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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).

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.

> torrenting today is as good as the experience of buying music on a physical medium in the 90s

You meant to say "it's much better than buying experience has ever been". You throw an RSS feed into your torrent client once and get desktop or email notifications when a new episode is downloaded and ready to play. If there's enough disk space, you can add whole categories in there and have hundreds of shows available locally at any time.

This is not a good experience. I cannot order a box like an Apple TV and just hook it up to my new TV and go. It’s never as easy as anyone says it is, there’s always more steps involved than logging into iTunes and/or subscribing to some service with my credit card. Plus there’s always the chance of a lawsuit hanging over my head.

For a tech illeterare person maybe. using `docker-compose up` to start a preconfigured sonarr, radarr, transmission with VPN , Plex or jellyfin is almost all you need. the only addition is getting a VPN service such as mullvad... If that's too involved for a software developer I'd call that person pretty incompetent, honestly.

This is exactly my point. I can do all these things. They’re the last thing I would ever want to do in my living room. This is analogous to the PC gamer master race thing. I have gaming PCs. I have consoles. The consoles are by far the better experience. They always will be. It’s the difference between “it just works” and “just have to”. You just have to do this, then that, and that… and then it’s just as good … oh until this or that update breaks the entire stack, or some weird quirk of the hardware or it’s OS kicks in and you’re in jank city when you really just wanted an elegant solution.

You got downvoted but once setup it really is easy. We have a little VM with deluge and a VPN. Couple little IPTables rules ensure it can’t even route traffic except over the VPN interface or the one VPN endpoint, making sure no traffic leaks. I’m more worried I’ll stub my toe and it will hurt than my traffic leaks. I showed my wife how to use it, no problem. Sketchy browsing happens with Guacamole and a browser in a (separate) VM that wipes itself every few days.

It's not a question of competence, it's just a drag...like the construction expert who procrastinates minor home repairs. I'll stay up all night teasing secrets out of locked boxes but when it comes to entertainment I lose interest after about 30 seconds so I just don't bother to pirate stuff unless I find a torrent in the first 30 seconds. I could just be reading a book instead.

> using `docker-compose up` to start a preconfigured sonarr, radarr, transmission with VPN , Plex or jellyfin is almost all you need.

That "almost all you need," is exactly why I'd rather just plug in an Apple TV. I'm not technically incompetent, I just have better things to do with my time.

Jellyfin's Syncplay and Roku app work as well, making group video watching easy

I have an Android TV and streaming subscriptions. If I want to stream something I have to find out what service carries it, open the right app, and attempt to type the title with the arrow keys on the remote. For me, it's much easier to torrent.

Or, you get a small server and download a package... with a little finangaling, you have a service that will catalog shows and movies you want to watch, download them, sort them and push them to your own private "netflix" server ala Plex.

https://github.com/sebgl/htpc-download-box

put it behind a VPN (included) and bam... all your stuff, globally gotten and none of the BS with "Wildvine" and it's ilk.

>with a little finangaling

This is the part that you're wildly underselling, and missing the whole point by doing so. Netflix is just a better UX for anyone that doesn't make a hobby out of tinkering with tech

Plex is pretty damn good. If netflix is "better", it's marginally so.

There is learning with the above... docker to start and NZB/Torrenting... server management...

If you know those things already? or are close? great learning experience (my case).

is it worth ~$14/month for Netflix? Prime? Disney+? HBO Max? etc? maybe... but at a certain point the 'nickel and dime' gets to a point to where learning how to do the above becomes more worth it.

You don't need an expensive computer/server to do all this... just time and a desire to learn. once done? you control your own library and no need to worry about losing your content if you stop the monthly payments.

Streaming used to be pretty good, when Netflix was basically the only one (with most content), but it's so fragmented now, that you need so many subscriptions that it's not cheap, and pretty annoying flipping between apps to find the show/movie you want to watch, then to find it expired last week, and you have to find out who still streams it.

I mean, don't get me wrong... streaming is still pretty good. Fragmentation of content aside, there's more good content than there's ever been. So I'm not a 100% doom and gloomer...

but...

Getting that content has the "provider" problem. As you say, whack'a'mole to get the movie you want.

