I’m just surprised this hasn’t already happened already…
Well, you’d lose support for devices which can’t handle software DRM playback, old YouTube clients installed on things like TVs which no longer get updated, if you want to support things that only get Widevine L3 support (most devices) you’re not really going to move the needle since Widevine L3 had been broken since like forever, etc.
The main thing YouTube would gain in practice from such a move would be to get DMCA as a legal tool to crack down on people ripping YouTube videos, but that’d require some very significant resources invested into driving Legal processes against average consumers ripping videos, and the return on investment for that is almost certainly abysmal.
EDIT: I thought of two more reasons:
- Given the enormous scale of YouTube’s transcoding pipeline, just adding in a DRM step into the mix will cost non-significant amounts of money
- All old content will remain non-DRM, because a re-transcode of the full YouTube catalog would cost an impossible amount of money
Same reason Microsoft or Adobe do not stop piracy. They want to create friction that pushes people to pay, but if they fully blocked adblockers then it could create an impetus for a competitor to become popular.
And then you have companies like Google who are going all in on adblocking because that is their entire revenue stream.
You realize google owns youtube, right?
Only enough to make the average user comply.
Again, enough friction.
The original post is about Google
That would result in a mass exodus of their users and potentially result in their competitor popping up. Imagine the 2023 Reddit API controversy, but things going a lot worse for Reddit. Had Reddit taken a more extreme approach and made it entirely impossible to use any 3rd party apps instead of permitting workarounds for users to modify their apps, then they would’ve lost a lot of relevancy and would actually have suffered financially.
The smart way to do this would be to slowly implement anti-user practices over a long period of time, and let your corporate bootlickers gaslight the rest of the users into thinking that everything is fine and that they’re only overreacting.
The greedy little pigboy didn’t do that because the IPO was coming up too fast
If they do, they risk losing customers to other platforms. So far, they decided not to take that risk.
Compatibility with older clients. It will also break some embedded videos on other sites too.
This… kills the site.
(Would see Vimeo or similar take over in about 5 months)
Vimeo is a video hosting platform but it isn’t anywhere near YouTube replacement. It would be such a massive shift in their business model that trying to make it one would result a second dead site
There is no algorithm and search function, I don’t even think there’s a notification feature. Vimeo is mostly for artists to upload to and manually send the link
Things change, and full DRM would hasten that change. YT is a platform, they don’t own the content.
That doesn’t really have any impact on my point. They’re similar in a few ways but it’s like suggesting Wikipedia becomes an IMDB replacement, it would completely change the brand
I will not install DRM on my devices.
I already just use screen capture recording to take videos in my desktop playing YouTube on a browser. Could they even stop that?
This is different, and doesn’t address screen recording.
HDCP uses three systems:[5]
- Authentication prevents non-licensed devices from receiving content.
- Encryption of the data sent over DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, GVIF, or UDI interfaces prevents eavesdropping of information and man-in-the-middle attacks.
- Key revocation prevents devices that have been compromised and cloned from receiving data.
It would stop someone from playing DRM content to an unauthorized TV, but does not mention anything about screen recording your own device. There are some built in protections for preventing an application from being recorded but I have no doubt there are bypasses
Maybe I’m not following but this seems to be talking about applications communicating with hardware designed to be authorized to play.
How would a video playing on a browser like YouTube on my existing, old hardware be able to parse what’s authorized? Short of making YouTube a program on my computer, how does it on a browser know what else I’m running?
I mean that’s what DRM stops…
You can’t record it, its just a blackscreen…
You can try it. Or Try asking a friend/relative to screenrecord their netflix… its just black
I mean unless you literally take out a camera to record it… but then the video quality degrades since you aren’t gonna get a 1:1 from making a videotape of a screen.
It is often the graphics hardware blocking it in this case… disabling hardware decoding in the browser may ‘help’, if your CPU can handle it (you can still use hardware encoding, tho)
From a quick google search, seems like you can disable hardware acceleration to record with OBS. Or you can use other dedicated software. And thats not even covering the bypasses that can likely be done on Linux
To add, you could always capture via the output video too, regardless of the DRM nonsense. Once it leaves the device in a format a display can present it, any device that can utilize that signal can record it.
There’s always a million ways to skin the cat.
Netflix being an application that is running on a TV seems like a very different situation than a video playing inside of a browser. How exactly would YouTube know or be able to stop screen recording short of forcing me to actively run a program?
idk how they do it, but browsers have DRM built right into it, you can play a stream from netflix but if you try to record it, its just a blackscreen…
Youtube could implement the same thing… I mean Google literally made Widewine
Also, apparantly you also need Secure Boot and TPM enabled to get the full HD content, otherwise it runs on Widewine L3 instead which only displays content in Standard Definition… not HD.
The browsers implement the DRM protections. It will be black if you try to record.
You can also run Netflix in a browser
Nope
I mean that’s what DRM stops…
…and nobody wants that.
Me: “I’m curious why this evil dictator hasn’t enacted his evil plans yet?”
You: “Why do you support evil?”
So what are you trying to tell?
I imagine the fact that they allow the embedding of videos on other sites make it hard to restrict the playback to that degree. There seems to be a tipping point at which they’ll work on breaking something, more than likely based on it’s popularity When enough 3rd party frontends figured out background playback, they took the time to develop a way to break it. I think the same will happen when they feel too many people are circumventing their data scraping, ads or algorithms. They’ll finally go all in but it’s clear that they don’t want to do that just yet.
Because they don’t care if people download it? 99% of users will still go to watch the video on youtube because it’s more convenient. I guess if they would stop ad-blockers first and then everyone who can’t stand ads left and started torrenting or something they might try that but for now it just doesn’t make sense.
