28 ms·

> 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

> 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" to stop average users from trivially downloading and keeping the file, like you might do with an plain, embedded MP4 file.

lousken 7y ago
Obviously, the point is to screw up the customers - every DRM can and will be broken at some point
nikanj 7y ago
Device manufacturers. Play nice, or we won't grant you the magic pixie dust to play our content in glorious 4k.
- baddox 7y ago
  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 article claiming to be a big revelation, but it’s pretty much common sense and has been fairly well recognized for much longer than that: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-engineer-drm-has-nothing-to-do-with-piracy/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-engineer-drm-has-nothin...
  - narrator 7y ago
    So the purpose of DRM is to thwart the first sale doctrine?
    - c256 7y ago
      It is absolutely one prime motivation. “The purpose” is essentially non-verifiable.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    Reading that article, it seems to me that the arguments don't fit the conclusions. Media companies may be strong-arming software and device manufacturers, but they're doing so as a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Their motive for strong arming software and hardware manufacturers is their desire to control consumer behavior. That may be slightly more general than "piracy" specifically, but not that different.
    - baddox 7y ago
      Sure, of course they ideally want end to end control. The point, though, is that the argument “pirates will still be able to pirate and legitimate users will be inconvenienced,” while true, is not a great argument for why content producers should stop using DRM, because DRM still works quite well for establishing control over hardware and distribution providers.
  - sideeffffect 7y ago
    Ian Hickson's insightful short essay about DRM was on Google+. But now it's gone... Not entirely, actually, thanks to the Internet Archive!!! https://web.archive.org/web/20190119000840/https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2 https://web.archive.org/web/20190119000840/https://plus.goog...
turblety 7y ago
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.
- geofft 7y ago
  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?
  - jaimex2 7y ago
    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.
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      >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?
      - diamondlovesyou 7y ago
        Those two sides aren't mutually exclusive. Demand for content creates both.
vkaku 7y ago
This ^ DRM is only to create the illusion of security, to deter the average person, not the determined pirate or developer. Once you've sent the content to the client, you've lost all practical ways to avoid these torrents.
foota 7y ago
I imagine you'd see a lot more casual piracy if it were trivial to copy, i.e., people just sending the videos to their friends.
- Sendotsh 7y ago
  For every person torrenting there’s multiple getting movies off friends on USB sticks and stuff. One member of my family does the torrenting for a dozen others in my family, and I know plenty of others that work like that. I personally do a mix of paying for content and pirating. I’m 100% happy to pay for content if I can, but with geoblocking and platform restrictions and all the other bullshittery, it’s legitimately impossible for me to legally buy half (or more) of the content I’m actually interested in, so I pirate it, and I don’t feel bad for doing so in the slightest. I also regularly have to pirate things I already own thanks to DRM that doesn’t work on my devices, missing subtitles, etc. The entire industry is broken and it’s their own fault.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Not sure if applicable to your region but have you given movieseverywhere a shot?
    - Sendotsh 7y ago
      Do you mean Disney Movies Anywhere? That’s a US exclusive, like just about all content these days.
      - Freak_NL 7y ago
        Mostly so. With some interesting exceptions, luckily. You can watch Star Trek: Discovery on Netflix in 32 countries, including most of Europe, but not in the US (there it's an exclusive on CBS or something like that).
      - giancarlostoro 7y ago
        https://moviesanywhere.com/ https://moviesanywhere.com/ This website, it's not Disney specific, but that sucks. It would mostly be the convenient solution to this problem. If you have a movie on iTunes or Play, it unlocks in the other, and vice-versa.
vbezhenar 7y ago
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.
- swebs 7y ago
  HDCP has had its master key leaked in 2010. You can also buy hardware over the internet that bypasses HDCP.
  - gruez 7y ago
    Basically this. HDCP 2.2 is "secure", but the previous versions aren't. A company signed the HDCP agreement and got the decryption keys, and made a device that could downgrade HDCP. Apparently this was allowed by the HDCP licensing agreement so it's all legal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection#HDCP_v2.2,_v2.1_and_v2.0_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content...
  - aaronax 7y ago
    Ok but that will be lower quality. The original compressed file will be decoded and sent to the monitor at full resolution and frame rate, and then the pirates will be able to capture that. Then the pirates will need to encode/compress that for distribution. This new file will be lower quality, I believe.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  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
- ikeboy 7y ago
  It's not clear. The tools are kept secret to avoid patching. But presumably they reverse engineered it and have a way to capture the raw stream. I know at one point they were using Roku TVs or Fire TVs which allowed an older DRM standard. Now apparently there's a crack for Windows that's kept underground in the scene groups doing releases.
noonespecial 7y ago
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?"
stevetodd 7y ago
It’s designed to reinforce the idea that piracy is morally wrong.
aaron695 7y ago
