Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

https://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/22338.html

by toma1k • 7 years ago

426 315 7 years ago

hansdegoede.livejournal.com

chrisseaton• 7 years ago

Disney's existing streaming service, Disney Life, is using Silverlight, so anything's better than that.

jonplackett2• 7 years ago

This explains a lot. But even the apps which can’t be, are truly awful.

cryptoz2• 7 years ago

Is Disney+ expected to work fully before launch date? Isn't in 'testing' right now as described by the author? Why is everything expected to be perfect while still in testing?

From this text, it sounds like Disney is actively working on the issue. The product has not launched yet.

I'm not sure what the problem is. Aside from a faster initial customer support response (for a product that isn't even out!) would could Disney have done differently here?

I understand that Disney+ may not launch with (or ever have) Linux support, and that would suck. But no evidence of that is presented here. And the author expects a resolution for a complex issue for a pre-launch product in testing phase from a major corporation within days? That seems aggressive and unrealistic timeline to expect a fix.

Edit:

The author writes "Their so called help-center does not even know about "Error Code 83"" (with some attitude and prejudice, I'll note); but also writes that Disney responded with "We are familiar with Error 83.". Confusing.

jchw2• 7 years ago

The thing is, as they cover in their post, there’s nothing to “fix.” It isn’t broken. The error is actually that it refuses to run without a higher security level than many platforms support.

Mindwipe5• 7 years ago

It runs in Chrome on Windows, which also only supports Widevine Level 3, same as Linux.

The post is just... not very good and full of factual errors.

newnewpdro• 7 years ago

You're ignoring the analysis that Disney+ seems to be blocking use entirely at the lower "security level" assessed by Widevine.

It would not take significant time or effort for them to change the threshold value if it were something they considered broken.

It seems prudent at this point to avoid becoming a paying customer until they address it, if you care about this sort of thing.

cryptoz2• 7 years ago

It would not take significant time or effort for them to change the threshold value if it were something they considered broken.

Do you have reason to believe this? To me that sounds like a complicated change with significant potential business impacts. Have they signed contracts already where this kind of security is ambiguous? Does changing the flag actually solve the issues on all devices or do other issues present, since they have been untested? Testing must happen post-change, I would imagine.

The issue still sounds complex to me. I use Linux and I want Disney+ to support it, obviously. But I don't see Disney as being in the wrong here (yet) - they're potentially just working on the issue before release. We'll see, I guess.

Mindwipe5• 7 years ago

You're ignoring the analysis that Disney+ seems to be blocking use entirely at the lower "security level" assessed by Widevine.

That's because it's wrong. Chrome on Windows only supports Level 3 too, and it works there.

(The article incorrectly assumes Level 1 is lower than Level 3. Level 1 is the highest security level, not the lowest.)

Causality1• 7 years ago

In this case e.g. Netflix will not offer full HD or 4k resolutions, but otherwise everything works fine,

I don't understand the point of this type of thinking. Video DRM isn't like Denuvo where it can actually get you a few days or even weeks before any pirated versions exist on the web. If it can be watched by a human pirates will copy it, even if they have to rip it straight from the display controller of their monitors. I have never once had the slightest difficulty or delay in finding pirated versions of video content on Day 1 or even before, and at the highest-produced quality and resolution. Why do providers think making life hard only on paying customers is a good thing?

jedberg• 7 years ago

They do this because Hollywood doesn't understand technology. Netflix understands technology and understands this stops no one, but they are licensing the content from Hollywood, who thinks this behavior actually helps.

Netflix is forced to play ball with them.

Your next question is usually, "Why doesn't the Netflix original content not have these shenanigans then?".

The answer is that most Netflix content is still made by Hollywood studios, so they have the same restrictions. Netflix is only a distributor in most cases, not the content creator.

The other answer is that it is a lot more complicated in the software and for testing to say "can this content be played at 4K based on the publisher?" than to just say, "DRM level 1 means no 4K".

jyrkesh• 7 years ago

Was waiting for this reply, happy to see it come from the mighty jedberg. For those that don't know, click on his bio, he's definitely 100% spot on here

simias• 7 years ago

It's like asking why they bother paying customers with anti-piracy ads at the beginning of legally-purchased DVDs when obviously pirates are going to trim them. It's not supposed to be reasonable.

It's design by committee, it's bikeshedding, it's weird clauses in complex contracts etc... From the right's holder point of view your reasoning doesn't make sense, instead it goes the other way: if people buy our product anyway when we do it that way, why change it? Do you think that when NBC licenses The Office to Netflix they care about Linux users not being able to stream it in 1080p? Do you think Netflix is willing to spend time and money to fight for the tiny portion of the user base who both watches Netflix on Linux and cares for high-def?

JorgeGT• 7 years ago

Do they actually rip the videos from display controllers? I though they just used those shady HDMI splitters that actually strip the HDCP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17463105

mindcrime4• 7 years ago

Interesting. I'd been toying with signing up for Disney+ at some point (when does it even go live officially?). But if this is the case, I absolutely won't be getting a subscription as I use Linux as my desktop OS.

"No Linux support" == "no customer"

reaperducer• 7 years ago

While I agree with the philosophy that Disney should try to support as many platforms as possible, I really don't think it will notice the Linux market is missing.

Cost of building and maintaining a Linux client > Potential revenue from Linux users.

cameronbrown2• 7 years ago

Cost of building a Linux client should be zero. It's not because they want to have their proprietary DRM/spyware restricting what you can do.

Ever heard the phrase "piracy is a better service", Disney?

Edit: Cost should be negligible. You should build for web/browser standards, not the OS.

judge2020• 7 years ago

Looks like this is more of "requiring widevine level 2/3", their player and DRM should work with Linux Firefox and Chrome with minimal changes.

