7 ms·

Why do these "Linux gets Netflix" stories not have the same bad attitude from folks as the "W3C caves to DRM" stories? They're the same topic, essentially.

deeviant 12y ago
Maybe some people want both of these things: * Have a linux HTC * Watch netflix without some horrible hack and are now happy that this is possible?
wmf 12y ago
I guess people will accept DRM as long as they don't know it's there (inside Chrome in this case).
smacktoward 12y ago
My guess would be that in the "Linux gets Netflix" story, the positive angle ("I get Netflix!") is specific and concrete, while the negative ("More DRM, yuck") is more abstract. Whereas in the "W3C caves to DRM" story, it's flipped; the negative is specific and concrete ("Standards body kowtows to corporate overlords"), while the positive ("maybe someday that will mean I can watch video on Linux") is more abstract.
- this_user 12y ago
  I'd say lots of people are extremely dogmatic when its comes to certain topics. They will condemn things like DRM without even considering the positive aspects. I like to see DRM the pragmatic way: Without it, neither cheap streaming of music and movies nor would cheap games via services like Steam would be possible.
  - davexunit 12y ago
    There are no long-term positive aspects to DRM for users. I don't consider trading computer freedom for streaming movies to be positive.
    - rosser 12y ago
      I don't consider trading computer freedom for streaming movies to be positive. That's entirely your choice — and one with which I tend to agree. Don't presume your opinion on these matters is a universal truth, however. Other people have other priorities, and it's not up to you to decide that they're wrong.
gph 12y ago
I wasn't a vehement opponent of W3C implementing DRM, but I'll put my two cents in; I don't mind if private companies implement DRM in their own products. I do mind DRM being standardized, meaning every vendor has to implement it in order to be complaint with the standard. Ubuntu != linux, it is just a distro. Similarly Chrome is not the browser standard, it's only an implementation. If this story was actually "Linux adds DRM to kernel for netflix and other media companies" I think you would see a huge reaction.
- warfangle 12y ago
  W3C implementing DRM is only an extension of W3C implementing encryption. And W3C implementing encryption is a Good Thing, IMHO. DRM may be a stupid, silly idea: one that causes more problems than solved; one that can and will be circumvented. For media you have purchased to own, it is arguably Evil(tm). But for media that you have rented, or media that you have access to via a subscription? I don't see the problem with it. The bigger discussion shouldn't be about DRM, but about the new commercial paradigm of not even owning the copies of the media you purchase outright. DRM in this case is a red herring.
  - riffraff 12y ago
    > W3C implementing DRM is only an extension of W3C implementing encryption. why do you think so? Encryption is good for every interested party (except NSA, perhaps) while DRM means at least someone is being screwed. It's like saying that "fast lanes" are only an extension of TCP. (I don't have a strong opinion on whether DRM should be standardized by W3C or not, but I disagree with this reasoning)
    - chc 12y ago
      In the scenario "Now you can watch Netflix" (which entails implementation of DRM), who is being screwed?
      - riffraff 12y ago
        to continue the simile, that is like asking in the scenario of "you can get more bandwidth" who is being screwed? And the answer is: the same person, if you just look at the whole issue instead of the single positive angle. Of course, if you think that DRM is a good thing (i.e. inability to have open source implementations, need to load binary blobs, limiting use of content to what the provider decides etc) then yes, DRM is exactly like encryption for you. Yet, since there is a substantial number of people who do _not_ believe it, this still makes the two things different.
kaoD 12y ago
Because Ubuntu is known to give shit about freedom (and it's a Ltd.), while Mozilla boasts about their users' rights (and is a Foundation).
schoen 12y ago
I have a bad attitude toward Ubuntu's work on this. I also remember that their philosophy statement http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy (which advocates that users should be able to exercise free software freedoms with "their software" -- I presume meaning the software that the users use) used to be easy to find from the front page. Clicking around on the home page today, it was far easier for me to find the Netflix announcement than an explanation of what free software is or the idea that Ubuntu supports or advocates it (!). I've sometimes asked Ubuntu folks about how Canonical's work with proprietary ISVs fits in with their commitment to software freedom, but I haven't gotten any explanation.
ep103 12y ago
Because the problem is that the encryption is still happening within Chrome, not within linux itself (if I understand this correctly), and the latest build of Chrome for Linux now includes this drm. So the issue is either still 1) W3C caves to DRM or 2) Linux caves to Chrome, and #2 will not be nearly as popular a story because its both a slightly more complex issue (only slightly), but mostly because there are too many google fanboys on this website for it to gain much traction.
pessimizer 12y ago
If Netflix were on Chromium, and Debian accepted Chromium in its repos, I'd be upset. As it is, I'm tentatively saying that this is a partnership between Google, Ubuntu, and Netflix to expand their customer base, and as long as it isn't aggressively trying to infect the rest of the ecosystem, good on them. Maybe a better comparison is the general glee shown about Steam coming to Linux. I would never install Steam on my machine, but I also can't imagine a situation in which I'd be forced to because (for example) Gnome wouldn't run without it anymore. Therefore, I think of it as a non-bad thing that may be a good thing if it attracts developers.
api 12y ago
