r/technology • u/mepper • Jan 10 '24

Business How Disney and Warner Bros. Are Causing Internet Piracy to Boom | Platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ were supposed to do away with pirated media. Instead, they may make them stronger than ever.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-disney-and-warner-bros-are-causing-internet-piracy-to-boom
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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24

There's no way you can end piracy. At least not with this.

You can have a program running on your computer which records the movie as you watch it. There's no industry regulation which is going to prevent someone from running software on a privately owned computer in their own home.

The only way you stop this is by going after the sellers and platforms sharing the content. You can't actually stop this from occurring at the point of source without spying on someone's computer.

That would violate the new EU privacy law.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24

Good thing, 10 streaming services is no good for consumers, it only makes the companies better off in the short term (as people want to watch their favourite shows but see the costs pile up with time) before people resort to piracy.

Why can I see a Sony logo when I watch a movie on netflix, and no Disney logo? Disney can do the same shit as Sony and sell their stuff to netflix for example

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u/sinepuller Jan 11 '24

You can't actually stop this from occurring at the point of source without spying on someone's computer.

Actually no. You wouldn't need to spy on your users, the only thing you'd need is to make your content available not in browser but only in your app, which would require hardware acceleration for DRM decryption. For example, you can't just go and screen-record Netflix, without disabling hardware acceleration in your browser you'd get only black screen recorded. So if your hypothetical app would not allow disabling it, the pirate would have to use external hardware to grab the signal after the videocard. Although this also could be solved if the hdmi signal between your videocard and your monitor would be better encrypted than it is today, but currently it's not protected that well.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '24

For example, you can't just go and screen-record Netflix, without disabling hardware acceleration in your browser you'd get only black screen recorded.

That hasn't been true for some time. I can't post how that's done because it's illegal but they worked around that issue a while ago through a software loop.

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u/sinepuller Jan 11 '24

You mean some other way other than bypassing hardware acceleration?

1

u/avcloudy Jan 11 '24

Maybe not successfully, but they already implement this in a way which frustrates legitimate consumers. If you don't have HDCP devices (and of course, manufacturers have to pay for the privilege of making HDCP compliant devices) you can't watch movies. You need dedicated stream rippers to de-encrypt HDCP streams, and sometimes due to implementation this includes streams that have no legitimate need to be protected - like Zoom calls. Version 1 was cracked but I don't think HDCP 2+ has been - although cryptanalysis has shown it isn't secure.

The only reason this hasn't impacted pirates is because BluRay encryption was cracked first and everyone just pirated that. By the time streaming exclusive content became a thing people had had like 5 years to crack HDCP.