Windows media 10/11 DRM hacked

[RichUK]

LINK

I'm sure MS will fix this....

But at the end of the day can DRM really prevent pirated media content.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

its pointless for them to try to stop it. it bothers the honest people that buy it more than it does the pirates.

 

[drag]

But at the end of the day can DRM really prevent pirated media content.

Is that a question?

The answere is undoubtably 'no', it can't. DRM is not practicle. Theoretically it is possible, but in reality it will require vastly different ways that networks, computers, sociaty, and software works.

But that's ok. DRM isn't about stopping piracy and it will never will be. Laws are designed as a attempt to stop or limit piracy, not DRM.

A couple current uses of DRM:
- DRM is audio books and 'ebooks'. Audible uses it to make it difficult to do 'casual' piracy. This makes it easier to obtain licenses to sell this stuff from paranoid Publishers.

For real 'pirates' they simply do audio capture, use tricks with windows media player to strip out drm, scan real books into pdf, do OCR stuff, etc etc.

- Apple uses Itunes as a mechanism to sell music online. It serves two major purposes.. To make the publishers feeling 'safe' against people trading music and such. The second major purpose is to lock people into using Apple's software and buying Apple's ipods.

The reason the Ipod/Itunes lock-in works is because other software and hardware makers can't legally make compatable software and hardware, even though it's very technically possible. This means when you go out and buy a 150 dollars on a 150 songs from Itunes you will only be able to play them on Ipods unless your technically savy enough to work around it. When a paticular non-Apple peice of hardware or software becomes popular Apple will simply send DMCA warning notices to developers and change their formats to make it incompatable.. which they've done several times in the past I beleive.

This means as Ipods get scratched up, their batteries wear out, or they otherwise gradually grow obsolete, this makes it very difficult for users to purchase other people's hardware is it would make their music collection mostly useless unless they put a lot of time and effort into changing formats.

Pirates will simply use programs to strip out the AAC DRM. More casual users will burn songs to cdrom then rip the cdroms via Apple's itunes programs to strip out DRM, but that's a big inconvience.

- Intel (and it's not just Intel, but many other hardware and software companies but Intel is one of the bigger ones) is attempting to use DRM to sell hardware. By working with Microsoft and other people they can ensure a more difficult-to-crack DRM sceme then it is currently possible.

The problem currently facing the industry is that old PCs are fast enough to satisfy most users. Intel would like to see their PC hardware being used in many different situations then it is currently used in.

For instance set-top boxes and high-end multimedia machines. So DRM is being used to attempt to make Hollywood people feel comfortable with commercially supporting these things. Once these hardware-level DRM scemes are supported then Intel would turn around and use to try to make their own stuff seem more compelling.

Of course 'real' pirates have already found ways to crack Intel's DRM stuff.


Remember what is fundamentally happenning in the social sense is that Intel/MS/TiVo/whoever is doing is attempting to restrict your ability to access and use your computer in ways that they don't approve of. Then they are going to license to 3rd party people technology that would allow them gain additional controls on your computer that would be illegal for yourself to prevent or limit.

These people that would have extra controls would be corporations that create content. Anybody who makes movies, music, books, pornography, etc etc would probably purchase licenses since the idea of limiting casual piracy is very compelling to their bottom line.

From the objective point of veiw this isn't a good thing.

its pointless for them to try to stop it. it bothers the honest people that buy it more than it does the pirates.

Exactly..

For instance say you want to buy a movie which has strong DRM:
- You get to pay 5-80 dollars for it.
- Your restricted on what hardware you can play it on.
- Your restricted on what software you can use to watch it.
- Your forced to purchase propriatory software and operating system.
- You may be restricted on how many times you can watch it.
- You may be restricted on how many copies of it your allowed to have.
- You may be restricted on how long you have to watch it.

OR
You can simply download it for free of the internet illegally and have no restrictions.

So since DRM can't ever stop 'real' piracy from a marketting/social point of view it's already a complete failure.

You end for very techinical and practicle reasons why it's just a stupid idea to begin with.


edit:

Personally I just purchase stuff that doesn't have DRM.

For instance I have a crapload of CDs. I go buy one or two about every other month or so and I rip them into Flac format on my computer. That way I end up with songs that are cheaper then what I can get through Itunes, and they don't have restrictions, and they are better sounding.

I'll even go to 'used cd warehouse' type places. When I buy songs from there I get them even cheaper AND it just happens the publishers and artists don't make any money off of those sales! So that makes me a pirate, right? Well if you tried to do something like that with DRM'd media it WOULD because they wouldn't allow it therefore I'd have to break federal law (DMCA) to strip out the DRM. Yeh, fair use.

 

[stash]

That way I end up with songs that are cheaper then what I can get through Itunes, and they don't have restrictions, and they are better sounding.

Man, I thought I was the only dinosaur that did that.

I don't get why itunes and the link are so popular. You don't save any money, and the sound quality is crap. If you can't tell the difference between a song on itunes and a CD, get your ears cleaned. That's the part that I really care about. I'm a musician, and I have a nice audio system. I want to be able to hear everything that the artist wanted me to hear.

I don't have to worry about what happens if I delete the files or lose my license. If I delete the files, the CD is still in my jukebox and I can re-rip.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: stash

That way I end up with songs that are cheaper then what I can get through Itunes, and they don't have restrictions, and they are better sounding.

Man, I thought I was the only dinosaur that did that.

I don't get why itunes and the link are so popular. You don't save any money, and the sound quality is crap. If you can't tell the difference between a song on itunes and a CD, get your ears cleaned. That's the part that I really care about. I'm a musician, and I have a nice audio system. I want to be able to hear everything that the artist wanted me to hear.

I don't have to worry about what happens if I delete the files or lose my license. If I delete the files, the CD is still in my jukebox and I can re-rip.

Nope, I do the same thing too, until they offer lossless audio formats that can be downloaded at a price less than a CD, I don't see the point in going with online services.

 

[Noema]

Originally posted by: stash

That way I end up with songs that are cheaper then what I can get through Itunes, and they don't have restrictions, and they are better sounding.

Man, I thought I was the only dinosaur that did that.

Count me in. I can't stand anything below LAME enconded, EAC ripped MP3s at 320kbps with constant bitrate, or even better, WMA lossless (which is for my media library in my main PC), or Apple Lossless (for my iPod).

I really don't get how people can stomach listening to the poorly ripped and encoded crap they get off the net (legally or otherwise). 128kbps sounds like it's coming out a shoebox, it's awful. I have 10 year old tapes I recorded off my CDs when I was in high school that sound better.