Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM • Hacker News Board

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#71

Post by hellofunk » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #44

Anyone who’s used Disney’s existing streaming service will, I am certain, tell you it it truly awful. It’s incredibly slow, saddles you with massive downloads regardless of device or connection type. The app sometimes just doesn’t open at all. I really hope whatever they’re making is not based on what they are doing currently.

This whole thread has been rather surprising to me, we've been enjoying Disney+ for a few weeks now and I've been amazed how wonderful all the content is. I've never seen any errors or the issue described in this article (I'm on Mac).

The only thing about the UI that I miss is that it does not respond to keyboard shortcuts (like pressing spacebar to start and stop the playback).

But overall, I've been very happy and impressed with the service.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#72

Post by foota » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

profmonocle wrote: post #36

> desktop Linux and many Android devices only support level 1. In this case e.g. Netflix will not offer full HD or 4k resolutions And yet 4K webrips of recent Netflix shows are readily available on torrent sites. I don't understand who these higher levels of DRM are trying to target. They obviously don't stop the serious pirates from ripping and sharing the content with everyone. Yet the lower levels are "good enough…

I imagine you'd see a lot more casual piracy if it were trivial to copy, i.e., people just sending the videos to their friends.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#73

Post by dewey » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #9

Interesting. I'd been toying with signing up for Disney+ at some point (when does it even go live officially?). But if this is the case, I absolutely won't be getting a subscription as I use Linux as my desktop OS. "No Linux support" == "no customer"

> when does it even go live officially?

November 12 in US, CA, NL. More countries on the 19th.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#74

Post by yaur » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 10:39 PM UTC

swiley wrote: post #39

vitus wrote: post #26

Nit, since this confused me when I was looking for more context: for whatever reason, Widevine security levels are ordered in decreasing security (whereas the article has them backwards). Widevine on Linux only supports L3, which means that there's no guarantee that any processing is done inside the CPU's trusted execution environment. Which, uh, reads as "no security guarantee" to me.

I’m not really ok with other people’s code running on my Secure Enclave. BitTorrented video has no security guarantee either.

In order to get the highest level protection in widevine (the numbering is confusing) the decryption code and secure media path all need to be provisioned by the OEM. In otherwords the “other people” running code in the Secure Enclave is the device manufacturer. If you don’t trust them you are already sunk.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#75

Post by pcr910303 » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 10:40 PM UTC

While I understand why Disney is getting much hate here at HN, I don’t think Disney really deserves it; Let’s face it, Linux is a very niche OS.

Just flipping on a switch for level 3 on Linux also takes money, as then they have to check whether it’s working at every deploy, provide customer support for them, etc, ...

And there’s people in this thread that DRMs are pointless... but IMO DRMs aren’t useless, it works as a small barrier for users to not copy. Think about two hypothetical people A and B for example;

When DRM exists: A talking to B “Hey, I’ve watched the movie XXX from Disney+ last night, you really should subscribe to see that great movie!”

When DRM doesn’t exist: A talking to B “Hey, I’ve watched the movie XXX from Disney+ last night, you really should see it. I’ll give the movie file in my USB tomorrow.”

I don’t like the company-tired nature of DRMs, but not much of a solution exists, esp when DRM was rejected by the web standards.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#76

Post by adrianmonk » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

dchest wrote: post #18

cloudking wrote: post #10

I'm pretty sure Disney is optimizing for the majority of their audience who use Windows, OSX, iOS etc, not developers/hackers who run desktop Linux. I'm curious about Android though.

Optimizing how?

Focusing their attention on the platforms that are most critical at first launch, I'd guess.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#77

Post by dewey » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

From their response it sounds like they are on it, it's still 3 weeks until the official launch in the bigger markets and it's only live in NL as a test market right now.

To me it sounds like a normal bug for an edge case. It's made out to be much more than it actually is with this clickbait title.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#78

Post by bobajeff » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 10:43 PM UTC

vitus wrote: post #56

swiley wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not really ok with other people’s code running on my Secure Enclave. BitTorrented video has no security guarantee either.

The security guarantee here isn't for the user, though. It's more of a placebo effect for the content producers.

That's the funny thing about this whole thing they keep using terms like security when what they're really talking about is anti-saving/copying/skipping/fastforwarding and region blocking.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#79

Post by manicdee » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 10:47 PM UTC

pcr910303 wrote: post #75

While I understand why Disney is getting much hate here at HN, I don’t think Disney really deserves it; Let’s face it, Linux is a very niche OS. Just flipping on a switch for level 3 on Linux also takes money, as then they have to check whether it’s working at every deploy, provide customer support for them, etc, ... And there’s people in this thread that DRMs are pointless... but IMO DRMs aren’t useless, it works as…

When DRM exists: “Hey I watched this movie that hasn’t been released from Disney last night, have a copy and you can enjoy it too!”

The only thing preventing this stream working on Linux is someone paying Disney the licence fees. It’s nothing to do with control of end product quality. Disney does not provide support for customer technical problems.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#80

Post by vbezhenar » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

profmonocle wrote: post #36

> desktop Linux and many Android devices only support level 1. In this case e.g. Netflix will not offer full HD or 4k resolutions And yet 4K webrips of recent Netflix shows are readily available on torrent sites. I don't understand who these higher levels of DRM are trying to target. They obviously don't stop the serious pirates from ripping and sharing the content with everyone. Yet the lower levels are "good enough…

How those webrips are performed? Are there leaked DRM keys or something like that? I thought that DRM encrypts stream all the way from website to display, so it's quite hard to intercept it.