7 ms·

> We don't do anything shady, and we're proud of that. We're an honest company. Maybe not shady, but surely controversial. [0]: https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypte

by mimsee 9y ago

> We don't do anything shady, and we're proud of that. We're an honest company. Maybe not shady, but surely controversial. [0]: https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ [1]: https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/18/drm-for-the-web-is-a-bad-idea/ https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/18/drm-for-the-web-is-a-bad... [2]: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/drm-in-web-standards https://www.defectivebydesign.org/drm-in-web-standards

EpicEng 9y ago
Realistically, what's their option here? Take a stance on an issue not everyone agrees upon (and which most people don't care about) which could potentially shut them down in the long run?
- mlkmlksmdf 9y ago
  This is a pretty abominable line of reasoning. Yeah, doing the right thing is not always free of cost.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  > which could potentially shut them down in the long run Yes, if we ever possessed the technology to pirate movies, everyone would watch them and the industry couldn't survive.
  - overcast 9y ago
    Right, so we'll make it stupid simple for people to do. A giant, unencrypted library of movies, that can be saved and redistributed. Pirating exists, but if I asked most people how to do it, they still wouldn't know how to download a torrent client, find the torrent, unpack the movie, get a movie player, etc.. You know how locks on your front door keeps the honest thieves out? Same idea. I've never understood the complaints over DRM. At what point in your lives does it provide some type of hindrance? I load up Netflix, I start playing a movie until it's done. I don't give a shit if it was encrypted before I viewed it. All I care about is that I can watch it. What's the issue here?
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      The point where things break because of it. It hasn't happened with Netflix on any large scale, yet. But it has happened in the past. There are videos games that are single player and can't be played without an active connection back to the publisher. What happens when the publisher doesn't like you or mislabels you as a pirate? What if you just want to play the video game you bought and payed fro without an Internet connection? There were music stores that only played music through special software after getting decryption keys from an active connection to the Internet, and some of those stores shut down. What happened with the millions of dollars paid into those stores? What about the songs? Did you know that decrypting a song you bought and paid for is a crime? Consider: https://xkcd.com/488/ https://xkcd.com/488/ I would rather get out in front of this entirely artificial problem before I have to support my friends and family who don't understand the nature of this problem.
      - overcast 9y ago
        You're comparing a subscription service to a game that you purchased a license for. The former you're not entitled to a copy of, the latter you are. With or without DRM, companies are also entitled to revoke your licenses regardless. You don't own any of it. DRM would also not exist, if it wasn't for everyone stealing the stuff. Do you really think companies want to pour all of the money and resources into this, if they didn't have to? Should games even have keys without DRM? What if I lose the key, and the company folded years ago. Now I can't play the game because they dared to require a key to play. Is your solution making everything openly available to download, and just relying on the goodness of the human heart to pay for it? Good luck.
        silly_goose 9y ago
        We could call it "shareware"
      - jclardy 9y ago
        I must have missed the part of Netflix ToS that gives me ownership of all their content for $9.99 a month. I do agree with you for purchases that have DRM, but this is a subscription service - you watch when you pay, not when you don't.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    I think he meant hollywood could withhold license to big name movies.
    - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
      They already do. Netflix's streaming library is garbage filled with direct-to-DVD dreck.
  - EpicEng 9y ago
    That's not what I meant. I meant that content owners simply won't deal with Netflix without DRM in place. Whether or not that's a rational approach is irrelevant; it's their stance on the matter.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  It's totally in Netflix's interest to keep DRM and make it harder and more complicated to implement. It creates a huge barrier to entry and keeps the labels and people thinking this is "ok" or even "needed". What could they do? They could not laud DRM on their blog. They could say they are reluctantly adding it. They could probably have pushed for 1080p in Chrome, etc. They could make their own stuff DRM free and publish piracy/subscription stats to show how much DRM helps. Their choices aren't just "fully embrace it" or "go out of business".
owebmaster 9y ago
House of Cards has a plot very shady to me. A lot of hidden agendas or bias if you prefer to take it easy.
hsod 9y ago
Shady and controversial are two very different things.
Freak_NL 9y ago
