5 ms·

They definitely shouldn’t because netflix doesn’t need their help to succeed. They should make upstart netflix competitors happy however, to grow an ecosystem.

by Joeri 9y ago

They definitely shouldn’t because netflix doesn’t need their help to succeed. They should make upstart netflix competitors happy however, to grow an ecosystem. The frustrating part is that my choice to be a law-abiding media consumer subscribing to a bunch of services makes me get a worse service in many ways than a pirate. I can’t use a player of my choice, i can’t have a single UI on top of all media, I can’t rely on content remaining available. Pirates don’t have these problems. The DRM legislation and media conglomerates power ensures that the market can’t fix itself. You can’t make a netflix competitor without DRM because you’ll never get access to licenses for popular culture products. Even had the W3C refused to deal, the situation wouldn’t be meaningfully better.

WorldMaker 9y ago
How does W3C enabling a DRM option stop Netflix competitors, though? It's not like the next Netflix could legally start by just downloading the current Netflix. They'd have to go back to the media owners and negotiate their own contracts for it. At that point, anyone trying to compete with Netflix presumably winds up with the same contractual requirements from the media providers to use some sort of DRM. From that perspective, the W3C adding web platform support for DRM surely enables more competitors than it stops, right? Now the startup engineering cost is to build or hire one EME-compatible DRM provider, you don't have to build proprietary apps for every platform, you can trust people's browsers to run your DRM as easily as Netflix's and quickly launch to every platform that has a supporting browser. There's also still room left to compete with a DRM free product, assuming you find a way to negotiate media contracts without it, and figure out how to market that fact both to media companies and to users why that would be an advantage. From a web platform standpoint the work that goes into providing pleasant DRM experiences still floats some of the needs of DRM-free video playback, because browsers are going to engineer one on top of the other to save effort.
- quadrangle 9y ago
  The article explained in depth how the W3C didn't just enable a DRM option, they were in a position to create a standard that furthered the whole concept of DRM in a way that wouldn't have otherwise happened at all. And they make it painfully clear that DRM is used abusively to undermine otherwise legal rights.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    None of which invalidates my points, which was with regards to corporate competition. It furthers the whole concept of DRM, but as a standard open to any party, thus not really damaging competition on the scale of companies like Netflix, that if anything helps the next company to come along and wish to replicate the Netflix streaming experience, because Netflix "has" to share that baseline DRM standard with them (otherwise W3C wouldn't have endorsed it and browsers wouldn't support it). Yes, DRM is used to abusively undermine the legal rights of users, but that doesn't stop competition for those users, and supposedly in a fair market the least abusive company you'd hope might be able to market a better value proposition. A DRM standard doesn't stop companies from being less abusive and using that as competitive leverage, even if it arguably furthers, or at least favors, the baseline amount of abusive behavior amongst that corporate ecosystem.
    - quadrangle 9y ago
      > It furthers the whole concept of DRM, but as a standard open to any party, thus not really damaging competition… It damages (as the article states) the specific type of competition that is disruptive to the framing of Netflix-type business. I.e. there can be competition from a Netflix-clone but not from an innovative competitor who does something different building directly on Netflix in the way that Netflix themselves built directly on top of existing DVD markets to get started themselves. Real innovation often involves this sort of non-clone, innovative, disruptive competition that doesn't just do something new but actually adapts the existing market in new ways. DRM certainly blocks a lot of that, and that is exactly what the DRM-advocates want to block and what EFF is talking about in stifling competition.
      - WorldMaker 9y ago
        I suppose I'm arguing from a stricter reading of competition as a direct competition. Even expanding to "non-clone, innovative, disruptive competition", I still get back to in the case of a Netflix DRM is backed by contract law. Most of those same "non-clone, innovative, disruptions" would be "protected" against by contracts and license/subscriber agreements with or without DRM enforcing them. A lot of the arguments here about DRM stifling competition aren't dissimilar to complaining about how exclusivity contracts stifle competition. (Disney removing their entire catalog from Netflix in a couple years to give exclusivity to their own streaming service has much more to do with contract law than DRM.) So too, the fact that you couldn't build a sharing service on top of Netflix has much more to do with the contract law and licensure of digital artifacts versus physical goods than anything at all to do with DRM. DRM is entirely orthogonal to the discussion. DVDs have DRM and that didn't prevent Netflix from building on top of them. What almost prevented Netflix from using DVDs was existing contract precedences with Blockbuster, but again that had much more to do with contract law than DRM. DRM is a tool that is only as useful as law allows it to be, both for good and bad (how it gets regulated versus how it enforces legal structures). It does seem to me that many of the complaints about DRM are misdirected that there is no digital bill of rights and digital assets don't have regulations/protections that we take for granted for physical goods. Those problems remain even if W3C had blocked EME from becoming a standard.

