Sorry, but as someone who spent nearly a decade founding and building a premium content VOD service, and 6 of those years fighting fiercely against DRM and making great content available without DRM, I have both the knowledge and moral authority to say that you're living in a fantasy world. You might as well say that anyone who is not living an RMS-sanctioned ascetic technology lifestyle is hurting the cause of free software everywhere. Technically that might be true, but a few true believers martyring themselves is not going to change the social and political forces that drive software over time.
Here's the bottom line: browser makers have absolutely zero leverage over DRM. Firefox refusing to implement DRM would have been 1000 times more likely to lead to Firefox's irrelevance and death than it would lead to rightsholders caving on DRM requirements. Even if all browsers banded together and refused, all that would mean is that premium content would not be available in browsers, and that would lead to a significant devaluation of the web in favor of proprietary apps. It is a techno-centric fantasy to think that browser makers have even a modicum of leverage here. The fact is content producers would restrict themselves to licensed devices in a heartbeat, and they would get away with it to, because at the end of the day, people want to watch what they want to watch.
EME is a ideological compromise, sure, but it's a net benefit to the open web since its scope is small and it maintains the overall schema of web standards. It shouldn't be considered worse than proprietary plugins with arbitrary scope.
People have been recording the things they watch since the invention of the VCR.
DRM will not have any impact on that. Someone will come along, and make a video-grabbing utility that bypasses the DRM. Also, many of the content is already available via bittorrent.
DRM is pointless. But perhaps you are right about "browser vendors refusing to cooperate" not being the best possible approach. However, do you know what is?
We somehow got away from DRM on audio. I was wondering how to do this for video too. What worked for audio, was that you had one vendor (Apple) that had a large enough market share. In order to sell DRMd media that worked on Ipods, the media companies had to sell through Apple. Or they could sell non-DRMd files that would still work on Ipods. They did the calculation, and figured they would make more money going non-DRM so they can pick other distributors such as Amazon.
For video, people don't download it and take it with them (typically), they either play from their computer or from a set top box or smart TV. So there is no market forces that would give the movie studios any incentive to do non-DRM.
Yes but in Netflix case and html5 we are precisely talking about streaming service.
Download should be DRM free for free for vidéo that's true but don't blame Netflix for using DRM on a streaming service as every music streaming service does that too.
Indeed I think studios could reduce pirating to baseline (people who can't afford anyway) in a split second should they understand that people are willing to pay for a fair priced streaming service like Netflix. They just need to open up their catalogs like music majors finally did as an average wallet can hardly sustain a dozen different subscriptions in order to have a decent movie catalog.
I think the entire Plex userbase would disagree. There's also a reason Google Play Music lets you upload your own music: Not all music can be found in "regular" streaming catalogs.
Technicalities aside: Also I like to think that buying albums (even if I stream them later on) makes the artist more money. And I want to support the artists I appreciate as much as I can.
I meant "normal" as in mass-market, not "normal for HN". I, probably like you, of course have a unix fileserver in my residence (as well as a metric ass-ton of vinyl, because it seems we are similar types of nerd).
How else would a subscription service work? If you bought your music instead of renting it you'd truly own it without DRM or any other strings attached.
As a very frequent music buyer, I'd say the situation is very comfortable and user-friendly and I'd wish to see the same for video content.
> What worked for audio, was that you had one vendor (Apple) that had a large enough market share. In order to sell DRMd media that worked on Ipods, the media companies had to sell through Apple. Or they could sell non-DRMd files that would still work on Ipods.
Ironically, this scenario just got more unlikely, thanks to EME now being a standard and thus available for everyone... Hooray for web standards!
We got away from it with audio in part because a typical audio product such as a music single or short audiobook can viably be produced and sold DRM-free at a price so low that it's hardly worth anyone looking for it elsewhere even if they could find it literally for free. Unfortunately, the same economics don't work in most other markets.
Guess which industry watched how that happened REALLY REALLY closely?
The music industry was falling apart by the time they gave up on DRM, the video industry is still very strong and had time to learn where all the mistakes were made that lead to DRM free content.
The end of DRM for purchased music downloads was primarily driven by the need to break what the record industry perceived as a monopoly.
They got in bed with Apple, and at first they were happy with that -- Apple showed that offering a legal way to download music would succeed, so long as it was A) convenient, B) had a suitably large catalog and C) was priced in a way customers saw as fair.
And the result was Apple became a major player in the market, to the point that the record labels started getting scared of what Apple could now force them to do. So they needed to give Apple a competitor. Except... Apple wasn't about to license its Apple-specific DRM scheme to that competitor, and wasn't going to install the competitor's DRM scheme on Apple devices. Which left them with no way to introduce a serious competitor other than to go DRM-free so purchased music would be playable on all the popular devices, including Apple's. Thus, Amazon got to start selling DRM-free music (and eventually Apple got to sell it too).
I suspect sooner or later the book industry will have to go DRM-free to break Amazon's ebook stranglehold, in much the same way.
