1) Find out the drive name and model number. 2) Find and download a firmware file for that drive. 3) Patch the firmware to turn it either into RPC1 or into auto-restarting RPC2. 4) Flash the file. 5) Carefully never ever use certain software and always cancel out of certain dialog boxes.
All this just because rights-holders want to stop you buying a new DVD from outside your region."
It's the same thing as "Oh I'm sure the government COULD access all my data, but why would they want to?"
Region-locking affects more people than you might think, just not with DVDs anymore. Most of the world using reddit/hackernews/the internet is constantly faced with the frustration of clicking on a youtube link and seeing the copyright notice that says the content is restricted to US-only.
It would be nice if it told me which regions were allowed, so I knew which VPN I should use :P
That's true, but I think it's a cop out.
When Google, Microsoft and Netflix specced, implemented and shipped EME, there was no significant pushback. Of course, as you say, average users don't care - they don't even understand the issue. But tech people didn't care enough either.
Instead, tech people flocked to products made by at least 2 of those 3 responsible for EME. And they kept installing those products for their non-techie relatives and so forth.
The real reason EME was not stopped is that people in the tech industry didn't care. A few of us did, of course, but the majority of us simply didn't. Most tech people agree that DRM is bad, but as a group we did not decrease our usage of Google, Microsoft and Netflix products containing EME.
We could have stopped this. We didn't.
Adobe just became an unwritten standard... again.
Surely there was, at least, some kind of open-source alternative for getting/fetching/caching these keys? Or does it truly rely on blackbox obfuscation?
The client ultimately has to decrypt the data somehow. So the key is there on the client. I take it obfuscation is the only thing standing between the user and that key. Am I correct about that?
Which makes me wonder: How much security does HTML5 DRM really provide? Security through obscurity is a very weak defense, and one that is almost invariable defeated sooner or later. Will this really prove a hindrance to piracy in the long run?
Of course an audit of OpenSSL would do the same.
It Does, because it is illegal(at least in the US) to reverse engineer it.
I don't necessarily disagree. But how, other than through obscurity, does HTML5 DRM inhibit copying, given that the client possesses the decryption key? (Let's assume the would-be attackers aren't dissuaded by any laws that might apply.)
Here are a few cases I recall:
Microsoft screwed a bunch of people with PlaysForSure. Even the brown bar of turd wouldn't play it:
The Zune and PlaysForSure music are both
Certified for Windows Vista, yet the Zune
cannot play PlaysForSure music purchased
from the MSN Music Store[1]
Some hardcore baseball fans have been left
stranded on third base by Major League Baseball
after it decided to change DRM systems. As a
result, game footage purchased under the old
DRM scheme are no longer viewable, leaving fans
with unwatchable footage—and no refunds.[2]
Unless the world population suddenly decides to become digitally literate enough to understand the web in a programmer's context, these patterns of bad unwritten standards will continue out of convenience for the "soccer mom" end user.
The users don't care. I have never been able to convince a layperson why DRM should matter at all to them, have you?.