8 ms·

Is there any video DRM scheme which successfully protects video content appearing on the pirate bay within 24 hours? I really don't see why so many millions (b

Is there any video DRM scheme which successfully protects video content appearing on the pirate bay within 24 hours? I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out.

makin 3y ago
Denuvo mostly works. Allegedly they have a custom approach to each new game, so cracks can take months to appear, with some unpopular games never having been cracked at all. The price is lowered performance, of course.
- free_bip 3y ago
  That's a video game DRM scheme, not a video DRM scheme
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  > Denuvo mostly works. Not for users: https://gamerant.com/denuvo-outage-servers-down-persona-5-royal-unplayable-online/ https://gamerant.com/denuvo-outage-servers-down-persona-5-ro... > Allegedly they have a custom approach to each new game, so cracks can take months to appear, with some unpopular games never having been cracked at all From what I hear, it's cracked in a matter of days or weeks. I haven't checked whether this is true or not, so I can't say you are wrong about some (most?) cracks taking months.
  - crtasm 3y ago
    Looking at the previous two years of uncracked Denuvo and only selecting games that seem notable: Dragon's Dogma 2 (2024) Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (2024) Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024) Street Fighter 6 (2023) Hi-Fi Rush (2023) Dead Space (2023) Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023) Persona 5 Tactica (2023) EA Sports FC 24 (2023) NBA 2K24 (2023) Assassin's Creed Mirage (2023) Atomic Heart (2023) Lost Judgment (2022) Sonic Frontiers (2022) Sonic Origins (2022) Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (2022) Persona 5 Royal (2022) Sniper Elite 5 (2022) Marvel's Midnight Suns (2022) Total War: Warhammer III (2022) Going back further there's more high profile games that were never cracked. The system seems to work as intended in some cases.
    - lossolo 3y ago
      Some of the games you mention were already cracked but not by the scene.
      - crtasm 3y ago
        Which ones? My list has nothing to do with scene or otherwise.
        crtasm 3y ago
        Well I checked and the list is correct. There is a closed beta copy of SF6, a leaked dev build of Atomic Heart, and an arcade dump of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax but these are unrelated to Denuvo.
    - kyriakos 3y ago
      Many denuvo games are eventually released without denuvo and are then instantly pirated. Looks like the cost of denuvo is high enough for game publishers to stick to it just enough to reach profitability and then ditch it.
- lossolo 3y ago
  > Allegedly they have a custom approach to each new game, so cracks can take months to appear It's because it's tedious to crack it, it's not really a rocket science, they just generate new VM for the binary so you can't automate it, they inject A LOT of code paths which you need to manually follow and change. That's the only reason why games stay uncracked for months. It's a war of attrition. > with some unpopular games never having been cracked at all That's not exactly true actually, you need to pay for Denuvo license every year, that's why after some months or a few years it's removed from most of the games.
jsheard 3y ago
4K streaming content is hit or miss because most services lock that behind Widevine L1, which requires implementors to use a secure enclave and the entire signal path to use strong encryption. If an L1 implementation gets compromised it quickly has its keys revoked and is downgraded to L2/L3, so piracy groups have a limited time window to dump as much 4K content as possible. Those lower Winevines tiers are permanently broken though so everything is immediately available in at least 1080p. 4K Blurays are currently always ripped due to an unfixable compromise in Intel SGX allowing PowerDVDs keys to be extracted, they could close that hole by revoking PowerDVDs keys for new Bluray releases but they haven't done that yet. I imagine they will at some point because PowerDVD requires SGX to play UHDs, and Intel stopped supporting that on newer consumer hardware, so 4K Bluray playback on PCs is effectively being phased out.
- ricktdotorg 3y ago
  ^^^ great comment. hard to imagine a better synposis of 4k DRM in ~2 grafs. thanks!
  - gorkish 3y ago
    Not mentioned above, but should be noted that all of this DRM is still only protecting the compressed and encoded video content. Schemes to protect the uncompressed digital video data are all permanently and universally broken or bypassed. The 'analog hole' has gone fully digital. One would think that alone would be enough to seal the deal on the pointlessness of DRM, but unfortunately there are a lot of gullible execs out there that want to keep pouring money on the fire.
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      As long as it stops even 100,000 people from not downloading videos off of Netflix, from an executive’s perspective, it pays for itself. To them, it’s like saying Speed Limit signs are useless, because cars can go faster than the number posted by literally pressing a button. That’s not the point.
miki123211 3y ago
The point is pressure on equipment manufacturers, making borrowing and streaming work for digital content, maybe also deterring casual piracy, not necessarily protecting videos from appearing on tpb.
gwbas1c 3y ago
> have never kept the bad guys out Careful who you call the bad guys. A lot of "piracy" comes from the people who spend the most money on the content they pirate. I personally think the best DRM approaches are those that keep "the honest people honest:" IE, metadata that identifies copyright owners, flags that identify content that has restrictions due to copyright, and casual protections. (Think of a "do not enter" sign that you can choose to ignore if you have reason to do so.) Otherwise, DRM really only works when the people consuming the content have motivation to keep it secret. (IE, corporate and military secrets.)
