This is definitely weird that they'd add new features before fixing broken functionality. Maybe they do what they can because the new DRM is tough to get working again so they release *something* new to at least give new features if they can't fix a particular functionality? However, like Peacock, it logs me out after every two episodes of a TV series is downloaded- but the DRM is working, just keeps logging me out- why can't that be fixed before a new feature is added? I work IT for a living and if we have an application (whether internal or customer-facing), FIXING the functionality ALWAYS takes priority over new features.
funreviews
It's not because "the new DRM is tough." C'mon, it beggars belief that AS can be direct downloading within something like 10 days after the January CDM revocation and 5 months later SF is unable to crack even one DRM.
You can't fix what you're not attempting to find a solution for.Back in 2014, Feng Tao, DVDFab, Feng Tao Software et al were sued by the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator (AACSLA) for "trafficking in products designed to circumvent [AACSLA’s] encryption technology." Feng Tao moved to dismiss the suit, not on the grounds that the US District Court of the Southern District of NY didn't have jurisdiction, but for insufficient process, claiming that he should have been served through The Hague Convention, rather than serving them in an email in English - the strategy being if he/they couldn't be served. the any legal proceeding was dead in the water. AACSLA claimed they'd been unable to uncover his/their physical addresses, hence the email service, while Feng Tao claimed their physical location was easy to find.
Various and sundry motions on both sides dragged the proceedings out for years, with AACSLA moving for default judgment as Feng Tao et al failed to appear, and Feng Tao opposing that motion, until in 2018 that Feng Tao's insufficient service motion was dismissed (based partially on his demonstration that he understood that he'd been sued).
Fast forward to August 21, 2023* when a permanent injunction against Feng Tao et al was granted on AACSLA's behalf, with damages of $14,927,000. That injunction covers "all circumventing activity," not just DVD encryption, which was the focus of the original 2014 suit, and calls for disabling all the DVDFab websites. I have no further info regarding whether SF plans to comply, or if there any other legal filings on behalf of either party.
However, since news that of the upcoming DRM change was known in October,
just two months later, and DVDFab did nothing to get out ahead of it, the timing of that lack of action and avoiding any accountability with mods
@jpp72 and
@Cats4U, essentially jerking them around and using them to buy time, can't be that much of a coincidence. If there are still devs on staff who can crack a DRM, then they'd had to have been in a collective coma for the past 5 months - so Occam's Razor dictates that they are no longer there, and that DRM decryption isn't something that SF is going to be providing. There has been zero effort made to crack a single DRM, and SF have deliberately turned a direct downloader into a screen recorder/re-encoder.
I think we've all figured out by now that the "working for a solution" droppings from various SF functionaries here translates to "fixing the screen recorder/re-encoder we're selling now" and not "bringing back the direct downloader you paid for."
*
https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2014cv01112/423515/202/0.pdf?ts=1692695511
