4 ms·

> the future for personal computing is looking grim I don't know. They could lock up the hardware stack as much as they want, in the end it's pixels being push

> the future for personal computing is looking grim I don't know. They could lock up the hardware stack as much as they want, in the end it's pixels being pushed to arrays. It's extremely hard to prevent these pixels from being intercepted. You'll have pirate groups just going deep in the hardware (opening the monitors and soldering and hacking and whatnots) and eventually tap these. As for personal usage: I've got hardware from the eigthies still working fine. Instead of: movie2025-WEBRip1080p-x265.mp4 people shall download: movie2025-WEBRip1080p-DRMfree-x265.mp4 And people shall just play that on their DRM-free hardware, either brand new or old. For example people can still buy brand new CRT (!) screens today. Not just CRT screens but also brand new CRT PCBs to drive either new or old CRTs. It's 2025 and people can still buy brand new CRTs. That's kinda rad. And if worse comes to worse, if it's really impossible to go "tap" into the pixels being sent to a DRMed monitor (which I don't buy for a second), there's still the analog hole. Pirates are just going to use old (non DRMed) gear to rip, analog style, DRMed content and then they'll just process the result with some AI models to get it back to near perfection. Heck, the day's probably not very far where I can use, say, two handcams from the 90s to film a movie at the movie theater and then use an AI model to give back a near pristine movie file (as in: one where it's impossible for the layman to discern from the original). > This tech extended to browsers could easily mean that sites could refuse to serve you That's already the case: some content is geo-blocked. People use a VPN or just fire up Frostwire or qbittorrent. Even a Raspberry Pi 5 goes a long way: when are these going to play the DRM game and make the future look grim, instead of bright? I don't doubt there are really deeply sick, evil, people out there thinking about how they can ruin of collective future but I also know that they'll encounter people who have systematically owned their sorry arses.

stonogo 2y ago
The issue isn't preventing piracy, it is defending GPU market segmentation. In the old days you could flash Quadro firmware to Geforce cards and unlock features or modify clocks. The common thread is artificial scarcity.
- slt2021 2y ago
  it is price discrimination. How to sell the same GPU hardware at different prices based on consumer's wallet: 1. cheaper price for gamers only for games 2. maximum price for crypto/AI bros
thomastjeffery 2y ago
We're not concerned about DRM because it will (or won't) stop us from redistributing and playing content. The stated goal of DRM (blocking copyright infringement), and DRM's general failure to meet that goal, is the least interesting part of the story. We're concerned about DRM because what it does accomplish. DRM creates a vertically-integrated market wherein every layer of the stack is authoritatively controlled by a colluding oligopoly of vertically integrated hardware+media corporations (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Comcast, etc.) The greatest problem with DRM is drivers. NVIDIA hardware only works well in Linux because it's important to NVIDIA's business. Even so, there are longstanding issues that would have been fixed decades ago if kernel devs were allowed to collaborate. Instead, DRM (and copyright in general) demands that the driver dev team be siloed away from the kernel devs. This way, NVIDIA can use the exclusivity of its CUDA implementation as an anticompetitive advantage in its hardware business. Copyright is, fundamentally, a wall between would-be collaborators. DRM is an implementation of that wall, but instead of isolating people, it isolates software. The wall DRM provides is not used to monopolize the distribution of content: it is used to construct moats in our software ecosystem. There's a reason I prefer the experience of torrenting a Netflix rip over streaming Netflix on my Roku: the entire hardware+software stack is superior. I can actually sort and navigate my library. I can decode&render with my faster GPU. I can adjust the audio delay. I can adjust subtitle placement & font. I can mix the audio so that dialogue is actually audible. I can do frame interpolation with SVP (again using a better GPU than whatever your "smart" TV has onboard). I can seek forward&backward quickly without changing bitrate. I can let the credits play without being interrupted by an ad. The list goes on... I don't want a goddamn CRT. I want modern hardware. The more we let corporations abuse us with DRM, the less compatible that hardware will be with real software.
- mkl 2y ago
  > I can mix the audio so that dialogue is actually audible. How are you doing that?
  - thomastjeffery 2y ago
    Honestly, I don't usually, but turning up the center channel volume usually helps.
hex4def6 2y ago
I'm not so optimistic. Yes, you can never "plug the analog hole" completely, but you can definitely lock stuff down to the point it's impractical for 95% of people. For instance, imagine some sort of audio / video fingerprint system that resides in Intel and/or nVidia's GPU drivers. Content gets played through the on-GPU HEVC / h.264 decoders already. Doesn't seem like a huge stretch to add a fingerprint authentication system to that stage. Have a list of content IDs that are protected, and require a valid license to play. Yes, your source file is unprotected (video camera in front of monitor), but all of your devices are unable to play it. Yes, your ancient, circa 2024 desktop PC will still play it, but your new 2030 model TV implements this fingerprint system as well so you can't just cast this file to your 100" display in your living room. This is to say nothing of other forms of content (applications / games / web pages) that actually could require attestation / DRM HW / always-on internet to run.
- jandrese 2y ago
  I was thinking of someone hacking a capture device that sniffs the output matrix of a display in order to capture the video and has a line-in plugged into the drivers on the speaker. Way out of reach of most people, but only a very small number of people need to be have the wherewithal to do it to keep the pirate scene going, especially if they live in countries that don't care about your DRM laws. The analog hole exists so long as people don't have DRM directly implanted into their eyeballs.
  - dlgeek 2y ago
    As I understand it, that's common now - cheap HDMI splitters do the HDCP negotiation on the first port, and then the unencrypted digital video and audio signals are cloned to both ports, ready to be captured.
    - jandrese 2y ago
      Oh yeah, I had to buy one of these (I called it the HDCP defeater) because my receiver was otherwise unable to forward the negotiation between the Roku and the TV fast enough. I would turn on the TV and the screen would blink on and off for several minutes before the HDCP handshake managed to win the race. In theory those devices might be defeated with newer versions of the protocol, but that part that drives the matrix of pixels can never be encrypted until you have DRM built directly into your eyeballs.