Yeah, being limited to 720p because you run a free software operating system is not my idea of 'not shady' (Netflix is keeping their streams on Firefox and Chrome on 720p as a matter of policy, 1080p requires IE11, Edge, or Safari on a non-free operating system, or their proprietary app on an approved operating system). The only way this makes sense is if the purpose of this blockade is to push people towards devices and operating systems that are completely locked down with DRM, from the software to the hardware. I can't think of any other reason — if Netflix does serve me 1080p and 4K streams, would that cause a sudden increase in the amount of pirated releases available? I can already get everything on Netflix, in 1080p, if I really want just by visiting the usual pirate haunts! So what exactly is gained by degrading my viewing experience by only allowing me 720p as long as I choose to run a free operating system instead of a fully locked down platform? I wish Netflix would give an honest answer on their DRM strategy, because it is driving me away. I could understand if this was done because of licensing issues, but Netflix has decided on a blanket ban of 1080p and higher for their customers on free operating systems and anyone else who wants to use Chrome or Firefox.
- snuxoll 9y ago
  If it was licensing issues, it'd at least be nice if Netflix only lowered quality where required instead of across the board. For crying out loud, why can't I get 1080p streams of Netflix originals on Linux - I've got the stupid Widevine CDM installed, what's the problem?
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    Would be nice, but at the same time it's a lot simpler to just do it once.
- specialist 9y ago
  Have both Amazon Prime and NetFlix. Still fetch torrents, so I can control playback speed (watch faster).
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
scarface74 9y ago
I don't see anything controversial about encrypting media you rent. The whole canard about DRM is that you don't own the media. You're not paying for ownership of Netflix videos. You're paying for access.
- btym 9y ago
  I've always thought that streaming services' main goal should be to be more convenient than digital piracy. That's when they win- when the service provides such a clear advantage over piracy that people are happy to pay money for it. At the moment, aside from ethical qualms, it is often more convenient for Linux, FF, and Chrome users to pirate Netflix's content. DRM, ironically, promotes piracy.
  - helthanatos 9y ago
    Also, Netflix's library is incredibly small compared to the amount of shows people actually watch. Netflix now blocks rooted Android devices. Netflix's originals are mostly terrible. So piracy vs $10/month for so much less is just painful. They don't allow anything more than 720p on chrome quite ironic considering the widevine deal. So yes, it seems Netflix is much more inconvenient than piracy.
    - scarface74 9y ago
      Netflix's originals are mostly terrible. http://fortune.com/2016/09/16/emmys-preview-netflix/ http://fortune.com/2016/09/16/emmys-preview-netflix/
      - cavanasm 9y ago
        While I also strongly disagree that Netflix's originals are "mostly terrible", I also think that awards shows are not as objective a judge of quality as I (and I imagine many others) would like.
        LordDragonfang 9y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
There are many shady tech company practices: * Open sexual harassment culture * Building spy software for the government * Selling censorship tools to governments * Selling your private data to advertisers * Allowing advertisers to target a person's emotional state * Profiting off of fake news and click bait * Tracking people across the web * Using monopolies to limit competition in other realms * Strong arming third parties to keep them from using your competitors' products Somehow, limiting streaming to 720p on non-supported platforms seems pretty benign. Edit: Tried to separate list from closing comment.
- Teichopsia 9y ago
  Could you re-phrase this somehow? I'm not sure if you are talking about companies in general or Netflix. Edit: I rather ask than make an assumption. Thanks for the confirmation.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    His last sentence should make it clear that he wasnt talking about netflix, shouldnt it?
  - ethbro 9y ago
    Strongly assume parent was referring to all those things that are done at other companies... vs the 720p issue at Netflix. On the other hand, if Netflix has managed to reimplement the NSA's dragnet internally, I'm going to be really impressed by their engineers' productivity.
  - cholantesh 9y ago
    From the second to second-last line, they're referring to shady practices in general. In their last, they're arguing that delivering lower-quality streams to Linux-based user agents is comparatively benign. Not sure I agree, FWIW.
- Antrikshy 9y ago
  You have sources for these?
Mithaldu 9y ago
Another example to add for "shady", for a long time Netflix used to push shows you'd watched to the end in your "continue watching" show to prompt you to watch them again, which could easily be mistaken for "the show actually has new episodes". They did fix that though, i think.
rbritton 9y ago
Blocking virtually all VPNs and VPS IP ranges is not the most pleasant practice. I realize this is likely a Hollywood demand, but absent any kind of other information from them, it sure appears that they are complicit in it. Further, they make it essentially impossible to to create a local routing rule to bypass the VPN for them alone. You're stuck whitelisting the whole of AWS.
- xixor2 9y ago
  It's also a government demand: ratings, amount of locally produced content, taxes, etc.
  - jmanderley 9y ago
    Blocking VPNs is a government demand? I'm highly skeptical of this.

