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Comment by byuu | Hacker News Reader

The DRM is becoming increasingly complex and elaborate, and taking longer and longer to fully crack. Compare PS2 to PS3 crack times, for instance.

The media executives are of the firm belief that unbreakable DRM is just around the corner, and that when they reach it, piracy will end and they can go back to charging whatever they want again. A return to the good old days of $25 CDs for one song you like and eight filler tracks.

But as far as music and movies go, the genie's already out of the bottle: even with unbreakable DRM, we can always fall back on old camcorders / capture cards and microphones to make lossy copies. I think most pirates will tolerate a bit of quality loss if it saves them heaps of cash.

I think they will ultimately succeed in game DRM that remains unbreakable for the entire duration of a game's market viability, though. Especially with required online connectivity components. But only time will tell.

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The PS3 only went uncracked for so long because Sony offered the option to install Linux on the PS3. Once Sony removed that option the people with the smarts to crack the PS3 did so. Once a magnifying glass was put under the PS3 it turned out that the "DRM" was actually horribly implemented (like Rand() functions that were essentially returning constants).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4lo...

> The PS3 only went uncracked for so long because Sony offered the option to install Linux on the PS3. Once Sony removed that option the people with the smarts to crack the PS3 did so.

It's funny how the facts change over time. Just to correct the facts here: the reveal of the PS3 hack occured on January 26, 2010 and then OtherOS support was removed on April 1, 2010 citing security concerns as the rationale. And to top it off: if you look at the hacker's reasons for hacking, Linux was nowhere in his motivations.

Off topic: This is why I hate history. If we can't even remember what happened 3 years ago even if we have all records available at our fingerprints then how can we be sure what happened like 100 years ago?

You've misunderstood the facts. The PS3 security was not fully compromised with the first hack, and locking down the console was a motivation to those who ended up cracking the security properly (news released December 2010). Watch this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEFMAP0mTvY#t=0

Doesn't change the fact that Hotz was working on the crack before otheros was removed. So, the removal of otheros was not the seminal moment that the op described. That is, the ps3 did not take so long to crack due to insufficient motivation. It took as long as it did, because it was a more difficult platform. There are similar trends in other areas as well like rooting/jailbreaking phones and installing Linux on UEFI machines.

Hotz's hacking may have been a contributing factor for getting OtherOS removed, but it's removal does appear to be a motivation to those behind the more complete hacks that followed (I believe it's mentioned in the video series I linked to). So with a timeline of April 2010 to December 2010, fully exploiting the PS3 security took less than 12 months.

Sure, but I think that's orthogonal. My comment is addressing the OPs original premise. I seriously doubt there were hackers sitting around saying "we'll leave the PS3 alone as long as OtherOS stays supported." While removing OtherOS certainly brought more attention to the platform and accelerated the hacking, I think the reason it took so long for the PS3 to be finally cracked mostly had to do with the complexity of the architecture or other things. I don't think OtherOS was a factor.

As a counterpoint, I offer the xbox 360, which to my knowledge has not been cracked except for DVD firmware hacks and physically altering the device (mod chips).

The conclusion of this is that hackers will not continue to win the DRM battle. Eventually, enough holes will be plugged, where cracking these products becomes so time or cost prohibitive that the product stays closed for it's lifetime.

i don't follow sony because i don't consume from companies with lock in tactics (betamax, laserdisc, md, memory stick, etc, etc) but thank you for that. it was awesomely entertaining.

So, your current living quarters has hardly any modern entertainment to speak of? Good thing libraries still exist.

I can garantee you i don't miss blueray as i did not miss laser disc.

Also it's much more convenient that my camera and phones use sd cards instead of memory sick..

You're point?

Oh, don't get me wrong, I have no point per se. I'm just amazed that someone has gone that route in this age of apathy. But I am assuming this extends beyond Sony products as many electronics are along the same lines in terms of locked environments.

Yes, they certainly made mistakes with the PS3 crypto. And those mistakes are now certainly fixed in the PS4.

Although it sounds poetic, I don't believe for a second that the PS3 was protected by offering a limited Linux install option with crippled software graphics. The timing of the break just coincided well with that. Of course this is all my opinion on the matter.

The PS4 lacks Linux install support completely, so if Linux was the protecting factor, then people should already be tearing it apart, right? I could certainly be wrong, and there could be a gaping flaw, but my hunch is that it's going to take longer than the PS3 to crack.

<quote>I think most pirates will tolerate a bit of quality loss if it saves them heaps of cash.</quote>

From the studies done, piracy is not about cash, it's about convenience, freedom, etc. If the studios released the content for free (as in beer) but DRM-encumbered then pirates would still be removing the DRM.

DRM was and always will be pointless and insulting, no matter how elaborate it will become. Because it's not the right way to treat customers.

DRM on a sealed hardware platform is entirely different than DRM on a consumer controlled device, which is what the HTML5 DRM plugin interface hopes to achieve.

Do consumers really control their devices anymore? Maybe they still can, but in the industry, there's no doubt that this is viewed as a problem that needs solving.

How much quality loss people are willing to accept if they are not really keen on the content is astonishing. If you go to the pirate bay and look at some of the comments on the tele-synced copies, R6 with hardcoded Chinese subs and all the other sub-par quality rips there still is a large amount of positive feedback. Sure, there is always someone who doesn't know what any of the cryptic abbreviations in the title mean and is upset about the quality, but those seem a minority to me.

I would really like to see more scientific results on how low the quality can be if the viewer doesn't exactly desire the content but uses it to just pass the time and how that compares to the price of going to the cinema.

For music, I can go as low as 128kbps MP3 without noticing much of a difference, and 192kbps without noticing any difference.

For movies, I've always been perfectly happy with DVD recodes into 700MB XviD. Could probably go much lower if they were recoding from a lossless master and using H.265. For most things, the Bluray/1080p quality jump reveals details I don't want to see, like how caked on actor makeup is, and all of their skin complexion issues. Great for nature shows, though.

The cutoff points for me are 64kbps Shoutcasts and telesyncs. At that point, the quality is so bad that it makes me dislike the music or movie I am watching.

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