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I'm a senior person who looks after content protection and anti-piracy at a major streaming company. The idealism of those who want to see the demise of DRM do
by bobdvb 2y ago
I'm a senior person who looks after content protection and anti-piracy at a major streaming company.
The idealism of those who want to see the demise of DRM doesn't actually hold up in the face of reality. Even when we remove restrictions and give global access to content, for free, pirates don't give up. One of the reasons is that many pirate sites get ad revenue, piracy is a business for many folk and they get the benefit of not paying for the most expensive part. They also don't have legal/regulatory compliance, taxes and will often operate their infrastructure using stolen credit cards or accounts (we can see this).
Then you have people who are selling legitimately and trying to provide the best service for customers, but who have to pay for the content, competing with people who don't have any such responsibilities. So, customers take the cheap deal.
Some folk are also under the assumption that streaming services are money grabbing. Except when you actually look, most streaming services are running at a loss, or barely profitable.
I'm just working to protect our company and reduce losses, ultimately I am not preventing people getting access to fresh food or water. I am protecting premium goods from being illegitimately exploited and protecting the jobs of my colleagues when we're already under significant cost pressures.
One reason I post about these things on the internet is in the hope that one day we might have a constructive dialogue about how to balance freedoms AND enable commerce. But at the moment we have extremism, libertarian ideals against company lawyers.
- cakealert 2y agoI'm sure you are aware that there are groups (scenes) which break your DRM as a hobby, they sacrifice device keys for 4K HDR content. And they do it for just the reputation. More money than ever flows into piracy these days. Even with complete monolithic control (which is an unlikely objective) over the entire chain from distribution to display there will be a way to obtain good quality output from a hijacked LCD controller if nothing else. There is no win condition for you.
- bobdvb 2y agoYup, and I have zero issue with people finding exploits, ultimately many of those just serve to help us improve security as they get released. Ultimately the goal of content protection (not just DRM) is to make it as inconvenient as possible to take content without paying. No security system is going to be perfect, but when you make it secure enough that people concentrate on weaker targets (or give up), then you're content.
- kachapopopow 2y agoThe biggest problem with this is that DRM does not work, there will always be mediums such as blu-ray releases, some chinese display controller or l3 data decryption available.
- bobdvb 2y agoBy that measure, locks on our houses don't work, so we shouldn't bother locking the door? To repeat what I said to the other commentor: Ultimately the goal of content protection (not just DRM) is to make it as inconvenient as possible to take content without paying. No security system is going to be perfect, but when you make it secure enough that people concentrate on weaker targets (or give up), then you're content.