This Company and their software

[NewMelle]

That's pretty much the crux of it. It has ceased to be StreamFab, welcome to ScreenGrab.

[Cats4U]

Stream Fab developers and I use that term loosely spent 3 weeks telling jpp72 they think they have it fixed. Don't you think they thought that screen recording was what they were referring to?

It didn't happen. Firstly, we never talked to any developer. Wilson Wang was the only one that we communicated with. The only thing that was discussed to be worked on and fixed was direct stream download. It was only after several failures at fixing downloading was CleverGet brought up by Wilson as a temporary measure. I had no idea what CleverGet was initially, and I had to research it. I think Jack already knew what it was, and he started protesting its use aggressively. Once I found out that it was a screen recorder, I joined in with the protests. At least that's how I remember it. I really wish I hadn't removed myself from the Zoom DVDFab Chat now so that I could post the whole conversation here. We managed to get them to go back to downloading with versions 6.1.6.6 and 6.1.6.7, but they switched back to recorder with 6.1.6.8 and have stayed with it since for Amazon & Netflix (and later Peacock). I still think that if the planets aligned just right, they would want to go back to running as a downloader again. I do think that they intend for the recorder to be temporary, but at the same time, I don't think they'll ever put in the effort and the money to get a competent cryptographic developer to make that change back to downloader.

[Chameleon]

If that's true, it's a sad story.

[artsunlimited]

It didn't happen. Firstly, we never talked to any developer. Wilson Wang was the only one that we communicated with. The only thing that was discussed to be worked on and fixed was direct stream download. It was only after several failures at fixing downloading was CleverGet brought up by Wilson as a temporary measure. I had no idea what CleverGet was initially, and I had to research it. I think Jack already knew what it was, and he started protesting its use aggressively. Once I found out that it was a screen recorder, I joined in with the protests. At least that's how I remember it. I really wish I hadn't removed myself from the Zoom DVDFab Chat now so that I could post the whole conversation here. We managed to get them to go back to downloading with versions 6.1.6.6 and 6.1.6.7, but they switched back to recorder with 6.1.6.8 and have stayed with it since for Amazon & Netflix (and later Peacock). I still think that if the planets aligned just right, they would want to go back to running as a downloader again. I do think that they intend for the recorder to be temporary, but at the same time, I don't think they'll ever put in the effort and the money to get a competent cryptographic developer to make that change back to downloader.

We really owe you and Jack a lot for getting them to come through with 6.1.6.6. and 6.7., and your frustration with making good recommendations, but never getting any response to important issues certainly came through loud and clear very early on.

Did you get the sense that there's no one at the helm who has any vision, or can see any way forward beyond "temporary solutions" that seem to be coming permanent simply by default?

[Chameleon]

Posted by artsunlimited
permanent simply by default

I'll bet you it's permanent. If it were not permanent, they wouldn't have made it a screen recorder, which took a month to do. They are betting the majority will live with it.

[Cats4U]

Here are some old TorrentFreak articles on DVDFab vs AACS: https://torrentfreak.com/?s=DVDFab

[Chameleon]

Here are some old TorrentFreak articles on DVDFab vs AACS: https://torrentfreak.com/?s=DVDFab

Those are old, the injunction is dated way later than those articles.

[Cats4U]

Those are old, the injunction is dated way later than those articles.

I said they were old. But you can't get the complete story if you just go by the last rendering by the judge. These articles give the history of the case as it was happening. I can't help but think that there would never have been a Ken Burns' Civil War documentary if he left out the readings of diary entries of the soldiers written at the time of a particular battle.

[Chameleon]

I said they were old. But you can't get the complete story if you just go by the last rendering by the judge. These articles give the history of the case as it was happening. I can't help but think that there would never have been a Ken Burns' Civil War documentary if he left out the readings of diary entries of the soldiers written at the time of a particular battle.

I just saw the movie "Civil War" it was a good movie but there are so many flaws in it. In times of War, the President has a bunker 100 feet underground somewhere under a mountain in the Midwest, where he and the chiefs of staff would go in times of imminent danger. In the movie, they were fighting for weeks or months and the President was still in the White House. That's a pretty dumb place to hide if you are the President.

[NewMelle]

Whether it's the litigation or the inability to crack the new DRM, whatever the reason, re-encoding is their answer. I hardly consider it a solution. There are many more screen recorders out there that are just as capable for far less money. The only thing SF has going for it any more are the odd-ball streamers few others support and some of them are also broken.

[Cats4U]

Did you get the sense that there's no one at the helm who has any vision, or can see any way forward beyond "temporary solutions" that seem to be coming permanent simply by default?

