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The vast majority of DRM protected content (or at least majority by watch time) available in UHD via torrent in a matter of hours. People like to stay away from torrents, because it carries significant risk in many jurisdictions. But the only reason UHD versions are only available via torrent and often not as streams or downloads is bandwidth cost. I can't see how it has any thing todo with DRM. The only thing it maybe cut's down is sharing within friend groups. But even then it only takes one to figure out how to set up a VPN for torrenting.

The whole point is that if it is so easy everyone can do it without asking, it will be more widespread than if there are hurdles in the way, no matter how minor.

"Cutting down sharing in friend groups" is exactly what they hope to achieve.

I have so many people watching off my plex that I should start charging them for second ISP line. And most of my friends are not technical people. This is my way of saying that streaming is available a well.

>>Most techie people I know ripped their DVD collections. Many ripped their Blurays but plenty didn't because it requires specialized software to get around the DRM. Only a handful of them have ripped their UHD discs which require specialized software AND specific hardware AND flashing a specific firmware on that hardware.

>The vast majority of DRM protected content (or at least majority by watch time) available in UHD via torrent in a matter of hours. People like to stay away from torrents, because it carries significant risk in many jurisdictions.

Sounds like you're proving his point? If stripping DRM is so trivial that anyone can pop in a bluray and rip it (like ripping CDs in itunes), piracy would arguably far worse. Pirates today have to brave shady torrent sites and the risk of getting C&D letters. Asking your friend to make a copy is far more accessible.

No. The bottleneck isn't "getting the files", it's sharing them.

If you can ask a friend with basic tech know-how to "rip a CD", you can also ask a friend with basic tech know-how and a VPN to "rip a movie".

>No. The bottleneck isn't "getting the files", it's sharing them.

It's that hard to upload a file to google drive and share a link? Is your model of the average person a bumbling idiot that struggles to do anything other than opening tiktok and flicking up?

Have you seen the average person trying to use technology?

I mean, a real average person, in a natural environment. Not in a movie or in stock footage. The real deal.

I have, and, holy shit. I cannot find the words to express just how unsettling it was of an experience. I still haven't fully recovered from it.

> Pirates today have to brave shady torrent sites and the risk of getting C&D letters. Asking your friend to make a copy is far more accessible.

Or torrent through a VPN, which many people have access to already.

With streaming content, the barrier to just copying it is already as high as pirating. You don't just have a file you can email to your friend -- you have to install and use software to capture the video and then handle the big file that results, on your phone, which is awkward. And that just gives you one movie which in isolation is barely worth anyone's attention to begin with. By the time you've figured out all that, you could have just figured out how to torrent, or even easier, find a free Chinese website that streams the pirated content to your browser just like the original service.

Pretty much. The path of "figure out how to screen capture the entire DRM-unprotected movie as a video and send that entire file" has about the same level of resistance as "find a link to a pirate streaming site that already has the movie on it and send that link". Maybe more.

>The path of "figure out how to screen capture the entire DRM-unprotected movie as a video and send that entire file" has about the same level of resistance [...]

The biggest flaw with this logic is that screen capturing tools specifically don't work on DRM protected content. Moreover if you're trying to imply making a screen recording is some sort of black magic to normies, you must be living in the 2010s. Nowadays both iOS and Android have built-in screen recorders, and on desktops you can use something like loom, which works off a browser.

The biggest flaw with your logic is the utter lack of it.

If I could rip K-Pop Demon Hunters with a screen capture app to obtain a file I could share with a friend, I still wouldn't do it. Because finding a torrent is simpler and faster. I would get a very similar file, but so much faster, because I didn't have to keep the screen running at x1 for the full duration.

And finding a shady website that has it available is simpler and faster still.

>If I could rip K-Pop Demon Hunters with a screen capture app to obtain a file I could share with a friend, I still wouldn't do it.

Well no, because the lack of DRM wouldn't just mean you can manually screen record netflix. It also means you (or someone else) can write an app to screen record netfilx for you, or skip that altogether, similar to something like yt-dlp. After all, if somebody wants to rip youtube (DRM free), they don't screenrecord it, they find some random website/tool off google.

YouTube is not just DRM-free, but cost-free. One of the things you can pay for is "enhanced bitrates", and while you can yt-dlp them if you auth (maybe?), you won't find the random download sites offering it.

Even if money is no object, if you want to watch bluray-quality 4K content your only choice is to buy the physical media and get it shipped to you (and then use some horrible proprietary player interface). I'm not aware of any streaming services offering the same bit-rates at any cost.

Then you didn't look very hard.

https://www.kaleidescape.com/

There are a couple others as well.

This requires a physical device to be installed on-prem, I'm talking about something you can install as an app, or a website you can visit.

Their tagline is also "Downloaded, Not Streamed"

But if you internet is fast enough, you can still just play it without first downloading it.

In my case, the in-browser DRM is what is making things more difficult. Whenever something uses the DRM checks, one or both of my monitors turn off. I am not interested in troubleshooting this beyond disabling DRM in my browsers. I don't generally pirate any media, but it might actually be easier than troubleshooting this hardware problem.

> If you have no DRM and people can just share the install disk, they will do that and piracy will be universal

There are plenty of consumers who are happy to pay a reasonable price for an easy-to-access product.

The question is, does adding DRM onto your product push more of those consumers towards piracy than it does towards paying...?