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by lxgr 438 days ago
But what even is the business case here? I get the idea of encrypting pay TV, but isn't the entire point of free broadcast TV that it's... free?

It would be a different story if the DRM were available ubiquitously, e.g. in the way that arguably Widevine is for online streaming (but certainly not broadcast TV). Are rightholders that afraid of unauthorized out-of-market rebroadcasts that they'd rather obliterate their reachable market with stunts like that?
3 comments
Lammy 437 days ago
> But what even is the business case here? I get the idea of encrypting pay TV, but isn't the entire point of free broadcast TV that it's... free?

This should be a big clue that the spying is the point, and all the DRMs of the world are justification for spying instead of the other way around. Total Information Awareness is the path to completing the Great Work.

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tonyarkles 438 days ago
Yeah, if I squint and think back to the reasoning from previous generations of tech like this it’s that they don’t want people to be able to make bit-perfect recordings to save and share. By putting DRM on the broadcast stream they’re trying to make sure that it’s only usable as a one-time broadcast.
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Marsymars 438 days ago
Free as in beer. See what happened to Aereo.
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