7 ms·

It's incredible how much effort and money has gone down this drain, chasing the fundamentally flawed idea of DRM. All to satisfy some inflated management egos a

It's incredible how much effort and money has gone down this drain, chasing the fundamentally flawed idea of DRM. All to satisfy some inflated management egos and sell snake oil to the content industry - the enginners implementing these schemes must surely realize it's in vain, that the attack surface includes all devices in the world and all it takes is a single successful hack against a single device to decrypt the content after which it's game over. And the consumer is paying for all of this security theater.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago
It seems as though it has been working for them though, no? Isn’t Netflix and its DRM evidence of that?
- wpietri 8y ago
  To me, Netflix is evidence that there's no point to DRM. I still can torrent any content I want, but I almost never do. But if it's on Netflix or anything else I subscribe to, I won't bother. I suspect Netflix's DRM is purely about pacifying video industry executives, and that it makes approximately no difference to the bottom line of anybody except the people hyping their proprietary DRM solutions.
  - wolfgke 8y ago
    > To me, Netflix is evidence that there's no point to DRM. I still can torrent any content I want, but I almost never do. To me, it is rather the other way round: As Netflix offers no DRM-free version, I will never subscribe. So in other words: by insisting on DRM, the movie industry openly states that they don't want any money from people who don't want DRM. But if you "reverse" this sentence "in a hacker way", this means that they are not losing any money, if DRM-haters pirate (because they just stated that they don't want the DRM-haters' money). Thus, in my opinion is quite a pro-pirating slogan coming from the mouth of Hollywood.
    - CJefferson 8y ago
      I might just not have to imagination, but a DRM free Netflix wouldn't seem to work -- you pay a low monthly fee for temporary access to a huge library. What would you prefer?
      - wolfgke 8y ago
        > I might just not have to imagination, but a DRM free Netflix wouldn't seem to work -- you pay a low monthly fee for temporary access to a huge library. What would you prefer? I do not get your point. Perhaps I misunderstand it, because English is not my mother tongue. I do not see a problem. First: If I really download a lot, I will soon get out of disk space (even if I own a NAS). Second: Netflix adds new movies/series all the time to its library. So there is an incentive to stay a subscriber.
        joshuamorton 8y ago
        Storage is cheap. You can store 500 hours of video in a TB. And four TB is less than one year of Netflix, but gives you enough storage to download enough video to last a few years. I'd pay for one month of Netflix every two years instead of monthly, without question.
        wolfgke 8y ago
        > I'd pay for one month of Netflix every two years instead of monthly, without question. I can imagine that in this case Netflix would just have to change the price model somewhat: Make the first month much more expensive than the following ones to give a disincentive for canceling the subscription. At least this pricing model is applied by many software companies who love to sell subscriptions for their software.
        joshuamorton 8y ago
        I'm sure Netflix would have seen explosive growth if it required 1 year, $100+ contracts, and that's assuming content producers would have been okay with it (they wouldn't have). Sure they could have used a different business model, but had they, we wouldn't be talking about Netflix.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    Yes, I completely agree. I not only can torrent stuff, I can do it very comfortably as I used to do it a lot and have created a pipeline that will download it complete with subs in English and Czech, correctly name and categorize and make it available to my network so I can play it directly on my TV - all just by clicking on a magnet link. And yet since Netflix is available, I don't, Netflix is even more comfortable, and I want to support their original work.
  - pdkl95 8y ago
    > there's no point to DRM. I still can torrent any content I want DRM appears to be useless because you are incorrectly assuming DRM's purpose is to stop or reduce piracy. DRM is and always has been about controlling the playback platform. Media companies like DRM so the can force anyone making a player to not implement features they don't like. Their ability to control how media is used was severely limited when the Betamax case[1] (1984) established that using a home video tape recorder to time shift was is fair use. Unable to legally control how media is used, media companies hade regularly attempted to establish and require a DRM scheme they could use to technologically control use. The proper response is to tell the media companies their right to control a copyright protected work ends at the first sale[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