by Joeri 9y ago

WorldMaker 9y ago

How does W3C enabling a DRM option stop Netflix competitors, though? It's not like the next Netflix could legally start by just downloading the current Netflix. They'd have to go back to the media owners and negotiate their own contracts for it. At that point, anyone trying to compete with Netflix presumably winds up with the same contractual requirements from the media providers to use some sort of DRM. From that perspective, the W3C adding web platform support for DRM surely enables more competitors than it stops, right? Now the startup engineering cost is to build or hire one EME-compatible DRM provider, you don't have to build proprietary apps for every platform, you can trust people's browsers to run your DRM as easily as Netflix's and quickly launch to every platform that has a supporting browser. There's also still room left to compete with a DRM free product, assuming you find a way to negotiate media contracts without it, and figure out how to market that fact both to media companies and to users why that would be an advantage. From a web platform standpoint the work that goes into providing pleasant DRM experiences still floats some of the needs of DRM-free video playback, because browsers are going to engineer one on top of the other to save effort.

quadrangle 9y ago
The article explained in depth how the W3C didn't just enable a DRM option, they were in a position to create a standard that furthered the whole concept of DRM in a way that wouldn't have otherwise happened at all. And they make it painfully clear that DRM is used abusively to undermine otherwise legal rights.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  None of which invalidates my points, which was with regards to corporate competition. It furthers the whole concept of DRM, but as a standard open to any party, thus not really damaging competition on the scale of companies like Netflix, that if anything helps the next company to come along and wish to replicate the Netflix streaming experience, because Netflix "has" to share that baseline DRM standard with them (otherwise W3C wouldn't have endorsed it and browsers wouldn't support it). Yes, DRM is used to abusively undermine the legal rights of users, but that doesn't stop competition for those users, and supposedly in a fair market the least abusive company you'd hope might be able to market a better value proposition. A DRM standard doesn't stop companies from being less abusive and using that as competitive leverage, even if it arguably furthers, or at least favors, the baseline amount of abusive behavior amongst that corporate ecosystem.
  - quadrangle 9y ago
    > It furthers the whole concept of DRM, but as a standard open to any party, thus not really damaging competition… It damages (as the article states) the specific type of competition that is disruptive to the framing of Netflix-type business. I.e. there can be competition from a Netflix-clone but not from an innovative competitor who does something different building directly on Netflix in the way that Netflix themselves built directly on top of existing DVD markets to get started themselves. Real innovation often involves this sort of non-clone, innovative, disruptive competition that doesn't just do something new but actually adapts the existing market in new ways. DRM certainly blocks a lot of that, and that is exactly what the DRM-advocates want to block and what EFF is talking about in stifling competition.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      I suppose I'm arguing from a stricter reading of competition as a direct competition. Even expanding to "non-clone, innovative, disruptive competition", I still get back to in the case of a Netflix DRM is backed by contract law. Most of those same "non-clone, innovative, disruptions" would be "protected" against by contracts and license/subscriber agreements with or without DRM enforcing them. A lot of the arguments here about DRM stifling competition aren't dissimilar to complaining about how exclusivity contracts stifle competition. (Disney removing their entire catalog from Netflix in a couple years to give exclusivity to their own streaming service has much more to do with contract law than DRM.) So too, the fact that you couldn't build a sharing service on top of Netflix has much more to do with the contract law and licensure of digital artifacts versus physical goods than anything at all to do with DRM. DRM is entirely orthogonal to the discussion. DVDs have DRM and that didn't prevent Netflix from building on top of them. What almost prevented Netflix from using DVDs was existing contract precedences with Blockbuster, but again that had much more to do with contract law than DRM. DRM is a tool that is only as useful as law allows it to be, both for good and bad (how it gets regulated versus how it enforces legal structures). It does seem to me that many of the complaints about DRM are misdirected that there is no digital bill of rights and digital assets don't have regulations/protections that we take for granted for physical goods. Those problems remain even if W3C had blocked EME from becoming a standard.