[deleted]
Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
191–200 of 330 posts
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#192>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…
Well look at it from Netflix's perspective. You are in no way an indicative normal customer. They don't support certain browsers, because there is no need to. Privacy hiding VPNs are used to evade content locking as part of Netflix's business models/licensing agreements, so why would they allow your privacy hiding vpn? I'm not agreeing that they should do these things, but you are approaching a service from a very standpoint, and I can understand why your experience is less than optimal. Being a ubuntu/debian user you must have encountered this before righ ;)
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#193Interesting. 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"
While I agree with the philosophy that Disney should try to support as many platforms as possible, I really don't think it will notice the Linux market is missing. Cost of building and maintaining a Linux client > Potential revenue from Linux users.
I've only signed Netflix after my living room TV was able to directly interact with it, smart TVs run Linux. The second question I made was how I would use it on the TVs that didn't run it, and solved it with a chromecast, again, Linux.
Another option is to get one of those media players sold on the internet, again Linux.
What other option is there for people to watch the streaming services? Directly on their computers? I doubt many people will even think about that.
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#194Earlier 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.
> And yet 4K webrips of recent Netflix shows are readily available on torrent sites. and: > Piracy can be greatly reduced by distributing the content via Netflix Aren't you guys saying different things? One is saying people already pirate on netflix, and the other is saying netflix removes the need for piracy. If you're saying the same thing, I would interpret it to mean that piracy is greatly reduced on netflix, but…
Removing the reasons to infringe copyright is completely different from making it impossible to infringe someone's copyright.
Netflix is a convenient enough service that makes it easy for people to watch what they want to watch. Most people will just pay for it without thinking twice. It's easy enough that most people won't even consider infringing. Netflix's value isn't just in the content it serves, it's also in the fact it frees people from the non-trivial effort required to "pirate". Private torrent trackers have an economy of their own.
Making it impossible to infringe is extremely difficult. Movies and music are really just information. Extremely big numbers. It's trivial to make copies of this stuff and send those copies over the network. In previous centuries, you needed to be a major industry player and own big machines like printing presses in order to infringe on someone's copyright at scale. In the 21st century it's as easy as copy paste or forgetting to close the torrent client. People might not even realize they are doing it.
This is why a fragmented streaming market will push people towards copyright infringement. Instead of pooling their intellectual property and creating one single perfect streaming service with all the content, they are making it difficult and expensive for the consumer by competing with each other. At some point, people are going to wonder if there's a better way. That's when they'll find "piracy".
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
DRM doesn't inconvenience pirates, but piracy inconveniences consumers. It's inconvenient to free up 50 GB of hard disk space to torrent of a 4k netflix rip you found off some shady torrent site. It's much more convenient to just give netflix a few bucks a month. That inconvenience comes from law enforcement action against pirate sites and many users having trouble managing their hard drive space. Not from DRM.
It may be inconvenient to free up some disk space (citation needed, anyone on HN has probably got terabytes of free space somewhere ), but the inconvenience of certain streaming platforms, or even the total hostility to watching anything ad-free (even paid users) will knock people into the piracy camp. There is no source where I can watch AAA movies that I buy on my laptop legally in 4K as it is illegal to break Blu-…
I'm talking about the typical consumer, not a HN user. Most people aren't running linux, have legal streaming options available to them, don't have terabytes available to them at any particular moment (maybe they have a few terabytes of portable harddrive in a closet somewhere, but not mounted and ready to roll.)
Are there scenarios where typical consumers turn to piracy? Sure, aboslutely. They generally do that when a convenient legal way isn't an option (e.g. region locks screwing them over.)
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#196>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…
[deleted]
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And yet 4K webrips of recent Netflix shows are readily available on torrent sites. and: > Piracy can be greatly reduced by distributing the content via Netflix Aren't you guys saying different things? One is saying people already pirate on netflix, and the other is saying netflix removes the need for piracy. If you're saying the same thing, I would interpret it to mean that piracy is greatly reduced on netflix, but…
DRM doesn't inconvenience pirates, but piracy inconveniences consumers. It's inconvenient to free up 50 GB of hard disk space to torrent of a 4k netflix rip you found off some shady torrent site. It's much more convenient to just give netflix a few bucks a month. That inconvenience comes from law enforcement action against pirate sites and many users having trouble managing their hard drive space. Not from DRM.
"Piracy" is inconvenient. It takes knowledge, effort, time and money as well as computing power, storage and network bandwidth to participate in the ratio economies of private torrent trackers. It gets to the point it looks like an enthusiast operation run by people who want the best possible version of everything.
What's truly sad is how so many people find this preferable to paying for the official services. It speaks volumes to the quality of their streaming services. A huge number of people don't even have the choice to pay for the content to begin with: many of the of companies that complain about copyright infringement don't even offer their services outside of the United States. They ignore entire markets and complain when people find a way via unofficial means. It's really hard to feel any sympathy for the copyright industry.
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
They may not be stupid, but that doesn't mean they're totally rational either (that would be inhuman and I can assure you they're just as human as the rest of us.) Most of these media companies have never even tried no-DRM so a fully rational appraisal of the value of DRM simply isn't possible for them. The music industry largely went no-DRM (and streaming) and they were totally unscathed. A good quality mp3 or flac…
A good quality (for your average media consumer) 4k rip can be as low as 8gb. Sure it's not blu-ray quality but neither is Netflix, and no one cares. At least where I live, you're looking at 5-15 minutes to download a 4k rip on the average home connection. This is also completely ignoring pirate streaming sites, that while not as popular as they used to be, still exist and are lower friction than Netflix half the tim…
Those pirate streaming sites are such a nightmare of ads and malware, I find it hard to believe many consumers prefer it to legal streaming. The reason somebody would use that is because they can't afford the legal streaming service, or legal streaming isn't an option at all. This has nothing to do with DRM.
And why do they use those shady pirate streaming sites, instead of pirate torrents of higher quality? It's because many of them struggle to find even 8GB of free space. I know some users who view deleting files to free up space to save new files as part of their daily routine. It doesn't need to be this way, but that's the way it currently seems to be.
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#199Earlier 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?
I remember this being in the context of video games, and from some time ago (so things may have changed with Steam sales and the like), but it said that something like 85% of sales occur in the first two weeks. Thus the DRM was there to (hopefully) hold out for as much of that initial time as possible.
Anyway, anecdotal story, take with (many) grains of salt.
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#200Interesting. 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"
Countdown page, https://preview.disneyplus.com/