11 ms·

> All your streaming services -- Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc -- are using DRM and no one even fights this any more. Well, yeah. Streaming services wouldn't exis

by derefr 4y ago

> All your streaming services -- Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc -- are using DRM and no one even fights this any more. Well, yeah. Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. The existence of infinite accessible libraries of content for flat-fee monthly-subscription prices, is built upon IP licenses which were granted conditional to the consumer's inability to leverage that access into piracy. If we deleted DRM, streaming services would cease to exist overnight — all their license grants being revoked, leaving them with nothing to serve — and we'd go back to just relying upon the iTunes Music Store / Netflix DVD rental model. (Which, to be clear, has still also existed alongside streaming this whole time.) > But, guess what? increasingly all of that is in a cloud data center where your control is ... limited. But with almost every stack deployed to those data centers just using one or another portable open standard (Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, etc.) for deployment, commodifying the IaaS provider, such that the moment the IaaS provider attempts to assert any constraints developers aren't uncomfortable with, the developer can just move away in an instant. (IaaS providers try their best to offer technologies with actual lock-in, but either no significant fraction of users takes them up on them; or a new open-standard abstraction layer is created that re-commodifies the offering by making it something portable to other IaaS providers + open implementations. The "S3-compatible" object-storage API is one good example of such re-commodification.)

Teever 4y ago
> Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. Why? Is DRM stopping piracy? Like what do you think would happen if DRM didn't exist, would the pirate bay be even bigger? People don't pay for netflix because it's hard to pirate stuff, they pay for netflix because it's easier to do so than to pirate stuff, and it would be the same even if the laws of the universe changed one night and all DRM ceased to function.
stackbutterflow 4y ago
If we deleted DRM, streaming services would cease to exist overnight — all their license grants being revoked, leaving them with nothing to serve — and we'd go back to just relying upon the iTunes Music Store / Netflix DVD rental model. Why is that? You can download everything for free. I don't think people use Netflix to access otherwise inaccessible content but rather because it's more convenient than searching for the right torrent link.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  Exactly. Everything is already available and there are really simple ways to find, download, watch and even stream everything but they all have hurdles; how to know the quality you download, download speed (not everyone has fiber or Starlink etc), riddled with fakes, malware etc. Then streaming services that are illegal: again; finding good quality, porn ads popping up during watching, crypto miners in your browser, application installation attempts etc. It is just far easier to just watch Netflix etc; if it had no drm, the vast majority would not change anything I would think, especially because the GP already said: no-one cares about drm. If they don’t care it doesn’t matter either way for most people (not the handful of Hn readers). It is like privacy; the vast majority of people don’t care; just the few that worry about dystopia.
  - herbst 4y ago
    'Illegal' streaming services are legal for private use where I live. In German there is a huge market with many sites featuring basically any movie in different quality settings. I have an adblock, no idea which kind of evil ads they usually use. With Kodi I also have all of that on my TV available just as easy as Netflix. However many if not most people still use Netflix even thought they have no real reason to.
    - frederikb 4y ago
      Just as a heads up: to my knowledge that's not correct in Germany. It's only highly unlikely to get "abgemahnt" in addition to the difficulty of obtaining IP addresses of users in comparison to alternatives such as Torrents. But not getting caught != legal. Streaming from a „offensichtlich rechtswidrige Vorlage“ (§ 53 UrhG.) is not legal. That has been clarified by a decision from the EuGH in 2017. I'm not a lawyer though and this isn't legal advice. Let me know if there have been verdicts and legal proceedings stating the contrary.
      - herbst 4y ago
        I am Swiss. I just use German internet. Should have made this more clear
DeathArrow 4y ago
>Well, yeah. Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. The existence of infinite accessible libraries of content for flat-fee monthly-subscription prices, is built upon IP licenses which were granted conditional to the consumer's inability to leverage that access into piracy. If we deleted DRM, streaming services would cease to exist overnight — all their license grants being revoked, leaving them with nothing to serve — and we'd go back to just relying upon the iTunes Music Store / Netflix DVD rental model. (Which, to be clear, has still also existed alongside streaming this whole time.) Then why there is a ton of Netflix and Amazon Prime owned content on the torrents? It seems the content is very pirateable, DRM or not.
- derefr 4y ago
  Technically, they're not pirating the content itself; the original, full-fidelity content remains DRMed. Instead, what these torrents are, are re-encodings of the decoded video stream produced by playing the content. (I.e., they're what comes down the HDMI cable out of the streaming box, minus the HDCP.) This process loses a lot — for example, this signal is very likely post-HDR-color-processing, and so the result won't look very good on any other screen than the one it was originally told it was going to be played on. Most people won't care, and will just watch the torrent anyway; but the fact that there's this very slight loss of fidelity, makes the IP rights-holders feel warm and happy inside that they still have this "perfect fidelity master copy" that they can show in theatres that nobody else has access to. Take that away from them, and they really do withdraw their licenses. (See also: Apple being able to license effectively-perfect-fidelity 256kbit AAC versions of songs from certain parties, but being unable to convince those same parties to license Apple Lossless encodings of those songs.)
  - dtech 4y ago
    This does not match my experience, I have never encountered such a rip. I downloaded a few when Prime and Netflix would be fussy, and the quality is consistently higher than the 1080p (?) low-bitrate I get on auto in firefox.
  - herbst 4y ago
    Netflix is so bloatet that it consistently has streaming issues on my likely underpowered 4k TV. Rips that use a more standard caching play well in whatever quality. For me personally quality outside of Netflix is usually always better. Likely because of DRM
Vladimof 4y ago
> Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. That's completely false... People can already download for free drm-free content that is available on Netflix, etc, yet, they still subscribe.
shaan7 4y ago
