back to article If HDMI screen rips aren't good enough for you pirates, DeCENC is another way to beat web video DRM

An anti-piracy system to protect online video streams from unauthorized copying is flawed – and can be broken to allow streamed media from Amazon, Netflix, and others to be saved, replayed, and spread at will, we're told. The Common Encryption Scheme (CENC) is a form of DRM that is used by video-streaming giants to ensure …

  1. Joe W Silver badge

    ISO = extortion scheme...

    "Use the standards or else!"

    "What are the standards?"

    "Hand over your money or you'll never know!"

    1. stiine Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: ISO = extortion scheme...

      And the answer to that is "if the spec is requred by any laws or government refulations then the specifications must be public".

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: laws or government refulations

        "refulations"? Hmm.. interesting portmanteau coinage there: perhaps refuted regulations? refusal to regulate? ...?

        :-)

  2. sitta_europea Silver badge

    *Every* anti-piracy scheme designed to protect movies and the like is doomed because it's more or less trivial to capture the video and sound outputs.

    I could do it very easily, but I can't be bothered because I'm not really interested and at six for a pound I could buy vastly more DVDs from the charity shops than I could ever find time to watch.

    Even my wife cracks the copy protection on DVDs after she's bought them so that she can compress the data by a factor of five or ten and put a lot more movie files on her 3TB movies disc.

    I really can't understand why people make such a fuss about it, they're just bringing attention to the flaws in the cobbled-together systems.

    1. Spazturtle Silver badge

      At the end of the chain is always a scaler that converts the signal into a raw un-encrypted pixel map to send to the display panel, there is no way that set can be protected. So all of this is just a folly anyway.

    2. Mage Silver badge

      Re: and the like is doomed

      A 4K camera is now cheap, as is a 4K screen.

      Pull the curtains and camera on tripod pointing at screen. Sound by line / earphone to analogue in.

      Never been easier.

      HDCP and all other DRM are consumer taxes and never stopped commercial pirates.

      An ebook is slightly harder if you want decent text from the still photos of the screen (but most Amazon & Adobe DRM is defeated anyway).

      DRM serves to divide & conquer markets and control consumer consumption, it has no effect on commercial pirates who may even copy at studio, production facility, projection booth, or cut spine off paper ARC and auto-sheet-feed scanner. Though some now have page turners and cameras.

      1. Wade Burchette

        Re: and the like is doomed

        DRM currently has a 0% success rate in stopping copyright infringement. Which means that the only thing it does is make life harder for legitimate paying customers.

        1. MOH

          Re: and the like is doomed

          That's been the case for decades now.

          I don't think the companies care

        2. Marty McFly Silver badge
          Facepalm

          Re: and the like is doomed

          Ah! But is the goal to stop commercial pirates from making & selling copies of their content?

          Or is the DRM target actually legitimate paying customers? Make it non-trivial for a couple of buddies to share content, and they will all buy their own copies. They just need to make the DRM pain hurt enough that the common person is unable to create a 'backup'.

          1. Blazde Silver badge

            Re: and the like is doomed

            is the goal..

            As usual with these things there is no singular goal.

            The goal of the distributors is to demonstrate to content producers that they've done their best to prevent piracy, even though it's hopeless, because otherwise they don't satisfy the contract and get the content.

            The goal of the DRM technology salespeople is to tell a nice story full of technical jargon but light on technical details about their new fangled, which if the distributors are careful not to question too much can give them a nice story to pass on to content producers to demonstrate they're doing their best to prevent piracy.

            The content producers' goal is to demand that best possible efforts are made to prevent piracy, partly in the vain hope that one day eventually someone will find a good way to prevent piracy, but mainly so they can tell their shareholders they've done their best to prevent piracy, and occasionally so they can point judges to their efforts when arguing in court that the pirates have done naughty things to undermine efforts to prevent piracy.

            1. Brad Ackerman

              Re: and the like is doomed

              And the goal of the streaming services and providers of “purchased’ video (if they can take it away at their pleasure, it’s a rental) is to lock you into their clients—to force ads to be displayed and tracking data to be exfiltrated, to make it harder to buy/rent from a different provider, and probably a few other reasons that don’t come to mind at the moment.

              1. Blazde Silver badge

                Re: and the like is doomed

                The goal of Amazon appears to be hijack your checkout experience for say, a DVD you do hope to actually own, and make you sign-up for Prime if you don't succeed at a tedious Where's Wally-esque game that involves finding the only link on the screen that says 'maybe next time' in the blandest font buried among all the big colourful 'ok', 'whatever', 'take my money' buttons.

                After that I think it's easier on them if you don't watch any of the actual streaming lest you realise you're being fleeced..

