5 ms·

> So what is this DRM supposed to achieve? I think DRM in general was never really designed to completely thwart piracy. The goal is actually to delay the pir

by Cyph0n 8y ago

> So what is this DRM supposed to achieve? I think DRM in general was never really designed to completely thwart piracy. The goal is actually to delay the pirated version as much as possible and to raise the barrier to entry when pirated versions are eventually released into the wild.

Endy 8y ago
Instead of that, it's turned pirates into heroes of the common person. After all, why pay and be limited in the way you can watch the thing you paid for when unlimited access exists for free?
- jonas21 8y ago
  > why pay and be limited in the way you can watch the thing you paid for when unlimited access exists for free? Oh I dunno... have you tried asking one of Netflix's 140M subscribers? Or the 26M people who use Amazon prime video? The point of DRM isn't to make it impossible to pirate things -- it's to make it difficult enough to get pirated content that most people would prefer to pay a few bucks a month to watch things via a channel where rights holders are compensated. And by that measure, it seems to be working pretty well.
  - Sharparam 8y ago
    I'm not sure for how much longer it will keep working though. With the increased fragmentation of streaming services (and geoblocking), pirating content is starting to feel more convenient yet again. When it comes to music, I can most of the time listen to it legally via Spotify or Google Play Music/YouTube Music. When it comes to movies (and especially for older movies), the rights holders give me no choice but to pirate because they simply don't make it available for me to obtain in a legal way. As an extreme example: I was looking up an old childhood movie "Hugo: Djungeldjuret". The rights holder have stopped distributing the movie and they no longer sell it, but they do issue copyright claims and take-down requests towards anyone who hosts it. How am I supposed to watch a movie like that in a legal way when the only distributor has stopped distributing it?
simias 8y ago
My point was that, for movies and TV shows at least, this simply doesn't work. The delay is small enough that it's usually negligible (a few hours in my experience). For live events (especially sporting events) of course that's enough to make pirating impractical, but for the new episode of Game of Thrones it's really not much. Furthermore I assume that most of that latency is not due to the time required for pirates to break the DRM but rather the time for the original riper to encode the file and share it through the pirate food chain until it reaches the public trackers that I use. You'd still have to wait a little while to get your pirate file if you don't have a subscription to the official streaming service.
- Cyph0n 8y ago
  > For live events (especially sporting events) of course that's enough to make pirating impractical, but for the new episode of Game of Thrones it's really not much. I think you underestimate how many people prefer to watch the latest episode as it airs. > not due to the time required for pirates to break the DRM Even if the DRM is already broken, you can't just ignore the initial time spent to break it. > until it reaches the public trackers that I use Let's say you stopped 100 random people on a busy street and asked them what a "public torrent tracker" is. How many do you think would know what that even means? And of those who do, how many do you think would actually be able to download a movie through a public tracker? This is why Popcorn Time was such a huge hit: it provided effortless access to movie torrents for the masses. Obviously, this also explains the rapid response by content publishers to crush the project.
  - radisb 8y ago
    Isn't it still live and well?
  - simias 8y ago
    >I think you underestimate how many people prefer to watch the latest episode as it airs. I don't, but even without any DRM you still have the delay between the moment the ripper manages to get the file and the moment it's available for download. DRM doesn't really change anything here. It's not like for games where DRM can delay the release of cracked version by days or even sometimes weeks. >Even if the DRM is already broken, you can't just ignore the initial time spent to break it. For movies and TV shows I think I can. It's just so full of holes and broken implementations that it's usually trivial to crack. I have yet to see the release of a good quality movie or TV show because they couldn't crack the DRM. >Let's say you stopped 100 random people on a busy street and asked them what a "public torrent tracker" is. How many do you think would know what that even means? I honestly don't know, but I do know that streaming solutions and direct download websites are pretty mainstream in my experience. Megaupload was huge for instance. But even if you're right and it's obscure, doesn't that make DRM even more pointless? If people don't pirate because they don't know how why would they start ripping Netflix streams? Technically speaking it's even more involved.
hdfbdtbcdg 8y ago
In reality as long as possible is a few hours. In exchange everyone who doesn't pirate has to jump through hoops and gets a worse experience.