Without DRM, someone will write a script to suck down all new Netflix videos and immediately post them to e.g. Popcorn Time. Then Netflix will drop Linux support. It's a shame that so many people in the OSS community have such an asymmetric and hypocritical view about paying people for their work and respecting creators' licensing intents. If I take a GPLed GitHub repo, clone it, incorporate it into my commercial closed-source app, and release without source or credit to the author in violation of the GPL, everyone gets bent out of shape. But apparently quite a few people in the community don't extend that kind of respect to non-programmers. Only developers have rights -- artists, musicians, etc. can go suck it. Just commenting on why the industry refuses to give up DRM despite the fact that it's complicated, costly, limiting, and users hate it. Want DRM to go away? Start showing the same respect to all creators that you show to others in your own field. (Not directed at anyone in particular, but to prevalent attitudes and behaviors in the community.)
- wmf 12y ago
  OTOH, I don't think appeasing Hollywood will help anyone but Hollywood. Their thinking is grounded in ideology not economics; if their content is pirated they think the DRM isn't working so they demand stronger DRM. If their content isn't being pirated they think the DRM must be working so it should be maintained or strengthened.
  - api 12y ago
    I used to think this way until I met more people in music, art, entertainment, etc., and generally learned more about how the world actually works. These people aren't dumb, and they pay a lot of attention to customer behavior just like marketing professionals do in any industry. They also don't necessarily like DRM for intrinsic reasons. It's actually cumbersome. There are some interests in the industry that like it -- such as DRM vendors themselves and various hardware/console/software interests -- but the actual content producers are largely indifferent to it in itself. All they want is for people to actually pay for their content. At the biz level they don't care how or why. If users paid and refrained from engaging in bulk, industrial-scale piracy without DRM, then DRM would wither and die. There'd just be no value proposition to it -- it would add a layer of complexity, cost, and inconvenience to no benefit. You think these guys want to license an expensive proprietary DRM platform if their data shows it makes no difference in their sales numbers? You've seen this happen within one or two semi-closed ecosystems. iTunes no longer uses DRM because data showed that users of iTunes who purchased music on iTunes were no more likely to pirate it without DRM than with it. But my guess is that users of iTunes who also purchase on iTunes are people who are generally in the habit of purchasing their music/movies and like the convenience of being able to do it with one click. These results from that specific user group do not necessarily translate out to the entire general public on all platforms. I've also heard that Amazon has made DRM optional on Kindle and that many publishers don't check that box, but I've never published on Kindle so I'm not sure. But I guarantee you that if Netflix allowed HTML5 video with no DRM mechanism you'd have a direct scripted cron-jobbed pipeline from Netflix to Popcorn Time and similar industrial-scale piracy ecosystems. I know it, and they know it, and that's why you're not gonna see DRM-free open Netflix or Hulu until people stop behaving in this way. I mean come on people. It's cheap. A movie rental on iTunes (much more expensive than Netflix) costs what a freaking latte costs at Starbucks. Netflix is like 1/10th the cost of cable. Grow up. People have to eat and art must be a viable profession (with you know benefits, 401ks, etc.) or you're not going to get much of it beyond garage quality. Yeah, record companies and movie studios can be jerks just like VCs and such, but all you're accomplishing is to bust the bottom out of the industry. When that happens, scarcity-driven thinking takes over and people act like even bigger jerks and everyone gets squeezed even more. You're not empowering the artist -- you're moving the artist even further down the totem pole while reducing the amount of money that's even available to trickle down to them. VCs might be jerks sometimes but think about what would happen to the software industry if they disappeared or were no longer able to raise funds? What do you think programmer salaries would do over time? What would happen to innovation? What would happen to VC behavior if they were squeezed even more? The stupid thing is I've actually seen people pay more to pirate via HideMyAss-type VPNs and torrenting VPSes (e.g. Digital Ocean nodes) than it would have cost them to just buy the damn feed. Now there's an ideology for you. (Not talking about people who use VPSes to watch outside the U.S.... that's a different issue. I'm talking about people here in America spending over $15/month to chug and seed pirated torrents instead of getting a Netflix account.) (Again not aimed at anyone in particular in this thread, but at prevalent behaviors in the community.)
bachmeier 12y ago
This is similar to many other situations in the history of Linux. It's generally a matter of giving someone the option to do something vs forcing it on their machine. The W3C action is interpreted (rightly or wrongly) as forcing DRM on your machine whether you want it or not. Having the ability to watch Netflix, if you want, is not controversial among most Linux users. The closest previous situation was probably the blow-up over Mono being installed by default. If it had been available for installation by those who wanted it, there would have been no issue, but it instead had to be installed and then removed. [To avoid upsetting anyone, I didn't care much one way or the other, I'm just saying that was the source of the problem.]
anonbanker 12y ago
HN's audience largely supports innovation and potential revenue streams above freedom. Complaining about DRM will inevitably get someone compared to RMS.