But video... is different. There isn't a monopolish player in the online video market. There are multiple competing services, some doing purchase and some doing temporary rental and some doing streaming and some doing combinations of multiple options, and there's nobody emerging with power to dictate to movie/TV studios the way Apple emerged in music or Amazon did in ebooks. Which suggests DRM on video is going to be with us for a while no matter what.
And video is one area where I have some sympathy for attempts to control access: the video market is quite young compared to music or books, and has had the short-term rental as a key segment of its market for roughly as long as it's existed. And this makes some sense, as video content tends to have less long-term re-use value: listening to a song multiple times, and re-reading a book multiple times, both seem to be much more common than watching a movie multiple times. So providing a reduced-price option which limits the number of times or amount of time of watching makes business sense. I'm unsure how to reconcile that with hardcore anti-DRM positions, since some type of access control is necessary to enable a rental market.
> I suspect sooner or later the book industry will have to go DRM-free to break Amazon's ebook stranglehold, in much the same way.
I wonder about this, because the fact is that I really LIKE Amazon's system. It doesn't matter where music comes from, I listen to it over and over and usually listen to each song totally.
But with books, it takes more than 3 minutes to read. The fact that all my stuff (Kindle App, Kindle, website) know my place and sync all that stuff is very handy. It's the main reason I use Kindle over physical books.
If you load non-DRMed eBooks onto Kindle my understanding is you don't get that functionality for them and I'm guessing no one would have the power to force Amazon to implement that feature. The end result is that Amazon's DRMed books may be more appealing to me than DRM free options from other places.
As for breaking their monopoly.... Apple tried and the government smacked them down for it.
That's assuming people are going watch things multiple times. Most people, including myself, are one and done.
I've always rented the movies I've watched because I know I won't watch them again, so the savings is win on the whole.
I guess there's something to be said for TV shows, as people often watch those over. I generally don't watch TV series, the exception being a couple Netflix series that friends have begged me to watch, so I don't have too much of an opinion there.
I think this could be rephrased as people don't consciously download things to keep forever. Whatever device you're watching on will cache anything you've viewed for a while so it doesn't need downloading again, and I at least make quite heavy use of the ability to save things for offline viewing on train journeys.
What I don't do anymore is to download video or music and then just keep it around on a hard disk just in case I want to watch it again. At least in my case storage is actually far more expensive than bandwidth, both in monetary value and time spent maintaining things.
I'd say this is false. I'd love to watch more videos when I commute. My Pay TV provider even offers a download option for their streaming sub service(DRMed and self destructing after X days I think, never tried it) which would indicate that there's certainly market demand for it.
Download as in "cache this title within this app for viewing in an environment where Internet connectivity doesn't work well yet" is very different from download as in "here's an .mp4/.webm file for you to hold onto for ever--have fun taking backups and figuring out which third party player can handle the subtitles.
Fun story:
Not very long ago, I bought a copy of a documentary using the latter model.
Another person with whom I was going to watch the documentary had visited their site and seen what movie services it was on. I trusted that info at first without checking the documentary's own site. I got very annoyed about the movie services having the title geoblocked in my country (even when a movie service had presence here and in a neighboring country and the rights for both countries are typically sold as a bundle and the neighboring country had it available!).
Then I looked at the site of the documentary myself. And indeed, for the price of the Blu-Ray version, I could buy a full-HD .mp4 without DRM to download.
So I paid and downloaded the .mp4 plus .mp4s for all the Blu-Ray extras. And I downloaded a .srt file for the subtitles.
The Linux box I had connected to my TV couldn't do full HD well in software but could via VAAPI. However, the player that supported VAAPI was supposed to support .srt but didn't actually support at least this .srt file.
In the end, we watched it by pluggin in a more performant Windows laptop doing the whole thing in software.
Conclusion:
This is what we always said we wanted. However, when it was there, I didn't expect it to be there and assumed I had to find the title on one of the big-name services instead of navigating to the documentary's own site. The UX of getting stuff to work was less smooth than with the locked-down streaming services.
When digital music downloads started record companies demanded DRM. They agreed to a model with iTunes of $0.99 per song. They chafed against this model and wanted pricing tiers. Jobs was willing to give them this but the price was to go DRM free.
Jobs could get away with this for two reasons. First, he was Steve Jobs. Second, the record industry had unwittingly created a virtual music download monopoly in iTunes.
I personally use Spotify because streaming is incredibly convenient and there isn't much you can buy but can't stream. I use Netflix and Ahbo Now for the same reason.
I'd never "buy" DRMed content so music would be fine. Video not so much. I personally don't have as much of an issue with DRM on streaming content.
"The music industry didn't go DRM free because they hated DRM; they went DRM free because they were fearful of the leverage Apple was gaining with their iTunes + FairPlay + iPod combination. Apple’s DRM created this lock, and it became so successful that the music industry went with the lesser of two evils (songs locked to Apple’s iPod monopoly vs. the distribution of DRM-free music) and chose to distribute DRM-free music...
