18 ms·

This only works because of DRM infecting web standards. Thanks for hurting the web, Netflix.

tzs 10y ago
They did not put DRM into web standards. They put an open interface into web standards that can be used to interface to third party DRM, but could also be used for non-DRM purposes.
- davexunit 10y ago
  That's just playing word games. Netflix lobbied for EME so they could serve DRM'd video, end of story.
  - artursapek 10y ago
    Netflix wouldn't be a viable business if not for DRM. Why is everyone so upset? Having the option to use DRM in native web APIs is not a bad thing.
    - davexunit 10y ago
      >Netflix wouldn't be a viable business if not for DRM. Uber wouldn't be a viable business model if it didn't exploit drivers and dodge laws that apply to taxis. Airbnb wouldn't be a viable business model if it didn't sidestep hotel laws. If your business depends on having unjust power over your customers then you ought to go out of business.
      - pitaj 10y ago
        These are completely different realms. Legality of Uber and Airbnb is very different from Netflix losing all 3rd party content if they didn't provide DRM. Also, many people seem to have a real hard-on for the same legal system that outlaws marijuana and created the DMCA.
    - sigmar 10y ago
      >Netflix wouldn't be a viable business if not for DRM. Uh, why not? All Netflix series are already getting pirated even with DRM.
      - artursapek 10y ago
        Houses get broken into even when they have locks, so why do you keep a lock on your house?
        MichaelGG 10y ago
        This terrible analogy would only be remotely close if your house was copied to millions of people, and a single person breaking in could expose everything inside to everyone on the Internet.
        artursapek 10y ago
        So it's ok to steal things that are easy to steal?
        cr0sh 10y ago
        Stealing implies that the theft of the "thing" denies the original owner of possession and use of that same "thing". Digital IP is different - you can make infinite copies of it. A copy I make does not diminish your copy, nor does it deprive you of possession of your copy, or usage of that copy. What it does deny you is the amount of money which you might have made on the sale of that copy (if you are the rights-holder and are selling the digital IP "thing" to others). I haven't, however, stopped you from continuing to sell your digital IP "thing" - you still have it. You just don't have the money. Surely you can see this difference? If it could be called anything, it would be considered theft of opportunity, rather than theft of an object. You have been deprived of making a portion of money. Now - that's very close to - if not almost identical, to me going up to your digital IP (via website, a kiosk, you at a table burning copies onto disc - whatever), looking at it, then saying to you "I would love to have a copy of this, but you know, I just won't, because you are charging money for it". I still haven't deprived you of your IP - you still have it, you still have your copy, etc. What I have done is deprived you of the opportunity of making money. Should I go to jail, or be fined, or be forced to pay you the money in some manner because I didn't buy it? The only real difference between the two? Well - in the first scenario, I have a copy of the digital IP; in very real terms, I have the knowledge of a particular number (because that is what any digital work can be reduced to - just a very large number) - in the second case - I don't. But - what if on the off chance I somehow guess that large number? What if I am able to do that? Since it is a real number, there is that possibility (granted, the probability of being able to do so is vanishingly small). I know have the knowledge of that number, and can use it as I see fit - including decoding it to watch it as a movie, or play it as a piece of music, or whatever. But I didn't copy it from you; in fact, you might not even know that I now know your number! Have I committed a crime? DRM (and the laws which surround it) - in a very real sense - is a system put in place to criminalize and prosecute people for knowledge of particular numbers - nothing more, nothing less. In other words, knowledge of such numbers is considered a crime, unless you have paid money for that knowledge - even possibly if you independently arrive at that knowledge. Agree or disagree - but it's the truth.
    - josteink 10y ago
      > Netflix wouldn't be a viable business if not for DRM. Why is everyone so upset? Having the option to use DRM in native web APIs is not a bad thing. Because Netflix is freeloading on our open technology to deliver closed content, and putting the cost to support their DRM on us. It's not right. It's not fair. They are fragmenting the web by making "web sites" which are browser and OS-specific. If they want to make closed, OS-dependent stuff anyway, they should have to pay the cost, not us. They should just make a native app. Like they already do for at least 10 other platforms. Basically keep your closed and non-free poison out of my browser and open web-standards. That's a no-DRM zone. I'll use your app though, if you just go make it.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        In what sense is Netflix "freeloading"? Where does the free ride stop? Are they allowed to use TCP/IP stacks to deliver DRM? The HTTP protocol? Or is just Mozilla that's the problem?
        Touche 10y ago
        The free ride stops when they add stuff to a spec that other people can't freely implement.
        tptacek 10y ago
        I understand why you don't like EME DRM. I don't understand the sense in which it is free-riding.
        Touche 10y ago
        It's offloading the cost of implementing proprietary software onto others.
        pikzen 10y ago
        You don't see in what sense forcing the implementation of DRM into an open standard (HTTP in a broad sense, which includes HTML, JS, etc.), that has been developed for the past decades in a rather open way so your company can keep making profits could be "freeloading"? Not to mention setting it up in such a way that their part of the web is broken if for some reason you do not have their blessing for their DRM. Netflix came in and screwed over everyone, in a way that is just as bad as Flash. Sure, use the TCP/IP stack. Send your data over the internet. Make your own software based on that, it's just a transport layer and it screws no one else. Except they seem to be pretty damn awful at it, considering how comically bad all their desktop apps are.
    - pitaj 10y ago
      If you're like one these people who believe that DRM is actually an act of evil, then I guess it makes sense.