The only thing we knew for certain was that Wilson was officially listed as Project Manager. Despite that, at no point did I think he had any control over what the developers were doing. They told him what they were going to do. I got the feeling that the developers were with another company and DVDFab was just licensing the core program that was StreamFab from them. I questioned Wilson about this twice, and once I got a denial and another time I got no reply to the question. The denial said that they were in-house. I don't know what to believe, but I'm still leaning toward StreamFab being a licensed program from some other company. With that in mind, to Wilson the use of screen recorders might be a temporary solution, but I'm not so sure that the developers feel that way. I don't have much experience dealing with Chinese companies (Jack does, maybe he could comment) but this one has seemed to go out of its way to hide itself within a ball of confusion. Just look at its location - Hong Kong, Beijing, Arvada CO. With the US site being just a mail drop for a bunch of questionable Chinese retail stores. Come to find out that the Hong Kong address (FLAT/RM 826 8/F, OCEAN CENTRE, HARBOUR CITY, 5 CANTON ROAD, Hong Kong, China) was the same with a dozen or more companies all located in Room 826. I haven't checked into the Beijing address yet.
Anyway, I'm glad I'm out of it now. I've cancelled all my streaming subscriptions and I haven't used StreamFab in about 2 months. I get all my files via Torrent now. Where all the major streamers were making money off me each month, they get nothing now because of their DRM change. I'm just one person, and so I am just a tiny fraction of a percentage point to them, but it still feels good to me that I'm putting the screws to them because they tried to put the screws to us with the DRM change.

Now if I could just get over this addiction to writing to this forum.

[Cats4U]

I just saw the movie "Civil War" it was a good movie but there are so many flaws in it.

That's not the one I'm talking about. https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-civil-war/

[Sebastian001]

I am in favor of sending Chameleon and Cats4U to a DRM cracking training course. After that, he can write a new StreamFab 8.0 with jpp72 . Wilson comes to the canteen to hand out food....

[artsunlimited]

I said they were old. But you can't get the complete story if you just go by the last rendering by the judge. These articles give the history of the case as it was happening. I can't help but think that there would never have been a Ken Burns' Civil War documentary if he left out the readings of diary entries of the soldiers written at the time of a particular battle.

Thanks for finding these Cats4U - and you are so, so right! These go into more detail than a court order that had to summarize NINE YEARS of legal wrangling. I thought the judge did a valiant job holding it to just 14 pages, but as we're not downloading, hey, why not get a little bit more backstory?

Feng Tao's argument that US Copyright Law isn't applicable worldwide is correct - each country has its own copyright laws governing intellectual property that are unique to that country, and may not be valid in other countries. As Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe could tell you if they weren't dead, a lack of an international copyright law in their day meant each country's copyright laws only applied to works created and used in that country, which is why both authors lost money when their works were published the US and UK, respectively, without their permission.

What Feng Tao failed to mention is that there are a number of International Copyright Treaties and Conventions that exist today that the US is a signatory to, like the Berne Convention and its supplement, The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty, which was implemented in US law in 1998 by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which is why its violation by Feng Tao is the reason AASCLA called for a preliminary injunction in the first place. WIPO prohibits circumvention of encryption and other tech measures for the protection of works, such as DRM (Directive 2001/29/EC). There are 110 signators and 30 ratifying nations - China is both of these.

Those are old, the injunction is dated way later than those articles.

Chameleon, this is actually the first preliminary injunction issued on March 4, 2014, after Feng Tao et al failed to appear, but you can see how scorched-earth it was. First Feng Tao moved to amend it (2nd article), then AASCLA moved to oppose that and further amend it, with each opposing each other's motions after that. So there was an amended preliminary injunction issued which Feng Tao filed an interlocutory appeal on (I stated earlier they won the appeal, but I misread the ruling - the injunction was affirmed), before AASCLA filed for a permanent injunction in 2019, which was issued in August of 2023. The permanent one had to meet four legal standards: an irreparable injury; legal remedies like monetary damages are inadequate compensation for that injury; an equitable remedy is warranted; and the public interest would not be harmed by a permanent injunction. It was deemed necessary as Feng Tao made it clear they weren't going to comply with the preliminary one.

[NewMelle]

It's all a confusing mess but one underlying theme is prevalent. Obfuscation and deception.

I worked for a Chinese PC manufacturer in the mid 90s by the name of Pony Computers. I had to work my way up from the assembly room. I can't count how many times I told the supervisor a system had an issue and all I ever got was "Is okay, just box", they were perfectly willing to risk an RMA rather than spending the extra time to correct the issue. Next thing I knew I was not only providing English speaking tech support but put in charge of the RMA/Warranty service department. I noticed a lot of the components we sent back to the manufacturer were coming back as "tested working" never mind the huge gaping holes where fried chips used to be or obvious cracks in the logic boards as example.

I started keeping detailed records of the issues including serial numbers. A good many were in fact NOT tested at all, simply sent back with the SAME issues thinking we'd accept this. I brought this to the president's attention (Mr. Yunchi Chen) and the next thing I know we had representatives from two of the component manufacturers (Jaton and Shuttle) coming from China to try and save their contracts with us. Had I not called BS the company likely would have folded long before it did and the manufacturers in China would have happily skirted their responsibility. Once they had the money they did everything they could to keep every penny, ethically or not.

If you see BS, call it and make some noise. If you see a LOT of BS, call it and make a LOT of noise.