Disney+ OTOH seems to have the drm features kranked up to maximum draconian settings

tolmasky3• 7 years ago

If its true that this includes Chromebooks, it could definitely affect a lot of people.

mfer• 7 years ago

This impacts those using ChromeOS, if I read it right. Disney May want to support that.

Isn’t ChromeOS Linux under the hood?

fortran77• 7 years ago

Linux users won't pay for things. It's not worth chasing that market.

mindcrime4• 7 years ago

Maybe they won't. That's fine, it's their decision to make. All I'm saying is that I can absolutely confirm that I won't be signing up for a streaming service that won't work on Linux. If the market of people like me is small enough, then maybe it'll never matter to Disney.

marcosdumay2• 7 years ago

I've only signed Netflix after my living room TV was able to directly interact with it, smart TVs run Linux. The second question I made was how I would use it on the TVs that didn't run it, and solved it with a chromecast, again, Linux. Another option is to get one of those media players sold on the internet, again Linux.

What other option is there for people to watch the streaming services? Directly on their computers? I doubt many people will even think about that.

dewey2• 7 years ago

when does it even go live officially?

November 12 in US, CA, NL. More countries on the 19th.

pacomerh• 7 years ago

Countdown page, https://preview.disneyplus.com/

neximo64• 7 years ago

"No Linux support" == "no customer"

The conviction in this statement gave me a bit of a chuckle. I think most of us commenting here don't share this view.

mindcrime4• 7 years ago

I think most of us commenting here don't share this view.

Then "most of us" are part of the problem. Maybe the admins should rename this site to "Geeky/Techie/Science-ish News Stuff", because the "hacker ethos"[1][2][3][4] seems to be disappearing from here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic

[2] http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html

[3] https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.en.html

[4] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

cloudking• 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure Disney is optimizing for the majority of their audience who use Windows, OSX, iOS etc, not developers/hackers who run desktop Linux. I'm curious about Android though.

dchest• 7 years ago

Optimizing how?

x13• 7 years ago

Disney is focusing on traditional popular consumer markets.

Linux doesn't have a large enough number of users for their consumer-focused video streaming service at this time.

They'll probably move down-market after nailing the experience on the first few platforms.

side note - I love the number of comments about piracy as the other option, as if Disney is reading this page - or cares much about a small market (linux consumer-users)

adrianmonk• 7 years ago

Focusing their attention on the platforms that are most critical at first launch, I'd guess.

bobbyi_settv• 7 years ago

Don't the majority of people still watch TV on their TV? I don't care if their service runs on my computer because it's confirmed they will have an app for PS4, which is how I already watch Netflix and Hulu.

I know there are people out there who refuse to run any non-free software anywhere, and it is a good thing they exist, but I would guess that the majority of people who have Linux on their laptop are willing to use a Fire Stick or their TV's builtin OS or whatever to stream TV and movies.

mcv2• 7 years ago

It works fine on Android.

brogrammernot• 7 years ago

I can’t imagine the vast majority of their customer base uses Linux, and was likely left out as a fast follow as it isn’t worth being a supported system until they can see it gains traction.

RandomGuyDTB• 7 years ago

I was planning on subscribing instead to a VPN that supports peer-to-peer torrenting.

yumario2• 7 years ago

AmazonPrime video does not delivers HD content in Linux... I tried everything switching browsers, changing User agent, wine, running virtual box. I seems some type of DRM is not implemented yet in Linux. Netflix is the same I think.

I happily pirate content now.

Andrew_nenakhov2• 7 years ago

Publishers often refer to copying they don’t approve of as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that it is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them. Based on such propaganda, they have procured laws in most of the world to forbid copying in most (or sometimes all) circumstances. (They are still pressuring to make these prohibitions more complete.)

If you don’t believe that copying not approved by the publisher is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy” to describe it.

Buge• 7 years ago

On the other hand, sometimes "pirate" seems to have a positive connotation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ju_10NkGY

And interestingly the 3rd highest comment on that video currently is about Disney+.

shakna2• 7 years ago

You can get 1080p streams from Netflix on Linux (for 99% of their collection) by switching your user agent to ChromeOS. Their check is just:

    a = /CrOS/.test(a.userAgent);
    this.Fma = this.Aw = q.Gu.PV;
    this.Qm = [x.$l.nV];
    this.oo = [x.V.vA, x.V.wA];
    a && this.oo.push(x.V.TH);

It very much is _not_ "DRM not yet implemented".

Both Prime and Netflix are fully capable of streaming their highest quality under Linux - if you have the driver support.

Unfortunately they have a bunch of hacky stuff trying to prevent it, rather than allowing the user's browser is to make the decision.

eftychis• 7 years ago

I can confirm that switching the user agent [used to] work[s]. (Disclaimer: haven't streamed for a while personally.)

nyuszika7h2• 7 years ago

Actually, you can’t get higher than SD for Amazon Prime Video since they started enforcing VMP a few months ago, which isn’t supported on Linux.

proc0• 7 years ago

Yeah this means this was a business decision and not technical. They probably looked at user numbers for the different browsers.

stjohnswarts• 7 years ago

That's one reason I use it. If they switch to nazi DRM I'll drop them. If Disney won't play on Linux meh whatever then on them. I'm sure they won't miss me, and I won't miss them much either.

Rebelgecko• 7 years ago

FWIW I've had varying luck on Amazon; I think it's based on the publisher of the content. Some of Amazon's own stuff works in 1080 on my machine while other movies are much lower quality

toosangiforthis• 7 years ago

Changing the UA to Firefox windows works too. I always get the "best" stream. Also prime music does not work on Chrome/Firefox on Linux solely because they've blacklisted the UA. I keep yelling at them every 2-3 months

Andrew_nenakhov2• 7 years ago

I believe it morally justifies downloading Disney+ content via torrents.

egypturnash• 7 years ago

Oh come on, “Disney won’t stream their stuff to my niche OS” is not a reason to get their stuff without paying. You can wait for a DVD, you can scrounge a used device that will run their DRM, or you can decide you hate all DRM and boycott their stuff until the unlikely event they offer a copyable version. Lots of people work hard making this shit, and they have bills to pay, these things don’t just spring fully-formed onto a hard drive like Athena from Zeus’ skull. Maybe there’s some morality going on if you buy a ton of merch for what you watch. Maybe.

