Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

seclists.org

171–175 of 175 posts

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finish the thought. How do they profit from someone else's creative work? Is it a) by just taking it because they can? or b) by mutual agreement with the original creator?

By being in a dominant economic position whereby they can force predatory terms onto content creators who cannot avoid them if they want any chance of getting anything at all, or reaching a significant audience.

You're trying to use emotional language to avoid actually thinking about the question. The correct answer is b, and the alternative is just plain banditry.

You don't have an automatic right to compensation or audience for your work. Your right is that others can't take your work without your permission--i.e. that they don't own your text just because they can read it. If you have no rights over your text, then only the man with the printing press wins. When you do have those rights, you can trade them for compensation, audience, etc. and that's your choice, not theirs.

Does this mean that agreements are made between entities in unequal economic positions? Yes. But so does employment, so does freelancing, so does nearly every business ever.

Being personally dissatisfied with the current economics of publishing does not change the social contract that underlies it.

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By being in a dominant economic position whereby they can force predatory terms onto content creators who cannot avoid them if they want any chance of getting anything at all, or reaching a significant audience.

You're trying to use emotional language to avoid actually thinking about the question. The correct answer is b, and the alternative is just plain banditry. You don't have an automatic right to compensation or audience for your work. Your right is that others can't take your work without your permission--i.e. that they don't own your text just because they can read it. If you have no rights over your text, then only t…

> But so does employment, so does freelancing, so does nearly every business ever.

Sure, capitalism is fucked up all the way through.

If and when you get it to the point where people can negotiate from position of equal power (also in all those other areas, yes), then I could take your ethical point seriously.

As it is, the companies that get harmed by piracy of the kind that DRM prevents are parasites on society, and the notion that the deal that they force on the rest of us though their position of economic dominance is some kind of "social contract" is laughable. Which is exactly why piracy is so prevalent - if it really were a social contract, people wouldn't do it in droves.

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're trying to use emotional language to avoid actually thinking about the question. The correct answer is b, and the alternative is just plain banditry. You don't have an automatic right to compensation or audience for your work. Your right is that others can't take your work without your permission--i.e. that they don't own your text just because they can read it. If you have no rights over your text, then only t…

> But so does employment, so does freelancing, so does nearly every business ever. Sure, capitalism is fucked up all the way through. If and when you get it to the point where people can negotiate from position of equal power (also in all those other areas, yes), then I could take your ethical point seriously. As it is, the companies that get harmed by piracy of the kind that DRM prevents are parasites on society, an…

> capitalism is fucked up all the way through

My brother in Christ, you work for a two trillion dollar company built on these same rights.

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But so does employment, so does freelancing, so does nearly every business ever. Sure, capitalism is fucked up all the way through. If and when you get it to the point where people can negotiate from position of equal power (also in all those other areas, yes), then I could take your ethical point seriously. As it is, the companies that get harmed by piracy of the kind that DRM prevents are parasites on society, an…

> capitalism is fucked up all the way through My brother in Christ, you work for a two trillion dollar company built on these same rights.

I do, but I don't have to worship either the company or the system.

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#175
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don’t cite a sloppily-produced research paper I'm not, I'm citing their own comment in which they describe taking down 20,000+ illegal streams of their already DRM-"protected" content on launch day . He's describing it not being effective at all. Glass windows, speed limit signs, the tax system (what?) provide value to the people affected by them. DRM is a pure negative for customers.

You’re assuming it would not have been 100,000 without the DRM. You cannot prove, or cite any research, showing it would not have been much worse. In which case, it could indeed be quite effective.

The entire argument you all are having is predicated on the assumption that the presence or absence of the DRM and/or the user's ability to defeat it in some way affects a user's ability to present a stream of the content.

I am telling you flatly that the users who are producing the streams have absolutely no concern or effect from the DRM. Most probably are completely unaware of it. It's quite literally as simple as plugging your phone into your computer with a $15 cable and pressing the Cast button on a webpage.

We as nerds are privileged to recognize that the $15 HDMI capture card in the above scenario is playing fast and loose with HDCP; maybe we understand systems like ContentID that don't rely on any of this; maybe we recognize that there could be stenographic data in the output that can identify us.

Anyway my objective is to emphasize that the lack of data isn't sufficient to imply a false hypothesis. Please don't exaggerate your point in an attempt to 'balance' an argument that doesn't seem likely to support a conclusion that content piracy would be much worse without DRM.

Post reply on HN