    - bogomipz 8y ago
      >"DRM appears to be useless because you are incorrectly assuming DRM's purpose is to stop or reduce piracy. DRM is and always has been about controlling the playback platform." I'm no fan of DRM or the idiots in Hollywood but isn't "controlling the playback" a means to control piracy? Why must they be mutually exclusive? >"Media companies like DRM so the can force anyone making a player to not implement features they don't like." I'm curious is there any evidence of this? How would the Hollywood studios even be aware of all of the new hardware devices?
      - EvanAnderson 8y ago
        Controlling playback allows the industry to insure that new works are industry-sanctioned and appropriately taxed by the incumbents. DRM allows the middle-men to continue being in the middle in the face of the democratization of production and distribution that technology has created.
        bogomipz 8y ago
        >"Controlling playback allows the industry to insure that new works are industry-sanctioned and appropriately taxed by the incumbents" What industry are you referring to here - the tech sector, the entertainment industry? This is rather vague. Also which tax are you referring to? Who are the "incumbents"?
- mtgx 8y ago
  > Isn’t Netflix and its DRM evidence of that? How so? Can you not find Netflix shows on piracy sites? If you mean "Netflix has been successful in getting people to pirate less" that has nothing to do with the DRM, but with the fact that Netflix is a cheap and convenient enough service to stop many people from wanting to watch pirated content.
- ryanlol 8y ago
  Netflix videos are pretty easy to decrypt, there are a bunch of public exploits you can use to dump videwine device keys.
hlandau 8y ago
The really horrible truth is, DRM was probably never intended to prevent piracy. I used to think this - then you realise what DRM is actually intended to do. So long as we argue like this, we're not confronting the real motives. There seem to be two arguments for DRM which could be considered logical from an executive's perspective (even if in my view unethical): - Firstly, it delays the initial piracy of new releases. This is very variable and since new DRM systems aren't created as often as new films, this only seems to be successfully pulled off every now and then... but there have demonstrably been cases of it delaying piracy by a few weeks (hell, there's at least one video game which wasn't cracked for over a year). This probably feels valuable to executives who expect the bulk of returns on a film or video game to come immediately after release (especially if they have unrealistic expectations about correlations between piracy and lost sales). - Secondly, and more significantly, it ensures that media companies can control how content is consumed, and control the devices available to consume content. If you want to make a Blu-ray player, you have to sign contracts, and those contracts can tell you what functionality to add and what not to add. "Unauthorized" players, circumvention technology will always exist for the fringes, but that's too minor to care about. What it does mean - in tandem with the anticircumvention technology ban legislation, 17 USC 1202 - is that you can't walk into a retail chain store and buy a Blu-ray player that'll happily make copies, or so on. Most likely this is what these companies really care about - ensuring they have a say on what Homer Simpson has to choose from in Best Buy. To be clear, I unequivocally oppose DRM; but I suspect the above points are a closer approximation of the motives of the media industry in pushing it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Angostura 8y ago
  Regardless of how effective DRM is, don't forget it was an absolute requirement that Apple had to agree to implement in order to get the iTunes Store open, that Netflix et al had to follow in order to get up and running with agreement from the studios. DRM enabled a huge number of online businesses by providing content makers with the minimal assurances that they needed that those channels wouldn't be a simple, easy way for their content to be pirated.
mistrial9 8y ago
This is fine rhetoric, but you clearly have no idea the sales volumes and number of players involved in some markets. It is far more money than say, writing the ssh protocol handler or whatever you might think is cool. Sorry, it is that harsh.
forkerenok 8y ago
Inflated Management Egos -> IME Was that intentional? :)
- __sr__ 8y ago
  Well spotted!