    - shmerl 10y ago
      That's false. DRM doesn't enable business. It's not even needed at all.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        If that's true, why does every major content provider disagree with you?
        shmerl 10y ago
        They don't disagree. The usage of DRM has nothing to do with normal reasons. See https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree_movies/post499 https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree...
        tptacek 10y ago
        What the hell is Gog? Serious question. It was obviously never going to be my contention that there were no DRM-free video content producers. Just the major ones.
        shmerl 10y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com (the article incorrectly calls it Cypriot company, it's Polish). And I meant major ones. They admit that DRM isn't needed. See the report in the link above. Their usage of DRM isn't caused by business enabling requirements, but has completely crooked unrelated reasons.
        tptacek 10y ago
        So basically every mainstream movie and television content producer is colluding with every other such producer for some crooked end? By revenue, the overwhelming majority of the media industry is a criminal conspiracy?
    - apostacy 10y ago
      I use Netflix, simply because it is slightly more convenient than what I used to do, torrenting. I'm willing to pay for that convenience. Besides, they said that the Apple Music Store couldn't survive without DRM. And then one day they removed it and nobody even noticed. Now nobody uses DRM when they sell music. Even Spotify don't bother encrypting cached mp3s on your hard drive. If Netflix switched to unencrypted streams tomorrow, it would have no effect. There is no content that is exclusive to Netflix. As soon as Netflix makes something available, it is immediately ripped losslessly and put on The Pirate Bay.
- Touche 10y ago
  There are no use cases for EME other than DRM.
  - tzs 10y ago
    How about sharing encrypted videos among a private group of people who are not technologically sophisticated? The conventional way to do so would require recipients to download an encrypted video file, then run a separate program to decrypt the file. Then they could play the file. Then they have to remember to delete the decrypted file if it is something sensitive that should not be lying about unencrypted on their system. It should be possible to design a system that plugs into EME that greatly simplifies this.
    - hsivonen 10y ago
      If you mean using EME just for non-DRM encryption, no it doesn't make sense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11692420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11692420 If you mean that the recipients of the video are restricted in what they can do with it, that's a DRM use case.
      - tzs 10y ago
        From your linked comment:> If you want to use the Clear Key key system for privacy, you need to deliver the key over https I don't see anything that requires that the key be delivered over the net. I just did a test with Clear Key where the page with the video playback has a text field that the viewer pastes the key into, and that worked [1]. The scenarios I'm envisioning involve sharing videos between people that have good non-web methods of communicating, so can distribute a video's encryption key via some non-web means. End user encryption applications tend to by usability train wrecks for non-tech people (heck, they are often terrible for tech people, too...), so what I'm going for here is trying to get rid of the video viewer having to go outside their browser to deal with viewing an encrypted video. Maybe this can be done with MSE without EME, by handling the decryption in JavaScript? [1] Based on the Clear Key sample here: https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/eme/basics/ https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/eme/basics/
kibwen 10y ago
Let's give credit where credit is due: the EME proposal was jointly authored by Netflix, Microsoft, and Google: https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/
- mtgx 10y ago
  Both of which have an interest in having control over media platforms. DRM = control. See Apple and iTunes DRM for the first decade of its existence. Same with Amazon and the Kindle. And now see how Microsoft is already abusing that power to say that its Edge browser can deliver higher resolution Netflix shows - not because it's any better at rendering videos than Chrome and Firefox, but because it's uses its Windows DRM to only allow Edge to play higher-quality Netflix videos. Hashtag #NewMicrosoft
jasonmp85 10y ago
What Netflix is doing that hurts the web is opposing net neutrality now that they're big enough they can bargain for special treatment. This—on the other hand—provides a replacement for use cases which used poorly-supported, insecure, and battery-hungry proprietary plugins. I run Safari with no extensions and having this for Netflix and Amazon is fantastic. I trust Apple to patch security vulnerabilities and the browser is auto-updated along with the rest of my system. Not having to worry about Flash zero-days is more important to me than some purity argument about what the W3C should be doing. If you seriously think VoD services were going to operate using standards without DRM in place I'm not sure you'll find many productive conversations on this topic. The web has been dead for some time and Netflix had very little to do with that.
- davexunit 10y ago
  You're not getting EME extensions from Apple, you're getting them from the third-party that developed the extensions. You can count on terrible security vulnerabilities being found in these. Movies aren't important. Netflix isn't important. The open web, the ideology (or as you put it pejoratively, "purity") behind it, is important.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    So when an EME is installed open videos don't play anymore or something?
  - jasonmp85 10y ago
    You don't need to Trojan-horse DRM into W3C standards to kill the web. Facebook Instant Articles, Google AMP, adtech, and general trends toward centralization are doing that just fine with no changes in standards whatsoever. The amount of heat this change has generated is disproportionate to its actual role as a threat to the open web
  - tzs 10y ago
    What do you mean by "open web"? From the beginning or near the beginning it was possible and not uncommon to put things on the web with restricted access. The HTTP protocol itself supports a couple of login mechanisms which were intended to be used to restrict access to content, and these have been there since at least as early as 1996.