People always bitched that "Cable is horrible! Why do I have to pay for 400 channels to get the 3 I watch!". And here we are... able to pay for "Ala'Carte" and it's exactly what everyone wanted - and expected: Paying more for each bucket. Instead of $100 (or whatever a full cable plan is)... you're paying $75 for internet, $15 for netflix, $10 for prime (or whatever it amoritizes yearly), disney+, hbo max, Discovery+, etc, etc, etc.

Finding the EXACT movie you want is a hassle... and that hassle is what drives me to Plex. Radarr/Sonarr/NZB/etc all roll together to make a massively good platform that, learning aside, hands all the power back. I do have to pay for some stuff (NZB, Plex, internet, time learning, etc) but it's my time and worth it.

Plus, it's free.

> no amount of DRM will ever prevent this so why bother

There is a possible reason: insurance.

Once insurers are involved it drives behaviours in media production that may at first not appear to make sense -- protecting content in it's various forms leads into technical constrains however it can just as easily lead into "theatre".

DRM is doing what it is supposed to, and that is to stop common theft.

It's a lock on a door. 99% people can get past the lock if they really wanted to, but it takes time, effort, there are consequences.

If there is no lock, then 99% of people would just 'walk right through' the door.

Without DRM systems (including the legal framework) then the instant 'Spiderman' was released, it would be on S3 for the world to share for free. (Which some would like, others not so much, but there definitely wouldn't be another Spiderman).

So if you really want to try, take some risks, ask around, you can get it for free, but most people won't bother so they just pay.

" streaming services still haven't matched this experience. "

I don't know what you mean: people can flick on their TV's and stream whatever Disney or Netflix and that's that. I can't even recall the last time Netflix didn't work for me.

If you mean to say you can 'torrent anything you want' - well - yes, but that's another issue.

> ultimately if it comes out of a screen you can always capture the output, no amount of DRM will ever prevent this

I think that the end goal for the media companies is to add watermarking to all media and require watermark detection on all video-recording equipment, to include cameras. This would be terribly bad, but I think it is technically possible.

A practical problem DRM will always have is that the full DRM chain that tries to include everything in the path down to the cables, that involves too many actors not to break. Keys will inevitably leak left and right, and you'll always be able to find some sort of cable and capture card setup that ignores DRM.

About the watermark scheme, if it was standardized for inclusion in any video-recording equipment, then the standard would leak and people would learn how to neuter it. Or people would flash their camera's firmware to patch out the detection code.

There's simply too many places where the scheme cannot be secure, by design. It's hard to stop finding weak points in the DRM scheme.

once the bits are in your bus, you own them, as in physically have them, it becomes a matter of time and effort for you to access them in a humanly enjoyable manner.

it is possible to re engineer digital electronics with a little ribbon cable, an exacto knife, and a fine soldering hand.

the decrypted bitstream doesnt have to go to a display buffer it could go to memory instead.

that is where i see DRM failing to stop 100% of the leak, and is powerless to do so, as long as people can still understand, and manipulate lowlevel hardware and firmware

I can't wait to implement WideVine DRM chip on my brain

signed video cameras are coming to counteract the incoming tidalwave of AI generated misinformation. The 2024 US election will have swaths of AI generated videos. It will be a mess and I will continue to be longing for the simple days. I.e. dumb cameras/dumb game consoles/dumb tvs/dumb appliances etc.

Sell them some easily defeatable “solution”. Use lots of buzz words. They’ll buy it!

They’ve been buying dreams long enough, may as well be the one that sells it to them.

How do you carry it around?

The torrenting experience IMO is still fairly limited compared to either the BluRay experience for "max quality" viewing at home (but with easy portability of the disc too) or the "play it anywhere you're logged in without being tied to a particular device or hard drive" experience of streaming. When it comes to movies, you can often get both of those with a single purchase, too!

BlueRay sucks for portability their quiet fragile needing a case of some sort, you p need a player, and you quickly get to the point of having multiple CD cases worth of disks. Compared to the disks USB drives win, if your talking a player you might as well just take a tablet or laptop with multiple movies, and external drives hold as many movies as those CD cases while being far more convenient.

As far as I am concerned BlueRay loses on all fronts.

Any of a number of apps can serve your music/TV/Movie collection off your home network to the internet and stream it to your phone or other devices in real time. Plex. SubSonic. MediaPortal. Kodi. Etc.

For capturing, HDCP is also a DRM (but now broken). Even Cinavia exists for recording by camera.