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Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot

alexrad.me

121–130 of 159 posts

Re: Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is truly the sad part of DRM: the people that actually pay for content are the ones whose experience is most degraded. Pirates don't have to buy monitors with HDCP. Pirates can watch their collection when the authorization servers are down. Pirates can back up their media. Pirates can take screenshots. (Though I've never had this particular problem even with "DRM'd" media on Linux.) The list goes on. The co…

Example: If you rented "The Interview" on Google's video service (in HD) and played it back on a software/hardware stack that didn't have the latest DRM(1), you were limited to SD. You paid for HD. You got SD. Of course, you could go pirate a full HD copy of the movie and play it back anywhere. The effectiveness of these inconveniences is overwhelming. (1) I'm not positive it was even possible to redeem an HD rental…

I always get forced to watch Google Play movies in SD and I have a late 2013 MacBook Pro. It's the main reason I use iTunes more than Google Play.

Re: Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot

#122
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the media becomes impossible to consume without Intel Management Engine That's why Intel management keeps greenlighting this project. Intel thinks that it if it can convince content producers to distribute media as blobs encrypted with Intel's public key (and maybe, say, Samsung's or Apple's), then we can transition to a world where consumer video files do work on most consumer hardware, but can't be decrypted outs…

> except for the analog hole It's a pretty big hole, and it's practically impossible to seal. Which is why I don't think we'll ever see "game over" for piracy, no matter how advanced DRM technology becomes. At this point, I think censoring the internet is the only way for the movies/music industry to win. Sadly this isn't so far fetched.

> it's practically impossible to seal [the analog hole]

It's easier than you think. Look at Macrovision. Look at the EURion constellation. All you have to do is make your secure video path emit some kind of signal not immediately apparent to human eyes. In a post-general-purpose-computing world, you can just make consumer-grade devices respect these signals and refuse to record and make professional-grade equipment both insanely expensive and specifically traceable.

Re: Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot

#123
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When all you do is to write a single opaque value in a register, and never use those bits again, it's slightly excessive to give each of them a name. This also reflects in chipset documentation, which sometimes comes with pages and pages of "write X to register Y", and not much more. The value is that the higher level structure is more easily visible when you know what is code and what is data (which is the main issu…

Interesting stuff! I bet you coreboot guys could write some incredibly interesting blog posts with all the "secrets" you have learned. I really admire your work.

Not a blog post, but one of the coreboot devs held a talk at 31C3 about one of those extra processors in AMD's architecture: http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6103_-_en_-_...

Re: Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is truly the sad part of DRM: the people that actually pay for content are the ones whose experience is most degraded. Pirates don't have to buy monitors with HDCP. Pirates can watch their collection when the authorization servers are down. Pirates can back up their media. Pirates can take screenshots. (Though I've never had this particular problem even with "DRM'd" media on Linux.) The list goes on. The co…

Example: If you rented "The Interview" on Google's video service (in HD) and played it back on a software/hardware stack that didn't have the latest DRM(1), you were limited to SD. You paid for HD. You got SD. Of course, you could go pirate a full HD copy of the movie and play it back anywhere. The effectiveness of these inconveniences is overwhelming. (1) I'm not positive it was even possible to redeem an HD rental…

when I rented it, HD and SD cost the same amount. but your point is taken

Re: Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot

#125
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, this is the main problem I have with the people who claim in comment sections across the internet that since I'm only paying for a license to play the content, I can't complain about owning it. Nowhere on the iTunes store does it say, "Click here to purchase license to play video". Not on Amazon or Google Play either. This is just a case of false advertising by content producers and distributors. If they can…

You acknowledged that you were aware of these facts when you read the EULA (you did read it, right?) at some point in the past when installing or updating iTunes (or whatever other service). I know it's ridiculous but that's how it works, make sure to show a 50+ page 'you basically have no rights' notice that you have to 'agree', and you can strip whatever privileges you like from your paying customers.

Not all EULAs hold up in all jurisdictions.