Or you can reward the companies that do support your niche OS by paying for their stuff, that’s pretty unassailable.

I am far from without sin in this area, but I don’t try to make excuses. Watching stuff without paying its asking price is stealing.

prepend2• 7 years ago

Niche or not “Disney won’t sell me content I want to buy” seems like a tough position for Disney to argue past.

This was the argument back in the days when movies wouldn’t be released in many countries as the market is too small.

What do you expect potential customers to do? Should they buy new computers? Not watch Disney stuff?

I think I would expect the latter, but if they aren’t Disney’s customer then them pirating isn’t losing Disney any business.

ddingus• 7 years ago

Actually, it is infringing. We have that word for very specific reasons.

In this case, nothing was stolen.

earenndil2• 7 years ago

If you purchase a subscription and then torrent, that's justified. Otherwise--uh, no.

sucrose• 7 years ago

I think the point is to not pay them until the get their service fixed.

vitus2• 7 years ago

Nit, since this confused me when I was looking for more context: for whatever reason, Widevine security levels are ordered in decreasing security (whereas the article has them backwards).

Widevine on Linux only supports L3, which means that there's no guarantee that any processing is done inside the CPU's trusted execution environment. Which, uh, reads as "no security guarantee" to me.

swiley• 7 years ago

I’m not really ok with other people’s code running on my Secure Enclave.

BitTorrented video has no security guarantee either.

Mindwipe5• 7 years ago

I’m not really ok with other people’s code running on my Secure Enclave.

All the code that runs on your secure enclave is other people's code.

vitus2• 7 years ago

The security guarantee here isn't for the user, though. It's more of a placebo effect for the content producers.

yaur• 7 years ago

In order to get the highest level protection in widevine (the numbering is confusing) the decryption code and secure media path all need to be provisioned by the OEM. In otherwords the “other people” running code in the Secure Enclave is the device manufacturer. If you don’t trust them you are already sunk.

Vaslo• 7 years ago

“First of all, as always my opinions are my own, not those of my employer.”

Why do you need to write that? It’s a benign article and more so it’s about as protective as the useless “Store is not responsible for carts that damage your car” signs.

Spooky23• 7 years ago

Companies react in strange ways. I recall a forum post a few years back about an issue with a backup solution. The poster ran into a problem and shared it in response to a question.

Someone from the storage company went apeshit, figured out who the poster was, and met with the CIO of the guys employee to get him to remove the post.

gtirloni• 7 years ago

I really hope he's swimming in lawsuit money.

arthens• 7 years ago

Years ago I ranted on Twitter about Bitium being unreliable. There was no mention of the company I work for on my twitter account, but I had my full name visible. They looked up my name in their database, found my account, and made a phone call to my CTO to ask if there was a problem with their product. The tone of the call was friendly (they didn't try to get me fired or anything), but I still got some heat because my CTO was pissed (until I pointed out that it was a personal account without any work reference). So yeah... I'm not surprised people feel the need to add disclaimers to what they write online.

xellisx• 7 years ago

Is anyone really surprised?

profmonocle• 7 years ago

desktop Linux and many Android devices only support level 1. In this case e.g. Netflix will not offer full HD or 4k resolutions

And yet 4K webrips of recent Netflix shows are readily available on torrent sites.

I don't understand who these higher levels of DRM are trying to target. They obviously don't stop the serious pirates from ripping and sharing the content with everyone. Yet the lower levels are "good enough" to stop average users from trivially downloading and keeping the file, like you might do with an plain, embedded MP4 file.

lousken• 7 years ago

Obviously, the point is to screw up the customers - every DRM can and will be broken at some point

nikanj• 7 years ago

Device manufacturers. Play nice, or we won't grant you the magic pixie dust to play our content in glorious 4k.

tshaddox• 7 years ago

To clarify, this isn’t just a cynical comment. It’s actually why digital content producers use DRM. Generally speaking, they’re not idiots, they know it will have little effect on determined pirates and will cause some hassle for some legitimate customers. The point really is so that the digital content producers can maintain control over the providers of computer hardware and distribution channels.

Here’s an old article claiming to be a big revelation, but it’s pretty much common sense and has been fairly well recognized for much longer than that:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-engineer-drm-has-nothin...

turblety• 7 years ago

DRM punishes paying customers and does nothing to stop piracy. It reminds me of those "you wouldn't kill" segments at the start of DVD's that you couldn't skip, but just moaned at you to not pirate the DVD. But the only people they were telling this to was paying customers who bought the DVD. People who pirated the DVD, just plugged it into their computer, ripped out the content then published.

geofft3• 7 years ago

Sure, but why? Do the rightsholders believe that these mechanisms are effective at making them money somehow? How correct are they - are these mechanisms effective at stopping some amount of casual piracy and converting that into purchases?

unlinked_dll• 7 years ago

DRM punishes paying customers and does nothing to stop piracy.

Media companies aren't stupid. They know exactly how much DRM and piracy impact their bottom line. That's why DRM-free distribution is a non-starter for virtually every media company, because it saves them money.

Like all things dealing with bad actors, DRM isn't about stopping behavior. It's about slowing it down and making it more cumbersome

lifthrasiir2• 7 years ago

DRM punishes paying customers and does nothing to stop piracy.

