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Ours is an era of technological adolescence. Aside from the Al Gore sense of that truism, there are the cable vs. satellite, HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray, motion control vs. digital audio conundrums that cause no end of frustration at your local Best Buy. Almost by definition, electronics consumers want everything, all the time, and at the moment there is no single electronics vendor equipped to meet that demand. The quest for an all-in-one entertainment device is the industry’s Holy Grail, cf. Xbox Video Marketplace, Apple iPhone, even Nintendo’s Wii Channels. On the one hand, this quest benefits consumers by encouraging innovation and competitive pricing. On the other, the very consumers who embrace the resultant emerging technologies are often subject to having their purchases rendered obsolete. For that cadre of consumer termed “early adopters,” the risk is worth the reward of having the latest console or bigger, brighter TV a few months before mainstream up-take. But when obsolescence derives from industry regulation, rather than the natural cycle of technological maturation, early adopters turn to the Internet version of civil disobedience. And, some would say, justifiably.

I’m talking, of course, about HDCP, Intel’s crack at giving the motion picture industry what it wants. Much has been said on this topic by far better informed writers than myself, so let’s cut straight to the car chase: HDCP, if fully implemented, would shut out early HDTV adopters from viewing media in full HD resolutions, or at all, given that up until recently, HDTVs were not manufactured with HDCP in mind. The less discussed element of this stramash is that it probably will never happen. At present, next-gen DVD players do not fully implement HDCP, meaning that you can have a non-HDCP compliant link somewhere in your content chain and still play the content in full HD. While various dates are floated to switch on the full crushing might of HDCP, there’s a good chance these will be pushed back and back at least until Microsoft has a chance to re-engineer their HD-DVD player to use compliant links through the Xbox 360…which may or may not be possible, depending on Peter Moore’s mood when you ask him. Not content with trusting Pete’s doctors to mix up his medication? Here’s a better reason not to worry about HDCP: the pirates have already cracked it.

By pirates, I mean PhD wielding mathematicians. The math is here, courtesy of Prof. Ed Felten: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1005! “Conspiracy Attack” – could that be more Robert Ludlum? The crux of the method is that there will have to be, at some point, a 40-device conspiracy attack on HDCP, which will have the effect of decoding the 40x40 matrix on which all HDCP’s security depends. Given that this method works, the attack will be run, and the results will ultimately be used to create HDCP cracking devices, the question becomes one of ethics. Should I, as an early adopting consumer, support efforts to undermine HDCP by purchasing and/or utilizing such devices? The answer, unequivocally, is Yes. Ideally, every early adopter should only purchase and/or utilize devices with cracking capability built-in, then use those devices solely to watch unprotected content. The point would not be to do something illegal, but to demonstrate the inefficacy of any security scheme conceived in the mindset that prompted HDCP. Because if we don’t destroy it, who will?