3 ms·
> This truly is the death of the open web About as much as music DRM was the death of music players. And as we all know the only way to play a music file today
by tveita 9y ago
> This truly is the death of the open web
About as much as music DRM was the death of music players. And as we all know the only way to play a music file today is to buy them in the Microsoft Zune store and squirt them over to your FairPlaysForSure(tm) certified KindlePod.
It's not a good thing; it lets some very big actors hurt themselves and their paying customers by still pretending that people will eventually come around to paying more for inferior service if only they force feed enough "you wouldn't download a car" ads to their dwindling customer base, and it encumbers the browsers to support yet another legacy standard that will be used only by exploit writers in ten years time.
But in the end this is never going to prevent you or anyone born after the sixties from accessing any significant piece of content. It is only going to stop you from going out of your way to pay for it.
I guess if YouTube started putting DRM on everything, that would reach the level of 'annoying'. Is there any indication they would do that?
- zdkl 9y ago> Is there any indication they would do that? There won't be. Unless we actually make things happen to assure against "suddenly DRM", at some point the technology will be there that you cannot trivially bypass.
- izacus 9y agoRight now DRM is the death of you being able to preserve the TV shows you love (they'll just disappear from Netflix after some time and you're not allowed to download them even if you paid for them), the death of being able to watch things on planes and the death of being able to watch things if one of your increasingly unreliable ISPs drops a connection.
- agumonkey 9y agoWhat if it was legally bound that a securing tech (enforcing users not to abuse content) HAS to be opened in case of future demise of the author company ? If Apple and iTunes suddenly crash, they have to make a tiny effort into releasing a conversion/stripping tool and/or open source the system so that ex-customers can at least attempt to help themselves.
- endgame 9y agoIf a business is failing THAT BADLY, they're not likely to have resources to implement the safeties. And if they don't, who's going to get in trouble?
- izacus 9y agoIt's not about businesses failing - content disappears from Netflix and other services all the time. Shows people were watching previous month regularly disappear even though people pay for service. And DRM prevents them from exercising the legal right (in most juristictions, even US) to make private copies and watch them later. Remember VCRs and DVR devices? We changed laws to explicitly allow that.
- icebraining 9y agoNetflix is a streaming company. Users have no rights to the content after their contract with the platform expires. Hell, they have no rights to the content if Netflix happens to remove it from the platform.