tzs 10y ago

They did not put DRM into web standards. They put an open interface into web standards that can be used to interface to third party DRM, but could also be used for non-DRM purposes.

davexunit 10y ago
That's just playing word games. Netflix lobbied for EME so they could serve DRM'd video, end of story.
- artursapek 10y ago
  Netflix wouldn't be a viable business if not for DRM. Why is everyone so upset? Having the option to use DRM in native web APIs is not a bad thing.
  - davexunit 10y ago
    >Netflix wouldn't be a viable business if not for DRM. Uber wouldn't be a viable business model if it didn't exploit drivers and dodge laws that apply to taxis. Airbnb wouldn't be a viable business model if it didn't sidestep hotel laws. If your business depends on having unjust power over your customers then you ought to go out of business.
    - pitaj 10y ago
      These are completely different realms. Legality of Uber and Airbnb is very different from Netflix losing all 3rd party content if they didn't provide DRM. Also, many people seem to have a real hard-on for the same legal system that outlaws marijuana and created the DMCA.
  - sigmar 10y ago
    >Netflix wouldn't be a viable business if not for DRM. Uh, why not? All Netflix series are already getting pirated even with DRM.
    - artursapek 10y ago
      Houses get broken into even when they have locks, so why do you keep a lock on your house?
      - MichaelGG 10y ago
        This terrible analogy would only be remotely close if your house was copied to millions of people, and a single person breaking in could expose everything inside to everyone on the Internet.
        artursapek 10y ago
        So it's ok to steal things that are easy to steal?
        cr0sh 10y ago
        Stealing implies that the theft of the "thing" denies the original owner of possession and use of that same "thing". Digital IP is different - you can make infinite copies of it. A copy I make does not diminish your copy, nor does it deprive you of possession of your copy, or usage of that copy. What it does deny you is the amount of money which you might have made on the sale of that copy (if you are the rights-holder and are selling the digital IP "thing" to others). I haven't, however, stopped you from continuing to sell your digital IP "thing" - you still have it. You just don't have the money. Surely you can see this difference? If it could be called anything, it would be considered theft of opportunity, rather than theft of an object. You have been deprived of making a portion of money. Now - that's very close to - if not almost identical, to me going up to your digital IP (via website, a kiosk, you at a table burning copies onto disc - whatever), looking at it, then saying to you "I would love to have a copy of this, but you know, I just won't, because you are charging money for it". I still haven't deprived you of your IP - you still have it, you still have your copy, etc. What I have done is deprived you of the opportunity of making money. Should I go to jail, or be fined, or be forced to pay you the money in some manner because I didn't buy it? The only real difference between the two? Well - in the first scenario, I have a copy of the digital IP; in very real terms, I have the knowledge of a particular number (because that is what any digital work can be reduced to - just a very large number) - in the second case - I don't. But - what if on the off chance I somehow guess that large number? What if I am able to do that? Since it is a real number, there is that possibility (granted, the probability of being able to do so is vanishingly small). I know have the knowledge of that number, and can use it as I see fit - including decoding it to watch it as a movie, or play it as a piece of music, or whatever. But I didn't copy it from you; in fact, you might not even know that I now know your number! Have I committed a crime? DRM (and the laws which surround it) - in a very real sense - is a system put in place to criminalize and prosecute people for knowledge of particular numbers - nothing more, nothing less. In other words, knowledge of such numbers is considered a crime, unless you have paid money for that knowledge - even possibly if you independently arrive at that knowledge. Agree or disagree - but it's the truth.
  - josteink 10y ago
    > Netflix wouldn't be a viable business if not for DRM. Why is everyone so upset? Having the option to use DRM in native web APIs is not a bad thing. Because Netflix is freeloading on our open technology to deliver closed content, and putting the cost to support their DRM on us. It's not right. It's not fair. They are fragmenting the web by making "web sites" which are browser and OS-specific. If they want to make closed, OS-dependent stuff anyway, they should have to pay the cost, not us. They should just make a native app. Like they already do for at least 10 other platforms. Basically keep your closed and non-free poison out of my browser and open web-standards. That's a no-DRM zone. I'll use your app though, if you just go make it.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      In what sense is Netflix "freeloading"? Where does the free ride stop? Are they allowed to use TCP/IP stacks to deliver DRM? The HTTP protocol? Or is just Mozilla that's the problem?
