

Ask HN: Why not open-source DRM? - onetimehandle

Three points:<p>* Netflix and other media providers can not legally stream media without a DRM solution. Evil DRM may be, but there&#x27;s no way around it.<p>* The current effort to standardize DRM via W3C is not just controversial, it&#x27;s the wrong place to do it.<p>* There&#x27;s no DRM solution for Linux.<p>So why not create an open-source DRM plugin with a similar design? - like quicksilver, but sanely designed and open.
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jakejake
I suggested the same thing in a comment a long while ago and it didn't go over
that well! I don't see any technical reason why there couldn't be open,
standard DRM.

Possibly a reason is the motivations for DRM doesn't really appeal to enough
open source developers with the right skills. People with advanced
cryptography skills may prefer to work either on commercial products or else
things that are more in the spirit of freedom.

Another might be that companies who use DRM tend to want exclusive,
proprietary content protection and/or they want commercial guarantee and
support for their DRM technology.

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wmf
It's trivial to crack DRM by reading the code and finding where to look for
the keys.

But check out OMA DRM; it's an open standard and there are probably open
source implementations (although they're not trusted by Hollywood since by
definition they're not "robust").

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chris_wot
For the following reasons:

1\. Nobody in Open Source _wants_ DRM

2\. It would need to be unbreakable, all DRM relies on security via obscurity.

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onetimehandle
Although the first is certainly true, is security through obscurity really the
only viable option for DRM? It certainly has been proven to not work for
everything else.

~~~
chris_wot
DRM is inherently broken in its own right.