Re: Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot

#126
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strangest part is that according to the law (fair use) she should be able to do that. This DRM is effectively creating its own "copyright law", just like Cory Doctorow has warned us before. The whole copyright gang from MPAA to OS vendors and chip makers are using DRM to expand the reach of copyright law. And you can't just say "well I'll just break the DRM, since it's legal for me to take the screenshot" either.…

She is an academic in the UK, I'm not sure fair use applies but something else probably does. She's far more aware of those issues than I, I just advise how to get things done regardless of whatever constraints she may be under. My understanding though is that the constraints are technology based and how they interfere and prevent some things, rather than legally based and whether she is allowed to do something or no…

Fair use is called "fair dealing" in UK law (and in many other common law jurisdictions). It's not exactly the same, but similar enough in most cases.

Re: Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is truly the sad part of DRM: the people that actually pay for content are the ones whose experience is most degraded. Pirates don't have to buy monitors with HDCP. Pirates can watch their collection when the authorization servers are down. Pirates can back up their media. Pirates can take screenshots. (Though I've never had this particular problem even with "DRM'd" media on Linux.) The list goes on. The co…

Example: If you rented "The Interview" on Google's video service (in HD) and played it back on a software/hardware stack that didn't have the latest DRM(1), you were limited to SD. You paid for HD. You got SD. Of course, you could go pirate a full HD copy of the movie and play it back anywhere. The effectiveness of these inconveniences is overwhelming. (1) I'm not positive it was even possible to redeem an HD rental…

I looked into this and you could get HD on locked down devices (phones, tablets, TVs), but not computers, regardless of operating system. This was weird to see given that EME made it into Chrome recently and now Netflix works without silverlight. I ended up renting it on Youtube, then googling for an HD copy. Found one hosted on Google Drive (!), which produced quite a chuckle.

Re: Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot

#128

Just a note on the discourse: the point "I own it, I should be able to use it the way I want" feels like not really effective (as a rhetoric) in many part of the western world and in many social circles. I really feel for example in France it would be easily brushed off using analogy to construction permits or driver licenses, or just put the person in some crazy-libertarian box ("the kind that want to print firearms…

To use it "the way I want" is much smaller priority as to be able to dictate who uses my private property, for what purpose, and when. DRM violates each of those, and as rhetoric goes, the only law we should need is private property laws.

A driver license allow me to drive legally on the public road. It do not grant anyone else to repossess my car, instruct it to not run if someone else is behind the wheel, dictate who might repair or or what parts it will accept.

Re: Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot

#129
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRM is absolutely to do with piracy, that's the whole point of the technology. Of course Hollywood knows that any given DRM scheme will be broken at some point . How much they care about this depends a lot on what exactly "at some point" really means. Almost all money from movie sales comes in a spike when the movie is first release, hardly any movies go on to become long-term cult classics that people are still buyi…

"DRM is absolutely to do with piracy, that's the whole point of the technology." DRM's stated goal was dealing with piracy, 20+ years ago. That does not mean that that is what it does now. Goals aren't results, to say nothing of the fact that goals 20 years ago aren't necessarily goals today. It is highly arguable that, given that it has failed to stop piracy comprehensively, that its primary utility to the people th…

I think you attribute your own goals to the DRM. I, for one, don't believe DRM is there to prevent all and any copyright infringement through technical means. It works very well against casual copying. Even Macrovision for VHS did, despite being cracked. It has no means to prevent e.g. unlicensed public performance though. Neither it's aiming at preventing unlicensed distribution on non-DRM platforms, which you seem to point as a fault of DRM.

Re: Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal is that the decoding is done by trusted hardware, not by software keys. So you can run VMs and open source, but they won't have the keys to decrypt the content. Same deal with HDCP, where PCIe is treated as an unsafe bus, so data goes encrypted from the kernel to the GPU to the display device (something like that). It's also why sometimes people have trouble watching Netflix or so on, because some part fails…

The goal of DRM is not to kill piracy 100% and anything else is abject failure, it's to raise the cost of engaging in piracy to the point where just buying the movie seems easier and cheaper.

You can say that, but the fact that they do things like HDCP (normal users aren't going to do multi gigabit/s raw captures) would speak otherwise. Engaging in piracy is as simple as a search and download. Unless this tech works 100%, piracy will always remain that easy.
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