__sr__ 8y ago
No one ever accused the MBA toting managers of being tech savvy .. or smart, for that matter. /s Sarcasm aside, in my experience, most managers do not understand technology even at a high level. Even the ones who come from a tech background often don’t bother to keep up. The typical mentality being, “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Get someone from <insert tech department name here> to handle it.” When the <insert tech department name here> does come up with a solution, it is usually shot down if there is even the slightest hint of risk involved. And there usually is — any disruptive change — as all invocations tend to be — inherently carry a certain amount of risk. Even Steve Jobs was unable to convince the record labels to allow them to sell DRM free music via iTines until Apple had grown too big for them to go against — at least as far as music business was concerned. Basically, the only things the so called managers are good at are passing around the blame and covering their asses. Way too many companies have been destroyed or are a shell of their former glory - having missed major opportunities because the management was not willing to deal with the risks associated with innovation — because they were content to milk their cash cow till it was dead — while laughing at deficiencies of the more innovative competitors’ version 1.0 products. The real managers — the people who know what they are doing — go on to found successful tech companies.
bryanbuckley 8y ago
> the enginners implementing these schemes must surely realize it's in vain I wonder, if it is so "in vain", why have so many folks been so spooked by it (e.g. Stallman, Doctorow)? Are they worried about the needless increased cost to consumers, or maybe they think it might actually work well enough? If you are really against DRM, I don't get how saying DRM "will never work" will help avoid it. I worked at TI on OMAP MShield, TrustZone stuff (iirc we were the first (w/ Galaxy Nexus) to have good-enough DRM to be the first to have Netflix HD) and later at Trustonic which is the OS (and more) vendor of AMD PSP and many ARM-based devices. Everyone* knew that some use-cases of DRM meant a single successful hack meant the content being leaked. It is mostly the low-level designers (CPU arch, physical die, OS/firmware etc) to be responsible for making it more difficult/expensive. Some use-cases will be necessarily be concerned with simpler attacks e.g. recording a few key pages of a secure/DRMed PDF with a hidden camera (and thus more complex protections like a Central Licensing, watermarking server becoming involved). There are some use-cases of DRM where leaks are not a big issue (e.g. a more dynamic content which involves occasionally communicating with peers/servers). [*] This is probably not true. That basic case is easy enough to see, but I've personally seen other schemes where customers leave out key steps or end up trusting something that shouldn't be trusted. @hlandau makes good points, I think. I've always been on the fence regarding DRM. I think property rights seem like a decent idea so why not extend that to the digital realm? Do we not want digital scarce goods, collectibles? Is a technical enforcement of property rights superior to meat-space? I see many cool uses for DRM, trusted computing (and in the end I think it would transfer power from publishers, platforms, manufacturers to creators and owners). It's interesting (and makes sense) to see how blockchain people are generally in favor of trusted computing (though for many it seems to be too much of a "silver bullet"); iirc bitcoin wallets were some of our first customers after video DRM. I've talked with many folks over the years (including EFF people) and I've still not gotten a sense of why the theory of DRM is bad (I would agree that most implementations have been horrible), other than it starting a snowball towards a cyberpunk dystopia future, maybe. I 100% agree that "you own the device, you should be able to control it". That means I support the right to tinker, am against DMCA, and think owners of devices should be able to run whatever software they prefer and be able to wipe, disable, replace whatever they want (e.g. root of trust). While I worked at Trustonic, I pestered the CEO many times (and rallied co-workers to do the same) to open source the OS. In the end there was (allegedly) not a good enough business reason to do so (and of course open source competitors began to pop up: trusty, tlk, OP-TEE, etc).
benologist 8y ago
It's also incredible how much effort and money has gone into producing and debating and selecting open source licenses that have just the right restrictions on how everyone else can use code. I think there are some parallels with that and DRM.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago

