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Comment by ddaalluu1 | Hacker News Reader

I blame Google for making mpeg-dash so inaccessible. Want/need to use DRM? You won't receive a response from Google/widevine, no matter how often you write to them, despite them claiming otherwise and no matter how much money you already earn them via their advertising network. They have the defacto monopoly and they want to keep it.

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>Want/need to use DRM? You won't receive a response from Google/widevine

Thanks Google!

This doesn’t mean DRM is impossible, it means it’s only available to really big players who can cut deals with Google. Which makes it one of the few parts of the Web API that smaller companies and independent devs can’t use (not that I’d personally want to). Keeping it tightly controlled like that also makes it harder to crack.

>Keeping it tightly controlled like that also makes it harder to crack

Can you elaborate?

>Keeping it tightly controlled like that also makes it harder to crack.

We both know that's BS. I never thought I'd say this but Google is doing good by not selling this "product" to anyone that just asks.

> They have the defacto monopoly and they want to keep it.

FairPlay and PlayReady are there too.

Neither of which are available in Chrome clients though, right?

Thanks I didn't know about those. The previously successful site that needed DRM isn't online anymore because we couldn't find a solution to the streaming audio/video problem with DRM and monetization. Because of that we lost our access to content so the site had to shut down. For 9 years it was the leading news source for an, unnamed here, African country.

So I see, Apple and Microsoft have offers, but that's also not open source or easily accessible? It doesn't matter to me anymore personally. Google cut their own source of income by denying us access to widevine, since the site was fully monetized via Google.

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