> And yet 4K webrips of recent Netflix shows are readily available on torrent sites. WEBRIP (capture) are worse quality than WEB/WEB-DL (hacked DRM) So actually you prove their point, they are winning. The scene can do some WEB, they keep it secret, they even have servers for crew member to use without telling them how. WEB is probably using old TV software with weaker DRM, hence why 4k is rare.
Igelau 7y ago
I'm not a lawyer, but if we look at the DMCA, 17 USC §1201 (A)(1)(a): "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." No one is interested in perfect because the actual DRM is only a tiny sliver of the protection. The bulk of it is the threat of having to pay a huge settlement because you don't want to get the piss beaten out of you in court.
- gruez 7y ago
  >No one is interested in perfect because the actual DRM is only a tiny sliver of the protection. The bulk of it is the threat of having to pay a huge settlement because you don't want to get the piss beaten out of you in court. I don't find that argument convincing. I can't think of any famous cases of copyright holders or law enforcement going after rippers/encoders (the people who break the DRM and make it available for others to copy), but plenty of cases of them going after people who downloaded the content.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    And worse... You could have crappy DRM and if someone circumvents it. Its cheaper to produce and you can still prosecute the rippers.
- P_I_Staker 7y ago
  That doesn't explain the cat an mouse game. DRM schemes are constantly updated to fix issues so that previous hacks no longer work. Occasionally, the industry invests big money into sweeping changes. If what you're saying is true, you'd expect the minimum reasonable measures to suffice. No need to invest in new methods. Yet they do. I'm sure lots of people would be interested in "perfect", if you had that product to give them; you could be a millionaire, the problem is that it's impossible, as far as we know.
gok 7y ago
It gives content producers leverage with device manufacturers.
s3cur3 7y ago
My experience with small content producers is that their decisions surrounding stopping piracy have almost nothing to do with the economics of it; it’s an emotional decision. I’ve seen people spend 25%+ of their content’s revenue on DRM. Now, why the major players also pour money into this stuff is just baffling.
untog 7y ago
They're available on torrent sites, but how are you going to watch that video on your Roku, Apple TV, smart TV or whatever? The key here is hardware control. The big players have it.
- TrueDuality 7y ago
  Plex.
- jowsie 7y ago
  Plex and similar software are pretty popular. Not to mention most phones can 'cast' to all those devices. Both my smart tv's even have USB ports.
  - untog 7y ago
    It's kind of funny the number of people responding with Plex. I've used it for years, and it's an effective piece of software but it requires running a server in your house, managing storage, etc. etc... there's no way the average user is interested in doing that.
    - joecot 7y ago
      > it requires running a server in your house, managing storage, etc. etc... there's no way the average user is interested in doing that Which is why my family, my girlfriend's family, and all our friends just use my Plex server
    - tbyehl 7y ago
      Plex is just an application. My start, back when it was still Mac-only, was to run it on my Macbook Pro. When the drive got full, I deleted content that I'd already watched. For a decade now, Plex runs on any Windows / Mac / Linux device. It'll run on a Raspberry Pi. NVIDIA Shield. Western Digital's My Cloud NAS products (from $139 w/ 2TB). QNAP. Synology. The main obstacle for "average" people is just knowing that Plex exists.
      - 7y ago
paulddraper 7y ago
> many Android devices only support level 1 Isn't Android the biggest OS on the planet by # of users? Wouldn't the impact be huge?
deogeo 7y ago
> I don't understand who these higher levels of DRM are trying to target. They target device manufacturers. If you want to sell a computer/tablet/phone/TV that will play Disney+/Netflix/etc, then you must submit to their demands, pay their licensing fees, and hope you don't anger them. They want to be the gatekeepers to who can make a commercially-viable product.
aidenn0 7y ago
Aside from this comment[1], DRM prevents casual piracy. There was a point where a lot of my music was cassette tapes with the album written on it with a sharpie. DRM definitely prevents this. HDCP up to 2.2 is completely broken, so even perfect software DRM has a huge gaping hardware hole, but most people don't have the tools needed to circumvent this. One person breaking the DRM can make a torrent for all torrenters, but if say 1/4 the population can break the DRM, then people will copy things for friends. The closest current day equivalent is probably many people sharing a Netflix password. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21307648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21307648
LaundroMat 7y ago
It's all about (pretending to be) protecting intellectual property. After all, a large part of media companies' assets are intangible IP. To make sure the value of that asset is not eroded, companies such as Disney must invest in technologies that claim help protect it. (Edit: to be more precise, they must invest in tech that maximizes the extraction of (future) value from that IP).
beerandt 7y ago
I think at this point it's just an excuse for sub-par distribution networks. Or an excuse for poor playback compatibly. Or maybe even a way to save on bandwidth. It gets them out of any contractual or common law minimum level-of-service complaints.
Nasrudith 7y ago
They aren't for the consumer or even product security despite what they say. They certainly pay enough to afford people to tell them the truth - instead they pay extra to get ones who tell them what they want to hear. As far as I can tell they are a very expensive security blanket for those too tech illiterate to realize that trying to circumvent the analog hole for serial formats is barking madness or as an ass-cover. It brings to mind the use of polygraphs as similar outright instituional superstitions whose true function is blame deflection.

