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Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

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Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#131
post #114
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple: They pay a hot shot company to try and stop piracy and thats the best they can come up with. Piracy can't be stopped but thats not what they want to hear. Piracy can be greatly reduced by distributing the content via Netflix but thats not what they want to hear.

It's been decades and literally everyone in multiple industries is still refusing to admit they're throwing money after a lost cause? I won't say that's impossible, but the entire idea behind capitalism is that this happens rarely. Eventually someone will realize they can make more profit by not paying for anti-piracy, right?

I think some companies are just looking for the appearance of fighting and succeeding against piracy.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android depends on the hardware, but generally speaking Western devices support Widevine Level 1 and its implemented in hardware. Desktop Linux will only ever support Level 3. But Chrome on Windows also supports Level 3, and Disney+ works in Chrome, there, so the article isn't correct.

So I guess my question is why will Desktop Linux only ever support Level 3? If its the equivalent hardware that a Windows device would support L1 (or does that not exist?), then wouldn't, say, an Android device in para-virtualization be able to show you the content in HD? Wouldn't the right pieces extracted from Android and loaded into Desktop Linux allow you to watch L1? Just hypothetically. I guess my question is:…

Windows and Linux both only support L3, since L1 depends on hardware DRM support. The problem here is that Verified Media Path (VMP) is not supported on Linux. Amazon “solves“ this issue by restricting Linux to SD streaming, but it seems Disney+ doesn’t allow streaming without VMP at all.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#133
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

HDCP has had its master key leaked in 2010. You can also buy hardware over the internet that bypasses HDCP.

Basically this. HDCP 2.2 is "secure", but the previous versions aren't. A company signed the HDCP agreement and got the decryption keys, and made a device that could downgrade HDCP. Apparently this was allowed by the HDCP licensing agreement so it's all legal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content...

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost of building a Linux client should be zero. It's not because they want to have their proprietary DRM/spyware restricting what you can do. Ever heard the phrase "piracy is a better service", Disney? Edit: Cost should be negligible. You should build for web/browser standards, not the OS.

Why would the cost of supporting an additional platform ever be zero?

Turn off the DRM and the youtube-dl community will happily donate their time and effort to provide support to linux users. Disney needn't pay them a cent.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#135

> 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…

DRM punishes paying customers and does nothing to stop piracy. It reminds me of those "you wouldn't kill" segments at the start of DVD's that you couldn't skip, but just moaned at you to not pirate the DVD. But the only people they were telling this to was paying customers who bought the DVD. People who pirated the DVD, just plugged it into their computer, ripped out the content then published.

What makes matters worse is they inform the consumer that yes you can just steal the film. I was involved in the Private Server scene in my younger days and a game had a campaign against private servers. Ever since like 90% of the people in that private scene have told me they only knew about it cause of the campaign. You spark the human curiosity and screw yourself.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#136

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…

Are you from the future?

In all seriousness though, how are you able to enjoy Disney+ currently? It has yet to launch. According to the Disney+ website it launches in just under 23 days from now.[0]

0. https://disneyplus.com

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#137
The hand-wringing in this thread is sort of amazing — especially since 99% of the people complaining weren’t going to subscribe anyway.

Look, if there are indeed issues with actual ChromeOS (and not the Chromium variants — but the full mostly-proprietary Google procured ChromeOS), I fully expect that to be fixed — you might not get 4K support (but there are what, 3 Chromebooks with 4K screens? Plus, most streaming services do not support 4K on web browsers period - even Netflix only offers it on Windows. Mac users with 5K screens have to use Boot Camp (and even that isn’t a guarantee) to watch 4K in the browser) — but if Chromebooks are an issue, I fully expect that to be fixed.

As odious as DRM is, I just can’t bring myself to be surprised or overwrought by its existence. Yes, it is largely more about appearances than actually solving piracy — but those appearances matter. The big thing that has pulled people away from piracy is convenience. And with the exception of Linux on the desktop users (a population that is small and only getting smaller, as the main distros don’t even care about the desktop or non-server users anymore), Disney+ seems to offer that. The people that pirate because of DRM would have pirated anyway. I pay and subscribe to more content than 99.99% of the population — but I also download whatever I can’t get from an online service and I feel zero guilt and make zero justifications for my choices. And that’ll remain true for Disney+ — even if there wasn’t a DRM scheme at all (which just isn’t ever going to happen).

DRM sucks, sure, but are we really surprised? And I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to boycott a streaming service with tons of content because it doesn’t support Linux in the desktop.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#138

> 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.

It's not clear. The tools are kept secret to avoid patching. But presumably they reverse engineered it and have a way to capture the raw stream.

I know at one point they were using Roku TVs or Fire TVs which allowed an older DRM standard. Now apparently there's a crack for Windows that's kept underground in the scene groups doing releases.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#139
post #97

Could this be fixed by disassembling the widevine .so/.dll and altering the function that returns the "security level" so that it always returns the highest level?

The highest security level involves hardware keys. You'd have to get a hardware device that supports it and extract the keys somehow

So what hardware device is it interacting with when it is able to run properly on windows and mac? Is there a reason Linux couldn't interact with this hardware in the same way?

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#140
post #19

AmazonPrime video does not delivers HD content in Linux... I tried everything switching browsers, changing User agent, wine, running virtual box. I seems some type of DRM is not implemented yet in Linux. Netflix is the same I think. I happily pirate content now.

FWIW I've had varying luck on Amazon; I think it's based on the publisher of the content. Some of Amazon's own stuff works in 1080 on my machine while other movies are much lower quality
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