There is a plot twist here: DRM does help stopping piracy, but only for smaller businesses producing the contents that appeals enough to be copied but not enough to be paid for. I'm pretty fine with Steam DRM for that reason, without that indie games will have much harder time. For Disney+, I cannot understand their reasoning at all.

giancarlostoro4• 7 years ago

What makes matters worse is they inform the consumer that yes you can just steal the film. I was involved in the Private Server scene in my younger days and a game had a campaign against private servers. Ever since like 90% of the people in that private scene have told me they only knew about it cause of the campaign. You spark the human curiosity and screw yourself.

AlexDragusin• 7 years ago

The info is there not to stop piracy but as a legal matter in case the customer says "I didn't knew, I wasn't informed".

hombre_fatal• 7 years ago

DRM punishes paying customers and does nothing to stop piracy.

I would think DRM stops trivial tools like a Chrome extension that adds a "Download" button on anything you're watching on Netflix.com.

Which is good enough. Because piracy is confusing to most people. Piracy sites are scummy and require tech-savyness just to navigate them and download the right thing.

For example, my girlfriend knows "The Pirate Bay" by name though a torrent client is still confusing to her. First google result for that is https://thepiratebays3.com.

It has a scary and scummy banner at the top: "Official The Pirate Bay Warning. Do NOT download torrent files without hiding your IP! With a VPN you can Hide your IP & stay anonymous, avoid fines and lawsuits, especially in USA. <Link to NordVPN affiliate link>". And searching anything doesn't work for me.

So, I think the war against piracy is more or less won due to how relegated it is to a tiny part of the population that's capable of navigating it.

ehsankia• 7 years ago

DRM punishes paying customers and does nothing to stop piracy.

That's not necessarily true. I agree with the DVD example, but for example, I've almost never had any issues with Netflix's DRM. I can even pre-load videos on phone/tablet, and for the most part it works as expected. Same thing with Steam, it's fairly transparent to the user.

Yes there are bad DRMs out there, but there can be a balance when done right where it doesn't hurt the customer and provides more value than pirating (like Steam).

throw0101a• 7 years ago

It reminds me of those "you wouldn't kill" segments at the start of DVD's that you couldn't skip ...

Obligatory IT Crowd reference:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg

vkaku• 7 years ago

This ^

DRM is only to create the illusion of security, to deter the average person, not the determined pirate or developer. Once you've sent the content to the client, you've lost all practical ways to avoid these torrents.

foota• 7 years ago

I imagine you'd see a lot more casual piracy if it were trivial to copy, i.e., people just sending the videos to their friends.

Sendotsh3• 7 years ago

For every person torrenting there’s multiple getting movies off friends on USB sticks and stuff.

One member of my family does the torrenting for a dozen others in my family, and I know plenty of others that work like that.

I personally do a mix of paying for content and pirating. I’m 100% happy to pay for content if I can, but with geoblocking and platform restrictions and all the other bullshittery, it’s legitimately impossible for me to legally buy half (or more) of the content I’m actually interested in, so I pirate it, and I don’t feel bad for doing so in the slightest.

I also regularly have to pirate things I already own thanks to DRM that doesn’t work on my devices, missing subtitles, etc.

The entire industry is broken and it’s their own fault.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 7 years ago

The argument above was that the lowest level of Widevine is sufficient to prevent casual piracy (through that channel), and I agree: It's a lot easier to just torrent a clean version than to dump an encrypted Netflix stream, run some side-channel attack on Widevine (for which the PoC code doesn't seem to be public), then decrypt the dump.

AlfeG• 7 years ago

Pirating is already casual. But situation is much worse.

I can have russian voiceover from 4-5 studios on the next day after popular TV series aired. They even go this far, as to put full time commercials of not so legal online casino web sites. I dont even need to torrent, to watch any tv show next day after air. There is android apps that will allow to watch any show via http or torrent. There is pirate websites with payed and free access. And as I said earlier fulltime commercials of online casinos, that sponsor pirate translations.

This situation is very bad for any commercial tv show services in ex USSR territory. No low regional prices can battle 0 price.

dwild2• 7 years ago

I imagine you'd see a lot more casual piracy if it were trivial to copy, i.e., people just sending the videos to their friends.

Then just put enough of DRM for that not to happens. The fact that it's working through an app is more than enough. Most people have trouble even getting videos out of Youtube and doesn't know you can find apps to do that.

People share password much more than they share video files too.

vbezhenar2• 7 years ago

How those webrips are performed? Are there leaked DRM keys or something like that? I thought that DRM encrypts stream all the way from website to display, so it's quite hard to intercept it.

swebs• 7 years ago

HDCP has had its master key leaked in 2010. You can also buy hardware over the internet that bypasses HDCP.

huffmsa• 7 years ago

If you have a good internet connection and graphics card you can just capture the screen and intercept the audio separately. It's got a few artifacts here and there, but nothing that makes it unwatchable

ikeboy• 7 years ago

It's not clear. The tools are kept secret to avoid patching. But presumably they reverse engineered it and have a way to capture the raw stream.

I know at one point they were using Roku TVs or Fire TVs which allowed an older DRM standard. Now apparently there's a crack for Windows that's kept underground in the scene groups doing releases.

bscphil2• 7 years ago

Pirates cracked Widevine (and possibly other schemes). They have a drop-in replacement DLL (which they keep secret) that dumps the original content of the stream (not a screen / HDMI capture, like the other two comments said). This is called a WEB-DL, while capturing and encoding the stream is usually called a WEBrip.

unfocused• 7 years ago

No key involved, but a long time ago, circa 2008, I used to record my TV shows in my Rogers (Canada) PVR. It so happened it had a firewire port, and all you had to do was load the firewire SDK on your macbook, and when you play back your show on the PVR, you could capture the raw .ts (transport stream) which contained the MPEG2 video.