> The existence of infinite accessible libraries of content If only that were true, I'd be actually be happy to subscribe to them. I've realized that streaming services are only useful if your problem is "I need entertainment, find me something nice to watch", but mostly useless if you have a specific title to watch. Majority of the time there is no streaming service that offers the titles I want to watch.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Exactly my experience. Always start with a conversation... "you have never seen that movie ? let's play it" "wait I don't see it on netflix, neither on prime or disney or...I should have bought the vhs/DVD/blueray at the time." Not sure if you can find most +2y old movies on torrent platforms, last time I checked I couldn't find what I was looking for. I lament the death of local videoclubs where you could rent movies from any decade.
  - herbst 4y ago
    It depends on where you live. In German countries we have plenty of streaming sites (usually not torrents but semi direct downloads) of the 10 sites I visit regularly they all have a WAY bigger library than Netflix and Disney combined. In fact I am always disappointed how small they libraries actually are as I am used to something else.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      In Germany, scummy lawyers spy on your internet traffic with the help of your ISP and send you letters with fines on behalf of small creators like Disney, Warner Bros, BMG, Sony, Universal, etc. if you torrent any of their IP. Not exactly a model I wish to be followed by other countries.
      - FeepingCreature 4y ago
        The fine structure is different for piracy where you download vs piracy where you upload. You'll practically never get in trouble for the former, because the return on investment is not worth the cost of labor.
diffeomorphism 4y ago
> Well, yeah. Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. Why? Libraries loan you books and paper does not have any DRM. Works fine. The only difference is you might get some rate limit, e.g. 30 movies per month, or more watermarks instead of digital restrictions. On the flip side getting Netflix in high quality has annoying hoops because of DRM (No, nobody wants to use Edge, thank you very much). > If we deleted DRM, streaming services would cease to exist overnight — all their license grants being revoked, leaving them with nothing to serve No, only if single stores do that. If lots of stores do that, you simply get the same content but without DRM. That literally happened for music, so you would at least need to argue why not here as well.
- Zababa 4y ago
  > Why? Libraries loan you books and paper does not have any DRM. Works fine. Because books are physical objects, copying them is expensive. Digital data doesn't have that problem.
  - josefx 4y ago
    Anyone with a scanner and a day of time can produce infinite digital copies of a book. You don't have to throw money at it like Google and do some crazy AI driven OCR, a boring afternoon in front of a scanner, flipping through pages is more than enough. Source: I wasted way too much time to scan the notes I took as student just so I could throw the hard copies out.
    - Zababa 4y ago
      I should have said "expensive compared to digital stuff", you're right that it doesn't cost an individual millions to copy a book. But compared to copying a mp3, it takes a lot of time.
    - rightbyte 4y ago
      If you are not sentimental you can cut the book and just feed it. Many libraries have those fancy copying machines. I have never tried it my self for anything other than A4 compendia books though.
Asooka 4y ago
> Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. It's not like radio or TV have any DRM. I used to copy to tape movies and songs I liked all the time. Later we had TiVo &c to automate the process. The push for DRM just makes piracy stronger. Or as a contemporary example, Steam's DRM is about as effective as a sticky note saying "please do not copy", lots of games on the platform don't even have any DRM. Some of the most financially successful games launched without DRM, e.g. Sekiro and Elden Ring. Stores like itch.io, humble bundle, gog don't have DRM either. The only ones actually profiting from DRM are the DRM makers.
jraph 4y ago
> If we deleted DRM, streaming services would cease to exist overnight I don't think that's true. But assuming it is true, then yeah, I'm in! I'm sure people would find other enjoyable activities that would be DRM-free, we would be fine. There would not be this social pressure / expectation to use or subscribe to these DRM encumbered platforms (or that you, at least, have access to all movies or series at any time) when you invite people over.
zelphirkalt 4y ago
> Well, yeah. Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. [...] > [...] If we deleted DRM, streaming services would cease to exist overnight And yet GOG exists and sells games all DRM free. To disprove a theory, one only needs to provide 1 counter example. Maybe some streaming services would cease to exist. Maybe some of them are not needed. I highly doubt though, that it is an impossibility to have streaming services without DRM. I don't see how DRM helps at all. If I were a Netflix user, which I am not because of DRM and because it is shitty built to not work on Firefox on GNU/Linux and without installing shit on my machine, I could simply record my screen copying the content. Even if there was some software limiting this ability, I could use a hardware before the monitor to grab the video signal. DRM doesn't protect anything properly.
- mike_hock 4y ago
  It's there because the MAFIA insists, not because it makes sense. It doesn't prevent webrips, which exist. It drives away potential FOSS-using customers toward said webrips, lol.
  - dingleberry420 4y ago
    So true. It's embarrassing how netflix still refuses to play high quality streams on linux. So I'll just head over to my favorite torrent site and grab it there, instead.
    - mwcampbell 4y ago
      I think your priorities may be skewed. To me, supporting content creators (even though, yes, intermediaries take too big a cut) and respecting laws is more important than conveniently consuming entertainment on one's favorite operating system.
      - tremon 4y ago
        But is it right that I be forced to first support the makers of a closed operating system before I can support those content creators?
franga2000 4y ago
If we deleted DRM now, we'd probably have a longer gap between cinema and streaming releases, but that's about it. Old distribution models are gone beyond revival. Everyone would turn to piracy and rights-holders know this, so they'd have to give in. They're extremely risk-averse, yes, but they still prefer making money over not making money. As for the cloud point, "in an instant" is definitely not how I'd describe the process of moving between cloud providers. There wouldn't be whole series of blog posts coming out every month or so talking about how some company moved from provider X to Y, spending 100s of engineer hours just to find themselves in another semi-closed ecosystem, but for half the price.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  > If we deleted DRM now, we'd probably have a longer gap between cinema and streaming releases Why? You can always rip a video stream.
api 4y ago
> Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. Legally I'm sure that's true since content creators wouldn't agree to it, but in practice that's probably wrong. People would pay for the convenience of a it-just-works streaming service.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by derefr 4y ago