      - Touche 10y ago
        The free ride stops when they add stuff to a spec that other people can't freely implement.
        tptacek 10y ago
        I understand why you don't like EME DRM. I don't understand the sense in which it is free-riding.
        Touche 10y ago
        It's offloading the cost of implementing proprietary software onto others.
      - pikzen 10y ago
        You don't see in what sense forcing the implementation of DRM into an open standard (HTTP in a broad sense, which includes HTML, JS, etc.), that has been developed for the past decades in a rather open way so your company can keep making profits could be "freeloading"? Not to mention setting it up in such a way that their part of the web is broken if for some reason you do not have their blessing for their DRM. Netflix came in and screwed over everyone, in a way that is just as bad as Flash. Sure, use the TCP/IP stack. Send your data over the internet. Make your own software based on that, it's just a transport layer and it screws no one else. Except they seem to be pretty damn awful at it, considering how comically bad all their desktop apps are.
  - pitaj 10y ago
    If you're like one these people who believe that DRM is actually an act of evil, then I guess it makes sense.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    That's false. DRM doesn't enable business. It's not even needed at all.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      If that's true, why does every major content provider disagree with you?
      - shmerl 10y ago
        They don't disagree. The usage of DRM has nothing to do with normal reasons. See https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree_movies/post499 https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree...
        tptacek 10y ago
        What the hell is Gog? Serious question. It was obviously never going to be my contention that there were no DRM-free video content producers. Just the major ones.
        shmerl 10y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com (the article incorrectly calls it Cypriot company, it's Polish). And I meant major ones. They admit that DRM isn't needed. See the report in the link above. Their usage of DRM isn't caused by business enabling requirements, but has completely crooked unrelated reasons.
        tptacek 10y ago
        So basically every mainstream movie and television content producer is colluding with every other such producer for some crooked end? By revenue, the overwhelming majority of the media industry is a criminal conspiracy?
  - apostacy 10y ago
    I use Netflix, simply because it is slightly more convenient than what I used to do, torrenting. I'm willing to pay for that convenience. Besides, they said that the Apple Music Store couldn't survive without DRM. And then one day they removed it and nobody even noticed. Now nobody uses DRM when they sell music. Even Spotify don't bother encrypting cached mp3s on your hard drive. If Netflix switched to unencrypted streams tomorrow, it would have no effect. There is no content that is exclusive to Netflix. As soon as Netflix makes something available, it is immediately ripped losslessly and put on The Pirate Bay.
Touche 10y ago
There are no use cases for EME other than DRM.
- tzs 10y ago
  How about sharing encrypted videos among a private group of people who are not technologically sophisticated? The conventional way to do so would require recipients to download an encrypted video file, then run a separate program to decrypt the file. Then they could play the file. Then they have to remember to delete the decrypted file if it is something sensitive that should not be lying about unencrypted on their system. It should be possible to design a system that plugs into EME that greatly simplifies this.
  - hsivonen 10y ago
    If you mean using EME just for non-DRM encryption, no it doesn't make sense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11692420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11692420 If you mean that the recipients of the video are restricted in what they can do with it, that's a DRM use case.
    - tzs 10y ago
      From your linked comment:> If you want to use the Clear Key key system for privacy, you need to deliver the key over https I don't see anything that requires that the key be delivered over the net. I just did a test with Clear Key where the page with the video playback has a text field that the viewer pastes the key into, and that worked [1]. The scenarios I'm envisioning involve sharing videos between people that have good non-web methods of communicating, so can distribute a video's encryption key via some non-web means. End user encryption applications tend to by usability train wrecks for non-tech people (heck, they are often terrible for tech people, too...), so what I'm going for here is trying to get rid of the video viewer having to go outside their browser to deal with viewing an encrypted video. Maybe this can be done with MSE without EME, by handling the decryption in JavaScript? [1] Based on the Clear Key sample here: https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/eme/basics/ https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/eme/basics/