You say "Jobs was willing to give them this but the price was to go DRM free", but why would he do that if DRM was good for Apple, it's what locked this market to iPods? Doesn't make sense to me. The music industry had to go DRM free (with Amazon, for example) because that was the only alternative way to sell music that would play on iPods.
> You say "Jobs was willing to give them this but the price was to go DRM free", but why would he do that if DRM was good for Apple, it's what locked this market to iPods?
Here goes a ~10yo tidbit from SJ [0]. Whether you take it at face value, see it as a PR trick, or anything in between is up to you.
> Apple was able to negotiate landmark usage rights at the time, which include allowing users to play their DRM protected music on up to 5 computers and on an unlimited number of iPods. Obtaining such rights from the music companies was unprecedented at the time, and even today is unmatched by most other digital music services. However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.
> [...] only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. It’s hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.
> The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.
> Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music.
Kinda of, but most labels find the big three for both production and distribution. There is independent distribution company within each of the big three to attract independent labels. Most labels come to the big three simply because they have the infrastructure in place for global distriubtion from marketing to production to music distriubtion to all the major DSP (digital service providers) such as Apple and Spotify, as well as ringtone. One interesting thing about music deal is that while the big three have the infrastructure and capability, for example WMG can sign a deal with Sony in terrority Y (a country or multiple countries) for the release of X there and they split the royality, and vice versa.
I said kinda of because not all sign with big three and further more there are so many independent artists out there releasing to YouTube or Apple iTune or Soundcloud on their own).
A lot of geeks are under the misapprehension that the studios don't know this. But actually they are not idiots, they are fully aware of the sisyphean nature and ultimate futility of DRM.
The point of enforcing DRM is not to prevent piracy, but rather to flex their market clout and demonstrate control. As long as they put up moderate barriers to ripping, and as long as they have legal sanction to suppress productized piracy, the steady stream of new must-have content allows them to throw their weight around. Licensing streaming without DRM is a slippery slope that decreases the perceived value of their content. Small distributors will do it because they need to make whatever money they can, big distributors will never do it because it damages their brand.
1. People who have access to the content can usually see it over and over again (when they have a subscription to a service like Netflix). DRM will do nothing here.
2. People who don't have access to the content can't even see the DRM'ed version of the file, so DRM will do nothing here either.
3. People who want to pirate (illegally distribute) the content have advanced tools and knowledge to circumvent DRM, so DRM is of no use here again.
> Whether you have access to content isn't an immutable fact of your genetics. People can freely move between groups 1 and 2. That's the whole point.
So you're saying people could move to another jurisdiction to be able to watch their favorite show on Netflix? Yeah, that truly sounds like freedom to me. Or am I misinterpretating you?
You're misinterpretating me. Some people already live in jurisdictions to which Netflix permits distribution of their favorite show. Those people can decide to pay for access or not.
It's also true that some people don't live in such places. But that doesn't matter. You said that DRM serves no purpose. For some it may not. But for some people it does.
Yes, you are misrepresentating(sic!) him. The "move between groups 1 and 2" was meant as decision to start paying for a service, or to stop paying for a service, not a physical move. In other words, voting with your wallet.
1. People who have access to the content can usually see it over and over again (when they have a subscription to a service like Netflix). DRM will do nothing here.
Sure it will. It will stop people writing a script to download as much as they can get away with in a single month and then cancelling since they have enough content to keep them going for several more months without paying for them.
3. People who want to pirate (illegally distribute) the content have advanced tools and knowledge to circumvent DRM, so DRM is of no use here again.
That is a big assumption, and in many cases not a correct one. The major online DRM systems today are fairly robust, and if anyone has a crack for some of them, they're keeping their cards very close to their chests. The leaks of major movies that you find on torrent sites and the like are usually from other sources.
If you're supplying digital content as a business, then usually that isn't your real problem. They weren't going to give you any more money anyway, and with the legal framework being as it is in most places today, it's frustrating to see your content ripped off but not actually worth doing much about it. Meanwhile, your real problem is probably people who will casually copy and share your content, because even if the multiplication is relatively small, those are potentially still reaching people who would otherwise pay for a legitimate copy.
Of course, but typically quality suffers significantly, so what you get isn't as good as the original and that in itself is a deterrent for a lot of people.
Also, some modern watermarking techniques can survive conversions like this, so if anyone is making a habit of recording content from a service using watermarking and redistributing it on a scale that justifies taking serious action, it'll be pretty easy to prove who it was when the lawsuit comes up.
> it'll be pretty easy to prove who it was when the lawsuit comes up
Perhaps. But this person can always claim that it was done by an external hacker. In fact, it can be done by an "external" hacker, and it will be if these guys are smart.
I'm sure that's an appealing argument if you don't like DRM, but the reality is that someone who ripped content marked to their personal account, which server logs show did access the content in question from their usual IP address etc., is going to have a tough time convincing any court on the balance of probabilities that some unidentified bogeyman actually did it.
> Also, some modern watermarking techniques can survive conversions like this, so if anyone is making a habit of recording content from a service using watermarking and redistributing it on a scale that justifies taking serious action, it'll be pretty easy to prove who it was when the lawsuit comes up.
