MacBooks Enter a Golden Age of Anti-piracy Cruft: HDCP For All

It has come to pass that HDCP - High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (or, in this case, DisplayPort Content Protection) - is now built into the new MacBooks to protect iTunes Store media. Most of the content is not protected but it seems some newer videos are, which means you can't play them over a non-HDCP compliant TV or monitor. While many of us just use the screen or iPods to watch the potentially protected films, this could have ramifications for those wanting to connect their laptops up to TVs without HDMI or DVI ports - namely TVs with only VGA or component/composite ports. It could also have ramifications on the Apple TV in situations where users have odd TV set-ups.