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From the repo: >It is my honest opinion that DRM is a malignant tumor growing upon various forms of media, and that people that either implement or enforce imp

From the repo: >It is my honest opinion that DRM is a malignant tumor growing upon various forms of media, and that people that either implement or enforce implementation are morally repugnant and do no good to society. With that in mind, I was sad to learn in May 2021 that the original extension would soon be rendered obsolete. I really can't agree more. I don't use, and never have, services that require DRM. I buy my games from gog.com and itch.io and the like, get media from free-to-air television and state broadcasters, and buy music either from the artist or from good and reputable music labels like hyperion.co.uk. I buy books in a dead-tree form, or as DRM-free PDFs. I will simply not buy, use, or support DRM and I occasionally tell firms that I am not giving them business because of their inane corporate decisions. This might seem like a hard rant, but all of these binary blobs can be broken with varying degree of difficulty -- as this person's work shows -- because DRM is fundamentally pointless. It's such a waste of human endeavor! Think how many CPU cycles are burnt doing this! Estimate what the total cost of HDCP + Widevine + DRM etc is on the planet! It is pointless, insulting, and frustrating! </rant>.

10000truths 5y ago
> This might seem like a hard rant, but all of these binary blobs can be broken with varying degree of difficulty -- as this person's work shows -- because DRM is fundamentally pointless. I think that this ease of circumventing DRM is actually an indirect, but major, reason why movie theaters will never really go away. Online streaming new movie releases is great for direct-to-consumer business, but it comes with the risk of losing control of your distribution due to ease of piracy. Why would a frugal person pay $30 for "premier access" to a new movie on Disney+ when they can just go to Pirate Bay and torrent a perfect-quality rip for free? It's much easier to keep AMC Theatres in line than a global network of average Joes.
- wincy 5y ago
  I used to go to the movie theatres all the time and spend $30+ to see a movie in the Dolby Digital Experience and the like, but it’s easier for me to pirate than it is for me to sign up for whatever streaming service and watch a movie there. They’re always available immediately after release in the highest quality.
- pornel 5y ago
  DRM is not about piracy. Content producers know that all their content ends up on PirateBay anyway, and know DRM causes them support costs and lost customers. For content distributors DRM is still worth in because of the power it gives them in dictating how the content can be viewed. They can demand hardware manufacturers to give them prominent placement, or be blocked. They can sell the same content over and over again for every screen type and platform individually, with rules and prices at maximum each will bear. They can set their own rules, instead of relying on general provisions of the copyright law.
  - 10000truths 5y ago
    But the point is that DRM doesn't give content producers power over how content can be viewed. I could, if I wanted, go on The Pirate Bay and torrent Black Widow for free, and watch it however, wherever, whenever I want, regardless of whatever DRM Disney+ has on their streaming. It doesn't matter whether hardware manufacturers are restricted from displaying DRM content, because they can be bypassed entirely.
    - pornel 5y ago
      But that happens only after they've already sold the finely-carved distribution contracts, got branded TV remotes, and kickbacks they wanted. The legally-operating companies that sign contracts need to act like DRM is real, because the law says it's real.
siliconc0w 5y ago
"because DRM is fundamentally pointless" I dunno, it gave this person a lot of trouble and the result is maybe a very narrow victory that doesn't practically matter? And this is the lowest level of widevine security - L3 which is basically assumed to be owned. Good luck with L1 which uses trusted compute primitives. DRM has won. And I'm saying this as someone who agrees DRM is a threat to society as we're taking things that the world could otherwise have for free and denying it them so we can instead charge a small % for it. So we're intelligent enough to build this kind of technical sophistication but we are unable/unwilling to figure out a different model for financing it.
- magila 5y ago
  If you know where to look L1 content can be readily downloaded, including the original 4K streams. As usual the net effect of DRM is to make the paid service inferior to piracy. That's not what I would call "wining".
  - nyuszika7h 5y ago
    I don't know why you're being downvoted, you're right. There are plenty of TrustZone exploits that allow extraction of L1 keys.
    - R0b0t1 5y ago
      For now, at least. It is possible they fix all issues.
      - kristofferR 5y ago
        Not really, since that would entail breaking playback on current devices/firmwares. They can only try again next time (for 8K?).
        anonuser123456 5y ago