I think that's why most players now have no extra ports besides the HDMI as it was easy to bypass the HDMI protection...if you can call it that.

noonespecial• 7 years ago

When a bad outcome is assured (piracy from their perspective) the only rational course of action is that which will prevent the blame from falling on you:

"Yes it was pirated, but we spent maximum cash on the very best DRM... what else could we have done?"

stevetodd• 7 years ago

It’s designed to reinforce the idea that piracy is morally wrong.

aaron695• 7 years ago

And yet 4K webrips of recent Netflix shows are readily available on torrent sites.

WEBRIP (capture) are worse quality than WEB/WEB-DL (hacked DRM)

So actually you prove their point, they are winning.

The scene can do some WEB, they keep it secret, they even have servers for crew member to use without telling them how.

WEB is probably using old TV software with weaker DRM, hence why 4k is rare.

Igelau• 7 years ago

I'm not a lawyer, but if we look at the DMCA,

17 USC §1201 (A)(1)(a): "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

No one is interested in perfect because the actual DRM is only a tiny sliver of the protection. The bulk of it is the threat of having to pay a huge settlement because you don't want to get the piss beaten out of you in court.

gruez2• 7 years ago

No one is interested in perfect because the actual DRM is only a tiny sliver of the protection. The bulk of it is the threat of having to pay a huge settlement because you don't want to get the piss beaten out of you in court.

I don't find that argument convincing. I can't think of any famous cases of copyright holders or law enforcement going after rippers/encoders (the people who break the DRM and make it available for others to copy), but plenty of cases of them going after people who downloaded the content.

P_I_Staker2• 7 years ago

That doesn't explain the cat an mouse game. DRM schemes are constantly updated to fix issues so that previous hacks no longer work. Occasionally, the industry invests big money into sweeping changes.

If what you're saying is true, you'd expect the minimum reasonable measures to suffice. No need to invest in new methods. Yet they do. I'm sure lots of people would be interested in "perfect", if you had that product to give them; you could be a millionaire, the problem is that it's impossible, as far as we know.

gok• 7 years ago

It gives content producers leverage with device manufacturers.

s3cur3• 7 years ago

My experience with small content producers is that their decisions surrounding stopping piracy have almost nothing to do with the economics of it; it’s an emotional decision. I’ve seen people spend 25%+ of their content’s revenue on DRM.

Now, why the major players also pour money into this stuff is just baffling.

untog4• 7 years ago

They're available on torrent sites, but how are you going to watch that video on your Roku, Apple TV, smart TV or whatever? The key here is hardware control. The big players have it.

TrueDuality• 7 years ago

Plex.

jowsie3• 7 years ago

Plex and similar software are pretty popular. Not to mention most phones can 'cast' to all those devices. Both my smart tv's even have USB ports.

jsjohnst• 7 years ago

how are you going to watch that video on your Roku, Apple TV, smart TV or whatever?

Plex ;)

paulddraper• 7 years ago

many Android devices only support level 1

Isn't Android the biggest OS on the planet by # of users?

Wouldn't the impact be huge?

deogeo• 7 years ago

I don't understand who these higher levels of DRM are trying to target.

They target device manufacturers. If you want to sell a computer/tablet/phone/TV that will play Disney+/Netflix/etc, then you must submit to their demands, pay their licensing fees, and hope you don't anger them. They want to be the gatekeepers to who can make a commercially-viable product.

aidenn0• 7 years ago

Aside from this comment[1], DRM prevents casual piracy. There was a point where a lot of my music was cassette tapes with the album written on it with a sharpie. DRM definitely prevents this.

HDCP up to 2.2 is completely broken, so even perfect software DRM has a huge gaping hardware hole, but most people don't have the tools needed to circumvent this.

One person breaking the DRM can make a torrent for all torrenters, but if say 1/4 the population can break the DRM, then people will copy things for friends.

The closest current day equivalent is probably many people sharing a Netflix password.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21307648

LaundroMat• 7 years ago

It's all about (pretending to be) protecting intellectual property. After all, a large part of media companies' assets are intangible IP. To make sure the value of that asset is not eroded, companies such as Disney must invest in technologies that claim help protect it.

(Edit: to be more precise, they must invest in tech that maximizes the extraction of (future) value from that IP).

beerandt• 7 years ago

I think at this point it's just an excuse for sub-par distribution networks. Or an excuse for poor playback compatibly. Or maybe even a way to save on bandwidth.

It gets them out of any contractual or common law minimum level-of-service complaints.

Nasrudith2• 7 years ago

They aren't for the consumer or even product security despite what they say. They certainly pay enough to afford people to tell them the truth - instead they pay extra to get ones who tell them what they want to hear.

As far as I can tell they are a very expensive security blanket for those too tech illiterate to realize that trying to circumvent the analog hole for serial formats is barking madness or as an ass-cover.

It brings to mind the use of polygraphs as similar outright instituional superstitions whose true function is blame deflection.

SomeOtherThrow• 7 years ago

Is there any other future?

tolmasky3• 7 years ago

So, at least from my basic research, the levels seem to be switched in this post: L1 is the highest level, not L3. So if Android and Desktop Linuxes support L1, that should not be an issue. Perhaps its is a minor error and he meant L3.

That being said, is it possible for the user to have their Desktop Linux support L1 somehow? Android is a Linux that clearly support L1 and can show these formats (I imagine), so can that be accomplished on another Linux?

Mindwipe5• 7 years ago

Android depends on the hardware, but generally speaking Western devices support Widevine Level 1 and its implemented in hardware. Desktop Linux will only ever support Level 3.