deeviant 12y ago

Maybe some people want both of these things: * Have a linux HTC * Watch netflix without some horrible hack and are now happy that this is possible?

wmf 12y ago

I guess people will accept DRM as long as they don't know it's there (inside Chrome in this case).

smacktoward 12y ago

My guess would be that in the "Linux gets Netflix" story, the positive angle ("I get Netflix!") is specific and concrete, while the negative ("More DRM, yuck") is more abstract. Whereas in the "W3C caves to DRM" story, it's flipped; the negative is specific and concrete ("Standards body kowtows to corporate overlords"), while the positive ("maybe someday that will mean I can watch video on Linux") is more abstract.

this_user 12y ago
I'd say lots of people are extremely dogmatic when its comes to certain topics. They will condemn things like DRM without even considering the positive aspects. I like to see DRM the pragmatic way: Without it, neither cheap streaming of music and movies nor would cheap games via services like Steam would be possible.
- davexunit 12y ago
  There are no long-term positive aspects to DRM for users. I don't consider trading computer freedom for streaming movies to be positive.
  - rosser 12y ago
    I don't consider trading computer freedom for streaming movies to be positive. That's entirely your choice — and one with which I tend to agree. Don't presume your opinion on these matters is a universal truth, however. Other people have other priorities, and it's not up to you to decide that they're wrong.

gph 12y ago

I wasn't a vehement opponent of W3C implementing DRM, but I'll put my two cents in; I don't mind if private companies implement DRM in their own products. I do mind DRM being standardized, meaning every vendor has to implement it in order to be complaint with the standard. Ubuntu != linux, it is just a distro. Similarly Chrome is not the browser standard, it's only an implementation. If this story was actually "Linux adds DRM to kernel for netflix and other media companies" I think you would see a huge reaction.