kibwen 10y ago

Let's give credit where credit is due: the EME proposal was jointly authored by Netflix, Microsoft, and Google: https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/

mtgx 10y ago
Both of which have an interest in having control over media platforms. DRM = control. See Apple and iTunes DRM for the first decade of its existence. Same with Amazon and the Kindle. And now see how Microsoft is already abusing that power to say that its Edge browser can deliver higher resolution Netflix shows - not because it's any better at rendering videos than Chrome and Firefox, but because it's uses its Windows DRM to only allow Edge to play higher-quality Netflix videos. Hashtag #NewMicrosoft

jasonmp85 10y ago

What Netflix is doing that hurts the web is opposing net neutrality now that they're big enough they can bargain for special treatment. This—on the other hand—provides a replacement for use cases which used poorly-supported, insecure, and battery-hungry proprietary plugins. I run Safari with no extensions and having this for Netflix and Amazon is fantastic. I trust Apple to patch security vulnerabilities and the browser is auto-updated along with the rest of my system. Not having to worry about Flash zero-days is more important to me than some purity argument about what the W3C should be doing. If you seriously think VoD services were going to operate using standards without DRM in place I'm not sure you'll find many productive conversations on this topic. The web has been dead for some time and Netflix had very little to do with that.

davexunit 10y ago
You're not getting EME extensions from Apple, you're getting them from the third-party that developed the extensions. You can count on terrible security vulnerabilities being found in these. Movies aren't important. Netflix isn't important. The open web, the ideology (or as you put it pejoratively, "purity") behind it, is important.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  So when an EME is installed open videos don't play anymore or something?
- jasonmp85 10y ago
  You don't need to Trojan-horse DRM into W3C standards to kill the web. Facebook Instant Articles, Google AMP, adtech, and general trends toward centralization are doing that just fine with no changes in standards whatsoever. The amount of heat this change has generated is disproportionate to its actual role as a threat to the open web
- tzs 10y ago
  What do you mean by "open web"? From the beginning or near the beginning it was possible and not uncommon to put things on the web with restricted access. The HTTP protocol itself supports a couple of login mechanisms which were intended to be used to restrict access to content, and these have been there since at least as early as 1996.