Why are screen grabs/screen captures disabled?

Six

Why can't I make screen grabs while watching TV with the Spectrum app? The resulting file has the video display portion black. Is this happening for other users?

iPhone6

12.4.8

ATT

latest version of Spectrum app

James_M

After checking with our app developers, I can confirm that the screen captures are disabled due to potential copyright infringement.

LGT

Just tried this on my iPad with iOS 14.2 on my home network and got the same results. My guess is this is done on purpose for copyright protection, only a guess, but it would make sense.

I can capture a twitch stream, so again, seems like it is done on purpose.

Six

Yeah, but copyright (if that's the cause) makes no sense because when viewing content from providers' websites and native apps screenshots can be made. I'd love to know what is going on with this.

LGT

Well a ton of things about copyright law don’t make sense. Spectrum probably does not see itself as a copyright holder since they just pass on content. Whereas a provider might believe they are the copyright holder. Maybe providers are just lazier about implementation of DRM. Who knows. You would have to start asking everyone’s lawyers what their policy is.

All that is speculation on my part, but from what I can see the Spectrum app on iOS seems to block that type of capture since it is happening on two different devices running different versions of iOS. Maybe one of the Spectrum reps on here can give a more informed answer?