Teever 4y ago

> Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. Why? Is DRM stopping piracy? Like what do you think would happen if DRM didn't exist, would the pirate bay be even bigger? People don't pay for netflix because it's hard to pirate stuff, they pay for netflix because it's easier to do so than to pirate stuff, and it would be the same even if the laws of the universe changed one night and all DRM ceased to function.

stackbutterflow 4y ago

If we deleted DRM, streaming services would cease to exist overnight — all their license grants being revoked, leaving them with nothing to serve — and we'd go back to just relying upon the iTunes Music Store / Netflix DVD rental model. Why is that? You can download everything for free. I don't think people use Netflix to access otherwise inaccessible content but rather because it's more convenient than searching for the right torrent link.

tluyben2 4y ago
Exactly. Everything is already available and there are really simple ways to find, download, watch and even stream everything but they all have hurdles; how to know the quality you download, download speed (not everyone has fiber or Starlink etc), riddled with fakes, malware etc. Then streaming services that are illegal: again; finding good quality, porn ads popping up during watching, crypto miners in your browser, application installation attempts etc. It is just far easier to just watch Netflix etc; if it had no drm, the vast majority would not change anything I would think, especially because the GP already said: no-one cares about drm. If they don’t care it doesn’t matter either way for most people (not the handful of Hn readers). It is like privacy; the vast majority of people don’t care; just the few that worry about dystopia.
- herbst 4y ago
  'Illegal' streaming services are legal for private use where I live. In German there is a huge market with many sites featuring basically any movie in different quality settings. I have an adblock, no idea which kind of evil ads they usually use. With Kodi I also have all of that on my TV available just as easy as Netflix. However many if not most people still use Netflix even thought they have no real reason to.
  - frederikb 4y ago
    Just as a heads up: to my knowledge that's not correct in Germany. It's only highly unlikely to get "abgemahnt" in addition to the difficulty of obtaining IP addresses of users in comparison to alternatives such as Torrents. But not getting caught != legal. Streaming from a „offensichtlich rechtswidrige Vorlage“ (§ 53 UrhG.) is not legal. That has been clarified by a decision from the EuGH in 2017. I'm not a lawyer though and this isn't legal advice. Let me know if there have been verdicts and legal proceedings stating the contrary.
    - herbst 4y ago
      I am Swiss. I just use German internet. Should have made this more clear

