5 ms·

> I wonder what is their reasons for not using it - Introduces a decryption step, which is slow - Forces software video decoding, which is slow - Web browser

> I wonder what is their reasons for not using it - Introduces a decryption step, which is slow - Forces software video decoding, which is slow - Web browsers only support the weakest form of Widevine which is ineffective It would effectively push a significant portion of their user base off the platform while not being very effective in its goals.

Mindwipe 3y ago
> - Forces software video decoding, which is slow No it doesn't. Heck, forcing software decoding is actually one of the ways to force Widevine down to lower protection levels on general purpose hardware. > - Web browsers only support the weakest form of Widevine which is ineffective It's not fullproof but it would certainly make tools to bypass it clearly illegal in most of the world. There are efficacy reasons for not doing it on a backend level, but Google has required anything that wants YouTube to support Widevine for a very, very long time now.
- speedgoose 3y ago
  It may not be illegal in France: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000044365559/2023-08-14 https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...
  - izacus 3y ago
    Read up on meaning of word "most" when you feel the need to snipe contrarianism without adding to debate.
    - speedgoose 3y ago
      Things such as libdvdcss or libaacs are maintained by VideoLan in France. It’s not a random country in this context. https://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html https://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html https://www.videolan.org/developers/libaacs.html https://www.videolan.org/developers/libaacs.html
    - realusername 3y ago
      That's not contrarianism, most of the EU is in this situation. Basically everywhere where you have taxes on private copies, you must still be able to make the copies somehow, otherwise the tax would be repealed.
- dns_snek 3y ago
  > No it doesn't. If you're using a PC with a Nvidia GPU, run `nvidia-smi dmon -s u` and start playing a random Youtube video in Chrome. You'll notice how dec% moves from 0% to at least 2%. Pause, and start playing Widevine protected video and notice how dec% stays at 0% because decoding is happening on the CPU. > It's not fullproof but it would certainly make tools to bypass it clearly illegal in most of the world. Good luck, copyright infringement is already illegal and yet that hasn't stopped it from being widespread. Tools and techniques to bypass Widevine L3* are widely known and available (yes, even on GitHub). I was being generous in my previous comment. In reality, deployment of Widevine L3* should be shunned at least as much as Proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. It's completely ineffective in protecting content, it burns unnecessary CPU cycles multiplied by (potentially) billions of users, and significantly degrades user experience. Even Widevine L1* is ineffective in practice. Techniques to bypass it aren't available to the average Joe, but of course there are groups that will download, decrypt, and re-upload the newest 4K streaming releases to torrent trackers within an hour of them appearing on streaming services. *edit: Mixed up L3 and L1
  - lossolo 3y ago
    > If you're using a PC with a Nvidia GPU, run `nvidia-smi dmon -s u` and start playing a random Youtube video in Chrome. You'll notice how dec% moves from 0% to at least 2%. Pause, and start playing Widevine protected video and notice how dec% stays at 0% because decoding is happening on the CPU. It's because Widevine have embedded decoder into its lib and its using CPU instructions but from user perspective it's not a huge change on modern CPUs as most have specialized instructions to handle decoding of H264 etc. > Widevine L1* is ineffective in practice. Techniques to bypass it aren't available to the average Joe, but of course there are groups that will download, decrypt, and re-upload the newest 4K streaming releases to torrent trackers within an hour of them appearing on streaming services. There are no "Techniques to bypass it", the only way currently to get L1 streams is to use legit hardware keys from some devices, on which you can exploit secure enclave/extract HW keys.
    - dns_snek 3y ago
      > but from user perspective it's not a huge change on modern CPUs as most have specialized instructions to handle decoding of H264 There are no "instructions to decode H264", there is dedicated hardware acceleration like Intel QSV and AMD VCN, but these gets bypassed just like Nvidia's decoding acceleration from my previous example. All of this is trivially observable, playing back DRM-protected video wastes an obscene amount of resources, relatively speaking. From user perspective you'll notice stuttering, unusually high CPU usage, dropped frames and more, especially once you try to play multiple videos at once. > There are no "Techniques to bypass it", the only way currently to get L1 streams is to use legit hardware keys from some devices That's exactly what I meant. Being pedantic over my choice of words isn't very productive.
lossolo 3y ago
> Introduces a decryption step, which is slow It's not slow, after you decrypt the AES key, then you are using hardware AES instruction set supported by most CPUs currently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES_instruction_set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES_instruction_set
- dns_snek 3y ago
  Relatively speaking. You might not notice it when playing back a single video, but I promise you that you're not going to have a good time if you try to play back multiple high bitrate videos on slightly older hardware (think HTPC).
  - lossolo 3y ago
    > Relatively speaking. You might not notice it when playing back a single video So like 99.99% of use cases? > but I promise you that you're not going to have a good time if you try to play back multiple high bitrate videos on slightly older hardware (think HTPC). That could be the case, not disagreeing here, if you use old hardware, have multiple high bitrate videos and multiple streams at once but this is specialized niche example.