- repelsteeltje 3y ago
  Funny thing is that most streaming platforms only have DRM because content owners pressure them. It's expensive and a huge hassle to get right. While indeed DRM barely contributes in fighting redistribution over Pirate Bay, it does prevent stream sharing. Ie.: the platform saves a lot of CDN bandwidth by forcing that onto torrents.
  - watermelon0 3y ago
    I think this is not entirely true, because HBO and Netflix have DRM on their own shows.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > A lot of "piracy" comes from the people who spend the most money on the content they pirate. That doesn’t strike me as a valid statistic. Where are you getting that data from?
  - ParetoOptimal 3y ago
    > That doesn’t strike me as a valid statistic. Where are you getting that data from? I'm going to assume they are trying to say in other forms of support like word of mouth marketing, user created content, or purchases in other areas such as video game merchandise for instance?=
  - repelsteeltje 3y ago
tawa9102930 3y ago
HDCP is broken so none of it really matters. The resulting files ("webrips") aren't a lossless copy of the original, but are good enough for most.
- Salgat 3y ago
  Yeah web-dls might be hit or miss but webrips are such good quality that it's irrelevant for most folks anyways, since it's nearly the same quality you'd see on your TV.
  - russelg 3y ago
    I think you have terminology wrong here. by definition, WEB-DL is the exact encrypted video/audio content that is served, but unencrypted of course. You literally cannot get higher quality than a proper WEB-DL.
    - Salgat 3y ago
      That's what I said, you might not be able to get a webdl depending on if the stream is cracked, but at least webrips (which are captured from capture cards) are good enough quality anyways.
- gorkish 3y ago
  I posted elsewhere in the thread but it bears repeating, "The analog hole has gone fully digital." The generational loss from one recompression is effectively unnoticeable. What a ridiculous arms race!
bombcar 3y ago
The point of the DRM schemes is basically to keep video "hard enough to copy that normies don't do it". And not even "normies can't find it on the Pirate Bay" but "you can right click and download from Netflix." If they mostly succeed at that, they consider it good enough.
- jorams 3y ago
  If that were true it would be possible to watch in 4k resolution on Netflix on Linux. But it's not.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Because if "4k on Linux" was doable than "download a 4k rip directly" would shortly follow.
    - grapescheesee 3y ago
      Well, it sure seems to make a market for people who would/does pay for legitimate 4k video in their browser to pirate. I am happy to pay for streaming, but as the quality goes down so does any desire to shell out honest money.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        The thing that's breaking me is that I can't even figure out which combination of what I need to get what I want. I just want to pay the $5 and watch the damn movie/show! So instead I just ... check out the Roku from the library that has all the services and binge ;)
ParetoOptimal 3y ago
> I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out. A PR campaign to make people think getting that content for free is harder than it is?
hannob 3y ago
DRM schemes never worked, and it has been speculated that the people building them always knew it, but had other goals. Backn in the days it was: Of course you can break DVD copyprotection schemes. But you cannot build a legal opensource DVD player software. Today it's: Of course every Netflix series can be found on the pirate bay. But you're not legally allowed to build an alternative netflix player frontend.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  From the executive’s perspectives, DRM is working just fine. People can’t just go get a random browser extension to save videos. Alternative and unlicensed clients are illegal. Sure, there’s some piracy - but even at the end of the day, pirates would watch a smartphone recording to save a buck. To them, DRM does not have to be perfect to be a good investment; any more than copyright needing to be perfect or Speed Limit sign enforcement needing to be perfect. Plus, every layer of complexity that gets broken, is another line for convincing the DOJ or the Jury about malicious intent.
  - oaththrowaway 3y ago
    > Sure, there’s some piracy - but even at the end of the day, pirates would watch a smartphone recording to save a buck. I spend a lot of money on hard drives and Usenet to have quality rips. It's a service problem, not about the money
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      Yes, yes, the Gabe Newell quote - even though that quote was only an explanation for why piracy happened. Commonly lost in translation, that quote never once said piracy was justified or acceptable, nor did he encourage piracy under any circumstances.
      - oaththrowaway 3y ago
        I never claimed he did? I was just responding to your incorrect assumption
probably_jesus 3y ago
[dead]
somenameforme 3y ago
If you approach it at the most fundamental level, it seems like a clearly impossible goal to achieve. You are having users playing back content on their private devices, and then want to try to prevent them from copying that. That's basically impossible to achieve on somebody's own machine, and literally impossible to do once two enter into the picture. In the absolute worst case a high resolution/hertz cam on one's own screen with a quick ML software polish job, would look near to completely indistinguishable from the original content. I imagine the reason so much money has been spent on it is because studios prefer to blame piracy than content for increasingly poor sales. So they see it as their salvation and are willing to pay big bucks, even if it's impossible. That's a primo ground for hucksters and charlatans to make a killing. Something similar happened in poker where players wanting to use fully automated software to make their decisions ended up just stepping outside the cat&mouse game and using a setup with a second computer + cam - completely and absolutely impossible to detect.
