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Comment by mavamaarten | Hacker News Reader

I work for a company that deals with SVOD/AVOD content.

It's silly how many ridiculous things the content providers try to negotiate in the contracts for their content. Some requirements they ask for are sensible (HW decryption for their high quality renditions), some are downright idiotic because they would shut out so many devices and normal users (e.g. HW decryption on audio tracks and forcing HDCP version 2.3).

We've really gone full circle and piracy is becoming the easier-to-use platform again.

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The thing that gets me is that normal users have no interest in bothering to pirate the content, and pirates can trivially strip HDCP with a cheap bit of kit.

Almost no copyright infringement is being prevented, only legitimate use.

Implementing and testing it all is such a pain in the ass too.

The number of people that will spend money to do this bypassing is much smaller than those that won’t. It’s like every other sort of “criminal activity”, if it’s hard to do, fewer will do it. It’s not about the consequences of getting caught that deters. It’s the level of effort required to do it.

Only one person needs to actually do it, per bit of content, and seed the torrent or stick it on their friends-only warez FTP or whatever the cool kids are doing now (then someone else will make the torrent from that).

Everyone who wants to access it without paying will just get the torrent - which for some people is back to being more convenient and usable than paying for the stuff, as well as cheaper.

The only thing it really prevents is paying customers watching the thing they've rented.

And by 'just getting the torrent' they have a chance of getting a big fine. In lots of countries, there are 'anti piracy' groups trying to lobby for stupid stuff like levies on storage media (because piracy) and catching spreaders of pirated media.

They do risk that! People exceed speed limits in their cars too, with greater potential consequences. I wasn't recommending behaviour, merely describing it.

If I had to pay a "piracy tax" on equipment that may incentivise me to do some piracy. Being in the UK I'm already supposed to pay the BBC for a TV license if I watch any kind of commercial live internet stream (NHK World, Apple WWDC!) which isn't any less crazy.

Exceeding a speed limit by a few mph will not land you in jail or cost you thousands of dollars in fines in most parts of the world. Using torrents is some kind of reverse lottery: download an illegally shared movie (or for that matter: use a photo you grabbed from a random site on your own website) and get the chance to lose an annual income.

yes, let's all just do what ever we want with out respect for other people's work by grabbing their assets and using them on our websites because we have no skills to make the thing ourselves which naturally means stealing it is okay???? it never ceases to amaze me the entitlement people have. "this thing exists, so it therefore is totally reasonable for me to have it at no cost, and then make money from it without anything going back to the person that actually made it." go pound sand with that logic

There's not a single piracy user which has to bypass this though, they already get non encrypted files in full quality, this is only affecting legitimate purchases.

Same as it always was...

Give them what they want, just make sure they pay for the support to refund 99% of people and ruin their reputation?

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