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Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

I can hardly understand the motivation of the corporations keeping to invest in DRM and software activation bullshit tech despite it's obvious it is going to be cracked inevitably (and quickly).

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The goal of DRM is and always have been to lock users inside a platform, not to prevent piracy. It gives companies market power because users cannot easily switch to a better alternative without losing their entire digital collection.

https://www.defectivebydesign.org/faq#copyright

> DRM is not about limiting copyright infringement. Such an argument attempts to make DRM appear beneficial to authors and is based entirely on a (very successfully advertised) misrepresentation of DRM's purpose. To illustrate the absurdity of the argument, consider the nature of file sharing: to obtain a copy of a file without permission, downloaders go to a friend or a file sharing network, not a DRM-encumbered distribution platform. If DRM existed only to prevent unauthorized sharing, every distribution method for that particular piece of media would have to be distributed by an uncrackable DRM-encumbered distribution platform, which is impossible on its own. So long as one copy becomes available without DRM, countless more are easily produced. Industry proponents of DRM are well aware that DRM is not a copyright enforcement mechanism. DRM is only marketed as a copyright enforcement mechanism to mislead authors into tolerating and even defending it.

> The goal of DRM is and always have been to lock users inside a platform,

In that case it fails to accomplish that goal for the same reason. It doesn't work and will be defeated. When you download a song, or movie, or ebook that has been stripped of its DRM you aren't tied to anything. Why introduce unnecessary annoyances for paying customers which often drives them to pirate copies that aren't crippled by DRM? As long as something works like they want it to, most people wont care what platform they use to get it.

> As long as something works like they want it to, most people wont care what platform they use to get it.

For almost anything, there are (at least in big cities and in the Internet) many vendors offering nearly the same with nearly the same quality level at nearly the same prices.

But I can't say I don't care whom do I get the same service thing every particular time. I'm more likely to choose whoever feels more nice and offers even slightly more freedom and flexibility. Once I've chosen a vendor I'm much more likely to stick with them (and choose them every time I need something else they can offer) as long as I don't feel severely dissatisfied.

E.g. once I've got a GMail (GMail is and has always been the very best e-mail service anyway, you can hardly be dissatisfied with it) account I would use everything Google if only they didn't piss me off politically (with stiff like this particular discussion subject) and scare me by terminating other's peoples accounts. But I actually am migrating everything I can away from Google and Gmail because Google seems becoming more and more evil (I even suspect RIAA only attacked ytdl after Google told them to).

That's fair, I think most people will stick with whatever easiest.

Up until some line gets crossed (like Op). The definition of the line is subjective for each user.

Very good point, and I would add that line can be moved based on individual circumstances. I've seen people complain about issues with a service, but the moment I offer an alternative and a way to migrate (painlessly for me to do, and I typically offer to help them) suddenly all is good with their service and they're sticking with it. I've even pushed a little further in the past to say I will do ALL of the work for you, just sit back and relax and in a couple hours done. Most still refuse and I don't get why once all barriers have been removed.

Maybe because it was a hush hush compromise intended to make it possible rather than impossible to watch netflix on linux at slightly reduced quality. Windows and Mac PCs with closed source browser would watch at full quality due to hardware drm. No one was motivated until now it seems to blow the lid off the weaker libre drm since a likely outcome is it just get turned off and services require hardware drm only going forward. We'll be lucky if we can still play videos on Linux or Chromium one year from now.

I wonder whether the situation will improve now that Firefox has support for hardware decoding on Linux. After all, the DRM could be completely handled by the GPU without any help from the driver. Just feed it some binary stream and tell it where to put it.

Although the issue with your compromise theory is that not all browsers are supported for high definition even on MacOS or Windows, at least theoretically (don't have a Netflix account to check). In particular, Chrome isn't supported, although Chrome-based Edge is.

From the Netflix help page on watching UHD [0]:

    Netflix is available in Ultra HD on Windows and Mac computers with:
      Microsoft Edge for Windows
      Windows 10 App
      Safari for MacOS 11.0 or later

From the Netflix help page on watching on Windows [1]:

    Windows computers support streaming in the following browser resolutions:
      Google Chrome up to 720p
      Internet Explorer up to 1080p
      Microsoft Edge up to 4K*
      Mozilla Firefox up to 720p
      Opera up to 720p
      Windows 8 app up to 1080p
      Windows 10 app up to 4K*

The situation is similar on MacOS, where only Safari supports 1080p [2]

[0] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444 [1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23931 [2] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/55764

If I can't watch movies on Linux I'll just skip watching them or torrent them. I already hate dealing with running an OSX vm just to IM my parents, and without hardware acceleration I doubt video decoding would work anyway.

Has that Cinavia nonsense been cracked though? It's the reason I haven't knowingly bought anything Sony in the last decade.

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