- eddd-ddde 3y ago
  I imagine in the future DRM is directly embedded in the viewers brain and if it detects pirate content it just fries you. I genuinely can't imagine any other form of DRM being successful.
  - LadyCailin 3y ago
    Drink a verification can to continue.
  - idle_zealot 3y ago
    You could require that all devices capable of video or audio display or capture embed models to detect copyright-protected content, and only proceed with playback or capture if they are connected to the internet and are able to verify some cryptographic liscense is valid. Put all this logic in some secure processor that self-destructs at the slightest sign of potential reverse-engineering or irregular behavior, along with physical anti-tampering measures that make phreaking or uncapping any components liable to trigger self-destruction. Then make the circumvention of any of these measures or attempts to create or import non-compliant display or capture video or audio content carry some heavy criminal penalty, such that any group well-resourced enough to attempt bypass would judge doing so foolish. That would probably "work".
nonrandomstring 3y ago
> I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out. Sunk cost investment bias [0]. Past a certain point, even when the outcome is obviously futile, it becomes a mixture of accumulated momentum and pure bloody mindedness to "build it if it kills us". Companies like Microsoft or Sony have entire departments of people working on "rights management". Nobody has the courage to just say, "Sorry guys, this is a fool's errand, we're going to shut it down and move you all onto something more productive". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
jvanderbot 3y ago
It doesn't need to work, it needs to be a clearly demarcated legal boundary. If it's hard enough that it takes effort to cross, you can prosecute. Someone who wanders in the woods might not be blamed for trespassing. But someone who hops a fence with a sign on it doesn't have much defense.
squigz 3y ago
> I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out. Because the goal isn't actually to "keep the bad guys out" - it's to strip user freedom and privacy, and make a shit load of money at the same time
daveoc64 3y ago
The DRM clearly does work in preventing "casual piracy" - where average users do things like downloading a file and keeping it forever (even after cancelling a subscription) or copying the file to a friend.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  Video streaming hasn't been "a file" in a long time. HLS et al download little snippets at a time, adjusting to current bandwidth circumstances, typically with video and audio separate, etc. Even without DRM, the average user couldn't "download a file" from Netflix.
  - jasomill 3y ago
    Depends on what tools you give the average user. A simple GUI wrapper around something like yt-dlp or ffmpeg would suffice for downloading DRM-free HLS videos. As a concrete example, try yt-dlp --format english_192-English+bestvideo https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2020/10655/3/45C0E27F-A3BA-416D-B037-9BEE7466C11F/master.m3u8 Note that --format is only required (to get the best available version) because yt-dlp appears to rely only on metadata present in the supplied .m3u8 file to determine which stream is "best", and no such metadata appears for the audio streams in this example. For details on what yt-dlp knows about each candidate stream when attempting to choose the best, see yt-dlp --list-formats https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2020/10655/3/45C0E27F-A3BA-416D-B037-9BEE7466C11F/master.m3u8 This would presumably not be a problem for our hypothetical "Netflix DLP.app", which could rely on whatever convention Netflix uses to indicate stream quality to its own clients when choosing streams, rather than falling back to sensible defaults for arbitrary HLS input.
Retr0id 3y ago
At this point, video DRM is more of a legal protection than a technical protection.
devwastaken 3y ago
No. It is fundamentally impossible. DRM centralizes piracy, it makes it profitable both socially and financially to pirate harder. As DRM tries to get harder it actually gives pirates more power. These pirates release high quality content that is better than the service provides on most devices. Typically in HEVC as well, requiring less download size. It's also great for those that don't have consistent Internet and want to download over time. DRM and anti piracy are a snake oil industry for business suit types that think they're protecting their assets. They're not, but they don't understand the infinitely copiable nature of digital. They want control at any cost.
nevir 3y ago
Publishers demand it, but don't understand it. The platforms roll their eyes, but implement it anyway; cause it's a rounding error, and keeps publishers happy
whoopdedo 3y ago
I don't believe the "Digital Video Express"[1] (aka DIVX[2]) discs were ever cracked while they were on the market. But that's only because they were only sold for 1 year and nobody bought any. Even now finding information about the disc format is rare. Although anyone who has a reason to try probably should be able to do it easily since it was just 3DES. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX [2] And this is when I remember that Wikipedia links are case-sensitive