lousken 7y ago

Obviously, the point is to screw up the customers - every DRM can and will be broken at some point

nikanj 7y ago

Device manufacturers. Play nice, or we won't grant you the magic pixie dust to play our content in glorious 4k.

baddox 7y ago
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 article claiming to be a big revelation, but it’s pretty much common sense and has been fairly well recognized for much longer than that: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-engineer-drm-has-nothing-to-do-with-piracy/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-engineer-drm-has-nothin...
- narrator 7y ago
  So the purpose of DRM is to thwart the first sale doctrine?
  - c256 7y ago
    It is absolutely one prime motivation. “The purpose” is essentially non-verifiable.
- catalogia 7y ago
  Reading that article, it seems to me that the arguments don't fit the conclusions. Media companies may be strong-arming software and device manufacturers, but they're doing so as a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Their motive for strong arming software and hardware manufacturers is their desire to control consumer behavior. That may be slightly more general than "piracy" specifically, but not that different.
  - baddox 7y ago
    Sure, of course they ideally want end to end control. The point, though, is that the argument “pirates will still be able to pirate and legitimate users will be inconvenienced,” while true, is not a great argument for why content producers should stop using DRM, because DRM still works quite well for establishing control over hardware and distribution providers.
- sideeffffect 7y ago
  Ian Hickson's insightful short essay about DRM was on Google+. But now it's gone... Not entirely, actually, thanks to the Internet Archive!!! https://web.archive.org/web/20190119000840/https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2 https://web.archive.org/web/20190119000840/https://plus.goog...

turblety 7y ago

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.

geofft 7y ago
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?
- jaimex2 7y ago
  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.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    >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?
    - diamondlovesyou 7y ago
      Those two sides aren't mutually exclusive. Demand for content creates both.

vkaku 7y ago

This ^ DRM is only to create the illusion of security, to deter the average person, not the determined pirate or developer. Once you've sent the content to the client, you've lost all practical ways to avoid these torrents.

foota 7y ago

I imagine you'd see a lot more casual piracy if it were trivial to copy, i.e., people just sending the videos to their friends.

