4 ms·

Why wouldn't they do some basic erasure coding (or even just xor with a repeating pattern) to get around the trivial DMCA takedowns that's inviting?

by treyd 3y ago

RajT88 3y ago
If they were that sophisticated, they probably wouldn't be involved in movie piracy. I'm sure there's a certain amount of laziness that also comes with how keen each site is on enforcement. The most recent one I looked at, all the files were on the same site, in the same folder.
- xp84 3y ago
  > If they were that sophisticated, they probably wouldn't be involved That's an odd assertion. Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I've ever interacted with were very actively involved in the piracy scene. These types love a challenge, and that's why they get involved in piracy. In some cases they aren't even all that into the content itself. I don't unilaterally hate all IP (other than patents) btw, so this is not an endorsement of piracy itself, just a frank acknowledgement that a lot of these people are very smart.
  - RajT88 3y ago
    Let me clarify what I'm getting at: These streaming sites are laden with ads, and some even have offer subscriptions, so there's a profit motivation for the people that run them. I'm not talking about the people who upload torrents (there's not much in a profit motive there, since that stuff is hard to monetize), or people who crack software. That sort of stuff. Interviews digging into their motivations have been going around for a long time now. If you're hacking on running a pirate streaming site to make money off it, if you have skills enough to stay ahead of the people constantly trying to take your content down, at some point you're going to realize you can make a lot more money using those skills working for a legit company. My take on the profit motive for malware authors is not the same; a malware dev can make a lot of money if the group manages to hit the right victims. The ones who are state sponsored probably make decent money too.
zaik 3y ago
Probably browsers don't support any extra decoding steps when playing a .m3u8 file.
- Retr0id 3y ago
  Browsers can't play m3u8's natively in the first place, client-side JS is responsible for piping the fragments into the video element. As sibling comments point out, I think it's more a case of "can't be bothered", than "can't".
Retr0id 3y ago
The main "crime" they're committing here is ToS violations for the hosting backends (they're basically using them as a free CDN). They're probably playing takedown whackamole here already, and if I'm right then most of those takedowns aren't DMCA, so they're not bothered.

Why wouldn't they do some basic erasure coding (or even just xor with a repeating pattern) to get around the trivial DMCA takedowns that's inviting?

by treyd 3y ago

Why wouldn't they do some basic erasure coding (or even just xor with a repeating pattern) to get around the trivial DMCA takedowns that's inviting?

RajT88 3y ago

If they were that sophisticated, they probably wouldn't be involved in movie piracy. I'm sure there's a certain amount of laziness that also comes with how keen each site is on enforcement. The most recent one I looked at, all the files were on the same site, in the same folder.

xp84 3y ago
> If they were that sophisticated, they probably wouldn't be involved That's an odd assertion. Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I've ever interacted with were very actively involved in the piracy scene. These types love a challenge, and that's why they get involved in piracy. In some cases they aren't even all that into the content itself. I don't unilaterally hate all IP (other than patents) btw, so this is not an endorsement of piracy itself, just a frank acknowledgement that a lot of these people are very smart.
- RajT88 3y ago
  Let me clarify what I'm getting at: These streaming sites are laden with ads, and some even have offer subscriptions, so there's a profit motivation for the people that run them. I'm not talking about the people who upload torrents (there's not much in a profit motive there, since that stuff is hard to monetize), or people who crack software. That sort of stuff. Interviews digging into their motivations have been going around for a long time now. If you're hacking on running a pirate streaming site to make money off it, if you have skills enough to stay ahead of the people constantly trying to take your content down, at some point you're going to realize you can make a lot more money using those skills working for a legit company. My take on the profit motive for malware authors is not the same; a malware dev can make a lot of money if the group manages to hit the right victims. The ones who are state sponsored probably make decent money too.

zaik 3y ago

Probably browsers don't support any extra decoding steps when playing a .m3u8 file.

Retr0id 3y ago
Browsers can't play m3u8's natively in the first place, client-side JS is responsible for piping the fragments into the video element. As sibling comments point out, I think it's more a case of "can't be bothered", than "can't".

Retr0id 3y ago

The main "crime" they're committing here is ToS violations for the hosting backends (they're basically using them as a free CDN). They're probably playing takedown whackamole here already, and if I'm right then most of those takedowns aren't DMCA, so they're not bothered.