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

101–110 of 330 posts

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#101

Post by hannasanarion »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #96
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.

> DRM punishes paying customers and does nothing to stop piracy. There is a plot twist here: DRM does help stopping piracy, but only for smaller businesses producing the contents that appeals enough to be copied but not enough to be paid for. I'm pretty fine with Steam DRM for that reason, without that indie games will have much harder time. For Disney+, I cannot understand their reasoning at all.

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.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#102

Post by jonny_eh »

theninja wrote: post #91

Content publishers sometimes demand certain DRM features in order to license their content. For example, they can dictate that only X devices can watch content Y. They can also demand restriction to how content is stored on devices etc. So until the content publishers change their restrictions, DRM will be there and will be annoying to customers :(

Disney owns all the content they're streaming.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#103

Post by diamondlovesyou »

bilbo0s wrote: post #94
jaimex2 wrote: 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.

> 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…

Those two sides aren't mutually exclusive. Demand for content creates both.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#104

Post by Sendotsh »

foota wrote: post #72
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…

I imagine you'd see a lot more casual piracy if it were trivial to copy, i.e., people just sending the videos to their friends.

For every person torrenting there’s multiple getting movies off friends on USB sticks and stuff.

One member of my family does the torrenting for a dozen others in my family, and I know plenty of others that work like that.

I personally do a mix of paying for content and pirating. I’m 100% happy to pay for content if I can, but with geoblocking and platform restrictions and all the other bullshittery, it’s legitimately impossible for me to legally buy half (or more) of the content I’m actually interested in, so I pirate it, and I don’t feel bad for doing so in the slightest.

I also regularly have to pirate things I already own thanks to DRM that doesn’t work on my devices, missing subtitles, etc.

The entire industry is broken and it’s their own fault.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#105

Post by eftychis »

shakna wrote: post #42
yumario wrote: 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.

You can get 1080p streams from Netflix on Linux (for 99% of their collection) by switching your user agent to ChromeOS. Their check is just: a = /CrOS/.test(a.userAgent); this.Fma = this.Aw = q.Gu.PV; this.Qm = [x.$l.nV]; this.oo = [x.V.vA, x.V.wA]; a && this.oo.push(x.V.TH); It very much is _not_ "DRM not yet implemented". Both Prime and Netflix are fully capable of streaming their highest quality under Linux - if y…

I can confirm that switching the user agent [used to] work[s]. (Disclaimer: haven't streamed for a while personally.)

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#106

Post by gbear605 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #94
jaimex2 wrote: 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.

> 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…

My interpretation of the quotes is that if a show is on Netflix, its pirating rates go down drastically, but some shows on Netflix are still pirated. That’s because there is a significant population who pirates only when it is easier than streaming, and Netflix makes streaming really painless, in comparison with other streaming sites like Hulu or CBS All Access. However, some people still won’t pay for Netflix (or for any other streaming service), and they’re the ones that the first quote is talking about.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#107

Post by stevetodd »

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…

It’s designed to reinforce the idea that piracy is morally wrong.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#108

Post by [deleted] »

reaperducer wrote: post #13
mindcrime wrote: post #9

Interesting. 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.

[deleted]

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#109

Post by catalogia »

bilbo0s wrote: post #94
jaimex2 wrote: 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.

> 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.

Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

#110

Post by gbear605 »

debaserab2 wrote: post #28
cameronbrown wrote: post #16

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?

When the platform is the web browser, not an OS. If I write a website today, it works just as well on Linux, Windows, macOS, or any other modern platform. Other than DRM, there is nothing needed for Disney+ that isn’t common across all desktop OSes.
Post reply on HN