DeathArrow 4y ago

>Well, yeah. Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. The existence of infinite accessible libraries of content for flat-fee monthly-subscription prices, is built upon IP licenses which were granted conditional to the consumer's inability to leverage that access into piracy. If we deleted DRM, streaming services would cease to exist overnight — all their license grants being revoked, leaving them with nothing to serve — and we'd go back to just relying upon the iTunes Music Store / Netflix DVD rental model. (Which, to be clear, has still also existed alongside streaming this whole time.) Then why there is a ton of Netflix and Amazon Prime owned content on the torrents? It seems the content is very pirateable, DRM or not.

derefr 4y ago
Technically, they're not pirating the content itself; the original, full-fidelity content remains DRMed. Instead, what these torrents are, are re-encodings of the decoded video stream produced by playing the content. (I.e., they're what comes down the HDMI cable out of the streaming box, minus the HDCP.) This process loses a lot — for example, this signal is very likely post-HDR-color-processing, and so the result won't look very good on any other screen than the one it was originally told it was going to be played on. Most people won't care, and will just watch the torrent anyway; but the fact that there's this very slight loss of fidelity, makes the IP rights-holders feel warm and happy inside that they still have this "perfect fidelity master copy" that they can show in theatres that nobody else has access to. Take that away from them, and they really do withdraw their licenses. (See also: Apple being able to license effectively-perfect-fidelity 256kbit AAC versions of songs from certain parties, but being unable to convince those same parties to license Apple Lossless encodings of those songs.)
- dtech 4y ago
  This does not match my experience, I have never encountered such a rip. I downloaded a few when Prime and Netflix would be fussy, and the quality is consistently higher than the 1080p (?) low-bitrate I get on auto in firefox.
- herbst 4y ago
  Netflix is so bloatet that it consistently has streaming issues on my likely underpowered 4k TV. Rips that use a more standard caching play well in whatever quality. For me personally quality outside of Netflix is usually always better. Likely because of DRM

Vladimof 4y ago

> Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. That's completely false... People can already download for free drm-free content that is available on Netflix, etc, yet, they still subscribe.

shaan7 4y ago

> The existence of infinite accessible libraries of content If only that were true, I'd be actually be happy to subscribe to them. I've realized that streaming services are only useful if your problem is "I need entertainment, find me something nice to watch", but mostly useless if you have a specific title to watch. Majority of the time there is no streaming service that offers the titles I want to watch.

prmoustache 4y ago
Exactly my experience. Always start with a conversation... "you have never seen that movie ? let's play it" "wait I don't see it on netflix, neither on prime or disney or...I should have bought the vhs/DVD/blueray at the time." Not sure if you can find most +2y old movies on torrent platforms, last time I checked I couldn't find what I was looking for. I lament the death of local videoclubs where you could rent movies from any decade.
- herbst 4y ago
  It depends on where you live. In German countries we have plenty of streaming sites (usually not torrents but semi direct downloads) of the 10 sites I visit regularly they all have a WAY bigger library than Netflix and Disney combined. In fact I am always disappointed how small they libraries actually are as I am used to something else.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    In Germany, scummy lawyers spy on your internet traffic with the help of your ISP and send you letters with fines on behalf of small creators like Disney, Warner Bros, BMG, Sony, Universal, etc. if you torrent any of their IP. Not exactly a model I wish to be followed by other countries.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      The fine structure is different for piracy where you download vs piracy where you upload. You'll practically never get in trouble for the former, because the return on investment is not worth the cost of labor.

diffeomorphism 4y ago

> Well, yeah. Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. Why? Libraries loan you books and paper does not have any DRM. Works fine. The only difference is you might get some rate limit, e.g. 30 movies per month, or more watermarks instead of digital restrictions. On the flip side getting Netflix in high quality has annoying hoops because of DRM (No, nobody wants to use Edge, thank you very much). > If we deleted DRM, streaming services would cease to exist overnight — all their license grants being revoked, leaving them with nothing to serve No, only if single stores do that. If lots of stores do that, you simply get the same content but without DRM. That literally happened for music, so you would at least need to argue why not here as well.