by mimsee 9y ago

EpicEng 9y ago

Realistically, what's their option here? Take a stance on an issue not everyone agrees upon (and which most people don't care about) which could potentially shut them down in the long run?

mlkmlksmdf 9y ago
This is a pretty abominable line of reasoning. Yeah, doing the right thing is not always free of cost.
paulddraper 9y ago
> which could potentially shut them down in the long run Yes, if we ever possessed the technology to pirate movies, everyone would watch them and the industry couldn't survive.
- overcast 9y ago
  Right, so we'll make it stupid simple for people to do. A giant, unencrypted library of movies, that can be saved and redistributed. Pirating exists, but if I asked most people how to do it, they still wouldn't know how to download a torrent client, find the torrent, unpack the movie, get a movie player, etc.. You know how locks on your front door keeps the honest thieves out? Same idea. I've never understood the complaints over DRM. At what point in your lives does it provide some type of hindrance? I load up Netflix, I start playing a movie until it's done. I don't give a shit if it was encrypted before I viewed it. All I care about is that I can watch it. What's the issue here?
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    The point where things break because of it. It hasn't happened with Netflix on any large scale, yet. But it has happened in the past. There are videos games that are single player and can't be played without an active connection back to the publisher. What happens when the publisher doesn't like you or mislabels you as a pirate? What if you just want to play the video game you bought and payed fro without an Internet connection? There were music stores that only played music through special software after getting decryption keys from an active connection to the Internet, and some of those stores shut down. What happened with the millions of dollars paid into those stores? What about the songs? Did you know that decrypting a song you bought and paid for is a crime? Consider: https://xkcd.com/488/ https://xkcd.com/488/ I would rather get out in front of this entirely artificial problem before I have to support my friends and family who don't understand the nature of this problem.
    - overcast 9y ago
      You're comparing a subscription service to a game that you purchased a license for. The former you're not entitled to a copy of, the latter you are. With or without DRM, companies are also entitled to revoke your licenses regardless. You don't own any of it. DRM would also not exist, if it wasn't for everyone stealing the stuff. Do you really think companies want to pour all of the money and resources into this, if they didn't have to? Should games even have keys without DRM? What if I lose the key, and the company folded years ago. Now I can't play the game because they dared to require a key to play. Is your solution making everything openly available to download, and just relying on the goodness of the human heart to pay for it? Good luck.
      - silly_goose 9y ago
        We could call it "shareware"
    - jclardy 9y ago
      I must have missed the part of Netflix ToS that gives me ownership of all their content for $9.99 a month. I do agree with you for purchases that have DRM, but this is a subscription service - you watch when you pay, not when you don't.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  I think he meant hollywood could withhold license to big name movies.
  - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    They already do. Netflix's streaming library is garbage filled with direct-to-DVD dreck.
- EpicEng 9y ago
  That's not what I meant. I meant that content owners simply won't deal with Netflix without DRM in place. Whether or not that's a rational approach is irrelevant; it's their stance on the matter.
MichaelGG 9y ago
It's totally in Netflix's interest to keep DRM and make it harder and more complicated to implement. It creates a huge barrier to entry and keeps the labels and people thinking this is "ok" or even "needed". What could they do? They could not laud DRM on their blog. They could say they are reluctantly adding it. They could probably have pushed for 1080p in Chrome, etc. They could make their own stuff DRM free and publish piracy/subscription stats to show how much DRM helps. Their choices aren't just "fully embrace it" or "go out of business".

owebmaster 9y ago

House of Cards has a plot very shady to me. A lot of hidden agendas or bias if you prefer to take it easy.

hsod 9y ago

Shady and controversial are two very different things.