But Chrome on Windows also supports Level 3, and Disney+ works in Chrome, there, so the article isn't correct.

yumario2• 7 years ago

Why do say that Linux will only ever support Level 3? Is there some fundamental limitation?

tolmasky3• 7 years ago

So I guess my question is why will Desktop Linux only ever support Level 3? If its the equivalent hardware that a Windows device would support L1 (or does that not exist?), then wouldn't, say, an Android device in para-virtualization be able to show you the content in HD? Wouldn't the right pieces extracted from Android and loaded into Desktop Linux allow you to watch L1? Just hypothetically. I guess my question is: is Desktop Linux actually incapable of doing it for some reason, or is it just that no one will ever distribute a distro that can do it out of the box, but you could theoretically assemble it yourself.

jonplackett2• 7 years ago

Anyone who’s used Disney’s existing streaming service will, I am certain, tell you it it truly awful. It’s incredibly slow, saddles you with massive downloads regardless of device or connection type. The app sometimes just doesn’t open at all.

I really hope whatever they’re making is not based on what they are doing currently.

hellofunk2• 7 years ago

This whole thread has been rather surprising to me, we've been enjoying Disney+ for a few weeks now and I've been amazed how wonderful all the content is. I've never seen any errors or the issue described in this article (I'm on Mac).

The only thing about the UI that I miss is that it does not respond to keyboard shortcuts (like pressing spacebar to start and stop the playback).

But overall, I've been very happy and impressed with the service.

alt2192• 7 years ago

Are you from the future?

In all seriousness though, how are you able to enjoy Disney+ currently? It has yet to launch. According to the Disney+ website it launches in just under 23 days from now.[0]

0. https://disneyplus.com

yread• 7 years ago

I've been using it on a Chromecast. I'm not sure what "wonderful" content you're amazed by - there are some nice movies but I think by next month we will be pretty much out of interesting stuff to watch. And technically it's also not that great - it takes a while to load and in about 50% of the movies I've watched it froze and I had to restart the app.

We will probably stay subscribed though so it's not all that terrible.

pcr9103032• 7 years ago

While I understand why Disney is getting much hate here at HN, I don’t think Disney really deserves it; Let’s face it, Linux is a very niche OS.

Just flipping on a switch for level 3 on Linux also takes money, as then they have to check whether it’s working at every deploy, provide customer support for them, etc, ...

And there’s people in this thread that DRMs are pointless... but IMO DRMs aren’t useless, it works as a small barrier for users to not copy. Think about two hypothetical people A and B for example;

When DRM exists: A talking to B “Hey, I’ve watched the movie XXX from Disney+ last night, you really should subscribe to see that great movie!”

When DRM doesn’t exist: A talking to B “Hey, I’ve watched the movie XXX from Disney+ last night, you really should see it. I’ll give the movie file in my USB tomorrow.”

I don’t like the company-tired nature of DRMs, but not much of a solution exists, esp when DRM was rejected by the web standards.

manicdee2• 7 years ago

When DRM exists: “Hey I watched this movie that hasn’t been released from Disney last night, have a copy and you can enjoy it too!”

The only thing preventing this stream working on Linux is someone paying Disney the licence fees. It’s nothing to do with control of end product quality. Disney does not provide support for customer technical problems.

pcr9103032• 7 years ago

When DRM exists: “Hey I watched this movie that hasn’t been released from Disney last night, have a copy and you can enjoy it too!”

Only if the value of time consumed trying to break the DRM is lower than the Disney+ subscription fee. And I think for the majority, the Disney+ subscription fee will be lower.

dewey2• 7 years ago

From their response it sounds like they are on it, it's still 3 weeks until the official launch in the bigger markets and it's only live in NL as a test market right now.

To me it sounds like a normal bug for an edge case. It's made out to be much more than it actually is with this clickbait title.

briandear• 7 years ago

Ironically, scrolling for the article is broken on iOS Safari.

voldacar3• 7 years ago

Could this be fixed by disassembling the widevine .so/.dll and altering the function that returns the "security level" so that it always returns the highest level?

Avery3R• 7 years ago

The highest security level involves hardware keys. You'd have to get a hardware device that supports it and extract the keys somehow

voldacar3• 7 years ago

So what hardware device is it interacting with when it is able to run properly on windows and mac? Is there a reason Linux couldn't interact with this hardware in the same way?

zelly• 7 years ago

As I understand it, the DRM authenticates the physical monitor/TV with a key on the hardware. That part is uncrackable because authentication is done on Netflix-side.

But as for whatever is rejecting Linux but allowing Windows/macOS, that has to be completely in-software. I think you are right--this could be bypassed by changing a register value somewhere. This sounds like a fun project.

voldacar3• 7 years ago

But as for whatever is rejecting Linux but allowing Windows/macOS, that has to be completely in-software.

Yeah that's more of what i was referring to.

theninja• 7 years ago

Content publishers sometimes demand certain DRM features in order to license their content. For example, they can dictate that only X devices can watch content Y. They can also demand restriction to how content is stored on devices etc. So until the content publishers change their restrictions, DRM will be there and will be annoying to customers :(

jonny_eh• 7 years ago

Disney owns all the content they're streaming.

danmg• 7 years ago

Are we forgiving Walt Disney for having 'trouble makers' blacklisted and investigated by HUAC? I'm not.

Even if they made something besides pablum, I wouldn't be interested.

antisthenes• 7 years ago

Back to piracy it is, I guess.

ahje• 7 years ago

But _why_? Is there something Disney has that everyone _needs_ to have?

My first reaction to stuff like this is simply that I can't be bothered -- if Disney don't want me as a customer then I'll simply ignore their service.

This is a serious question; I'm quite ignorant when it comes to the content of the current Disney IP portfolio and I'm not really a consumer of mainstream media.

zeruch• 7 years ago

Having had Disney as a client in a past life, I always assume they will go for the most draconian, despotic IP control imaginable...as a starting point.

