Can TCPA be broken?
The early versions will be vulnerable to anyone with the tools and patience to crack the hardware (e.g., get clear data on the bus between the CPU and the Fritz chip). However, from phase 2, the Fritz chip will disappear inside the main processor – let’s call it the ‘Hexium’ – and things will get a lot harder. Really serious, well funded opponents will still be able to crack it. However, it’s likely to go on getting more difficult and expensive. Also, in many countries, cracking Fritz will be illegal. In the USA the Digital Millennium Copyright Act already does this, while in the EU the situation may vary from one country to another, depending on the way national regulations implement the EU Copyright Directive. Also, in many products, compatibility control is already being mixed quite deliberately with copyright control. The Sony Playstation’s authentication chips also contain the encryption algorithm for DVD, so that reverse engineers can be accused of circumventing a copyright prote