Zababa 4y ago
> Why? Libraries loan you books and paper does not have any DRM. Works fine. Because books are physical objects, copying them is expensive. Digital data doesn't have that problem.
- josefx 4y ago
  Anyone with a scanner and a day of time can produce infinite digital copies of a book. You don't have to throw money at it like Google and do some crazy AI driven OCR, a boring afternoon in front of a scanner, flipping through pages is more than enough. Source: I wasted way too much time to scan the notes I took as student just so I could throw the hard copies out.
  - Zababa 4y ago
    I should have said "expensive compared to digital stuff", you're right that it doesn't cost an individual millions to copy a book. But compared to copying a mp3, it takes a lot of time.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    If you are not sentimental you can cut the book and just feed it. Many libraries have those fancy copying machines. I have never tried it my self for anything other than A4 compendia books though.

Asooka 4y ago

> Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. It's not like radio or TV have any DRM. I used to copy to tape movies and songs I liked all the time. Later we had TiVo &c to automate the process. The push for DRM just makes piracy stronger. Or as a contemporary example, Steam's DRM is about as effective as a sticky note saying "please do not copy", lots of games on the platform don't even have any DRM. Some of the most financially successful games launched without DRM, e.g. Sekiro and Elden Ring. Stores like itch.io, humble bundle, gog don't have DRM either. The only ones actually profiting from DRM are the DRM makers.

jraph 4y ago

> If we deleted DRM, streaming services would cease to exist overnight I don't think that's true. But assuming it is true, then yeah, I'm in! I'm sure people would find other enjoyable activities that would be DRM-free, we would be fine. There would not be this social pressure / expectation to use or subscribe to these DRM encumbered platforms (or that you, at least, have access to all movies or series at any time) when you invite people over.

zelphirkalt 4y ago

> Well, yeah. Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. [...] > [...] If we deleted DRM, streaming services would cease to exist overnight And yet GOG exists and sells games all DRM free. To disprove a theory, one only needs to provide 1 counter example. Maybe some streaming services would cease to exist. Maybe some of them are not needed. I highly doubt though, that it is an impossibility to have streaming services without DRM. I don't see how DRM helps at all. If I were a Netflix user, which I am not because of DRM and because it is shitty built to not work on Firefox on GNU/Linux and without installing shit on my machine, I could simply record my screen copying the content. Even if there was some software limiting this ability, I could use a hardware before the monitor to grab the video signal. DRM doesn't protect anything properly.

mike_hock 4y ago
It's there because the MAFIA insists, not because it makes sense. It doesn't prevent webrips, which exist. It drives away potential FOSS-using customers toward said webrips, lol.
- dingleberry420 4y ago
  So true. It's embarrassing how netflix still refuses to play high quality streams on linux. So I'll just head over to my favorite torrent site and grab it there, instead.
  - mwcampbell 4y ago
    I think your priorities may be skewed. To me, supporting content creators (even though, yes, intermediaries take too big a cut) and respecting laws is more important than conveniently consuming entertainment on one's favorite operating system.
    - tremon 4y ago
      But is it right that I be forced to first support the makers of a closed operating system before I can support those content creators?

franga2000 4y ago

If we deleted DRM now, we'd probably have a longer gap between cinema and streaming releases, but that's about it. Old distribution models are gone beyond revival. Everyone would turn to piracy and rights-holders know this, so they'd have to give in. They're extremely risk-averse, yes, but they still prefer making money over not making money. As for the cloud point, "in an instant" is definitely not how I'd describe the process of moving between cloud providers. There wouldn't be whole series of blog posts coming out every month or so talking about how some company moved from provider X to Y, spending 100s of engineer hours just to find themselves in another semi-closed ecosystem, but for half the price.

rightbyte 4y ago
> If we deleted DRM now, we'd probably have a longer gap between cinema and streaming releases Why? You can always rip a video stream.

api 4y ago

> Streaming services wouldn't exist without DRM. Legally I'm sure that's true since content creators wouldn't agree to it, but in practice that's probably wrong. People would pay for the convenience of a it-just-works streaming service.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]