You know we had that, they called it HDCP. It continues to frustrate users of beamers and what not today, despite the root key being leaked for many years now. Even before the key leak, it never did anything to stop shows appearing as torrents on day one. It will never work, if pirates have to replace the TV panel with an FPGA, they will happily do so.
> It will never work, if pirates have to replace the TV panel with an FPGA, they will happily do so.
Evidence does appear to point to you being right, but I really wonder just who is going to these lengths to pirate things for other people?
A significant investment of time and money, from highly a highly skilled individual, for... bragging rights? Is there some financial motive I'm unaware of?
> but I really wonder just who is going to these lengths to pirate things for other people?
Content owners really seem to underestimate how far people are willing to go for kudos alone on setup cost if the reproduction cost is zero.
Also for some people it's a point of philosophy / concern about future-proofing. Guy I knew back in the day was the biggest torrenter around... He was stuffing a hard drive full of '80s cartoons. His attitude on it was that the creators and owners did not care if those half-hour toy commercials would be around in 100 years, but he did.
As other people already said, some people do it purely "for the just cause". But the piracy is also a literal gold mine if you're able to manage legal risks. Basically, you take ripped content and either re-sell ad-free access worldwide (Netflix is really, really limited to the first world), or make it available for free with heavy ads, or both.
An enterprising and skilled hacker or group of hackers finds rich financial backers to invest in the equipment and time necessary to build a solution. There’s probably a whole underground scene or multiple connected scenes working on this stuff, composed of both hackers and their supporters.
> but I really wonder just who is going to these lengths to pirate things for other people?
The people breaking the systems and the people doing most of the pirating are different.
DRM breaking is a fun challange to some people. You can find these kinds of people breaking all sorts of things. Browser sandbox escapes, remote code execution etc. The mindset is well described in the article here as I can only solve a problem if somebody else implies that I can't. It's a fun challenge! Plus if you do it before others, you get to feel really superior.
The actual pirating is however done by different people. Usually initially by close acquaintances of the DRM breaker, but the methods tend to spread/leak.
If I can crack any piece of DRM, or any digital restrictions, I will do it for free and release it for free. If publishers can't make paying for content more convenient than torrenting or downloading it from a random website, it is their fault. Also, the sense of accomplishment is too great to ignore once you finally crack it.
Thanks! I was trying to figure out what the heck a beamer was. Didn’t seem likely to be a BMW which is the only thing I’ve heard folks in the US call a beamer.
Reminds me of when I visited friends in Germany and they kept talking about their handy and I eventually figured out that’s a cell phone.