stonogo 2y ago

The issue isn't preventing piracy, it is defending GPU market segmentation. In the old days you could flash Quadro firmware to Geforce cards and unlock features or modify clocks. The common thread is artificial scarcity.

slt2021 2y ago
it is price discrimination. How to sell the same GPU hardware at different prices based on consumer's wallet: 1. cheaper price for gamers only for games 2. maximum price for crypto/AI bros

thomastjeffery 2y ago

We're not concerned about DRM because it will (or won't) stop us from redistributing and playing content. The stated goal of DRM (blocking copyright infringement), and DRM's general failure to meet that goal, is the least interesting part of the story. We're concerned about DRM because what it does accomplish. DRM creates a vertically-integrated market wherein every layer of the stack is authoritatively controlled by a colluding oligopoly of vertically integrated hardware+media corporations (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Comcast, etc.) The greatest problem with DRM is drivers. NVIDIA hardware only works well in Linux because it's important to NVIDIA's business. Even so, there are longstanding issues that would have been fixed decades ago if kernel devs were allowed to collaborate. Instead, DRM (and copyright in general) demands that the driver dev team be siloed away from the kernel devs. This way, NVIDIA can use the exclusivity of its CUDA implementation as an anticompetitive advantage in its hardware business. Copyright is, fundamentally, a wall between would-be collaborators. DRM is an implementation of that wall, but instead of isolating people, it isolates software. The wall DRM provides is not used to monopolize the distribution of content: it is used to construct moats in our software ecosystem. There's a reason I prefer the experience of torrenting a Netflix rip over streaming Netflix on my Roku: the entire hardware+software stack is superior. I can actually sort and navigate my library. I can decode&render with my faster GPU. I can adjust the audio delay. I can adjust subtitle placement & font. I can mix the audio so that dialogue is actually audible. I can do frame interpolation with SVP (again using a better GPU than whatever your "smart" TV has onboard). I can seek forward&backward quickly without changing bitrate. I can let the credits play without being interrupted by an ad. The list goes on... I don't want a goddamn CRT. I want modern hardware. The more we let corporations abuse us with DRM, the less compatible that hardware will be with real software.

mkl 2y ago
> I can mix the audio so that dialogue is actually audible. How are you doing that?
- thomastjeffery 2y ago
  Honestly, I don't usually, but turning up the center channel volume usually helps.

hex4def6 2y ago

I'm not so optimistic. Yes, you can never "plug the analog hole" completely, but you can definitely lock stuff down to the point it's impractical for 95% of people. For instance, imagine some sort of audio / video fingerprint system that resides in Intel and/or nVidia's GPU drivers. Content gets played through the on-GPU HEVC / h.264 decoders already. Doesn't seem like a huge stretch to add a fingerprint authentication system to that stage. Have a list of content IDs that are protected, and require a valid license to play. Yes, your source file is unprotected (video camera in front of monitor), but all of your devices are unable to play it. Yes, your ancient, circa 2024 desktop PC will still play it, but your new 2030 model TV implements this fingerprint system as well so you can't just cast this file to your 100" display in your living room. This is to say nothing of other forms of content (applications / games / web pages) that actually could require attestation / DRM HW / always-on internet to run.

jandrese 2y ago
I was thinking of someone hacking a capture device that sniffs the output matrix of a display in order to capture the video and has a line-in plugged into the drivers on the speaker. Way out of reach of most people, but only a very small number of people need to be have the wherewithal to do it to keep the pirate scene going, especially if they live in countries that don't care about your DRM laws. The analog hole exists so long as people don't have DRM directly implanted into their eyeballs.
- dlgeek 2y ago
  As I understand it, that's common now - cheap HDMI splitters do the HDCP negotiation on the first port, and then the unencrypted digital video and audio signals are cloned to both ports, ready to be captured.
  - jandrese 2y ago
    Oh yeah, I had to buy one of these (I called it the HDCP defeater) because my receiver was otherwise unable to forward the negotiation between the Roku and the TV fast enough. I would turn on the TV and the screen would blink on and off for several minutes before the HDCP handshake managed to win the race. In theory those devices might be defeated with newer versions of the protocol, but that part that drives the matrix of pixels can never be encrypted until you have DRM built directly into your eyeballs.