How many compromised netflix accounts do you think are floating around? At some point the bits have to actually go to a display device as well, which can always be tapped.
If a compromised account was used, presumably the server logs will show an unusual access pattern on that account, in particular involving the content that has leaked being accessed from an unusual location. And then presumably the person whose account was used will have to make a convincing case that they shouldn't be held responsible for access using their credentials anyway.
Ok, what if a machine is compromised (there are millions of zombie boxes out there)? Someone can gain access, do their stuff and then upload the result. Are they going to start suing grandmas with weak wifi passwords? That worked so well for the RIAA last time.
Then it'll be up to the person whose account was accessed to provide some evidence that something like this happened and that it wasn't their fault. That's how these things work. You go to court, you make your case and the other side makes theirs, and the court draws its conclusions and acts accordingly.
However, you don't just get to conveniently avoid taking any responsibility when there are videos being distributed that are specifically linked to an account you signed up for that clearly said you couldn't redistribute the content you got through it, just because there's some vaguely possible alternative that might have once happened somewhere maybe.
A compromised account is a vague possibility? I'm not amazing at these things, but I could probably access a WiFi network unconnected to me, mask my IP to a different location, and acquire a random Netflix account in a couple of hours. These things are likely, and wrongful lawsuits greatly damage the company while successful ones provide a minimal benefit.
I'm not amazing at these things, but I could probably access a WiFi network unconnected to me, mask my IP to a different location, and acquire a random Netflix account in a couple of hours.
Really? How would you do that, exactly?
If you're looking online and find camcorder copies of videos that were served to a specific customer at a specific time, as confirmed by the watermarking, and your server logs show that that stream was sent to the customer's usual IP address at the time in question, what are the odds that they were the victim of a carefully crafted hack of the kind you're implying, and not just someone who set up a camcorder to record from their own account?
Wireless isn't very secure, you're mileage may vary on the encryption mechanism but here is a guide to hacking WPA networks (with WEP it takes seconds):
From there you can try a range of known exploits and gain admin access to a PC, after that it's game over, they can run what they want, when the want. There is no careful crafting necessary, the process can be largely automated.
We aren't talking camcorder copies, but exact digital replicas from the netflix stream.
WPA2 is reasonably secure and has been the standard for home and business WiFi for years.
In any case, merely compromising WiFi won't get you someone's Netflix account. The Netflix data itself, including the credentials, are all encrypted.
As for taking over someone's PC, that's far beyond the average pirate, and you're talking about serious criminal offences on top of mere copyright infringement at that point.
And even then, we're not necessarily talking about being able to make exact copies of the stream. The whole point of hardware-backed DRM schemes is that just because you can run software on the PC, that doesn't mean you can access the unencrypted data stream.
So again, how exactly were you planning to do this? What you're talking about is far beyond the average script kiddie or casual pirate.
Remember, we were talking about convincing a court that it was more likely that someone did all of this and that was how a watermarked copy of protected content got out than that the person whose account was used to download that content then somehow shared it. A slight possibility that professional pirates who are also expert crackers chose that particular customer to pick on and left no evidence having done so isn't likely to be very convincing.
I can't figure out why you've added this ridiculous "need to use their computer" part, that would be necessary for a successful lawsuit but suing random Netflix users will look terrible even if the court clears them in the end. But OK...
WPA2 is reasonably secure, but most home instances aren't set up well. They often have WPS enabled or a guessable password. Plus weaker set ups are still easy to find. Once you're on, redirect Netflix to a site to grab their info, record the stream from a computer outside their house. This is needlessly complex for what is needed, find a compromised Netflix(+email?), record.
Netflix serves over HTTPS and uses HSTS. Under most circumstances, you aren't going to be able to MITM them and "grab their info" even if you've compromised their WiFi.
You keep coming up with these claims about how easy this is, yet you also keep missing basic technical points about the system actually works. As I've said before, if there is actual evidence that someone's account was compromised then they can produce that as part of their defence in court. However, if content that is watermarked to a specific account turns up all over the Internet, that is evidence suggesting that the person in question has infringed copyright, and that does need a real defence if the rightsholder chooses to take legal action accordingly.
Yes, and people are so great at making sure they access https addresses and never ignore a "this may not be secure" warning.
And you're still ignoring the major parts. What someone actually needs to do is much easier than all this, and Netflix has already lost if they end up in court with an innocent person.
If you want me to prove accounts have been compromised, look at all the account breaches over the past few years, think of how many reuse passwords.
> That's how these things work. You go to court, you make your case and the other side makes theirs, and the court draws its conclusions and acts accordingly.
Currently the burden of evidence is far too low. Something being done with my account, or even my machine is not evidence that I've done anything wrong.
> However, you don't just get to conveniently avoid taking any responsibility when there are videos being distributed that are specifically linked to an account you signed up for that clearly said you couldn't redistribute the content you got through it
How are we supposed to take responsibility for the actions of others? Should we be liable for crimes committed due to the insecurity of home networks? If so the computer industry has much bigger problems than DRM.