It seems as though it has been working for them though, no? Isn’t Netflix and its DRM evidence of that?

wpietri 8y ago
To me, Netflix is evidence that there's no point to DRM. I still can torrent any content I want, but I almost never do. But if it's on Netflix or anything else I subscribe to, I won't bother. I suspect Netflix's DRM is purely about pacifying video industry executives, and that it makes approximately no difference to the bottom line of anybody except the people hyping their proprietary DRM solutions.
- wolfgke 8y ago
  > To me, Netflix is evidence that there's no point to DRM. I still can torrent any content I want, but I almost never do. To me, it is rather the other way round: As Netflix offers no DRM-free version, I will never subscribe. So in other words: by insisting on DRM, the movie industry openly states that they don't want any money from people who don't want DRM. But if you "reverse" this sentence "in a hacker way", this means that they are not losing any money, if DRM-haters pirate (because they just stated that they don't want the DRM-haters' money). Thus, in my opinion is quite a pro-pirating slogan coming from the mouth of Hollywood.
  - CJefferson 8y ago
    I might just not have to imagination, but a DRM free Netflix wouldn't seem to work -- you pay a low monthly fee for temporary access to a huge library. What would you prefer?
    - wolfgke 8y ago
      > I might just not have to imagination, but a DRM free Netflix wouldn't seem to work -- you pay a low monthly fee for temporary access to a huge library. What would you prefer? I do not get your point. Perhaps I misunderstand it, because English is not my mother tongue. I do not see a problem. First: If I really download a lot, I will soon get out of disk space (even if I own a NAS). Second: Netflix adds new movies/series all the time to its library. So there is an incentive to stay a subscriber.
      - joshuamorton 8y ago
        Storage is cheap. You can store 500 hours of video in a TB. And four TB is less than one year of Netflix, but gives you enough storage to download enough video to last a few years. I'd pay for one month of Netflix every two years instead of monthly, without question.
        wolfgke 8y ago
        > I'd pay for one month of Netflix every two years instead of monthly, without question. I can imagine that in this case Netflix would just have to change the price model somewhat: Make the first month much more expensive than the following ones to give a disincentive for canceling the subscription. At least this pricing model is applied by many software companies who love to sell subscriptions for their software.
        joshuamorton 8y ago
        I'm sure Netflix would have seen explosive growth if it required 1 year, $100+ contracts, and that's assuming content producers would have been okay with it (they wouldn't have). Sure they could have used a different business model, but had they, we wouldn't be talking about Netflix.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Yes, I completely agree. I not only can torrent stuff, I can do it very comfortably as I used to do it a lot and have created a pipeline that will download it complete with subs in English and Czech, correctly name and categorize and make it available to my network so I can play it directly on my TV - all just by clicking on a magnet link. And yet since Netflix is available, I don't, Netflix is even more comfortable, and I want to support their original work.
- pdkl95 8y ago
  > there's no point to DRM. I still can torrent any content I want DRM appears to be useless because you are incorrectly assuming DRM's purpose is to stop or reduce piracy. DRM is and always has been about controlling the playback platform. Media companies like DRM so the can force anyone making a player to not implement features they don't like. Their ability to control how media is used was severely limited when the Betamax case[1] (1984) established that using a home video tape recorder to time shift was is fair use. Unable to legally control how media is used, media companies hade regularly attempted to establish and require a DRM scheme they could use to technologically control use. The proper response is to tell the media companies their right to control a copyright protected work ends at the first sale[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    >"DRM appears to be useless because you are incorrectly assuming DRM's purpose is to stop or reduce piracy. DRM is and always has been about controlling the playback platform." I'm no fan of DRM or the idiots in Hollywood but isn't "controlling the playback" a means to control piracy? Why must they be mutually exclusive? >"Media companies like DRM so the can force anyone making a player to not implement features they don't like." I'm curious is there any evidence of this? How would the Hollywood studios even be aware of all of the new hardware devices?
    - EvanAnderson 8y ago
      Controlling playback allows the industry to insure that new works are industry-sanctioned and appropriately taxed by the incumbents. DRM allows the middle-men to continue being in the middle in the face of the democratization of production and distribution that technology has created.
      - bogomipz 8y ago
        >"Controlling playback allows the industry to insure that new works are industry-sanctioned and appropriately taxed by the incumbents" What industry are you referring to here - the tech sector, the entertainment industry? This is rather vague. Also which tax are you referring to? Who are the "incumbents"?
mtgx 8y ago
> Isn’t Netflix and its DRM evidence of that? How so? Can you not find Netflix shows on piracy sites? If you mean "Netflix has been successful in getting people to pirate less" that has nothing to do with the DRM, but with the fact that Netflix is a cheap and convenient enough service to stop many people from wanting to watch pirated content.
ryanlol 8y ago
Netflix videos are pretty easy to decrypt, there are a bunch of public exploits you can use to dump videwine device keys.

hlandau 8y ago

The really horrible truth is, DRM was probably never intended to prevent piracy. I used to think this - then you realise what DRM is actually intended to do. So long as we argue like this, we're not confronting the real motives. There seem to be two arguments for DRM which could be considered logical from an executive's perspective (even if in my view unethical): - Firstly, it delays the initial piracy of new releases. This is very variable and since new DRM systems aren't created as often as new films, this only seems to be successfully pulled off every now and then... but there have demonstrably been cases of it delaying piracy by a few weeks (hell, there's at least one video game which wasn't cracked for over a year). This probably feels valuable to executives who expect the bulk of returns on a film or video game to come immediately after release (especially if they have unrealistic expectations about correlations between piracy and lost sales). - Secondly, and more significantly, it ensures that media companies can control how content is consumed, and control the devices available to consume content. If you want to make a Blu-ray player, you have to sign contracts, and those contracts can tell you what functionality to add and what not to add. "Unauthorized" players, circumvention technology will always exist for the fringes, but that's too minor to care about. What it does mean - in tandem with the anticircumvention technology ban legislation, 17 USC 1202 - is that you can't walk into a retail chain store and buy a Blu-ray player that'll happily make copies, or so on. Most likely this is what these companies really care about - ensuring they have a say on what Homer Simpson has to choose from in Best Buy. To be clear, I unequivocally oppose DRM; but I suspect the above points are a closer approximation of the motives of the media industry in pushing it.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Angostura 8y ago
Regardless of how effective DRM is, don't forget it was an absolute requirement that Apple had to agree to implement in order to get the iTunes Store open, that Netflix et al had to follow in order to get up and running with agreement from the studios. DRM enabled a huge number of online businesses by providing content makers with the minimal assurances that they needed that those channels wouldn't be a simple, easy way for their content to be pirated.