makin 3y ago

Denuvo mostly works. Allegedly they have a custom approach to each new game, so cracks can take months to appear, with some unpopular games never having been cracked at all. The price is lowered performance, of course.

free_bip 3y ago
That's a video game DRM scheme, not a video DRM scheme
ParetoOptimal 3y ago
> Denuvo mostly works. Not for users: https://gamerant.com/denuvo-outage-servers-down-persona-5-royal-unplayable-online/ https://gamerant.com/denuvo-outage-servers-down-persona-5-ro... > Allegedly they have a custom approach to each new game, so cracks can take months to appear, with some unpopular games never having been cracked at all From what I hear, it's cracked in a matter of days or weeks. I haven't checked whether this is true or not, so I can't say you are wrong about some (most?) cracks taking months.
- crtasm 3y ago
  Looking at the previous two years of uncracked Denuvo and only selecting games that seem notable: Dragon's Dogma 2 (2024) Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (2024) Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024) Street Fighter 6 (2023) Hi-Fi Rush (2023) Dead Space (2023) Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023) Persona 5 Tactica (2023) EA Sports FC 24 (2023) NBA 2K24 (2023) Assassin's Creed Mirage (2023) Atomic Heart (2023) Lost Judgment (2022) Sonic Frontiers (2022) Sonic Origins (2022) Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (2022) Persona 5 Royal (2022) Sniper Elite 5 (2022) Marvel's Midnight Suns (2022) Total War: Warhammer III (2022) Going back further there's more high profile games that were never cracked. The system seems to work as intended in some cases.
  - lossolo 3y ago
    Some of the games you mention were already cracked but not by the scene.
    - crtasm 3y ago
      Which ones? My list has nothing to do with scene or otherwise.
      - crtasm 3y ago
        Well I checked and the list is correct. There is a closed beta copy of SF6, a leaked dev build of Atomic Heart, and an arcade dump of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax but these are unrelated to Denuvo.
  - kyriakos 3y ago
    Many denuvo games are eventually released without denuvo and are then instantly pirated. Looks like the cost of denuvo is high enough for game publishers to stick to it just enough to reach profitability and then ditch it.
lossolo 3y ago
> Allegedly they have a custom approach to each new game, so cracks can take months to appear It's because it's tedious to crack it, it's not really a rocket science, they just generate new VM for the binary so you can't automate it, they inject A LOT of code paths which you need to manually follow and change. That's the only reason why games stay uncracked for months. It's a war of attrition. > with some unpopular games never having been cracked at all That's not exactly true actually, you need to pay for Denuvo license every year, that's why after some months or a few years it's removed from most of the games.

