This is a great example of the FSF trying to blur together various notions of "free" while pretending that software and the web are in their own gleaming tower

This is a great example of the FSF trying to blur together various notions of "free" while pretending that software and the web are in their own gleaming tower embodying those principles. Netflix and other similar services stream DRMed video to the browser, and they will continue doing so. Right now they use Silverlight, a proprietary Microsoft plugin whose future is unclear. Traditionally, sites have used Flash for any sort of video playing. Netflix would prefer to stream, play, and control the video using web standards, but as a distributor for Big Media, they need a DRM story. They'd like the story to be that the browser provides a facility for them to decrypt the content on the client. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of DRM, and the whole situation doesn't make sense so I don't believe it will last. Since all DRMed media comes with the decryption key, it's really only laws that make the encryption relevant, coupled with enough technical difficulty that a layperson would have to acquire some (illegal) software to perform the decryption. It sucks that ubiquitous hardware and software media formats come encumbered with restrictions (like "you can only play this DVD in the US" or "you can't skip this trailer") and are subject to patents; that you can't play a movie you bought on a physical disk for $12.99 on whatever computer or device you want in your own house. However, given the fact that legally, certain types of software are restricted in how they can be used, why not put that software in as small a box as possible? Just because Stallman doesn't want proprietary software on his computer doesn't mean you should have to run a separate runtime from your browser to use it. Let's make DRM a box with a key and a decryption algorithm and a sign that says, "Do not run!" Let's have royalty-free, open-source, standardized DRM, peer-reviewed by the hacker community to ensure that it's unbreakable without the key that you also have, and that there's no button visible to casual users that circumvents the restrictions. Treating DRM the way we treat other software actually weakens the concept by exposing the absurdity. Let's make it so easy to stream protected content that there's nothing to pay Netflix for, except maybe original content, instead of ending up in a world where we pay $60 a month to Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and a dozen other services. The HTML standard is set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which this block of corporations has been heavily lobbying as of late. The proposed adoption of EME is disturbing for what it says about the way decisions are made relative to the Web, but what does it mean for you as a free software user? Surprise, corporations are involved in web standards. Engineers at Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, and other companies wrote or reviewed many (most?) of the web standards in place today. DRM and free software don't mix... We'll see an explosion of DRM on the Web -- a growing dark zone inaccessible to free software users. I don't know if we'll see an "explosion of DRM on the Web" (it seems doubtful, unless it is because putting video on the Web is now more attractive to content-owners), but the decision to define "free software" as not doing any sort of DRM (the whole "doesn't mix" thing) is actually a very controversial part of the GPLv3 license. If a "free software user" is someone whose insistence on "the freedom to study how a program works and change it" threatens to cut them off from parts of the Internet, I wonder how many of these people there really are. Microsoft has already modified Internet Explorer to start supporting EME for media streaming. Simultaneously, Netflix has begun publicly promoting Internet Explorer, revealing a two-pronged strategy of pushing proprietary browsers while attacking Web standards in the W3C. Netflix doesn't have a "strategy" for attacking free software. It's not a "two-pronged" assault just because you feel affronted on two counts. Netflix presumably has their own motives, like simplifying their software, improving the experience for users, and supporting more devices. They want to work on Linux. They want to pay lip service to the idea of DRM while minimizing the impact on their service. Boycotting Netflix and impeding a web standard don't seem like great tactics for fighting DRM to me.