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Comment by profmonocle | Hacker News Reader

The saddest part is it doesn't even seem to accomplish anything. What would-be pirates are actually being foiled by this? Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime use EME, but all their exclusive content is still readily available on torrent sites. Does it raise the difficulty bar? It's hard to imagine anyone who knows how to rip video from their browser doesn't know how to torrent something.

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DRM technologies are often sold to the public & content providers as an anti-piracy measure but that has never been the intent.

It's _always_ been about control on the creation and manufacture of playback platforms and/or devices.

Yes! DRM is not about piracy, it is about CONTROLLING HOW YOU WATCH. Exclusive deals, upsells, ads and devices.

You don't need DRM for that. That is achieved by contracts.

Contracts can't be enforced just because you want to, DRM gives you the means to do it.

It almost seams entirely to please management. The local TV stations use eme and yet youtube-dl still works fine on them.

Can you provide examples? Some local stations in Australia have switched on DRM and I can't save anything. Over the air is still unencrypted though.

Iview is the one I'm talking about. YouTube DL basically downloads the unencrypted video direct from the server but the website doesn't work until you enable drm

Ah, whereas Seven, Nine and Ten are all encrypting (some) streams.

>exclusive content

content is no longer the only draw. the business goal is now monetizing the group experience. consider Fortnite. Companies won't care if a few people watch pirated content alone. They want to control the experience of group content consumption. This does require content, but managing the group experience is the new frontier. consider http://rabb.it Pirates can get ppl in groups to watch premium content, but at some size, authorities will show up to protect their property.

DRM can be successful even if piracy remains rampant.

What counts is whether adding DRM increases revenues enough to warrant the effort needed to add DRM.

It accomplished building a market around drm. Which the drm market is happy about.

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