That's why we have laws to apply negative externalities like very large jail sentences if you're caught distributing a file that you created by taping a movie off-screen.
> It's about compromises to drive behavior and consumer spending with convenience.
You mean grabbing a DRM-free (i.e. pirated) copy so that I can watch it at my leasure and on devices of my choosing, even if I have access to it via other legit means?
Any free or low cost run-of-the-mill capture software renders DRM useless. If it's made out of bits, you can't ensure ownership after redistribution. In an environment like this people pay because it is quality content and access is easy. The publishers business model needs to get with the times, not strong arm browser vendors into adhering to their archaic requirements. I'm personally sick of hearing about this DRM war. There are so many more things to be concerned with. ◔̯◔
Browser makers have plenty leverage. A Firefox user watching Netflix will, and this is a tautology, be worse off if they cannot continue doing so. That may lead to people switching to other browsers more often than dropping Netflix subscriptions, but the costs for Netflix wouldn't be 0, and may even be substantial considering the population of people using Firefox is self-selected to those placing a high value on openness.
If Chrome were to ship without DRM, Netflix would cave faster than you can say "thepiratebay". See what happened to flash when it wasn't supported on the iPhone. There are millions of archived predictions of Apple's demised in forums such as this, but even though they had 20% of the market at peak, they easily killed flash.
Unfortunately, Google has an interest in DRM for its own sake. This may serve as a welcome reminder that the awesome job they have done with Chrome is a result of an alignment of interest between them and the web community: they need the open web to compete against iOS and the closed Facebook ecosystem. That situation may not last forever.
I'm quite happy to have had RMS and other true-believing ascetic martyrs shaping the techno-centric fantasy world we're living in. If your defeatist attitude had prevailed in the early years, we'd all be writing VBScript to animate the spinning gif on homepage.doc – yes, Microsoft once tried to push .doc to replace .html.
I also think the music industry has proven quite clearly that you'll have a lot more success with carrots than sticks. I honestly don't know what benefit they think they're getting from DRM, considering all their material somehow ends in a .torrent anyway.
Not only is it not true that Netflix would cave if they didn't have native browser support, but we know it's not true, because Netflix for years relied on plugins to deliver over browsers. Meanwhile, every year that passes, browsers have less leverage as more Netflix subscribers get their content either on set-top boxes or mobile devices (where Netflix has total end-to-end control), and fewer are stuck with browsers.
Have to say that this mirrors my experience. Netflix as an app is ubiquitous -- it's on virtually every electronic device I have, from smart TV to Chromecast to phone to tablet to Wii U and PS4. I believe I have Flash specifically updated and enabled for Netflix (or one of the video services, HBO maybe?). If Netflix required a specialized Mac OS X, I probably would install it. I imagine browsers have less leverage when it comes to the average non-technically inclined user.
So the response becomes "so what?". Oh no, proprietary videos will move to proprietary apps, and free videos would remain in the browser. People aren't going to stop using browsers for everything else just because they watch youtube vids on the youtube app. Browsers just aren't going to suffer if proprietary videos move elsewhere - it doesn't matter whether Netflix caves or not. It's not like the rest of the world-wide-web that doesn't rely on DRM'd electronic files is going to follow suit and leave the browser.
>> because Netflix for years relied on plugins to deliver over browsers.
They still do, you have to have the Widevine PLUGIN and the Open H264 PLUGIN to play content on netflix
It is a pure myth that eme does not have plugins
>browsers have less leverage as more Netflix subscribers get their content either on set-top boxes or mobile devices (where Netflix has total end-to-end control), and fewer are stuck with browsers.
I am fine with that, I would rather have that than an HTML5 standard that requires binary plugins to work. I would rather have that then the risk EME brings to extent beyond video content to start having entire pages plugin bases, fonts DRM encumbered, and 100's of other consequences to this move that are coming
>>HTML5 does not require binary plugins in order to work.
Yet... EME opens the door, and only the Naive believe EME will start and stop at Video Content.
There are already requests for ebooks,and fonts. Images and and even web content itself is not far behind
>I agree that it's a myth that EME doesn't have plugins. What EME does is reduce the scope of those plugins.
Yes and no, if you buy in to the "perfect sandbox" myth then sure, but to believe CDM's are secure is laughable. There are too many hooks into the hardware, there as to be in order to bypass the user, for it to actually be secure.
No the security is more protecting the CDM from the user, not protecting the user from the CDM
Well. Look what happened when Apple refused to support Flash. Did Netflix all the sudden support HTML 5 H.264 video in the browser in a cross platform way? No. They wrote a proprietary app for iOS. Would more people have been served if Netflix could have had a standard that worked across all browsers that would have allowed Android users to use Netflix 9 months sooner?
Firefox users were already viewing Netflix with a Silverlight plug in. Would you rather be stuck with an MS solution or one with input from various companies.
