Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

hansdegoede.livejournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 330 posts

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#151

Post by andrepd »

>Widevine has 3 security levels and many devices, including desktop Linux and many Android devices only support level 1. In this case e.g. Netflix will not offer full HD or 4k resolutions, but otherwise everything works fine, which is a balance between DRM and usability.

This reminds me of my very short foray into streaming services. I purchased a month of Netflix, or rather I got their 1 month trial, and opened the website to watch something. First it didn't open on Firefox, and they told me to install Chrom(ium). I didn't like it, but went away and `apt install`ed Chromium. Then it blocked my account because I was using a VPN. I liked this even less (I gave it a credit card number, so they know I'm not a bot or something using a VPN to hide traffic), but I still disabled my VPN. Mind that these two steps already cost me 45 minutes of browsing through FAQs and forums to figure out.

Then I finally open something, after installing proprietary software, a new browser, and disabling my privacy-protecting VPN. I'm presented with a video playing in glorious 1280x720 resolution. I just laughed to myself, closed the tab, and opened thepiratebay.org.

So let me get this straight. I'm paying for a service and I get headaches, restrictions upon restrictions, and mandatory malware, all for the privilege of watching gimped resolution content? Whereas if I went on piratebay I could get a 4K mkv file I can watch anywhere I want, no internet and no software required? You can fuck right off.

Strikes me as odd how anyone can describing paying for a shit service as "a balance between DRM and usability".

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#152

Post by prepend »

zokier wrote: post #116
prepend wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Niche or not “Disney won’t sell me content I want to buy” seems like a tough position for Disney to argue past. This was the argument back in the days when movies wouldn’t be released in many countries as the market is too small. What do you expect potential customers to do? Should they buy new computers? Not watch Disney stuff? I think I would expect the latter, but if they aren’t Disney’s customer then them piratin…

> Niche or not “Disney won’t sell me content I want to buy” seems like a tough position for Disney to argue past. I feel that is such an entitled attitude. Watching Disney+ is hardly some inalienable human right nor essential for survival. Why would anyone think their right to use a service, and cosume content, overrides Disneys well-established ownership?

What’s wrong to entitled attitudes?

I feel like “entitled” is some sort of jerk buzzword. Entitled is a wonderful thing. I think it’s good to be entitled to not being exploited by billion dollar companies making decisions that make like worse for people. Even if it’s just a little worse like not being able to watch a movie with your kids. Sadly, we’re not entitled to such a thing.

Why is Disney entitled to oppressive “well-established ownership?” I’m not sure how one is more entitled than retaining copyright for 70 years after the artists who create something die.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#153

Post by sushid »

geofft wrote: post #81
turblety wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but why? Do the rightsholders believe that these mechanisms are effective at making them money somehow? How correct are they - are these mechanisms effective at stopping some amount of casual piracy and converting that into purchases?

It could also be an attempt to sway the public and their views on piracy.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#154

Post by AlexDragusin »

turblety wrote: post #60
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…

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.

The info is there not to stop piracy but as a legal matter in case the customer says "I didn't knew, I wasn't informed".

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#155

Post by sideeffffect »

tshaddox wrote: post #70
nikanj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Device manufacturers. Play nice, or we won't grant you the magic pixie dust to play our content in glorious 4k.

To clarify, this isn’t just a cynical comment. It’s actually why digital content producers use DRM. Generally speaking, they’re not idiots, they know it will have little effect on determined pirates and will cause some hassle for some legitimate customers. The point really is so that the digital content producers can maintain control over the providers of computer hardware and distribution channels. Here’s an old art…

Ian Hickson's insightful short essay about DRM was on Google+. But now it's gone...

Not entirely, actually, thanks to the Internet Archive!!!

https://web.archive.org/web/20190119000840/https://plus.goog...

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#156

Post by earenndil »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #122
hannasanarion wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most games on Steam don't have DRM. Valve's DRM product is called Custom Executable Generation (CEG) and it costs extra for developers to add to their games. Most steam games work fine even if you uninstall Steam and have no internet.

How exactly many games do (EDIT: typo) have DRM? AFAIK the answer is "many enough", I'm unable to give a concrete number but I do recall many games in my library that doesn't appear in a list of DRM-free games. I don't agree to your premise. (To be clear, I do think DRM---so-called---is very bad in general. I accept DRMs for indie games only because DRMs have been already existed for games.) [1] https://steam.fandom.…

That list is community-maintained and almost certainly contains many omissions.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#157

Post by bscphil »

vbezhenar wrote: post #80
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.

Pirates cracked Widevine (and possibly other schemes). They have a drop-in replacement DLL (which they keep secret) that dumps the original content of the stream (not a screen / HDMI capture, like the other two comments said). This is called a WEB-DL, while capturing and encoding the stream is usually called a WEBrip.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#158

Post by s3cur3 »

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…

My experience with small content producers is that their decisions surrounding stopping piracy have almost nothing to do with the economics of it; it’s an emotional decision. I’ve seen people spend 25%+ of their content’s revenue on DRM.

Now, why the major players also pour money into this stuff is just baffling.

Post reply on HN