At some point this silly game of cat-and-mouse is going to escalate, and streaming players won't work unless your entire computer is locked down and "verified" by Microsoft or Apple.
It sounds dumb, like "why would companies shoot themselves in the foot like this" but trust that they will. They always do. Corpobrain is a form of autopilot, there's no one with intelligence in charge not because the people who work at media companies are dumb (though, they are), but because there's just literally no one in charge. Its autopilot. Each iterative decision in isolation makes sense, but when zoomed out and interpreted holistically they're killing their own business.
This is exactly what the WEI (Web Environment Integrity)[0] specification sought to achieve, but at the browser level.
The only reason it's possible to copy such content is because keys were leaked in the past, and they are not blacklisted.
If users continue to accept this path, which... they seem to, that is where we'll inevitably end up.
Granted, pointing a camera at a screen and recording will always be possible - but I say if we ever reach the point where that is the only option, we've lost.
And there's already precedent for this kind of thing: the way copiers block money bills as source.
You fundamentally can't prevent someone copying your file. It isn't possible, full stop. You can only make it maximally inconvenient. You can't encrypt a user's eyeballs, so the media has to be transmitted in the clear at some level. Be it intercepting the LVDS signal to your TV panel or just pointing a camcorder at the screen.
The current tact is to just make it maximally inconvenient for anyone to access the file in any way. This does not consider the asymmetry in effort required. All legitimate users must deal with shitty DRM systems and broken apps, where it takes exactly one pirate to go through the effort of making a copy. Then everyone else who obtains a copy has to expend zero effort to consume the media.
Piracy is simply easier, which is why there's a resurgence now. The only sustainable option is to make legitimate consumption easier than piracy. For a lot of media, piracy is the only option to obtain a copy that will not vanish at some indeterminate point in the future. even if you paid for it.
Companies think that they can just make piracy harder, but that simply doesn't work. Once the first copy is made, the game is over. As established, there's simply no way to truly and permanently prevent a copy being created. That's simply the nature of digital media. At best, you can slow pirates down, you can never stop them. Piracy will never go away, and people need to accept that. People have been selling bootleg copies of goods since the dawn of time, there's no way to prevent it. There will always be someone nabbing copies of movies and sharing the files.
You can either waste everyone's time by trying to fight it, or you can realize that companies need to compete to survive, not just be large. If you compete with the pirates and produce a better product that people want more, well that's what capitalism is all about, isn't it?
However, market forces are actually very real. They just don't work the way capitalists think they do. Or rather, capitalists are convinced they can control the market through technology. Unfortunately for them, this is a technology that can't be solved or controlled.
Oh, they do consider it. But, upon consideration, they decide that they don't care.
for the tv/movie industry, the best solution we have right now is basically streaming services like netflix. the issue is that its probably still not economically feasible for companies like netflix to pay for the streaming rights of new movies for their subscribers, especially those big budget movies. so for those, either you'd have to wait until the price is more palatable for netflix, or you'd have to just pirate it.
Has there ever been a time where piracy hasn't "won"?
It's grim. I hope to win the lottery and leave the industry before the term "computer" has lost all meaning.