They are cultural not wired any other way, and cannot be mollified. They are a horrible company.

unangst• 7 years ago

I like to think that if Disney+ doesn’t work on Chromebooks, the “freshmen hivemind” (aka all of the freshmen) will solve it by complaining to Disney relentlessly. Seriously, not sure if Disney has thought through the market penetration Chromebooks have in the K-12 market AND the correlation between those students/districts and discretionary income for “yet another streaming service.”

filmgirlcw• 7 years ago

The hand-wringing in this thread is sort of amazing — especially since 99% of the people complaining weren’t going to subscribe anyway.

Look, if there are indeed issues with actual ChromeOS (and not the Chromium variants — but the full mostly-proprietary Google procured ChromeOS), I fully expect that to be fixed — you might not get 4K support (but there are what, 3 Chromebooks with 4K screens? Plus, most streaming services do not support 4K on web browsers period - even Netflix only offers it on Windows. Mac users with 5K screens have to use Boot Camp (and even that isn’t a guarantee) to watch 4K in the browser) — but if Chromebooks are an issue, I fully expect that to be fixed.

As odious as DRM is, I just can’t bring myself to be surprised or overwrought by its existence. Yes, it is largely more about appearances than actually solving piracy — but those appearances matter. The big thing that has pulled people away from piracy is convenience. And with the exception of Linux on the desktop users (a population that is small and only getting smaller, as the main distros don’t even care about the desktop or non-server users anymore), Disney+ seems to offer that. The people that pirate because of DRM would have pirated anyway. I pay and subscribe to more content than 99.99% of the population — but I also download whatever I can’t get from an online service and I feel zero guilt and make zero justifications for my choices. And that’ll remain true for Disney+ — even if there wasn’t a DRM scheme at all (which just isn’t ever going to happen).

DRM sucks, sure, but are we really surprised? And I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to boycott a streaming service with tons of content because it doesn’t support Linux in the desktop.

thayne• 7 years ago

I probably would pay for it if it had linux support. But since it doesn't, I won't. Every device in my household is either linux or Android, and I primarily stream from desktop linux. If disney+ doesn't work on that there is no rason for me to pay for it.

andrepd2• 7 years ago

Widevine has 3 security levels and many devices, including desktop Linux and many Android devices only support level 1. In this case e.g. Netflix will not offer full HD or 4k resolutions, but otherwise everything works fine, which is a balance between DRM and usability.

This reminds me of my very short foray into streaming services. I purchased a month of Netflix, or rather I got their 1 month trial, and opened the website to watch something. First it didn't open on Firefox, and they told me to install Chrom(ium). I didn't like it, but went away and `apt install`ed Chromium. Then it blocked my account because I was using a VPN. I liked this even less (I gave it a credit card number, so they know I'm not a bot or something using a VPN to hide traffic), but I still disabled my VPN. Mind that these two steps already cost me 45 minutes of browsing through FAQs and forums to figure out.

Then I finally open something, after installing proprietary software, a new browser, and disabling my privacy-protecting VPN. I'm presented with a video playing in glorious 1280x720 resolution. I just laughed to myself, closed the tab, and opened thepiratebay.org.

So let me get this straight. I'm paying for a service and I get headaches, restrictions upon restrictions, and mandatory malware, all for the privilege of watching gimped resolution content? Whereas if I went on piratebay I could get a 4K mkv file I can watch anywhere I want, no internet and no software required? You can fuck right off.

Strikes me as odd how anyone can describing paying for a shit service as "a balance between DRM and usability".

jowsie3• 7 years ago

You're clearly not representative of the average Netflix customer.

phist_mcgee• 7 years ago

Well look at it from Netflix's perspective. You are in no way an indicative normal customer. They don't support certain browsers, because there is no need to. Privacy hiding VPNs are used to evade content locking as part of Netflix's business models/licensing agreements, so why would they allow your privacy hiding vpn? I'm not agreeing that they should do these things, but you are approaching a service from a very standpoint, and I can understand why your experience is less than optimal. Being a ubuntu/debian user you must have encountered this before righ ;)

Kasoha• 7 years ago

yeah, I'm looking. Dude paid for the content with his credit card. Yet netflix still putting up hurdles after hurdles. No wonder dude ended up on piratebay. If I buy something I expect goods delivered to me. app store, play store, GOG, steam, everything...

matheusmoreira9• 7 years ago

People outside the United States have to suffer through all that for access to a subset of the full Netflix library. And Netflix is one of the better companies in that regard. Most of them simply tell me the content is "not available in my country". And when people ask them why, they have the gall to blame "piracy".

andrepd2• 7 years ago

Ahaha, yes I should also mentioned I did all that to have access to netflix originals and little else.

fyfy18• 7 years ago

Ironicallly I think this is why the privacy 'war' can never be won by these corporations. I live in a small European country where even if you subscribe to Netflix, Amazon (which isn't officially available here), cable TV, and whatever else you can find, you still won't get a lot of new movies and shows that you may want to watch. The only way you can get them is by pirating them, so that's what people do.

The problem is piracy isnt geo-blocked, so if someone here pirates a movie and shares it, it's also available to someone in the US.

I'm not sure why they keep pushing these technical restrictions, when really the issue is they don't allow people to buy their content in the first place.

acdha• 7 years ago

Look at it from Netflix’s perspective: most of their collection has legal strings attached, even most of their exclusives, with substantial penalties if they don’t take measures to encumber content and there’s a real threat of auditors catching implementation lapses. If they use HTML video with EME and someone comes up with a way to copy it, that’s a problem for Google’s Widevine (used by both Chrome and Firefox), Microsoft, Apple, etc. as long as they can show they used the system correctly. Similarly, they don’t need to be absolutely perfect in region locking as long as they can defend the mechanism in court. Similarly, VPN detection needs to be at the level where they have a good chance of avoiding a court case – auditors definitely know to try that.