        3. TonyJ

          Re: and the like is doomed

          "...DRM currently has a 0% success rate in stopping copyright infringement. Which means that the only thing it does is make life harder for legitimate paying customers..."

          Exactly - remember the anti-piracy messages at the start of DVD's that you couldn't skip?

          Anyone ripping them cut that entire thing, so anyone watching an actual pirated copy wasn't bothered by the hassle. Legitimate purchasers had to sit through them, though.

          1. TonyJ

            Re: and the like is doomed

            Also, remember the "you wouldn't download a car..."

            Wrong! I absolutely would have, if I could have! :-)

            1. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge
              Coat

              Re: and the like is doomed

              I did, but my 3D printer wasn't big enough.

      2. katrinab Silver badge
        Pirate

        Re: and the like is doomed

        My camera connects to the computer via an HDMI cable and an HDMI capture device.

        My screen connects to the computer via an HDMI cable.

        I could cut out both the screen and camera from that and get better image quality.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: and the like is doomed

          >I could cut out both the screen and camera from that and get better image quality.

          Only if your camera has "High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection" - the computer won't output content to a display that doesn't promise to only be a display

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "or else people could stream something once, save it, and replay it forever, wrecking the whole subscription model approach."

    Even worse - instead of watching the stream in real time they could watch the recording and fast forward through the ads.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      In Belgium, telecom provider Telenet has updated all their boxes so you can no longer fast forward through the ads, I believe even even the ones you recorded.

      I wonder just how many subscribers they lost that way, but I suspect it was not a sufficiently educational number..

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        The trick is for everyone to pirate and share the ads. Then they will introduce ever more complex copy protection onto the ads until nobody can ever mange to display them

      2. David Hicklin Bronze badge

        > Telenet has updated all their boxes so you can no longer fast forward through the ads

        same solution as live TV now - just mute the sound and play with something (or someone) else until they have stopped and turn the sound back on again.

  4. Lee D Silver badge

    I have to say that although I don't pirate content, HDMI's in-built "content protection" is all but useless by the look of it. It very much reeks of DVD's region protection or content control where you just need a cheap device from China that ignores it and everything "just works".

    And it seems, again, that those people with the cheap, junky hardware - or even just outright pirating - get a better deal than those customers who buy top-of-the-line kit that then honours such things and only stops legitimate users watching their content.

    My dad had a very expensive Philips DVD player back in the day and it wouldn't read other regions, wouldn't play DVD-Rs, couldn't play even older formats like VCDs or SVCDs, MP3 CDs, etc., forced you to honour the DVD operations (so you couldn't skip ads on the DVD, etc.).

    He hated that my £10 DVD player allowed you to do all that, and pretty much gave you the same output because DVD is just digital data.

    HDMI content protection appears to be the same.

    And now even streaming protection appears to be going the same way.

    Knock-off, cheapo devices and pirates - all the content none of the hassle, store perfect copies digitally and keep forever.

    Genuine customers - locked out of their own purchased content, lose it when a service shuts up shop because they can't back it up.

    We kind of got over this with MP3s, didn't we? Didn't the music industry eventually wake up and realise that people just want their music and don't want obstacles and they were still making billions even if people had MP3 files with no DRM on them? Even iTunes ended up going that way. Are we going back to the old ways again?

    I don't actually pirate. But I ripped all the DVDs I own and put them on my own Plex as basic MP4 files with no gumph or DRM. My entire media-viewing experience is SO MUCH BETTER.

    The other stuff I watch I record off TV as direct, perfect MPEG-2 streams captured from DVB-T. No DRM, stays around as long as I can keep hold of it.

    I never understood streaming at all. It's like renting access to someone else's Plex and it all goes away if you stop paying, and they can delete and change content any time they like and load it with ads throughout every video if they want.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I never understood streaming at all.

      I'm ambivalent. There is loads of content that I only want to watch once, or only once every decade or so. And that if I never got to watch it again, it would not be any kind of disaster. In which case streaming is a reasonable solution that avoids cluttering the house with dvds, or filling hard drives with rarely needed bits.

    2. Marcelo Rodrigues
      Happy

      "I never understood streaming at all. It's like renting access to someone else's Plex and it all goes away if you stop paying, and they can delete and change content any time they like and load it with ads throughout every video if they want."

      Streaming allows me access for a HUGE number of music/movies I couldn't ever afford to. Yes, one show can go away from one day to the next. Yes, I must keep paying to watch it. Fine by me: 99,99% of what I watch I have no intention to watch again or keep. The (very) few things I think is worth keeping, I buy a physical copy.

      The rest? Stream away, baby. Stream away.