As far as the music industry getting rid of DRM it had nothing to do with "carrot vs. sticks." The real history:
2003: itunes was introduced with DRMd music that only worked with the iPod.
late 2006: other companies tried to sell drmd music but since it didn't work with the iPod, none of them could gain traction.
Early 2007: the music industry asked Apple to license FairPlay. Apple refused. As an alternative, Jobs said that if the music industry would license their music without DRM, any music sold anywhere would be compatible with any player. His "Thoughts on Music" essay giving this alternative was widely publicized in 2007 (https://www.google.com/amp/readwrite.com/2007/02/06/steve_jo...) and was on the front page of Apple.com
The music industry wanted variable priced music, the ability to bundle songs, a cut of every iPod sold, and a deposit to insure against losses due to privacy. Apple refused all of those conditions.
To both decrease Apple's dominance in the market and to increase the competition, the music industry allowed all of Apple's competitors who would bow to their demands to offer DRM free music. Apple was only able to sell DRM free music by EMI and independent labels and they weren't allowed to sell music at all over cellular for the then new iPhone.
2008: Apple and the music industry came to terms and Apple started selling DRM free music.
The only reason the music industry allowed DRM free music was to decrease Apple's dominance.
That may lead to people switching to other browsers more often than dropping Netflix subscriptions, but the costs for Netflix wouldn't be 0
Maybe not, but since they already provide their content via various apps anyway, it's hardly a leap to them providing a dedicated, proprietary player on other platforms as well.
If Chrome were to ship without DRM, Netflix would cave faster than you can say "thepiratebay". See what happened to flash when it wasn't supported on the iPhone.
Flash continued to be the dominant platform for online video for several more years, major sites didn't work on Apple devices, and competitors literally ran campaigns with lines like "See the whole Internet"? I'm not sure you're making the point you intended to here.
If your defeatist attitude had prevailed in the early years, we'd all be writing VBScript to animate the spinning gif on homepage.doc – yes, Microsoft once tried to push .doc to replace .html.
This is just silly. At no point in the history of the Web, from its earliest days growing out into public awareness, was there any serious prospect of anything like that happening. Whether we're really better off with JS having become the dominant front-end language is a different question, but I digress.
I also think the music industry has proven quite clearly that you'll have a lot more success with carrots than sticks.
The music industry can sell its primary content at sub-dollar prices and still make a reasonable profit. Almost no-one else can.
I don't agree with "people want to watch what they want to watch."
IMO the 2005-2015 wave of pirated content was due to the exact opposite; users (people in the living room) not going the extra literal mile to buy/rent a DVD.
With the coming of Spotify & Co the music pirate scene has pretty much died off and it's because the physical CDs are replaces by something orders of magnitude easier.
Same thing is happening with video content now that most houses have the capability of streaming it.
What people want to do after work is to sit in the sofa and press "play". They don't want to start installing software.
I don't agree with "people want to watch what they want to watch."
I have quite a few data points that say you are flat wrong about that. I would add to this: people watch what they want to watch and how they want to watch it.
I've literally downloaded HBO shows even though I'm an HBO Now subscriber. The Roku HBO Now app is so horrible, I just hate using it.
I agree with this. My frustration is not only HBO, but also UFC. I pay for Fight Pass because I love the sport, and I want to support it, but my Roku experience is so bad that I found myself looking for other means of consuming it.
Sorry, that's not how it works. The situation is what it is, and the people with hard data are going to act on it, and your scepticism does not change any of that.
As another person with business interests that produce custom video content for niche markets, I have shifted significantly in my attitude towards DRM since discovering how real people behave. We tried to be nice and considerate and not limit access to the video files with DRM. We did this while producing new, original content unlike anything else out there for our subscribers. We held out for several years.
But we got to the point where we were spending so much time dealing with that that it was directly affecting our ability to deliver for the vast majority of our customers who respected the rules. We were losing out on revenues, our genuine customers were losing out on new content, and the only people winning were the freeloaders and the people enjoying our content on other people's sites/channels/whatever.
My concern about DRM affecting legitimate customers if something goes wrong is as strong as ever, so we still take a cautious approach and err on the side of being nice. However, I have no qualms at all about DRMing every single asset we have, and I have no qualms whatsoever about deploying the lawyers against people who knowingly, maliciously and without remorse rip off the results of several years of hard work and share them with others.
As a final point, none of this negates your point that making access convenient and prices reasonable improves conversion rates. But I see little evidence that this helps if part of your potential market is finding your content totally free from someone else first.
> What people want to do after work is to sit in the sofa and press "play". They don't want to start installing software.
Maybe, but Roku, Fire Sticks, Apple TV & Chromecast all seem to indicate that people are willing to put in some effort to set up a platform for video consumption. That combined with pre-installed solutions like iTunes and Microsoft Movies & TV give users some pretty easy options to compete with their browser.
I think we lost the ability to make fun of RMS once the Snowden revelations come out. Regardless...
>> It is a techno-centric fantasy to think that browser makers have even a modicum of leverage here
You realize the world's largest browser vendors are Google, Apple, and Microsoft... right?
