[benlivengood]

DRM in hardware is about the only other possibility. Make the GPU do the DRM internally. This is actually relatively feasible since most DRM'd video content has hardware acceleration support and GPUs already support HDCP.

Full DRM in hardware would require a much larger coordination across manufacturers than any DRM to date (HDCP), and with AACS's key distribution problems greatly magnified. Specifically, preventing any software fallback would be required to avoid AACS's player key leaks.

[btilly]

Also if the hardware DRM ever gets broken, you've got to choose between breaking the device or getting content ripped.

By contrast with DRM in software and automatic browser updates, you can switch DRM schemes fairly easily. Which is not hypothetical - Google has had to fix Wideview multiple times.

But this needs both streaming and automatic updates. Without automatic updates, you can't depend on devices having the update. Without streaming, something like https://www.redfox.bz/en/anydvdhd.html will eventually emerge and people buying existing content will be able to bypass your control.