Freak_NL 9y ago

Yeah, being limited to 720p because you run a free software operating system is not my idea of 'not shady' (Netflix is keeping their streams on Firefox and Chrome on 720p as a matter of policy, 1080p requires IE11, Edge, or Safari on a non-free operating system, or their proprietary app on an approved operating system). The only way this makes sense is if the purpose of this blockade is to push people towards devices and operating systems that are completely locked down with DRM, from the software to the hardware. I can't think of any other reason — if Netflix does serve me 1080p and 4K streams, would that cause a sudden increase in the amount of pirated releases available? I can already get everything on Netflix, in 1080p, if I really want just by visiting the usual pirate haunts! So what exactly is gained by degrading my viewing experience by only allowing me 720p as long as I choose to run a free operating system instead of a fully locked down platform? I wish Netflix would give an honest answer on their DRM strategy, because it is driving me away. I could understand if this was done because of licensing issues, but Netflix has decided on a blanket ban of 1080p and higher for their customers on free operating systems and anyone else who wants to use Chrome or Firefox.

snuxoll 9y ago
If it was licensing issues, it'd at least be nice if Netflix only lowered quality where required instead of across the board. For crying out loud, why can't I get 1080p streams of Netflix originals on Linux - I've got the stupid Widevine CDM installed, what's the problem?
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  Would be nice, but at the same time it's a lot simpler to just do it once.
specialist 9y ago
Have both Amazon Prime and NetFlix. Still fetch torrents, so I can control playback speed (watch faster).
- lern_too_spel 9y ago

scarface74 9y ago

I don't see anything controversial about encrypting media you rent. The whole canard about DRM is that you don't own the media. You're not paying for ownership of Netflix videos. You're paying for access.

btym 9y ago
I've always thought that streaming services' main goal should be to be more convenient than digital piracy. That's when they win- when the service provides such a clear advantage over piracy that people are happy to pay money for it. At the moment, aside from ethical qualms, it is often more convenient for Linux, FF, and Chrome users to pirate Netflix's content. DRM, ironically, promotes piracy.
- helthanatos 9y ago
  Also, Netflix's library is incredibly small compared to the amount of shows people actually watch. Netflix now blocks rooted Android devices. Netflix's originals are mostly terrible. So piracy vs $10/month for so much less is just painful. They don't allow anything more than 720p on chrome quite ironic considering the widevine deal. So yes, it seems Netflix is much more inconvenient than piracy.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    Netflix's originals are mostly terrible. http://fortune.com/2016/09/16/emmys-preview-netflix/ http://fortune.com/2016/09/16/emmys-preview-netflix/
    - cavanasm 9y ago
      While I also strongly disagree that Netflix's originals are "mostly terrible", I also think that awards shows are not as objective a judge of quality as I (and I imagine many others) would like.
      - LordDragonfang 9y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago

There are many shady tech company practices: * Open sexual harassment culture * Building spy software for the government * Selling censorship tools to governments * Selling your private data to advertisers * Allowing advertisers to target a person's emotional state * Profiting off of fake news and click bait * Tracking people across the web * Using monopolies to limit competition in other realms * Strong arming third parties to keep them from using your competitors' products Somehow, limiting streaming to 720p on non-supported platforms seems pretty benign. Edit: Tried to separate list from closing comment.

Teichopsia 9y ago
Could you re-phrase this somehow? I'm not sure if you are talking about companies in general or Netflix. Edit: I rather ask than make an assumption. Thanks for the confirmation.
- jhasse 9y ago
  His last sentence should make it clear that he wasnt talking about netflix, shouldnt it?
- ethbro 9y ago
  Strongly assume parent was referring to all those things that are done at other companies... vs the 720p issue at Netflix. On the other hand, if Netflix has managed to reimplement the NSA's dragnet internally, I'm going to be really impressed by their engineers' productivity.
- cholantesh 9y ago
  From the second to second-last line, they're referring to shady practices in general. In their last, they're arguing that delivering lower-quality streams to Linux-based user agents is comparatively benign. Not sure I agree, FWIW.
Antrikshy 9y ago
You have sources for these?

Mithaldu 9y ago

Another example to add for "shady", for a long time Netflix used to push shows you'd watched to the end in your "continue watching" show to prompt you to watch them again, which could easily be mistaken for "the show actually has new episodes". They did fix that though, i think.

rbritton 9y ago

Blocking virtually all VPNs and VPS IP ranges is not the most pleasant practice. I realize this is likely a Hollywood demand, but absent any kind of other information from them, it sure appears that they are complicit in it. Further, they make it essentially impossible to to create a local routing rule to bypass the VPN for them alone. You're stuck whitelisting the whole of AWS.

xixor2 9y ago
It's also a government demand: ratings, amount of locally produced content, taxes, etc.
- jmanderley 9y ago
  Blocking VPNs is a government demand? I'm highly skeptical of this.