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Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

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Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#221
post #186
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plex and similar software are pretty popular. Not to mention most phones can 'cast' to all those devices. Both my smart tv's even have USB ports.

It's kind of funny the number of people responding with Plex. I've used it for years, and it's an effective piece of software but it requires running a server in your house, managing storage, etc. etc... there's no way the average user is interested in doing that.

Plex is just an application. My start, back when it was still Mac-only, was to run it on my Macbook Pro. When the drive got full, I deleted content that I'd already watched.

For a decade now, Plex runs on any Windows / Mac / Linux device. It'll run on a Raspberry Pi. NVIDIA Shield. Western Digital's My Cloud NAS products (from $139 w/ 2TB). QNAP. Synology.

The main obstacle for "average" people is just knowing that Plex exists.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#222
This is a naive question but I've always wondered, what motivates people who distribute pirated content for free?

I get why someone would consume pirated content but why would someone take the risk of publishing pirated content? Is it the ad traffic that the publishers get?

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#223
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.

> Piracy can't be stopped but thats not what they want to hear. It can be stopped. All they have to do is destroy the computing and internet freedom we all enjoy today. Can't do subversive things like copy a file if they don't let us run our software. Governments around the world are also trying to erode these same freedoms by pushing encryption regulation.

> It can be stopped.

In the context of visual/audio (re: the topic), no. Even disallowing encryption will not save companies from simple steganography.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#224

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.

DRM encryption is a browser standard.

Aren't "proprietary" and "standard" mutually exclusive?

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#225
post #50
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This impacts those using ChromeOS, if I read it right. Disney May want to support that. Isn’t ChromeOS Linux under the hood?

Yeah ChromeOS is Linux under the hood. Probably the most mainstream desktop class OS based on Linux. A family member's Windows laptop quit booting up, and wanted a new one. Talked them into a Chromebook since they mostly just use the web, and didn't want to spend a lot of money. Figured ChromeOS would be less bloated than the other traditional desktop OSes too, especially if not wanting to spend a lot on hardware as…

* Wouldn't surprise me if a lot of kids have Chromebooks too*

Given how many schools want kids to have portables and Chromebooks have become the cheap choice, this is going to be a problem.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#226

>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…

People outside the United States have to suffer through all that for access to a subset of the full Netflix library. And Netflix is one of the better companies in that regard. Most of them simply tell me the content is "not available in my country". And when people ask them why, they have the gall to blame "piracy".

Ahaha, yes I should also mentioned I did all that to have access to netflix originals and little else.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#227
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.

> Piracy can't be stopped but thats not what they want to hear. It can be stopped. All they have to do is destroy the computing and internet freedom we all enjoy today. Can't do subversive things like copy a file if they don't let us run our software. Governments around the world are also trying to erode these same freedoms by pushing encryption regulation.

Even then, lets say the successfully broke all encryption and all communication - people would just go back to recording from a DVR and selling DVDs on the streets.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#228
post #115
post #94

Earlier 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…

Statement 1: Piracy is inevitable in all platforms and at scale every media property will be pirated by someone . Statement 2: If your content is available on a reasonably priced and performant streaming platform or is otherwise “low friction” the number of people who will choose to consume the pirated content instead of paying drops off dramatically. The problem for publishers is that there’s so many different knobs…

Exactly what I was trying to get at, thanks.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#229

> 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.

No key involved, but a long time ago, circa 2008, I used to record my TV shows in my Rogers (Canada) PVR. It so happened it had a firewire port, and all you had to do was load the firewire SDK on your macbook, and when you play back your show on the PVR, you could capture the raw .ts (transport stream) which contained the MPEG2 video.

I think that's why most players now have no extra ports besides the HDMI as it was easy to bypass the HDMI protection...if you can call it that.

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