HD Monitor Causes DRM Issues with Netflix

Jeremiah Cornelius points us to Davis Freeberg's blog, where he discusses his "nightmare scenario" of losing access to his DRM-protected purchases by upgrading his PC monitor. "When I called them they confirmed my worst fears. In order to access the Watch Now service, I had to give Microsoft's DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive. If the software found any non-Netflix video files, it would revoke my rights to the content and invalidate the DRM. This means that I would lose all the movies that I've purchased from Amazon's Unbox, just to troubleshoot the issue. Because my computer allows me to send an unrestricted HDTV feed to my monitor, Hollywood has decided to revoke my ability to stream 480 resolution video files from Netflix. In order to fix my problem, Netflix recommended that I downgrade to a lower res VGA setup."

Comments

Alternative to DRM

[maxrate]

If distributors could invisibly/digitally watermark the video that gets legally downloaded with a user-id/serial number-that could make people think twice about distributing the video freely to others/thereby potentially eliminating the need for DRM. The video would be traceable to the original consumer. I guess it's possible a video file could be 'leaked' accidentally and it could cause a lot of trouble for the consumer/distributor. My guess is that anyone who is willing to pay for a download would likely NOT participate in redistributing the file - but I'm too naive and too much of an optimist at times maybe!

I buy sheet music online - the site only allows you to print to a physical printer NOT a PDF recorder (it also prints my full name on the sheet music). I'm sure there is someone who is smart enough out there to bypass this, I've thought about it (for the technical challenge) but really I'm probably just to lazy to even try.

Lots of Netflix haters... but why hate Netflix?

[SuperKendall]

I don't see why all the antipathy against Netflix exists - it's not even Netflix that is distributing the files he would lose, just that the streaming player will not work because of a corruption in the DRM database.

Blame Windows for not having a better handle on backing up that data, sure. Blame UnBox for selling such crippled media - OK then. But Netflix has no other choices because content providers will not accept other solutions. They aren't even storing anything locally, just streaming.

Re:vista only

[man_of_mr_e]

Well, I was unable to read the original story because of slashdotting. The story seems to be "real", in that things likely happened as he explains, but he's (probably not deliberately, though definately hyperbolically) misrepresenting many of the facts.

First, nothing "scans all your files". Second, he makes it sound like you aren't allowed to watch videos without DRM, which is not correct. Third, it's not terribly difficult to backup your licenses. It's 3 clicks in Windows Media.

What this boils down to is when the DRM is "reset", the signing code is regenerated, which means that any files that use DRM that were downloaded with the old signing code will no longer play, because the signing key is no longer valid. Nothing "scanned all the files", nor were licenses "revoked". If they were revoked, you couldn't back them up and restore them with the new signing key.

Basically, it's the same thing that happens if you wipe your hard disk and re-install iTunes. None of your iTunes music downloads will work, because it regenerated a new signing key.

Now, this is still a problem that adding a higher resolution monitor causes the DRM to no longer function without resetting, but it's not an insurmountable problem, and it's almost *NOTHING* like what the author is trying to portray the situation as.