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+ streaming uses draconian DRM
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Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#92Interesting. 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.
Maybe they won't. That's fine, it's their decision to make. All I'm saying is that I can absolutely confirm that I won't be signing up for a streaming service that won't work on Linux. If the market of people like me is small enough, then maybe it'll never matter to Disney.
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#93Earlier 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. Media companies aren't stupid. They know exactly how much DRM and piracy impact their bottom line. That's why DRM-free distribution is a non-starter for virtually every media company, because it saves them money. Like all things dealing with bad actors, DRM isn't about stopping behavior. It's about slowing it down and making it more cumbersome
"Media companies aren't stupid. They know exactly how much DRM and piracy impact their bottom line."
Citation needed.
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but why? Do the rightsholders believe that these mechanisms are effective at making them money somehow? How correct are they - are these mechanisms effective at stopping some amount of casual piracy and converting that into purchases?
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 not entirely eliminated. But if that be the case, would that not be evidence of netflix' anti-piracy measures working?
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#95Earlier 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. Media companies aren't stupid. They know exactly how much DRM and piracy impact their bottom line. That's why DRM-free distribution is a non-starter for virtually every media company, because it saves them money. Like all things dealing with bad actors, DRM isn't about stopping behavior. It's about slowing it down and making it more cumbersome
They may not be stupid, but that doesn't mean they're totally rational either (that would be inhuman and I can assure you they're just as human as the rest of us.) Most of these media companies have never even tried no-DRM so a fully rational appraisal of the value of DRM simply isn't possible for them.
The music industry largely went no-DRM (and streaming) and they were totally unscathed. A good quality mp3 or flac file is what, tens of megabytes at most? Really easy to pirate. A good quality 4k rip is going to be tens of gigabytes. Pirating something that large is a hassle for me but inconceivable for some of my friends or family members. Pirating movies and TV shows has always been more niche than pirating music. And the formats easiest to pirate (720p, low bitrate, etc) are the formats being given the lightest DRM.
I wager there are some very human emotions involved in the decision making, namely pride and possessiveness. "We made this so we get to control it." The effectiveness of the DRM takes a backseat.
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#96> 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…
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.
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#97Could this be fixed by disassembling the widevine .so/.dll and altering the function that returns the "security level" so that it always returns the highest level?
The highest security level involves hardware keys. You'd have to get a hardware device that supports it and extract the keys somehow
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#98> 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…
When a bad outcome is assured (piracy from their perspective) the only rational course of action is that which will prevent the blame from falling on you:
"Yes it was pirated, but we spent maximum cash on the very best DRM... what else could we have done?"
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Device manufacturers. Play nice, or we won't grant you the magic pixie dust to play our content in glorious 4k.
To clarify, this isn’t just a cynical comment. It’s actually why digital content producers use DRM. Generally speaking, they’re not idiots, they know it will have little effect on determined pirates and will cause some hassle for some legitimate customers. The point really is so that the digital content producers can maintain control over the providers of computer hardware and distribution channels. Here’s an old art…
So the purpose of DRM is to thwart the first sale doctrine?
Re: Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM
#100> 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.
If you have a good internet connection and graphics card you can just capture the screen and intercept the audio separately. It's got a few artifacts here and there, but nothing that makes it unwatchable