>> EME is a ideological compromise, sure, but it's a net benefit to the open web since its scope is small and it maintains the overall schema of web standards.
Ahhh yes, the classic "compromise some of my morals to save the rest of them". Works every time.
Google and Apple have very little leverage. If even one major studio withdrew all their content from Apple and only made it available on Netflix, Apple could potentially lose millions of subscribers. People want to watch what they want to watch.
1) Content production is rapidly moving to an "in house" model, where subscribers are more heavily influenced by original and exclusive content
2) I doubt there would be large transfers of subscribers, more a slight depression across the board and large increases in piracy, as we saw rather distinctly with the early days of music providers (like before itunes early days)
3) Google and Apple each by themselves are worth the entirety of Hollywood many times over. I think it's less them having little leverage, and more them playing a longer game and not caring about DRM battles in the short term.
Content is indeed moving in house, and all the companies that are doing in-house production in any meaningful way DRM their content. So what does this matter?
You keep using this phrase. Doesn't that also suggest that, if given enough trouble, they will just pirate that content instead? DRM has shown to do very little to stop that, so why continue pretending that it does.
> You keep using this phrase. Doesn't that also suggest that, if given enough trouble, they will just pirate that content instead? DRM has shown to do very little to stop that, so why continue pretending that it does.
Yes, but, in general, trouble has been decreasing, and so has the need to pirate. I would argue that there are only three kinds of people who pirate anymore:
1. People who want a local copy of the content that can't be taken away (e.g. Netflix pulling a title, or just canceling one's Netflix account).
2. Content that is so long-tail that it's not available for streaming from one of the major players that have decent device/playback support.
3. People who are so far in the "openness"/ownership camp that they would refuse to buy into a service like Netflix unless they provided #1 (DRM-free, of course).
The fourth kind of person is mostly gone: the person who doesn't need 1-3, but finds the options for playing content legally to be too cumbersome, or who can't find a legal player for their chosen viewing device. (Essentially, they've been "given enough trouble".)
If Netflix were to drop all browser support, and release native apps for Windows and macOS, there would be an increase of that fourth kind of person (Linux users, mainly, though I wouldn't put it past Netflix to release a Linux client too), but that wouldn't change the situation for the 1-3 type people, who are the bulk of pirating community.
I really think, for the vast majority of viewers, having a native Windows/MacOS app, plus native apps for Android/iOS, is plenty. Taking away browser support isn't going to increase piracy by any measurable amount.
You missed be largest category for pirating: people who want to watch new releases before they are available on Netflix, but cannot afford $20 to see it in theaters, or $15-20 to buy it digitally before it becomes available on Netflix. The window before a movie is in theaters until it becomes available on Netflix can be huge, and many people don't want to wait that long. I usually prefer watching movies in theaters (I like the experience) and if I miss it in theaters I will gladly buy it through iTunes, and even then I usually have to wait 3+ months before a movie I missed in theaters is available for purchase. I don't pirate because I wouldn't even know where to start but I can say I've been tempted to look into it just so I can watch a movie today rather than 3 months from now (and I would gladly buy it even after pirating it).
4 is still a thing because of exclusives and regional restrictions meaning that you need a growing number of subscriptions to access a chosen subset of content, and it might not be available at all in your region
> You keep using this phrase. Doesn't that also suggest that, if given enough trouble, they will just pirate that content instead?
Not to point any fingers, but I can confirm that this happens, a lot.
But regardless of my personal views of DRM and its efficiency, kudos to Netflix for targeting Linux as a platform, even if they do it for their own pockets' sake.
> You might as well say that anyone who is not living an RMS-sanctioned ascetic technology lifestyle is hurting the cause of free software everywhere.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
―George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists"
This is all true. What has happened is probably the best out of a set of crappy options. It's only a net benefit compared to the other non-fantasy possibilities, though. EME is more something to be resigned to than happy about.
> It shouldn't be considered worse than proprietary plugins with arbitrary scope.
True. Proprietary plugins with limited scope are better than proprietary plugins with arbitrary scope, all other things being equal.
> Sorry, but as someone who spent nearly a decade founding and building a premium content VOD service, and 6 of those years fighting fiercely against DRM and making great content available without DRM, I have both the knowledge and moral authority to say that you're living in a fantasy world. .... EME is a ideological compromise, sure, but it's a net benefit to the open web
If you need DRM, nobody is forcing you to create a solution based on a open-platform. Go make a OS and platform-specific app instead.
I mean... That's what EME makes browsers and web-sites into anyway. You now have so called "web-sites" where your OS and platform has to be "supported".
And then you might as well make a native app. Like Netflix does. Like Spotify does. Like everyone does.
I think you're living in fantasy world where DRM actually works. Not once has DRM prevented me from watching a netflix show, it's only prevented me from watching it on netflix.
DRM works to do the only thing it was ever really meant to do, which is give copyright holders warm fuzzies so that they're more willing to put their content up for sale on legal channels that don't require much in the way of technical savvy to use. Which means that it also works for the vast majority of consumers, since that's all they really ever wanted in the first place.
