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1 year agoThat’s why Google is pushing hard their Web Environment Integrity. It’s DRM for the browser! They want the TPM chip in your computer to attest that the code running processing the video stream is authentic. Then you can’t slice out the ads because you do not have physical access to the inside of TPM. With HDCP encryption on the HDMI video output, you gonna need to point a literal video camera at the physical screen to DVR the video and slice out the ads later.
They’ve been working hard for decades to lock down the video pipeline with TPM and HDCP and now WEI. They said “don’t worry about it” and we let them. They are really close to snapping the trap shut!
Now please excuse me, my tongue is falling off with all the acronyms…
By some argument, section 103 of the DMCA (which is what grandparent post is referring to) does make it illegal to even talk about DRM circumvention methods.
If youtube implements an “access control measure” by splicing the ads with the video and disabling the fast-forward button during the ad, and you go on a forum and say “Oh yeah, you can write a script that detects the parts that are ads because the button is disabled, and force-fast-forwards through those”, some lawyer would argue that you have offered to the public a method to circumvent an access control measure, and therefore your speech is illegal. If you actually write the greasemonkey script and post it online, that would definitely be illegal.
This is abhorrent to the types among us for whom “code IS free speech”, but this scenario is not just a hypothetical. DMCA has been controversial for a long time. Digg collapsed in part because of the user revolt over the admins deleting any post containing the leaked AACS decryption key, which is just a 32-digit number. Yet “speaking” the number alone, aloud, on an online platform (and nothing else!) was enough for MPAA to send cease and desist letters to Digg under DMCA, and Digg folded.