warfangle 12y ago
W3C implementing DRM is only an extension of W3C implementing encryption. And W3C implementing encryption is a Good Thing, IMHO. DRM may be a stupid, silly idea: one that causes more problems than solved; one that can and will be circumvented. For media you have purchased to own, it is arguably Evil(tm). But for media that you have rented, or media that you have access to via a subscription? I don't see the problem with it. The bigger discussion shouldn't be about DRM, but about the new commercial paradigm of not even owning the copies of the media you purchase outright. DRM in this case is a red herring.
- riffraff 12y ago
  > W3C implementing DRM is only an extension of W3C implementing encryption. why do you think so? Encryption is good for every interested party (except NSA, perhaps) while DRM means at least someone is being screwed. It's like saying that "fast lanes" are only an extension of TCP. (I don't have a strong opinion on whether DRM should be standardized by W3C or not, but I disagree with this reasoning)
  - chc 12y ago
    In the scenario "Now you can watch Netflix" (which entails implementation of DRM), who is being screwed?
    - riffraff 12y ago
      to continue the simile, that is like asking in the scenario of "you can get more bandwidth" who is being screwed? And the answer is: the same person, if you just look at the whole issue instead of the single positive angle. Of course, if you think that DRM is a good thing (i.e. inability to have open source implementations, need to load binary blobs, limiting use of content to what the provider decides etc) then yes, DRM is exactly like encryption for you. Yet, since there is a substantial number of people who do _not_ believe it, this still makes the two things different.

kaoD 12y ago

Because Ubuntu is known to give shit about freedom (and it's a Ltd.), while Mozilla boasts about their users' rights (and is a Foundation).

schoen 12y ago

I have a bad attitude toward Ubuntu's work on this. I also remember that their philosophy statement http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy (which advocates that users should be able to exercise free software freedoms with "their software" -- I presume meaning the software that the users use) used to be easy to find from the front page. Clicking around on the home page today, it was far easier for me to find the Netflix announcement than an explanation of what free software is or the idea that Ubuntu supports or advocates it (!). I've sometimes asked Ubuntu folks about how Canonical's work with proprietary ISVs fits in with their commitment to software freedom, but I haven't gotten any explanation.

ep103 12y ago

Because the problem is that the encryption is still happening within Chrome, not within linux itself (if I understand this correctly), and the latest build of Chrome for Linux now includes this drm. So the issue is either still 1) W3C caves to DRM or 2) Linux caves to Chrome, and #2 will not be nearly as popular a story because its both a slightly more complex issue (only slightly), but mostly because there are too many google fanboys on this website for it to gain much traction.

pessimizer 12y ago

If Netflix were on Chromium, and Debian accepted Chromium in its repos, I'd be upset. As it is, I'm tentatively saying that this is a partnership between Google, Ubuntu, and Netflix to expand their customer base, and as long as it isn't aggressively trying to infect the rest of the ecosystem, good on them. Maybe a better comparison is the general glee shown about Steam coming to Linux. I would never install Steam on my machine, but I also can't imagine a situation in which I'd be forced to because (for example) Gnome wouldn't run without it anymore. Therefore, I think of it as a non-bad thing that may be a good thing if it attracts developers.

api 12y ago

Without DRM, someone will write a script to suck down all new Netflix videos and immediately post them to e.g. Popcorn Time. Then Netflix will drop Linux support. It's a shame that so many people in the OSS community have such an asymmetric and hypocritical view about paying people for their work and respecting creators' licensing intents. If I take a GPLed GitHub repo, clone it, incorporate it into my commercial closed-source app, and release without source or credit to the author in violation of the GPL, everyone gets bent out of shape. But apparently quite a few people in the community don't extend that kind of respect to non-programmers. Only developers have rights -- artists, musicians, etc. can go suck it. Just commenting on why the industry refuses to give up DRM despite the fact that it's complicated, costly, limiting, and users hate it. Want DRM to go away? Start showing the same respect to all creators that you show to others in your own field. (Not directed at anyone in particular, but to prevalent attitudes and behaviors in the community.)