Now ask how many Linux users running Firefox without the Widevine CDM installed over a VPN there are likely to be and how much revenue that brings in compared to the legal risks of not being able to check those boxes.

joshspankit• 7 years ago

Is anyone surprised that Disney would DRM in draconian ways?

BooneJS• 7 years ago

MLB Advanced Media was created to stream baseball games for MLB.tv. They did such a great job that other sports networks, ESPN, and even HBO have licensed their technology to successfully roll out streaming and handle the GoT bandwidth crush.

I'm looking forward to Disney+, and it's a shame that in 2019 a company as large as Disney with a back catalog and list of properties as massive as Disney can't simply step off the starting blocks with technology that lets them focus on the stories. The only stories I've read lately about the service is about the technology...

dmitrygr• 7 years ago

As always, the pirate bay offers a DRM free alternative. Maybe one day the media companies will learn that the one thing consumers cannot stand is being inconvenienced, even slightly.

As long as their solution provides less value than pirating, or is a bigger pain in the ass than pirating, they will lose.

Unfortunately for them, pirating has become so easy, that unless they become like iTunes, they are dead. Just a matter of time.

city41• 7 years ago

I think you greatly overestimate how many people pirate content.

matheusmoreira9• 7 years ago

{"errors":[{"code":"platform-verification-failed","description":"Platform verification status incompatible with security level"}]}

Any information about this "platform verification"? What exactly are they verifying and how?

ru999gol• 7 years ago

While some streaming services might work with Linux, almost all will not show HD or better quality. Just torrent everything, its so much easier, this DRM clusterfuck just gives you less reason to feel bad about it.

snr• 7 years ago

This is a naive question but I've always wondered, what motivates people who distribute pirated content for free?

I get why someone would consume pirated content but why would someone take the risk of publishing pirated content? Is it the ad traffic that the publishers get?

Sendotsh3• 7 years ago

Easiest way to think of it is as a competitive hobby. Groups compete to release stuff fastest for cred.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez_scene

h4waii• 7 years ago

To some, it's a game, it's a challenge, and it comes with recognition and/or reward -- potentially in the way of private services or paid requests.

Or, as the quote goes, "some men just want to watch the world burn", whichever world they deem unworthy of existing.

fredthomsen• 7 years ago

I see a future where media consumption via general purpose computing platforms is dead and only special super locked down devices can only play certain media. Seems like Disney+ will start us down that road

NoblePublius• 7 years ago

You would think Disney would want to support chromeOS because of its widespread use in schools

dudus• 7 years ago

Everyone here freaking out about DRM and how they think they're entitled to free pirate it if Disney don't offer the format they want. While I'm just looking at all my TV's that support casting from my phone by default. Who even watches movies on their computer anyway. Your TV will support it natively if not right away just buy a Chromecast or Roku and be done with it. There are worse things to freak out about.

m3adow• 7 years ago

Who even watches movies on their computer anyway.

I do for example. I don't own a TV, my beamer is directly connected to my PC. Just because your use case is covered doesn't mean everyones is.

Your TV will support it natively if not right away just buy a Chromecast or Roku and be done with it.

"If it doesn't work for you, just buy new hardware." - I'd call that entitled. I prefer to just don't subscribe to a service forcing me to buy additional hardware due to customer unfriendly DRM.

Marsymars• 7 years ago

I have an HTPC. It works very well. Any other solution would involve compromises that aren't acceptable to me.

diminoten• 7 years ago

I've never understood the pirate mentality as anything other than raging entitlement. If I have ever pirated anything, I certainly didn't do so out of any sense of righteousness, I'd have done it out of greed. No reason to dress it up like I'm some kind of hero.

cryptozeus2• 7 years ago

I was surprised as well to find out that many people here still watch the content on laptop. Everyone’s case is different but if you are going to watch starwars hd then might as well get a nice hd tv and forgot about the laptop.

mastrsushi• 7 years ago

Disney+ OTOH seems to have the drm features kranked up to maximum draconian settings

Is this likely for legal reasons then? Maybe Disney doesn't want OS's outside of the main consumer audience to have the ability to stream. Linux could be feared for capturing streaming data and scraping sites. It's a lot more customizable of an OS.

Sort of like when Sony dropped Yellow Dog Linux on PS3.

What other non Linux devices are having this problem?

p2t2p• 7 years ago

I’m a simple man, you treat me like a thief, I behave like one, I’m not paying for single DRMed video, I pirate it. I do pay for music though. On bandcamp.

ReptileMan• 7 years ago

Torrent sites use no DRM and the speeds are higher.

mcv2• 7 years ago

I do care about Linux, but I'm not using it to watch Disney+. I stream from my Android phone to Chromecast, which works great the first time. After a while the phone seems to lose track of the fact that it's casting and I can't stop it or start a different movie.

t0ddbonzalez• 7 years ago

There won't be much of an overlap on the Venn diagram of Fedora users and Disney+ subscribers.

Raise a hand if you're shocked that Disney would use the highest level of DRM possible, given their history of guarding their intellectual property...

cryptozeus2• 7 years ago

I don’t get the article, seems a bit of premature noise. They said they are aware of it and working on it. Just because it has not been fixed in 1 month during trial period does not mean they will not fix this.

Side note I had a recruiter call from disney + team to work on their app for windows. They are building this thing in wpf. I passed.

LeoNatan25• 7 years ago

Use torrents, those are DRM free, easy to use and often just as good if not higher quality than streaming services.

xs83• 7 years ago

Well unfortunately for Disney, my main TV box is an Ubuntu NUC so I will definitely not be subscribing to it. Just like when the NHL did the same - when there were better piracy options than your paid for service (which I might add I had no problem paying for for years) - you want to ask questions.

Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

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