Decrease patent terms to just a few years in most fields. Alternatively, a few major reforms would help. I think that evidence that patents are beneficial in any field is lacking. The system was put in place to protect us, if it isn't serving its purpose we need to be more objective and declare how it could be better implemented. Without disagreeing I would encourage you to provide an alternative solution to the current as you describe broken system. How Hackers Crack WPA2 Networks Using the PMKID Hashcat Attack
First it was efficient video and audio compression, now it will be life saving treatment. How does a binary blob get around a patent? Ah yes, the sweet taste of abusing state institutions to hold back scientific progress.
It is cracked.ĭo you mean that enabling the Pi's hardware decoding of MPEG-2 and VC-1 video files without paying for a license key just requires to patch a single byte with this command? Yes, it seems to patch a licensing function at 0圎C95FD4 to always return 1, by patching the jump at 0圎C95FE2 that should be only taken for the always-allowed H codec to always be taken, thus always allowing all codecs.
I'm actually surprised that that hasn't been cracked yet or at least, a quick search didn't find anything do let me know otherwise!īut given the publicity and popularity, it is a little surprising. However, it's not implausible the manufacturer of the hardware decoder takes some of the fee. If the only license is involved is the patent license, then they could likely provide it for free. This is very much the same thing as with medication, you have brand name medication which is pricy, patent expires and much cheaper versions enter the market, but even then you can still purchase the brand version and pay more. And there's nothing preventing them for charging for their decoder if people are willing to pay for it.Īnd if raspberry would have to provide these keys they would have to break their security scheme which would still be like breaking DRM.
I wonder if this will affect the existence of the Raspberry Pi's binary blob? A comment from reddit where I asked the same question: No, even if patent expired those companies won't want to surrender their income.