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Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

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Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#311

Post by thejynxed »

snagglegaggle wrote: post #286
noodlesUK wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

It's not illegal to break copy protection for a work you purchased. There was an ammendment to the DMCA for it -- likely if this had not happened more of the DMCA would have been challenged and struck.

The caveat to that amendment being that you are only allowed to do so using tools you created yourself and you may not afterword share your tools, your methods, nor the decrypted material with anyone else.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#312

Post by anoncake »

shadowgovt wrote: post #309
anoncake wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop repeating that propaganda. The point of standards is to facilitate interoperability. DRM does the opposite so it can never be standardized, no matter what capitalist-run "standards" organizations say

You can call it "propaganda," but it's documented right here. [ https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ ]. If Oauth2 is a standard without defining how authentication servers are implemented and requiring the implementation be disclosed, it's hard to claim EME is not also a standard in the same sense. A standard we don't like isn't propaganda.

Having the EME specification distributed by the W3C appears to be a very effective method of propaganda.

> A standard we don't like isn't propaganda.

A "standard" that doesn't even attempt to fulfil the purpose of a standard is not a standard.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#313

Post by Nasrudith »

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…

They aren't for the consumer or even product security despite what they say. They certainly pay enough to afford people to tell them the truth - instead they pay extra to get ones who tell them what they want to hear.

As far as I can tell they are a very expensive security blanket for those too tech illiterate to realize that trying to circumvent the analog hole for serial formats is barking madness or as an ass-cover.

It brings to mind the use of polygraphs as similar outright instituional superstitions whose true function is blame deflection.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#314

Post by shadowgovt »

anoncake wrote: post #312
shadowgovt wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can call it "propaganda," but it's documented right here. [ https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ ]. If Oauth2 is a standard without defining how authentication servers are implemented and requiring the implementation be disclosed, it's hard to claim EME is not also a standard in the same sense. A standard we don't like isn't propaganda.

Having the EME specification distributed by the W3C appears to be a very effective method of propaganda. > A standard we don't like isn't propaganda. A "standard" that doesn't even attempt to fulfil the purpose of a standard is not a standard.

What purpose is it failing to fulfill? It outlines how to indicate media is encrypted and how decryptors can be surfaced by the user-agent.

It doesn't indicate how decryption must happen, but OAuth2 doesn't indicate what standard an authorization server should use to authorize that a client matches a resource owner either.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#315

Post by Nasrudith »

mdpopescu wrote: post #304
geofft wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you prevent state intervention in a free market? What prevents the capital-possessing incumbents in a market from saying, "We need a government and an armed police force to enforce intellectual property laws"?

Competition. You hire a different police force to protect your property. Of course, if one entity has a monopoly over the legitimate use of force in an area, you're in trouble.

That sounds a lot like warring oligarchical or dictatorial nation states with extra steps in practice.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#316

Post by Lammy »

kuon wrote: post #204
hombre_fatal wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DRM punishes paying customers and does nothing to stop piracy. I would think DRM stops trivial tools like a Chrome extension that adds a "Download" button on anything you're watching on Netflix.com. Which is good enough. Because piracy is confusing to most people. Piracy sites are scummy and require tech-savyness just to navigate them and download the right thing. For example, my girlfriend knows "The Pirate Bay" b…

I know some not very technical people that bought some HDMI network restreamer on ebay, it's basically an HDMI splitter with an ethernet port that will act as a (I think rtmp) server. I didn't check the technicals details, and he uses VLC on his desktop computer to record movies he wants to keep. He does it at night with TV luminosity and volume at near 0. Of course you have to play the movie/serie in mirror on the T…

Get your friend an HDMI dummy plug and he should be able to turn off the TV. No affiliation with this particular item but just sorted Amazon by lowest price to find an example: https://www.amazon.com/Emulator-Headless-Display-3840x2160-G...

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#317

Post by rinchik »

sli wrote: post #298
rinchik wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

latest uTorrent is just a webapp that streams torrents, there are also a bunch of others.

That's contributing to the death of torrent ecosystems in the same way as Popcorn Time: all leeching, zero seeding.

Yep. 100%. At the same time, torrent ecosystem is a lot larger than piracy and movies/TVshows and actively used to share big data among researches and individual "archivists".

r/datahoarder lives in torrent ecosystem (there are a lot more things there besides linux ISOs)

internet archive is also big with torrent files that have nothing to do with streaming.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#318

Post by snagglegaggle »

thejynxed wrote: post #311
snagglegaggle wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not illegal to break copy protection for a work you purchased. There was an ammendment to the DMCA for it -- likely if this had not happened more of the DMCA would have been challenged and struck.

The caveat to that amendment being that you are only allowed to do so using tools you created yourself and you may not afterword share your tools, your methods, nor the decrypted material with anyone else.

I don't see that in there anywhere. More like you can't transfer the material, even to another rights holder, but I still question that. They can't make the sharing of the tools and methods illegal as it'd be against the first amendment.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#319

Post by xs83 »

Well unfortunately for Disney, my main TV box is an Ubuntu NUC so I will definitely not be subscribing to it. Just like when the NHL did the same - when there were better piracy options than your paid for service (which I might add I had no problem paying for for years) - you want to ask questions.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#320

Post by hakfoo »

Freak_NL wrote: post #255
matheusmoreira wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 seems to me that the approach Netflix and Disney et al are taking is accomplishing just that. DRM in the browser was step one. No Widevine, or whatever crapware is needed, no Netflix. Next came the limit on higher resolutions. You want Full HD? Stop using a free operating system. You want 4k? Get Internet Explorer, or better yet, get our app on one of the approved operating systems. The next step is probably to di…

I suspect it will just bifurcate the market eventually.

There was a brilliant moment where entertainment was all going to converge. You'd have your PC with terabytes of storage, stick a tuner card and an Ethernet cable in the back, run the sound out to your thousand-watt 20-channel amplifer, and display it all on your 70-inch flat screen. Broadcast TV, Netflix, Disney Plus, etc, would all just be desktop icons, right next to Steam and Excel. We were hurtling down that road in the mid-2000s (remember WinXP Media Centre Edition?) and suddenly it all jumped the track.

Seemed to happen pretty close to when Digital TV stumbled its way into the US market, or roughly the perfect time for it to really take hold (the classic "record a show on VHS" paradigm was suddenly killed off, and the ever-mutating subchannel lineups makes a smarter electronic program guide and recording functionality more appealing). I sort of blame the cable industry-- apparently it was virtually impossible to get a digital-cable-compatible tuner card for many years-- you had to buy from a narrow band of prebuilt PCs with the cards preinstalled, and even now the companies will scream blue murder over having to supply CableCards (if they even do anymore).

The PC is a do-anything device. Eventually, given the media industry's tastes, it will be the 'do anything except watch name-brand entertainment products' device. I don't think they can undermine general-purpose computing as a concept- there's too many other business cases that rely on being able to run random unsigned software or connect to arbitrary weird hardware.

Instead, Disney and Sony will push hard for various consumption-first or -only devices-- smart TVs, consoles, locked down phones/tablets. I'm sort of surprised they aren't already going for the subsidy model-- get a "free" PS5/Xbox 3π/"smart" television if you'll sign up for years of a content subscription service to feed it.

People will end up having both and being annoyed that they can't converge things.

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