jsheard 3y ago

4K streaming content is hit or miss because most services lock that behind Widevine L1, which requires implementors to use a secure enclave and the entire signal path to use strong encryption. If an L1 implementation gets compromised it quickly has its keys revoked and is downgraded to L2/L3, so piracy groups have a limited time window to dump as much 4K content as possible. Those lower Winevines tiers are permanently broken though so everything is immediately available in at least 1080p. 4K Blurays are currently always ripped due to an unfixable compromise in Intel SGX allowing PowerDVDs keys to be extracted, they could close that hole by revoking PowerDVDs keys for new Bluray releases but they haven't done that yet. I imagine they will at some point because PowerDVD requires SGX to play UHDs, and Intel stopped supporting that on newer consumer hardware, so 4K Bluray playback on PCs is effectively being phased out.

ricktdotorg 3y ago
^^^ great comment. hard to imagine a better synposis of 4k DRM in ~2 grafs. thanks!
- gorkish 3y ago
  Not mentioned above, but should be noted that all of this DRM is still only protecting the compressed and encoded video content. Schemes to protect the uncompressed digital video data are all permanently and universally broken or bypassed. The 'analog hole' has gone fully digital. One would think that alone would be enough to seal the deal on the pointlessness of DRM, but unfortunately there are a lot of gullible execs out there that want to keep pouring money on the fire.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    As long as it stops even 100,000 people from not downloading videos off of Netflix, from an executive’s perspective, it pays for itself. To them, it’s like saying Speed Limit signs are useless, because cars can go faster than the number posted by literally pressing a button. That’s not the point.

miki123211 3y ago

The point is pressure on equipment manufacturers, making borrowing and streaming work for digital content, maybe also deterring casual piracy, not necessarily protecting videos from appearing on tpb.

gwbas1c 3y ago

> have never kept the bad guys out Careful who you call the bad guys. A lot of "piracy" comes from the people who spend the most money on the content they pirate. I personally think the best DRM approaches are those that keep "the honest people honest:" IE, metadata that identifies copyright owners, flags that identify content that has restrictions due to copyright, and casual protections. (Think of a "do not enter" sign that you can choose to ignore if you have reason to do so.) Otherwise, DRM really only works when the people consuming the content have motivation to keep it secret. (IE, corporate and military secrets.)

repelsteeltje 3y ago
Funny thing is that most streaming platforms only have DRM because content owners pressure them. It's expensive and a huge hassle to get right. While indeed DRM barely contributes in fighting redistribution over Pirate Bay, it does prevent stream sharing. Ie.: the platform saves a lot of CDN bandwidth by forcing that onto torrents.
- watermelon0 3y ago
  I think this is not entirely true, because HBO and Netflix have DRM on their own shows.
andsoitis 3y ago
> A lot of "piracy" comes from the people who spend the most money on the content they pirate. That doesn’t strike me as a valid statistic. Where are you getting that data from?
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  > That doesn’t strike me as a valid statistic. Where are you getting that data from? I'm going to assume they are trying to say in other forms of support like word of mouth marketing, user created content, or purchases in other areas such as video game merchandise for instance?=
- repelsteeltje 3y ago

tawa9102930 3y ago

HDCP is broken so none of it really matters. The resulting files ("webrips") aren't a lossless copy of the original, but are good enough for most.

