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"Widevine Dump":Leaked Code Downloads HD Video from Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix

(torrentfreak.com)
449 points bertman | 2 comments | 27 Dec 21 12:55 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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alufers ◴[27 Dec 21 16:43 UTC] No.29703989[source]▶
Can we just stop the shitshow with DRM? I have NEVER encountered a TV show/movie that I could't rip using a torrent either on public p2p sites or a private tracker.

But I have seen a lot of my non-technical friends and family having a degraded experience, who pay for their streaming services every month. It was either because they were using a browser or device which was deemed unworthy of full quality streaming by the mighty DRM authors. And now the poor users of the TB-X505X will also have a degraded experience.

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tomxor ◴[27 Dec 21 16:49 UTC] No.29704050[source]▶
Yeah, I don't know in what world DRM is supposed to stop people ripping stuff, it only seems to hurt paying users, ultimately if it comes out of a screen you can always capture the output, no amount of DRM will ever prevent this so why bother <insert conspiracy vs Hanlon's razor theories here> .

The irony is that as a Linux user (only SD for us), and a user with poor internet and thus shitty streaming speed, DRM pushes me towards torrenting everything I "buy" from these platforms anyway, just for the privileged of being able to watch what i'm paying for without being a blurry over-compressed mess, without having my device rooted by a third party, and not needing to be blessed with a consistent high speed internet connection.

I've said it before, torrenting today is as good as the experience of buying music on a physical medium in the 90s... you bought it, took it home, and played it in fully quality uninterrupted, END OF STORY. streaming services still haven't matched this experience.

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1. derekp7 ◴[27 Dec 21 18:40 UTC] No.29705321[source]▶
The "paying users" is exactly the group that DRM is designed to hurt (control). There is a large class of users that won't mess with torrents or whatever for a number of reasons. Ones that apply to me are 1) I don't want my internet service cut if the ISP gets a complaint, 2) Yes, I know I can use a VPN service to get around (1), but then I'd have to find a trusted VPN and there have been ones in the past that were outed as honey pots. 3) You have to be part of the "scene" to work around (1) and (2). 4) I have some disposable income, so at this point in my life I don't feel a "sting" by paying 5 - 7 bucks a month for a streaming service. I'm sure that for other people, lack of familiarity with how to get content through unauthorized means.

Now for the control that they want over users like me. If I could easily do it, I'd subscribe to one service, grab a bunch of content to watch later, then unsubscribe a month later and go to the next service in line. Also they want to control how I use the media, such as watching offline (by using the "download to watch later" button they provide, they can ensure that I don't download it to all my friends' devices, and that I still am a paying customer at the time I decide to watch later).

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2. therein ◴[27 Dec 21 21:47 UTC] No.29707189[source]▶
They could achieve the same chilling effect on the "I'll just download it by using a chrome extension" crowd by having simple convoluted scheme in the way they retrieve the data. It isn't unseen, downloading them in chunks even is sufficient to throw these people off. Simple xor with a dynamic key with the decoding work done in WASM for more obscurity to throw the common downloader and reverser off would have the same effect without the intrusion into my computing device.

But it is what it is really. Not really disagreeing with you.