mistrial9 8y ago

This is fine rhetoric, but you clearly have no idea the sales volumes and number of players involved in some markets. It is far more money than say, writing the ssh protocol handler or whatever you might think is cool. Sorry, it is that harsh.

forkerenok 8y ago

Inflated Management Egos -> IME Was that intentional? :)

__sr__ 8y ago
Well spotted!

__sr__ 8y ago

No one ever accused the MBA toting managers of being tech savvy .. or smart, for that matter. /s Sarcasm aside, in my experience, most managers do not understand technology even at a high level. Even the ones who come from a tech background often don’t bother to keep up. The typical mentality being, “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Get someone from <insert tech department name here> to handle it.” When the <insert tech department name here> does come up with a solution, it is usually shot down if there is even the slightest hint of risk involved. And there usually is — any disruptive change — as all invocations tend to be — inherently carry a certain amount of risk. Even Steve Jobs was unable to convince the record labels to allow them to sell DRM free music via iTines until Apple had grown too big for them to go against — at least as far as music business was concerned. Basically, the only things the so called managers are good at are passing around the blame and covering their asses. Way too many companies have been destroyed or are a shell of their former glory - having missed major opportunities because the management was not willing to deal with the risks associated with innovation — because they were content to milk their cash cow till it was dead — while laughing at deficiencies of the more innovative competitors’ version 1.0 products. The real managers — the people who know what they are doing — go on to found successful tech companies.

bryanbuckley 8y ago

> the enginners implementing these schemes must surely realize it's in vain I wonder, if it is so "in vain", why have so many folks been so spooked by it (e.g. Stallman, Doctorow)? Are they worried about the needless increased cost to consumers, or maybe they think it might actually work well enough? If you are really against DRM, I don't get how saying DRM "will never work" will help avoid it. I worked at TI on OMAP MShield, TrustZone stuff (iirc we were the first (w/ Galaxy Nexus) to have good-enough DRM to be the first to have Netflix HD) and later at Trustonic which is the OS (and more) vendor of AMD PSP and many ARM-based devices. Everyone* knew that some use-cases of DRM meant a single successful hack meant the content being leaked. It is mostly the low-level designers (CPU arch, physical die, OS/firmware etc) to be responsible for making it more difficult/expensive. Some use-cases will be necessarily be concerned with simpler attacks e.g. recording a few key pages of a secure/DRMed PDF with a hidden camera (and thus more complex protections like a Central Licensing, watermarking server becoming involved). There are some use-cases of DRM where leaks are not a big issue (e.g. a more dynamic content which involves occasionally communicating with peers/servers). [*] This is probably not true. That basic case is easy enough to see, but I've personally seen other schemes where customers leave out key steps or end up trusting something that shouldn't be trusted. @hlandau makes good points, I think. I've always been on the fence regarding DRM. I think property rights seem like a decent idea so why not extend that to the digital realm? Do we not want digital scarce goods, collectibles? Is a technical enforcement of property rights superior to meat-space? I see many cool uses for DRM, trusted computing (and in the end I think it would transfer power from publishers, platforms, manufacturers to creators and owners). It's interesting (and makes sense) to see how blockchain people are generally in favor of trusted computing (though for many it seems to be too much of a "silver bullet"); iirc bitcoin wallets were some of our first customers after video DRM. I've talked with many folks over the years (including EFF people) and I've still not gotten a sense of why the theory of DRM is bad (I would agree that most implementations have been horrible), other than it starting a snowball towards a cyberpunk dystopia future, maybe. I 100% agree that "you own the device, you should be able to control it". That means I support the right to tinker, am against DMCA, and think owners of devices should be able to run whatever software they prefer and be able to wipe, disable, replace whatever they want (e.g. root of trust). While I worked at Trustonic, I pestered the CEO many times (and rallied co-workers to do the same) to open source the OS. In the end there was (allegedly) not a good enough business reason to do so (and of course open source competitors began to pop up: trusty, tlk, OP-TEE, etc).

benologist 8y ago

It's also incredible how much effort and money has gone into producing and debating and selecting open source licenses that have just the right restrictions on how everyone else can use code. I think there are some parallels with that and DRM.