This “feature” accomplishes nothing of value for anyone, including the streaming services, but imposes a massive (and for most people, confusing and frustrating) hindrance on honest people simply trying to easily capture high-quality (as opposed to, say, using their damn phone to take a photograph of their reflective laptop display) screenshots of the shows and movies they’re watching.
  • Riskable@programming.devEnglish
    13·
    6 days ago

    For a history of Dumb Restrictions on Media (aka DRM):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

    This fight goes way, way back. Microsoft worked with the media industry in the early 2000s to create a fully-encrypted media input/output pipeline for PCs in order to combat Linux adoption. Microsoft knew that it would be impossible for open source software to decrypt the media streams without making the encryption keys available so they went way out of their way to make sure things like HDCP would “protect” the media being played back on a PC from “illegal” copying.

    It starts with the TPM module in your motherboard/processor and continues outward all the way though to your HDMI monitor (which has to have the hardware keys necessary to decrypt the content).

    BTW: The keys for HDMI HDCP have long since been leaked so you can now cheaply and easily buy all sorts of HDMI capture devices on the cheap from places like AliExpress (they don’t ask any questions). Get one of those and your PC won’t even know that you’re capturing screenshots.

  • kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    11·
    6 days ago

    This is the reason I stopped using Netflix and other streaming sites in the first place. It would intentionally black itself out whenever it thought something might be reading the screen, or whenever I used a monitor it didn’t like. It was literally easier to just find what I wanted on a piracy site.

    This doesn’t even stop anyone from recording stuff illegally. An hdmi to usb capture card is like $20 on Amazon.

    Also god forbid anyone take screenshots of shows to share with their friends. Imho this “feature” has been detrimental to all parties involved, including the streaming sites. They’re just too up their own asses with copyright protection to notice.

  • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
    91·
    6 days ago

    Lmao, the author of this is such a fanboy, that the closest they can bring themselves to criticizing Apple is changing “more sophisticated video pipeline” to “more integrated”.

    The words they’re looking for are: less open, more closed, more controlling, more consumer unfriendly, or more patronizing.

    • misk@sopuli.xyzOP
      6·
      6 days ago

      John Gruber is an insufferable Apple apologist 100% of time but I thought it was an interesting observation that’s worth sharing.

  • catalyst@lemmy.world
    5·
    6 days ago

    This drives me nuts. All I want to do is post my little screenshots and modern technology has taken that bit of fun away. People who do this are essentially free advertising by word of mouth.

    With the use of Snipping Tool — a utility exclusive to Microsoft Windows, users are free to screen grab content from all streaming platforms.

    This has not been my experience at all. The only way I’ve managed to take screenshots of streaming shows on Windows lately has been to use Firefox with the Hardware Acceleration setting turned off.

  • teft@lemmy.world
    5·
    6 days ago

    “No one is screenshotting…”

    You underestimate what people will do to get pirated video.