by Cyph0n 8y ago

Endy 8y ago

Instead of that, it's turned pirates into heroes of the common person. After all, why pay and be limited in the way you can watch the thing you paid for when unlimited access exists for free?

jonas21 8y ago
> why pay and be limited in the way you can watch the thing you paid for when unlimited access exists for free? Oh I dunno... have you tried asking one of Netflix's 140M subscribers? Or the 26M people who use Amazon prime video? The point of DRM isn't to make it impossible to pirate things -- it's to make it difficult enough to get pirated content that most people would prefer to pay a few bucks a month to watch things via a channel where rights holders are compensated. And by that measure, it seems to be working pretty well.
- Sharparam 8y ago
  I'm not sure for how much longer it will keep working though. With the increased fragmentation of streaming services (and geoblocking), pirating content is starting to feel more convenient yet again. When it comes to music, I can most of the time listen to it legally via Spotify or Google Play Music/YouTube Music. When it comes to movies (and especially for older movies), the rights holders give me no choice but to pirate because they simply don't make it available for me to obtain in a legal way. As an extreme example: I was looking up an old childhood movie "Hugo: Djungeldjuret". The rights holder have stopped distributing the movie and they no longer sell it, but they do issue copyright claims and take-down requests towards anyone who hosts it. How am I supposed to watch a movie like that in a legal way when the only distributor has stopped distributing it?

simias 8y ago

My point was that, for movies and TV shows at least, this simply doesn't work. The delay is small enough that it's usually negligible (a few hours in my experience). For live events (especially sporting events) of course that's enough to make pirating impractical, but for the new episode of Game of Thrones it's really not much. Furthermore I assume that most of that latency is not due to the time required for pirates to break the DRM but rather the time for the original riper to encode the file and share it through the pirate food chain until it reaches the public trackers that I use. You'd still have to wait a little while to get your pirate file if you don't have a subscription to the official streaming service.

Cyph0n 8y ago
> For live events (especially sporting events) of course that's enough to make pirating impractical, but for the new episode of Game of Thrones it's really not much. I think you underestimate how many people prefer to watch the latest episode as it airs. > not due to the time required for pirates to break the DRM Even if the DRM is already broken, you can't just ignore the initial time spent to break it. > until it reaches the public trackers that I use Let's say you stopped 100 random people on a busy street and asked them what a "public torrent tracker" is. How many do you think would know what that even means? And of those who do, how many do you think would actually be able to download a movie through a public tracker? This is why Popcorn Time was such a huge hit: it provided effortless access to movie torrents for the masses. Obviously, this also explains the rapid response by content publishers to crush the project.
- radisb 8y ago
  Isn't it still live and well?
- simias 8y ago
  >I think you underestimate how many people prefer to watch the latest episode as it airs. I don't, but even without any DRM you still have the delay between the moment the ripper manages to get the file and the moment it's available for download. DRM doesn't really change anything here. It's not like for games where DRM can delay the release of cracked version by days or even sometimes weeks. >Even if the DRM is already broken, you can't just ignore the initial time spent to break it. For movies and TV shows I think I can. It's just so full of holes and broken implementations that it's usually trivial to crack. I have yet to see the release of a good quality movie or TV show because they couldn't crack the DRM. >Let's say you stopped 100 random people on a busy street and asked them what a "public torrent tracker" is. How many do you think would know what that even means? I honestly don't know, but I do know that streaming solutions and direct download websites are pretty mainstream in my experience. Megaupload was huge for instance. But even if you're right and it's obscure, doesn't that make DRM even more pointless? If people don't pirate because they don't know how why would they start ripping Netflix streams? Technically speaking it's even more involved.

hdfbdtbcdg 8y ago

In reality as long as possible is a few hours. In exchange everyone who doesn't pirate has to jump through hoops and gets a worse experience.