Salgat 3y ago
Yeah web-dls might be hit or miss but webrips are such good quality that it's irrelevant for most folks anyways, since it's nearly the same quality you'd see on your TV.
- russelg 3y ago
  I think you have terminology wrong here. by definition, WEB-DL is the exact encrypted video/audio content that is served, but unencrypted of course. You literally cannot get higher quality than a proper WEB-DL.
  - Salgat 3y ago
    That's what I said, you might not be able to get a webdl depending on if the stream is cracked, but at least webrips (which are captured from capture cards) are good enough quality anyways.
gorkish 3y ago
I posted elsewhere in the thread but it bears repeating, "The analog hole has gone fully digital." The generational loss from one recompression is effectively unnoticeable. What a ridiculous arms race!

bombcar 3y ago

The point of the DRM schemes is basically to keep video "hard enough to copy that normies don't do it". And not even "normies can't find it on the Pirate Bay" but "you can right click and download from Netflix." If they mostly succeed at that, they consider it good enough.

jorams 3y ago
If that were true it would be possible to watch in 4k resolution on Netflix on Linux. But it's not.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Because if "4k on Linux" was doable than "download a 4k rip directly" would shortly follow.
  - grapescheesee 3y ago
    Well, it sure seems to make a market for people who would/does pay for legitimate 4k video in their browser to pirate. I am happy to pay for streaming, but as the quality goes down so does any desire to shell out honest money.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The thing that's breaking me is that I can't even figure out which combination of what I need to get what I want. I just want to pay the $5 and watch the damn movie/show! So instead I just ... check out the Roku from the library that has all the services and binge ;)

ParetoOptimal 3y ago

> I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out. A PR campaign to make people think getting that content for free is harder than it is?

hannob 3y ago

DRM schemes never worked, and it has been speculated that the people building them always knew it, but had other goals. Backn in the days it was: Of course you can break DVD copyprotection schemes. But you cannot build a legal opensource DVD player software. Today it's: Of course every Netflix series can be found on the pirate bay. But you're not legally allowed to build an alternative netflix player frontend.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
From the executive’s perspectives, DRM is working just fine. People can’t just go get a random browser extension to save videos. Alternative and unlicensed clients are illegal. Sure, there’s some piracy - but even at the end of the day, pirates would watch a smartphone recording to save a buck. To them, DRM does not have to be perfect to be a good investment; any more than copyright needing to be perfect or Speed Limit sign enforcement needing to be perfect. Plus, every layer of complexity that gets broken, is another line for convincing the DOJ or the Jury about malicious intent.
- oaththrowaway 3y ago
  > Sure, there’s some piracy - but even at the end of the day, pirates would watch a smartphone recording to save a buck. I spend a lot of money on hard drives and Usenet to have quality rips. It's a service problem, not about the money
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    Yes, yes, the Gabe Newell quote - even though that quote was only an explanation for why piracy happened. Commonly lost in translation, that quote never once said piracy was justified or acceptable, nor did he encourage piracy under any circumstances.
    - oaththrowaway 3y ago
      I never claimed he did? I was just responding to your incorrect assumption

probably_jesus 3y ago

[dead]

somenameforme 3y ago

If you approach it at the most fundamental level, it seems like a clearly impossible goal to achieve. You are having users playing back content on their private devices, and then want to try to prevent them from copying that. That's basically impossible to achieve on somebody's own machine, and literally impossible to do once two enter into the picture. In the absolute worst case a high resolution/hertz cam on one's own screen with a quick ML software polish job, would look near to completely indistinguishable from the original content. I imagine the reason so much money has been spent on it is because studios prefer to blame piracy than content for increasingly poor sales. So they see it as their salvation and are willing to pay big bucks, even if it's impossible. That's a primo ground for hucksters and charlatans to make a killing. Something similar happened in poker where players wanting to use fully automated software to make their decisions ended up just stepping outside the cat&mouse game and using a setup with a second computer + cam - completely and absolutely impossible to detect.