        Broken TZ does not mean the algorithms are broken, only that exploits exist to bypass TZ. Fixing the exploits doesn't break anything about the algorithms for decode / decrypt.
MikeUt 5y ago
The point of DRM isn't to prevent piracy, but to control manufacturers, who cannot legally break DRM, so they have to comply with whatever the DRM licensing cartel demands. Prevent screenshots, prevent skipping ads, prevent recording (remember VHS recorders?), enforce region locking.. so many legal activities can be effectively made illegal, since manufacturers cannot both support DRM, and offer these options.
jshwlkr 5y ago
I believe you meant https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/ https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/
- azalemeth 5y ago
  I did -- thank you and apologies for getting it wrong.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
DRM is merely a symptom of the copyright disease. People actually want to believe data is scarce when it's not. When proven wrong, they make technology to force scarcity. It makes products and services worse for everyone and even then it barely works. The only way to stop this is to abolish copyright.
- beefjerkins 5y ago
  I agree that our current copyright system is certainly out of hand, but it does serve a purpose. Out of curiosity, what system would you suggest in its stead?
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Maybe patronage schemes? Crowdfunding? I have no idea. I just know that we can't go on like this. The only way to enforce copyright in the 21st century is to destroy computing freedom. I'd rather sacrifice the entire copyright industry than have computers that only run software they approve.
    - Godel_unicode 5y ago
      Except that's not true. There is tons of copywritten work sold online without DRM. It's just a matter of getting the business model right. https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000265101 https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000265... > every song from Amazon MP3 is DRM-free and encoded in high-quality 256-kbps MP3 format. This means that they will play on any MP3 player, so you don't need to worry about file format compatibility or licenses that expire.
      - Arainach 5y ago
        The production costs in music are orders of magnitude lower than those for video. It takes far fewer people far fewer days to record a song than a TV show or a movie. The equipment involved in recording, mixing, and special effects are all dramatically cheaper, which also makes the entire process more accessible and enables scales that do not exist for most media. A business model for one thing does not generalize.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rossjudson 5y ago
Let me see if I understand your position. "Laws are stupid because there are criminals who do crime anyway, and laws don't stop them." Does that sum it up?
- shmerl 5y ago
  Let's rephrase it. Corrupt laws like DMCA-1201 that use DRM to extend control over anything it touches are indeed stupid and even harmful to society.
meowface 5y ago
How do you feel about "effective DRM"? For example, an online RPG where you pay a monthly subscription to play with others in the same world. You could play single-player, or reverse engineer it and try to create a private server and modified client to play with others who choose to use the same modified client, but unless the implementation is unusually poor, the "DRM" is pretty much unavoidable if you want to play on the official servers.
- akiselev 5y ago
  That’s not really DRM, that’s actively providing a service. Some studios try to tie in single player experiences with online components as a form of DRM but those are invariably quickly cracked and are often a source of embarrassing launch day failures so they’re not that common.
  - meowface 5y ago
    Right, hence the scarequotes around the term. I'm just wondering if the parent poster also considers that model exploitative or freedom-restricting.
    - azalemeth 5y ago
      That depends a lot on whether or not the servers do actually provide value (e.g. a decent MMORPG – in my life I've played Eve and WoW, until about 2007) or are just egregious (I have a legal license for Adobe's Creative Suite CS6, and I'm sure as hell not upgrading).
Uehreka 5y ago
It’s not pointless if it works! Seriously though, those of us who don’t like DRM need to switch messaging from “It’s bad AND it’s pointless/useless!” to “It’s bad!” The “it’s pointless” part has clearly been interpreted as a challenge, and now we’ve got incredibly invasive junk creeping in at all levels of hardware and software, and it’s not actually inconveniencing everyday consumers that much (hackers and powerusers are a different story), and it’s working better all the time. I’m not sure exactly how to make this argument these days, but smugly saying “DRM will always be pointless in the end!” isn’t actually true, and I feel like we need to focus on the fact that the measures being taken to make it not pointless are impinging on both user privacy and the ability of open ecosystems (like Linux distros and more open hardware) to be useful for everyday media playback.

