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Piracy Media

'Widevine Dump': Leaked Code Downloads HD Video From Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix (torrentfreak.com) 24

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A GitHub user who goes by the name "Widevinedump" has published several repositories that allow people to download HD video from popular streaming platforms, including Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix. The code appears to be the real deal but the 'free' use is fairly limited and may not be very secure either. [...] TorrentFreak spoke to a source who confirmed that these scrips are indeed the real deal. That said, they appear to be relatively old pieces of code that may not be the most secure. Using these tools could get someone banned by a streaming platform, or perhaps worse.

There is another major issue that raises suspicion. Most of the download tools don't come with the Content Decryption Module (CDM) that's included to download 4K content. To gain access to that, people are required to buy it from the leaker, who writes that people can contact them via email. That said, there is also a free L1 Content Decryption Module posted in the 'LenovoTB-X505X-L1-KEY' repository. A trusted source confirmed to TorrentFreak that this CDM is indeed working. However, as Widevinedump also notes, it may not be active for much longer.

While these leaks are a major blow to the streaming platforms, which do all they can to keep their content secure, the developer has another agenda. In addition to selling CDMs, the code was apparently leaked to "punish" some people on Discord, who we assume shared it privately. "Hi! My name is WVDUMP. I am Leaking the CDM to burn it & punish few idiots that think themselves as dicord lords [sic]," the developer writes. Needless to say, using these tools can lead to all sorts of trouble and is clearly in violation of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions. As such, we doubt they will stay on GitHub for much longer.

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'Widevine Dump': Leaked Code Downloads HD Video From Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix

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  • using mommy and daddy's streaming account. the way the scripts download data is VERY obvious and will likely lead to your account being banned.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      and will likely lead to mommy's and daddy's account being banned.

      FTFY.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Has there actually been a problem ripping those services before? Capture cards exist. And pirates tend to deliver a superior product by filtering off some of the "how do we save compute and bandwidth server side" compression schemes used by the providers already.

      • by Revek ( 133289 )
        I was thinking more how amazon and others limit playback to 1080p in linux when there is no technical reason for this limit.
        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Technical reason is likely "too few people to invest into making it work correctly as we can see in our telemetry". It's important to remember that "technical reasons" are not limited to just "IT reasons". Many business problems are also highly technical in nature without being IT related.

          In fact, one of the primary mark of a good engineer as opposed to a bad one is knowing how to design something just perfect to requirements, not too flimsy of a design that it breaks in too many scenarios, and not too stro

          • by Anonymous Coward
            It's really just because it's too easy to circumvent the DRM and get a 4k version. Limiting the damage to 1080p is a compromise.
            Nothing to do with over designing or overbuilding or any kind of extra service or costs.
            • The 4K content always winds up on pirate sites anyway though. Direct stream decrypts too, not through something like capturing the HDMI transmission. So while they definitely sold it that way at first, continuing to not allow it while their DRM has been broken wide open anyway has to be motivated by other reasons. It's not like supporting Linux would allow casual piracy by non-technical users; it's not *that* easy. Netflix, Amazon, HBOMax, and Disney+ all use broken DRM for their 4K content, which appears o
        • Amazon won't allow 4k playback on Windows either.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        using capture cards (or just software capture which would work just as well these days on a modern computer) is a relatively time consuming process whereas a proper script would generally yield something higher quality without the headache of doing a re-encode and not trigger banning from the service

        more often than not, anyone sophisticated enough to do this via some form of screen capture would just as soon pay some nominal amount to download via seedbox/usenet in as little as a minute (if you have a fast

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There have been tools to rip these streams, just not available on the public internet. They were kept within the piracy scene.

        Pirates don't bother with capture cards, they rip the original streams for maximum quality. They also get all the metadata that way, stuff like chapter markers and subtitles.

        Sadly it appears that these scripts are incomplete and won't let anyone download this content. They need a whitelisted Content Decryption Module (CDM), which is not trivial to obtain. It's basically an encrypted,

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          My point was that capture cards are available to pretty much everyone, so you don't even need anything special to rip those streams. Off the shelf solutions exist today.

          Pirates will obviously use more technical solutions, and on top of that will often retime the subs and chapter markers, and use filtering techniques to reduce and even eliminate some of the compression artifacts induced by the streaming optimizations done by the streaming platform (which is often a moving target between compute, bandwidth an

    • Why bother to use these download scripts? (unless you want to start your own release group) IMO it's just easier to download via bittorrent or some other download service.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        It sounds like you're asking: why smelt ore when you can just buy ingots?

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        This guy seems to be trying to sell access to the Content Decryption Module (CDM) that is needed to make these scripts work. In other words he is using Github as his store front.

      • by jabuzz ( 182671 )

        I can think of a few reasons. Firstly if they where throttled to viewing speed, then you don't have to mess about with bittorrent etc. You can just download it. That also means you don't have to worry about having the copyright police knocking at your door. Thirdly if you want something a bit obscure or old good luck downloading it from a torrent. Much of it is simply not there or if there is a torrent file there are no seeders anymore.

    • by Kisai ( 213879 )

      I went back through all the "forked from's" in github and there is in fact everything needed to rip videos. Basically all you need is an Android device to rip the CDM from.

      As per usual, blame Google for doing things in software.

  • Great news (Score:5, Informative)

    by ickleberry ( 864871 ) <web@pineapple.vg> on Monday December 27, 2021 @07:42PM (#62120685) Homepage
    Phuq DRM. I'm glad this was broken. AFAIK this DRM uses trusted computing which RMS warned us about all these years ago. The evil media industries succeeded in foisting DRM upon us all with the introduction of streaming. Now that it has gained a foothold they are increasing prices and bringing out exclusive content so people need to subscribe to multiple services. Hope its not so easy to patch. Widevine was invented by none other than the almighty Goog, who have surreptitiously adopted a pro-DRM stance with little opposition
    • by Anonymous Coward

      The evil media industries succeeded in foisting DRM upon us all with the introduction of streaming.

      With the introduction of streaming? It's like you never heard about a ClearQAM capture card no longer being able to get some channel, or what caused the MPAA-vs-2600 DVD case. Video has been a shitshow since the turn of the century. It's a wonder people switched to piracy so slowly.

  • HBO max used to work in linux and then they stopped that

Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.

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