Sendotsh 7y ago
For every person torrenting there’s multiple getting movies off friends on USB sticks and stuff. One member of my family does the torrenting for a dozen others in my family, and I know plenty of others that work like that. I personally do a mix of paying for content and pirating. I’m 100% happy to pay for content if I can, but with geoblocking and platform restrictions and all the other bullshittery, it’s legitimately impossible for me to legally buy half (or more) of the content I’m actually interested in, so I pirate it, and I don’t feel bad for doing so in the slightest. I also regularly have to pirate things I already own thanks to DRM that doesn’t work on my devices, missing subtitles, etc. The entire industry is broken and it’s their own fault.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Not sure if applicable to your region but have you given movieseverywhere a shot?
  - Sendotsh 7y ago
    Do you mean Disney Movies Anywhere? That’s a US exclusive, like just about all content these days.
    - Freak_NL 7y ago
      Mostly so. With some interesting exceptions, luckily. You can watch Star Trek: Discovery on Netflix in 32 countries, including most of Europe, but not in the US (there it's an exclusive on CBS or something like that).
    - giancarlostoro 7y ago
      https://moviesanywhere.com/ https://moviesanywhere.com/ This website, it's not Disney specific, but that sucks. It would mostly be the convenient solution to this problem. If you have a movie on iTunes or Play, it unlocks in the other, and vice-versa.

vbezhenar 7y ago

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.

swebs 7y ago
HDCP has had its master key leaked in 2010. You can also buy hardware over the internet that bypasses HDCP.
- gruez 7y ago
  Basically this. HDCP 2.2 is "secure", but the previous versions aren't. A company signed the HDCP agreement and got the decryption keys, and made a device that could downgrade HDCP. Apparently this was allowed by the HDCP licensing agreement so it's all legal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection#HDCP_v2.2,_v2.1_and_v2.0_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content...
- aaronax 7y ago
  Ok but that will be lower quality. The original compressed file will be decoded and sent to the monitor at full resolution and frame rate, and then the pirates will be able to capture that. Then the pirates will need to encode/compress that for distribution. This new file will be lower quality, I believe.
huffmsa 7y ago
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
ikeboy 7y ago
It's not clear. The tools are kept secret to avoid patching. But presumably they reverse engineered it and have a way to capture the raw stream. I know at one point they were using Roku TVs or Fire TVs which allowed an older DRM standard. Now apparently there's a crack for Windows that's kept underground in the scene groups doing releases.

noonespecial 7y ago

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?"

stevetodd 7y ago

It’s designed to reinforce the idea that piracy is morally wrong.

aaron695 7y ago

> And yet 4K webrips of recent Netflix shows are readily available on torrent sites. WEBRIP (capture) are worse quality than WEB/WEB-DL (hacked DRM) So actually you prove their point, they are winning. The scene can do some WEB, they keep it secret, they even have servers for crew member to use without telling them how. WEB is probably using old TV software with weaker DRM, hence why 4k is rare.

Igelau 7y ago

I'm not a lawyer, but if we look at the DMCA, 17 USC §1201 (A)(1)(a): "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." No one is interested in perfect because the actual DRM is only a tiny sliver of the protection. The bulk of it is the threat of having to pay a huge settlement because you don't want to get the piss beaten out of you in court.

gruez 7y ago
>No one is interested in perfect because the actual DRM is only a tiny sliver of the protection. The bulk of it is the threat of having to pay a huge settlement because you don't want to get the piss beaten out of you in court. I don't find that argument convincing. I can't think of any famous cases of copyright holders or law enforcement going after rippers/encoders (the people who break the DRM and make it available for others to copy), but plenty of cases of them going after people who downloaded the content.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  And worse... You could have crappy DRM and if someone circumvents it. Its cheaper to produce and you can still prosecute the rippers.
P_I_Staker 7y ago
That doesn't explain the cat an mouse game. DRM schemes are constantly updated to fix issues so that previous hacks no longer work. Occasionally, the industry invests big money into sweeping changes. If what you're saying is true, you'd expect the minimum reasonable measures to suffice. No need to invest in new methods. Yet they do. I'm sure lots of people would be interested in "perfect", if you had that product to give them; you could be a millionaire, the problem is that it's impossible, as far as we know.