The whole bit about preventing people from copying content is just a feel good story that's told to TV executives in order to further DRM's primary purpose.
> I think you're living in fantasy world where DRM actually works. Not once has DRM prevented me from watching a netflix show, it's only prevented me from watching it on netflix.
Yes, yes, and yes.
DRM has blocked me from Netflix as a Linux user (not anymore obviously), blocked me from games due to bugs in the DRM in windows and or rootkits, and blocked me because the DRM does not work in Linux while the actual game does. And often you can find DRM free piracy versions.
It only deters people that were already detered by their own technological inability, the ones that don't know what files are. Everyone else can circumvent it by grabbing a pirate bay version.
Wrong, neither I nor anyone in industry believes DRM "works" in that sense. You're misunderstanding the purpose of DRM, see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13936576
> The point of enforcing DRM is not to prevent piracy, but rather to flex their market clout and demonstrate control.
I don't see how DRM does this. The amount they've spent compared to the results they've got seems to demonstrate a complete lack of control to me.
>As long as they put up moderate barriers to ripping, and as long as they have legal sanction to suppress productized piracy, the steady stream of new must-have content allows them to throw their weight around.
What does DRM do to prevent productized piracy?
>Licensing streaming without DRM is a slippery slope that decreases the perceived value of their content.
So the choose to increase the real value of it instead?
All evidence points to the opposite. Browser usage has expanded every single day since they were introduced ~26 something years ago. All that time there was no DRM in the browser.
Proprietary plugins have been the source of the majority of exploits. EME will be no different
> all that would mean is that premium content would not be available in browsers
I doubt that. All browsers boycotting DRM freaks would cause more rational heads in the media industry to push against those who insist on DRM, and it could become the tipping point in ridding video of this disease.
They themselves admit, they don't mind it, but don't want to be first to disrupt the status quo. So cowardice of browser makers only advanced the problem. But I agree that Firefox alone couldn't change things. This had to be a combined effort. But others simply either have no guts to stand against DRM, or are themselves dirty with it.
> Even if all browsers banded together and refused, all that would mean is that premium content would not be available in browsers, and that would lead to a significant devaluation of the web in favor of proprietary apps
Not everyone sees this as a bad thing. Horses for courses; the web doesn't have to be the platform for everything.
Someone can fork FF though and make it so that the DRM looks like it's there to the websites it visits, but it isn't really there. There's no way DRM can't be removed if I own the device that can play it.
You don't understand how this works. Firefox just provides some APIs that the DRM blob can use. All the decryption is done by the blob, not Firefox. You can reverse engineer the blob itself to an extent, but that will also become impossible with SGX (hence 4k on kabylake + edge only).
What's to stop someone reverse engineering the blob before it's loaded into an SGX enclave? I don't understand it very well so I could be missing something, but wouldn't that at least let someone document how the DRM works even if not running their own implementation?
It would be of no use (and the code can also be encrypted for additional obfuscation). There is no private data in the blob. The blob communicates to mothership once it's safe inside the enclave, and that's when sensitive data is transmitted over an encrypted channel which only the blob can decrypt inside the enclave.
Digital signatures. Not that I actually know how it's implemented, but I would expect someone like Netflix to pay Intel for the build infrastructure to be able to build signed blobs that the SGX will load.
The "someone" in your hypothetical can modify the blob, but then they won't be able to resign the blob, so SGX will fail to load it.
No, that's all fine for mucking around and developing apps, but actual SGX needs attestation which the emulator can't fake. That's the whole point of SGX.
There is a hardware-based secret which emulators cannot obtain or fake. That breaks the attestation chain. At the heart of it, there is some stuff that only your processor can do and not you the user even though you may have full control over the operating system. The OS is in SGX's threat model.
>Someone can fork FF though and make it so that the DRM looks like it's there to the websites it visits, but it isn't really there.
No, they can't. The DRM will have to be there, or the content (as is from the website) wont play.
>There's no way DRM can't be removed if I own the device that can play it.
There are several ways (including recording the analog signal if it comes down to that). But not any way of "make it so that the DRM looks like it's there to the websites it visits, but it isn't really there"
Here's the bottom line: browser makers have absolutely zero leverage over DRM. Firefox refusing to implement DRM would have been 1000 times more likely to lead to Firefox's irrelevance and death than it would lead to rightsholders caving on DRM requirements. Even if all browsers banded together and refused, all that would mean is that premium content would not be available in browsers, and that would lead to a significant devaluation of the web in favor of proprietary apps. It is a techno-centric fantasy to think that browser makers have even a modicum of leverage here. The fact is content producers would restrict themselves to licensed devices in a heartbeat, and they would get away with it to, because at the end of the day, people want to watch what they want to watch.
EME is a ideological compromise, sure, but it's a net benefit to the open web since its scope is small and it maintains the overall schema of web standards. It shouldn't be considered worse than proprietary plugins with arbitrary scope.