10000truths 5y ago

> This might seem like a hard rant, but all of these binary blobs can be broken with varying degree of difficulty -- as this person's work shows -- because DRM is fundamentally pointless. I think that this ease of circumventing DRM is actually an indirect, but major, reason why movie theaters will never really go away. Online streaming new movie releases is great for direct-to-consumer business, but it comes with the risk of losing control of your distribution due to ease of piracy. Why would a frugal person pay $30 for "premier access" to a new movie on Disney+ when they can just go to Pirate Bay and torrent a perfect-quality rip for free? It's much easier to keep AMC Theatres in line than a global network of average Joes.

wincy 5y ago
I used to go to the movie theatres all the time and spend $30+ to see a movie in the Dolby Digital Experience and the like, but it’s easier for me to pirate than it is for me to sign up for whatever streaming service and watch a movie there. They’re always available immediately after release in the highest quality.
pornel 5y ago
DRM is not about piracy. Content producers know that all their content ends up on PirateBay anyway, and know DRM causes them support costs and lost customers. For content distributors DRM is still worth in because of the power it gives them in dictating how the content can be viewed. They can demand hardware manufacturers to give them prominent placement, or be blocked. They can sell the same content over and over again for every screen type and platform individually, with rules and prices at maximum each will bear. They can set their own rules, instead of relying on general provisions of the copyright law.
- 10000truths 5y ago
  But the point is that DRM doesn't give content producers power over how content can be viewed. I could, if I wanted, go on The Pirate Bay and torrent Black Widow for free, and watch it however, wherever, whenever I want, regardless of whatever DRM Disney+ has on their streaming. It doesn't matter whether hardware manufacturers are restricted from displaying DRM content, because they can be bypassed entirely.
  - pornel 5y ago
    But that happens only after they've already sold the finely-carved distribution contracts, got branded TV remotes, and kickbacks they wanted. The legally-operating companies that sign contracts need to act like DRM is real, because the law says it's real.

siliconc0w 5y ago

"because DRM is fundamentally pointless" I dunno, it gave this person a lot of trouble and the result is maybe a very narrow victory that doesn't practically matter? And this is the lowest level of widevine security - L3 which is basically assumed to be owned. Good luck with L1 which uses trusted compute primitives. DRM has won. And I'm saying this as someone who agrees DRM is a threat to society as we're taking things that the world could otherwise have for free and denying it them so we can instead charge a small % for it. So we're intelligent enough to build this kind of technical sophistication but we are unable/unwilling to figure out a different model for financing it.

magila 5y ago
If you know where to look L1 content can be readily downloaded, including the original 4K streams. As usual the net effect of DRM is to make the paid service inferior to piracy. That's not what I would call "wining".
- nyuszika7h 5y ago
  I don't know why you're being downvoted, you're right. There are plenty of TrustZone exploits that allow extraction of L1 keys.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    For now, at least. It is possible they fix all issues.
    - kristofferR 5y ago
      Not really, since that would entail breaking playback on current devices/firmwares. They can only try again next time (for 8K?).
      - anonuser123456 5y ago
        Broken TZ does not mean the algorithms are broken, only that exploits exist to bypass TZ. Fixing the exploits doesn't break anything about the algorithms for decode / decrypt.

