I don't see how is that related to the topic.

It works though. Ebay either doesn't know or doesn't care, their system is very biased toward buyer protection. If you complain that you received a fake/counterfeit part and the seller doesn't refund  you, ebay will grant a refund nearly every time, almost no questions asked. If the part turns out to be illegal to sell, that responsibility lands on the seller, the buyer is still protected. All you have to do is open a claim that the item is defective or not as described.

[amyk]

Given that they are likely illegal to sell in the US I wouldn't be surprised if eBay just told you "tough luck, punk!".

How are they illegal if they can be found in just about every device that has an HDMI input...? Are those device also illegal to sell...?

The chips themselves aren't illegal. However, selling them without having a license can get you sued under DMCA and similar for trafficking in circumvention devices. That's not the same thing.

Maybe in your country, but not in the US. It's the same as buying devices with HDCP decoders in them and harvesting the chips for sale; the original buyer from the manufacturer may have such an agreement but that does not apply to further sales after that.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine