I remember the idea that DRM is not about controlling the viewers directly, but about controlling the makers of playback devices (both hardware, as in GPUs and TVs, and purely software). The point is not in making the bits uncopyable at all, but to prevent the makers of things like Roku or Chrome from making the access too easy, like skipping ads, let alone downloading.

Most viewers are not computer-savvy, even if they spend every day in an office facing a computer screen. If 90% of audience would know or bother to go no farther than the legal distribution channels, and won't be able to plainly download the high-res media in one click, the DRM has worked.

It suffices to make pirating inconvenient enough for the uninitiated, and let the advanced and determined minority pirate away, of course always threatened and stigmatized, to keep the operations low-key. A small amount of pirates, imho, only improves the profits, because they brag about having just seen the new hot thing in all its glory, and thus induce FOMO in their audience.

Of course the legally-buying, technology-naive audience is inconvenienced. But they know no better, and the whole point of control is, well, making people submit to what they rather won't, isn't it?

The DRM doesn’t really make pirating any more inconvenient for the (pirate) consumers (they get e.g. an MKV file without any of it). If there was no DRM on the legal platforms, it would be easier for pirates to release new stuff, but just marginally so.

If there was no DRM, ordinary viewers would still choose Netflix over torrents, and perhaps some more tech-savvy users would choose it as well (since many do want to support film makers, but are opposed to DRM). It would still be as hard to create a “pirate Netflix” as it is now, because of legal threats and because it’s tricky to monetize it.

DRM literally serves no purpose outside of some corporate politics bullshit.

No, with DRM, you can't make and sell a player that allows to skip ads, ignore regional limitations, etc. If you do, your key is revoked.

Pirating high-res videos already requires special hardware to remove HDCP. It's cheap now because HDCP is notoriously weak. A future standard may start needing a $500 device, or even a $5000 one.

> No, with DRM, you can't make and sell a player

Is it still relevant nowadays? I thought most people just went to online streaming, and you don’t need DRM to enforce all that stuff there.

> Pirating high-res videos already requires special hardware to remove HDCP.

That is true, and a new standard might make it harder for a few years, but:

1. The switch won’t happen overnight, which means pirates would still use HDCP while working on the new one.

2. It’s possible to make piracy prohibitively expensive, but the standard would have to be really really complex. Like, “putting hidden watermarks with display serial number on the stream and revoking keys just for that display” kind of complex. I don’t think it’s feasible.

Yes, nearly every TV is now "smart", that is, contains a player, something like Roku.

Controlling that is worth quite something.

Only one of the purposes of DRM is to prevent piracy. There are others.

One of which is to prevent mainstream media player manufacturers from making a hardware or software player which can skip region coding/studio tags/anti-piracy tags/trailers/random adverts. Or even from having a generic "skip 30s" feature.

You want to legitimately be able to play our stuff so you can sell millions of units of your player to unsophisticated consumers? Agree to these terms, and this fee schedule, or you don't get a key to play them. Fuck us over, and we'll revoke your key. Lol.