The cracking of HDCP is likely to have mixed impact upon the industry. The main usage for HDCP is in HDMI for transport off a BD player or set-top to a display. By circumventing HDCP, high-quality digital piracy could conceivably take place as content is delivered to the TV screen.

This is unlikely to change the rate of piracy of BDs since the physical copy protection on discs was broken in late 2007 for file copies from BD. However, it could impact the degree of control the industry can exert over BD players in the field where firmware updates can impose controls over certain playback modes.

For broadcast and online distribution, the issue is perhaps more visible since content hacking over the airwaves and DRM is more flexible to updates than the fixed standard on BDs. Without HDCP, content moving from the box to the TV over HDMI would be accessible in an unencrypted, full resolution, digital stream. This is particularly apt for early release feature film over broadcast or VOD, where HD VOD has already been mandated to be HDMI output only by the FCC in the US.  Risk to high value content in this transfer could push back some of the more innovative rollouts planned, at a time when pay TV is looking to capitalise on its improving security record and extend reach across devices as the only premium content provider.

A further crack to monolithic, fixed security systems does suggest that the industry needs to become more reactive and flexible in dealing with content tracking and security, especially as content rights become fragmented to multiple devices and networks. It seems unlikely that another round of heavy security like HDCP could be implemented without disrupting usage right of normal consumers in an increasingly connected content world. This may provide an opportunity for deployments of digital watermarking technology, such as is used in high end post-production to track content leaks at source. This would provide a less disruptive method of managing content by giving rights owner's visibility on content movement outside of the network through watermark tracking, with a choice of how to tackle persistent rights violation rather than a blanket ban.