gok 7y ago

It gives content producers leverage with device manufacturers.

s3cur3 7y ago

My experience with small content producers is that their decisions surrounding stopping piracy have almost nothing to do with the economics of it; it’s an emotional decision. I’ve seen people spend 25%+ of their content’s revenue on DRM. Now, why the major players also pour money into this stuff is just baffling.

untog 7y ago

They're available on torrent sites, but how are you going to watch that video on your Roku, Apple TV, smart TV or whatever? The key here is hardware control. The big players have it.

TrueDuality 7y ago
Plex.
jowsie 7y ago
Plex and similar software are pretty popular. Not to mention most phones can 'cast' to all those devices. Both my smart tv's even have USB ports.
- untog 7y ago
  It's kind of funny the number of people responding with Plex. I've used it for years, and it's an effective piece of software but it requires running a server in your house, managing storage, etc. etc... there's no way the average user is interested in doing that.
  - joecot 7y ago
    > it requires running a server in your house, managing storage, etc. etc... there's no way the average user is interested in doing that Which is why my family, my girlfriend's family, and all our friends just use my Plex server
  - tbyehl 7y ago
    Plex is just an application. My start, back when it was still Mac-only, was to run it on my Macbook Pro. When the drive got full, I deleted content that I'd already watched. For a decade now, Plex runs on any Windows / Mac / Linux device. It'll run on a Raspberry Pi. NVIDIA Shield. Western Digital's My Cloud NAS products (from $139 w/ 2TB). QNAP. Synology. The main obstacle for "average" people is just knowing that Plex exists.
    - 7y ago

paulddraper 7y ago

> many Android devices only support level 1 Isn't Android the biggest OS on the planet by # of users? Wouldn't the impact be huge?

deogeo 7y ago

> I don't understand who these higher levels of DRM are trying to target. They target device manufacturers. If you want to sell a computer/tablet/phone/TV that will play Disney+/Netflix/etc, then you must submit to their demands, pay their licensing fees, and hope you don't anger them. They want to be the gatekeepers to who can make a commercially-viable product.

aidenn0 7y ago

Aside from this comment[1], DRM prevents casual piracy. There was a point where a lot of my music was cassette tapes with the album written on it with a sharpie. DRM definitely prevents this. HDCP up to 2.2 is completely broken, so even perfect software DRM has a huge gaping hardware hole, but most people don't have the tools needed to circumvent this. One person breaking the DRM can make a torrent for all torrenters, but if say 1/4 the population can break the DRM, then people will copy things for friends. The closest current day equivalent is probably many people sharing a Netflix password. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21307648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21307648

LaundroMat 7y ago

It's all about (pretending to be) protecting intellectual property. After all, a large part of media companies' assets are intangible IP. To make sure the value of that asset is not eroded, companies such as Disney must invest in technologies that claim help protect it. (Edit: to be more precise, they must invest in tech that maximizes the extraction of (future) value from that IP).

beerandt 7y ago

I think at this point it's just an excuse for sub-par distribution networks. Or an excuse for poor playback compatibly. Or maybe even a way to save on bandwidth. It gets them out of any contractual or common law minimum level-of-service complaints.

Nasrudith 7y ago

They aren't for the consumer or even product security despite what they say. They certainly pay enough to afford people to tell them the truth - instead they pay extra to get ones who tell them what they want to hear. As far as I can tell they are a very expensive security blanket for those too tech illiterate to realize that trying to circumvent the analog hole for serial formats is barking madness or as an ass-cover. It brings to mind the use of polygraphs as similar outright instituional superstitions whose true function is blame deflection.