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Just pirate or I guess spoof your user agent, but just pirate instead: Don’t give Amazon money.
or I guess spoof your user agent
That won’t help. The issue is Widevine DRM protection level. It’s the same issue everywhere.
Piracy it is! The system fails again!
Nothing like being pushed into piracy by anti piracy measures, gj corporations
Streaming services like netflix and prime helped reduce piracy to all time lows. But then corps started getting stupid again and making their own exclusive streaming services, requiring you to have 20 subscriptions just get all the same shit you had with 2. Now drm enforcement on top of that and piracy is back on the rise…
YouTube purchases also don’t work beyond 480p on any desktop except for Mac Safari. These companies are fucking insane.
And yet their servers are using Linux to host a subpar experience for Linux clients.
Hey Amazon, use Windows and MacOS servers (lolz) instead for HD/UHD stream hosting!
Does Apple even make servers? I’ve seen plenty of *NIX servers but it’s usually RHEL or whatever Solaris/SunOS got Frankenstein’ed into.
Apple had server hardware more than a decade ago. It wasn’t really popular altough some institutions with mainly Apple devices did use it.
And there was a macOS Server app which enabled some “server” features, altough the important ones like file sharing are now directly integrated in the OS.
What happens if you change the useragent? It stops working at all?
No, changing the user agent doesn’t change anything. I believe it’s the Widevine DRM level or rather the lack of support for L1. The whole point of DRM is to make it not easily circumventable, so the best solution is piracy.
So the “problem” is hardcoded where? changing the useragent will make the server give both Linux and Windows the same exact data I think, am I wrong? So it’s the browsers fault? Or there’s something I’m missing?
The DRM component you need to be able to decrypt the video is not available, even if you get exactly the same data streamed to your Linux PC, that a Windows/Mac PC would receive.
Okay got it, thanks. Isn’t there a way to run the windows’ DRM component under wine?
The user agent tells the web server what browser requests the website. It’s up to the server whether they ignore the user agent.
DRM protected content isn’t just a http connection away, it’s encrypted content loaded after the initial website is displayed. The video is then decrypted by a proprietary DRM library called Widevine.
Widevine has multiple security levels and Linux only supports the most basic one. This results in low bitrate/resolution with no way around it. The reason Linux only support L3 is that copyright holders don’t think Linux graphics stack gives them the same DRM guarantees that Windows/macOS/Android gives them.
Got it, thanks! Wouldn’t be possible to run widevine under wine?
Unlikely, because Widevine works quite well at protecting it’s content. If the solution was as simple as using wine it’d be great though.
I gave up on prime video long ago for this bullshit, they’re also not the only streaming to serve crap quality on linux.
We really get much better content, quality, experience, and for a cheaper price just by navigating high seas these days.
Probably some DRM shit. This basically reads like “don’t use the software specified here if you want to rip it, because we can only prevent it on these”
We need some mad genius to crack Widevine and make a plugin that works for Linux.
It’s going to have to be restricted-source, but hey, honestly we need to break Google’s stranglehold anyways.
What bother when you can get all the shows from torrents?
Louis Rossman has done a couple videos about this and I tend to agree - Paying customers get a worse experience.
You use the official apps and real accounts and you are still subject to artificial bandwidth restrictions. You use the official YouTube app on your smart TV and you get 10+ midroll ads at unnatural places during a 12 minute video. You “own” purchased content in one platform and it can still be taken away from you or made inaccessible when a service gets collapsed into another platform or rebranded etc. I’m not going to re-buy the same fucking movie I already owned on one streaming platform and have already owned on 2 different formats of physical release.
Curating your own digital copies, regardless of how you obtain them, is the only way to guarantee quality and availability anymore.
does spoofing user agent fix this?
More than just that was required for 4k netflix, when it worked. Last I heard they came up with additional DRM bullshit. I would expect Amazon to at least attempt the same thing
Why wouldn’t it?
I do keep seeing the argument that you can vote with your wallet but I mentioned this in another thread I think a week ago.
I think voting with your wallet doesn’t quite work here because you’re not going to a competitor, you’re simply opting out. What happens is then they don’t see your platform of choice as the issue. All secretly gathered data points like your platform of choice often present a survivorship bias in the usage data.
With that being said, piracy has always been “… An issue of service not price” (GabeN) and I wholly support piracy as the alternative. I just don’t think these services like Amazon are going to ever get the memo.
I do have a weird Tin Foil hat feeling that they’re losing something Linux platform that’s more than support or DRM. What if it’s harder to monitor your usage on Linux platforms and they think that they can encourage you to leave the platform by forcing you to see lower quality so they can get those usage metrics back? (Again, tinfoil hat hypothesis)
Seems like there is no legitimate way for you to get that content. I guess youre forced to be a pirate!
It doesn’t matter how much DRM you put into the service. someone can just spin up a Virtual Machine and install chrome, windows in it and then record the stream from the host system.
I wonder if a user agent switcher would be enough to fool them, or if they’re actually using an exclusive library or something.
I know that Amazon says that, but I regularly watch stuff in full HD (1080p) on linux in Brave.
bflix dot tee oh
fmovies dot tea oooh
join the open seas my friend
Repeat after me OP: Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.