    3. DS999 Silver badge

      HDMI's in-built "content protection" is all but useless by the look of it

      Not sure if the same is true for HDMI 2.x for 4K video, but for HDMI 1.x the HDCP 1.x standard is useless because of stolen/compromised keys. Many (maybe most) cheap HDMI splitters use stolen keys and don't bother to HDCP protect the output. So basically they act as "HDCP strippers", allowing unecnrypted HDMI to be fed to encoders etc.

      While compromised keys are revoked (that's the main reason your cheap HDMI splitter stops working, it isn't because the electronics go bad) it depends on software updates to the device outputting the HDMI. So as long as it is getting software updates it is required to update the HDCP key revocation list. But there are many many devices out there that no longer get updates but are still perfectly functional, so you don't have to worry your "HDCP stripper" will stop working one day.

  5. Mockup1974

    >We kind of got over this with MP3s, didn't we? Didn't the music industry eventually wake up and realise that people just want their music and don't want obstacles and they were still making billions even if people had MP3 files with no DRM on them? Even iTunes ended up going that way. Are we going back to the old ways again?

    Exactly. And with the new tech illiterate Zoomer generation, they prefer paying for music streaming because pirating is "too hard" and they just want to install an app. I'm sure the same would work for video streaming, too. No need to keep the DRM really, because either you want it for free and will pirate or you want the convenience of using an app on your TV/PC/phone and are happy to pay. DRM doesn't make a real difference either way.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      The problem is that old habits die hard and the Copyright Cartels LIKE being able to dictate who can watch/read/listen to their media across arbitrarily carved up areas of the world

      Get rid of the control freaks and things would be a lot smoother

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        They need to be reminded of a simple fact - there are a lot more of us than there are of you. You are outnumbered if you try to play games.

      2. nightflier

        And surveillance

        Big Brother also wants to know what you watch, and when.

        1. stiine Silver badge
          Big Brother

          Re: And surveillance

          So, do as I do and leave a random, never-ending stream playing on my other monitor (the one that I cant actually see) and let them profile me to their heart's content.

  6. Mr Anonymous

    ISO standards docs

    Estonia's your choice for ISO docs. https://evs.ee

    They probably average 30-40€ or some much less, in the UK from BSI and direct to the IEC, it's a ripoff scheme.

    Eg EVS-EN IEC 62386-101:2022 €31.72

    CHF345 (£309.72) from iec webstore

    BSI £150

    The other ripoff is some standards are broken down into multiple parts. The example above is Dali ligting, so if you want the complete set to write a comprehensive open source library you need to buy 17 parts. Not so much an open standard as raising the costs for the competition.

    1. Fred Daggy Silver badge

      Re: ISO standards docs

      Open standards are just as important as open source. Arguably more so.

      It is getting to the point that our modern cultural heritage is being locked behind encryption. (Imagine if the Mona Lisa was scrambled and you need to put a 2€ coin into a box to see it for a few seconds)

      Now, there are copies of the standards out there, but they could get lost. And then future generations might not know which standards apply to which content. With a bit of luck there are decent records ... that survive the fall of humanity.

      Every piece of content owes something to the society that allows it to be developed. Even having a society that allows free time for content creation. Yes, the content creator deserves something for that effort and result. But, it is a two way street. Which is tilted in one direction only.

      If we don't have Open Standards, we do risk losing this generations place in artistic history.

  7. theOtherJT Silver badge

    Digital eyes. Digital ears.

    This makes me laugh every time. You can keep trying to protect your precious bit-stream however you like, but ultimately you're going to have to decode it into something my entirely non-digital eyes can see and my equally non-digital ears can hear and as soon as you do all copy protection is rendered totally worthless.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Implement in Reverse

    Can they DE-DECNEC so that Amazon stop pushing Ring of Power trailers onto me everytime I load up Amazon Video?

  9. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I think the pirates are already doing OK without DeCENC, considering if you look on torrent sites for exclusive shows from Netflix, Amazon or Disney you will find pretty much all of them on there. Usually within a hours of them being released on the platforms.

  10. Arthur Daily

    No money for you!

    As a boomer, I do and will never pay for TV. With 19 minutes of ads and fluff per hour, I moved to used DVD's. I also will not be told a 'purchase' is now a 'only rented' then told that platform is now kaput (Sony Ultraviolet). Op-shop DVD's work for me. Sadly, the pre-2000 dvd sets are in short supply. I am content to know most things are gettable, and no need to do anything, but wait for the dvd boxset to go on sale. Also a lot of woke releases and cancelled broken 1st season flops have taught many that there is nothing worth downloading anyway. This decoding thing was always cat and mouse stuff, and the unemployment situation always means top tier engineers can amuse themselves. A huge survey revealed people hate bundling, and would like a 'no fuss' way of paying per view without subscription and compulsory privacy detail theft. Guess the market will sort this out.

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