Mindwipe 3y ago

> - Forces software video decoding, which is slow No it doesn't. Heck, forcing software decoding is actually one of the ways to force Widevine down to lower protection levels on general purpose hardware. > - Web browsers only support the weakest form of Widevine which is ineffective It's not fullproof but it would certainly make tools to bypass it clearly illegal in most of the world. There are efficacy reasons for not doing it on a backend level, but Google has required anything that wants YouTube to support Widevine for a very, very long time now.

speedgoose 3y ago
It may not be illegal in France: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000044365559/2023-08-14 https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...
- izacus 3y ago
  Read up on meaning of word "most" when you feel the need to snipe contrarianism without adding to debate.
  - speedgoose 3y ago
    Things such as libdvdcss or libaacs are maintained by VideoLan in France. It’s not a random country in this context. https://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html https://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html https://www.videolan.org/developers/libaacs.html https://www.videolan.org/developers/libaacs.html
  - realusername 3y ago
    That's not contrarianism, most of the EU is in this situation. Basically everywhere where you have taxes on private copies, you must still be able to make the copies somehow, otherwise the tax would be repealed.
dns_snek 3y ago
> No it doesn't. If you're using a PC with a Nvidia GPU, run `nvidia-smi dmon -s u` and start playing a random Youtube video in Chrome. You'll notice how dec% moves from 0% to at least 2%. Pause, and start playing Widevine protected video and notice how dec% stays at 0% because decoding is happening on the CPU. > It's not fullproof but it would certainly make tools to bypass it clearly illegal in most of the world. Good luck, copyright infringement is already illegal and yet that hasn't stopped it from being widespread. Tools and techniques to bypass Widevine L3* are widely known and available (yes, even on GitHub). I was being generous in my previous comment. In reality, deployment of Widevine L3* should be shunned at least as much as Proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. It's completely ineffective in protecting content, it burns unnecessary CPU cycles multiplied by (potentially) billions of users, and significantly degrades user experience. Even Widevine L1* is ineffective in practice. Techniques to bypass it aren't available to the average Joe, but of course there are groups that will download, decrypt, and re-upload the newest 4K streaming releases to torrent trackers within an hour of them appearing on streaming services. *edit: Mixed up L3 and L1
- lossolo 3y ago
  > If you're using a PC with a Nvidia GPU, run `nvidia-smi dmon -s u` and start playing a random Youtube video in Chrome. You'll notice how dec% moves from 0% to at least 2%. Pause, and start playing Widevine protected video and notice how dec% stays at 0% because decoding is happening on the CPU. It's because Widevine have embedded decoder into its lib and its using CPU instructions but from user perspective it's not a huge change on modern CPUs as most have specialized instructions to handle decoding of H264 etc. > Widevine L1* is ineffective in practice. Techniques to bypass it aren't available to the average Joe, but of course there are groups that will download, decrypt, and re-upload the newest 4K streaming releases to torrent trackers within an hour of them appearing on streaming services. There are no "Techniques to bypass it", the only way currently to get L1 streams is to use legit hardware keys from some devices, on which you can exploit secure enclave/extract HW keys.
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    > but from user perspective it's not a huge change on modern CPUs as most have specialized instructions to handle decoding of H264 There are no "instructions to decode H264", there is dedicated hardware acceleration like Intel QSV and AMD VCN, but these gets bypassed just like Nvidia's decoding acceleration from my previous example. All of this is trivially observable, playing back DRM-protected video wastes an obscene amount of resources, relatively speaking. From user perspective you'll notice stuttering, unusually high CPU usage, dropped frames and more, especially once you try to play multiple videos at once. > There are no "Techniques to bypass it", the only way currently to get L1 streams is to use legit hardware keys from some devices That's exactly what I meant. Being pedantic over my choice of words isn't very productive.

lossolo 3y ago

> Introduces a decryption step, which is slow It's not slow, after you decrypt the AES key, then you are using hardware AES instruction set supported by most CPUs currently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES_instruction_set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES_instruction_set

dns_snek 3y ago
Relatively speaking. You might not notice it when playing back a single video, but I promise you that you're not going to have a good time if you try to play back multiple high bitrate videos on slightly older hardware (think HTPC).
- lossolo 3y ago
  > Relatively speaking. You might not notice it when playing back a single video So like 99.99% of use cases? > but I promise you that you're not going to have a good time if you try to play back multiple high bitrate videos on slightly older hardware (think HTPC). That could be the case, not disagreeing here, if you use old hardware, have multiple high bitrate videos and multiple streams at once but this is specialized niche example.