MikeUt 5y ago

The point of DRM isn't to prevent piracy, but to control manufacturers, who cannot legally break DRM, so they have to comply with whatever the DRM licensing cartel demands. Prevent screenshots, prevent skipping ads, prevent recording (remember VHS recorders?), enforce region locking.. so many legal activities can be effectively made illegal, since manufacturers cannot both support DRM, and offer these options.

jshwlkr 5y ago

I believe you meant https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/ https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/

azalemeth 5y ago
I did -- thank you and apologies for getting it wrong.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

DRM is merely a symptom of the copyright disease. People actually want to believe data is scarce when it's not. When proven wrong, they make technology to force scarcity. It makes products and services worse for everyone and even then it barely works. The only way to stop this is to abolish copyright.

beefjerkins 5y ago
I agree that our current copyright system is certainly out of hand, but it does serve a purpose. Out of curiosity, what system would you suggest in its stead?
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Maybe patronage schemes? Crowdfunding? I have no idea. I just know that we can't go on like this. The only way to enforce copyright in the 21st century is to destroy computing freedom. I'd rather sacrifice the entire copyright industry than have computers that only run software they approve.
  - Godel_unicode 5y ago
    Except that's not true. There is tons of copywritten work sold online without DRM. It's just a matter of getting the business model right. https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000265101 https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000265... > every song from Amazon MP3 is DRM-free and encoded in high-quality 256-kbps MP3 format. This means that they will play on any MP3 player, so you don't need to worry about file format compatibility or licenses that expire.
    - Arainach 5y ago
      The production costs in music are orders of magnitude lower than those for video. It takes far fewer people far fewer days to record a song than a TV show or a movie. The equipment involved in recording, mixing, and special effects are all dramatically cheaper, which also makes the entire process more accessible and enables scales that do not exist for most media. A business model for one thing does not generalize.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rossjudson 5y ago

Let me see if I understand your position. "Laws are stupid because there are criminals who do crime anyway, and laws don't stop them." Does that sum it up?

shmerl 5y ago
Let's rephrase it. Corrupt laws like DMCA-1201 that use DRM to extend control over anything it touches are indeed stupid and even harmful to society.

meowface 5y ago

How do you feel about "effective DRM"? For example, an online RPG where you pay a monthly subscription to play with others in the same world. You could play single-player, or reverse engineer it and try to create a private server and modified client to play with others who choose to use the same modified client, but unless the implementation is unusually poor, the "DRM" is pretty much unavoidable if you want to play on the official servers.

akiselev 5y ago
That’s not really DRM, that’s actively providing a service. Some studios try to tie in single player experiences with online components as a form of DRM but those are invariably quickly cracked and are often a source of embarrassing launch day failures so they’re not that common.
- meowface 5y ago
  Right, hence the scarequotes around the term. I'm just wondering if the parent poster also considers that model exploitative or freedom-restricting.
  - azalemeth 5y ago
    That depends a lot on whether or not the servers do actually provide value (e.g. a decent MMORPG – in my life I've played Eve and WoW, until about 2007) or are just egregious (I have a legal license for Adobe's Creative Suite CS6, and I'm sure as hell not upgrading).

Uehreka 5y ago

It’s not pointless if it works! Seriously though, those of us who don’t like DRM need to switch messaging from “It’s bad AND it’s pointless/useless!” to “It’s bad!” The “it’s pointless” part has clearly been interpreted as a challenge, and now we’ve got incredibly invasive junk creeping in at all levels of hardware and software, and it’s not actually inconveniencing everyday consumers that much (hackers and powerusers are a different story), and it’s working better all the time. I’m not sure exactly how to make this argument these days, but smugly saying “DRM will always be pointless in the end!” isn’t actually true, and I feel like we need to focus on the fact that the measures being taken to make it not pointless are impinging on both user privacy and the ability of open ecosystems (like Linux distros and more open hardware) to be useful for everyday media playback.