eddd-ddde 3y ago
I imagine in the future DRM is directly embedded in the viewers brain and if it detects pirate content it just fries you. I genuinely can't imagine any other form of DRM being successful.
- LadyCailin 3y ago
  Drink a verification can to continue.
- idle_zealot 3y ago
  You could require that all devices capable of video or audio display or capture embed models to detect copyright-protected content, and only proceed with playback or capture if they are connected to the internet and are able to verify some cryptographic liscense is valid. Put all this logic in some secure processor that self-destructs at the slightest sign of potential reverse-engineering or irregular behavior, along with physical anti-tampering measures that make phreaking or uncapping any components liable to trigger self-destruction. Then make the circumvention of any of these measures or attempts to create or import non-compliant display or capture video or audio content carry some heavy criminal penalty, such that any group well-resourced enough to attempt bypass would judge doing so foolish. That would probably "work".

nonrandomstring 3y ago

> I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out. Sunk cost investment bias [0]. Past a certain point, even when the outcome is obviously futile, it becomes a mixture of accumulated momentum and pure bloody mindedness to "build it if it kills us". Companies like Microsoft or Sony have entire departments of people working on "rights management". Nobody has the courage to just say, "Sorry guys, this is a fool's errand, we're going to shut it down and move you all onto something more productive". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost

jvanderbot 3y ago

It doesn't need to work, it needs to be a clearly demarcated legal boundary. If it's hard enough that it takes effort to cross, you can prosecute. Someone who wanders in the woods might not be blamed for trespassing. But someone who hops a fence with a sign on it doesn't have much defense.

squigz 3y ago

> I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out. Because the goal isn't actually to "keep the bad guys out" - it's to strip user freedom and privacy, and make a shit load of money at the same time

daveoc64 3y ago

The DRM clearly does work in preventing "casual piracy" - where average users do things like downloading a file and keeping it forever (even after cancelling a subscription) or copying the file to a friend.

yencabulator 3y ago
Video streaming hasn't been "a file" in a long time. HLS et al download little snippets at a time, adjusting to current bandwidth circumstances, typically with video and audio separate, etc. Even without DRM, the average user couldn't "download a file" from Netflix.
- jasomill 3y ago
  Depends on what tools you give the average user. A simple GUI wrapper around something like yt-dlp or ffmpeg would suffice for downloading DRM-free HLS videos. As a concrete example, try yt-dlp --format english_192-English+bestvideo https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2020/10655/3/45C0E27F-A3BA-416D-B037-9BEE7466C11F/master.m3u8 Note that --format is only required (to get the best available version) because yt-dlp appears to rely only on metadata present in the supplied .m3u8 file to determine which stream is "best", and no such metadata appears for the audio streams in this example. For details on what yt-dlp knows about each candidate stream when attempting to choose the best, see yt-dlp --list-formats https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2020/10655/3/45C0E27F-A3BA-416D-B037-9BEE7466C11F/master.m3u8 This would presumably not be a problem for our hypothetical "Netflix DLP.app", which could rely on whatever convention Netflix uses to indicate stream quality to its own clients when choosing streams, rather than falling back to sensible defaults for arbitrary HLS input.

Retr0id 3y ago

At this point, video DRM is more of a legal protection than a technical protection.

devwastaken 3y ago

No. It is fundamentally impossible. DRM centralizes piracy, it makes it profitable both socially and financially to pirate harder. As DRM tries to get harder it actually gives pirates more power. These pirates release high quality content that is better than the service provides on most devices. Typically in HEVC as well, requiring less download size. It's also great for those that don't have consistent Internet and want to download over time. DRM and anti piracy are a snake oil industry for business suit types that think they're protecting their assets. They're not, but they don't understand the infinitely copiable nature of digital. They want control at any cost.

nevir 3y ago

Publishers demand it, but don't understand it. The platforms roll their eyes, but implement it anyway; cause it's a rounding error, and keeps publishers happy

whoopdedo 3y ago

I don't believe the "Digital Video Express"[1] (aka DIVX[2]) discs were ever cracked while they were on the market. But that's only because they were only sold for 1 year and nobody bought any. Even now finding information about the disc format is rare. Although anyone who has a reason to try probably should be able to do it easily since it was just 3DES. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX [2] And this is when I remember that Wikipedia links are case-sensitive