4 ms·

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 shu

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 was answering in the general sense about what was wrong with DRM not anything specifically about Netflix, I even prefaced my comment with "It hasn't happened with Netflix on any large scale, yet". But why can't I use their service on a device of my choosing at a resolution of my choice? Why is my perfectly capable Ubuntu machine limited to 720p and a windows machine isn't? Having some kind of standardized access where I didn't have to put up with their BS would go a long way towards making that easier for me to deal with.
- 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".

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 was answering in the general sense about what was wrong with DRM not anything specifically about Netflix, I even prefaced my comment with "It hasn't happened with Netflix on any large scale, yet". But why can't I use their service on a device of my choosing at a resolution of my choice? Why is my perfectly capable Ubuntu machine limited to 720p and a windows machine isn't? Having some kind of standardized access where I didn't have to put up with their BS would go a long way towards making that easier for me to deal with.
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".