wmf 12y ago
OTOH, I don't think appeasing Hollywood will help anyone but Hollywood. Their thinking is grounded in ideology not economics; if their content is pirated they think the DRM isn't working so they demand stronger DRM. If their content isn't being pirated they think the DRM must be working so it should be maintained or strengthened.
- api 12y ago
  I used to think this way until I met more people in music, art, entertainment, etc., and generally learned more about how the world actually works. These people aren't dumb, and they pay a lot of attention to customer behavior just like marketing professionals do in any industry. They also don't necessarily like DRM for intrinsic reasons. It's actually cumbersome. There are some interests in the industry that like it -- such as DRM vendors themselves and various hardware/console/software interests -- but the actual content producers are largely indifferent to it in itself. All they want is for people to actually pay for their content. At the biz level they don't care how or why. If users paid and refrained from engaging in bulk, industrial-scale piracy without DRM, then DRM would wither and die. There'd just be no value proposition to it -- it would add a layer of complexity, cost, and inconvenience to no benefit. You think these guys want to license an expensive proprietary DRM platform if their data shows it makes no difference in their sales numbers? You've seen this happen within one or two semi-closed ecosystems. iTunes no longer uses DRM because data showed that users of iTunes who purchased music on iTunes were no more likely to pirate it without DRM than with it. But my guess is that users of iTunes who also purchase on iTunes are people who are generally in the habit of purchasing their music/movies and like the convenience of being able to do it with one click. These results from that specific user group do not necessarily translate out to the entire general public on all platforms. I've also heard that Amazon has made DRM optional on Kindle and that many publishers don't check that box, but I've never published on Kindle so I'm not sure. But I guarantee you that if Netflix allowed HTML5 video with no DRM mechanism you'd have a direct scripted cron-jobbed pipeline from Netflix to Popcorn Time and similar industrial-scale piracy ecosystems. I know it, and they know it, and that's why you're not gonna see DRM-free open Netflix or Hulu until people stop behaving in this way. I mean come on people. It's cheap. A movie rental on iTunes (much more expensive than Netflix) costs what a freaking latte costs at Starbucks. Netflix is like 1/10th the cost of cable. Grow up. People have to eat and art must be a viable profession (with you know benefits, 401ks, etc.) or you're not going to get much of it beyond garage quality. Yeah, record companies and movie studios can be jerks just like VCs and such, but all you're accomplishing is to bust the bottom out of the industry. When that happens, scarcity-driven thinking takes over and people act like even bigger jerks and everyone gets squeezed even more. You're not empowering the artist -- you're moving the artist even further down the totem pole while reducing the amount of money that's even available to trickle down to them. VCs might be jerks sometimes but think about what would happen to the software industry if they disappeared or were no longer able to raise funds? What do you think programmer salaries would do over time? What would happen to innovation? What would happen to VC behavior if they were squeezed even more? The stupid thing is I've actually seen people pay more to pirate via HideMyAss-type VPNs and torrenting VPSes (e.g. Digital Ocean nodes) than it would have cost them to just buy the damn feed. Now there's an ideology for you. (Not talking about people who use VPSes to watch outside the U.S.... that's a different issue. I'm talking about people here in America spending over $15/month to chug and seed pirated torrents instead of getting a Netflix account.) (Again not aimed at anyone in particular in this thread, but at prevalent behaviors in the community.)

bachmeier 12y ago

This is similar to many other situations in the history of Linux. It's generally a matter of giving someone the option to do something vs forcing it on their machine. The W3C action is interpreted (rightly or wrongly) as forcing DRM on your machine whether you want it or not. Having the ability to watch Netflix, if you want, is not controversial among most Linux users. The closest previous situation was probably the blow-up over Mono being installed by default. If it had been available for installation by those who wanted it, there would have been no issue, but it instead had to be installed and then removed. [To avoid upsetting anyone, I didn't care much one way or the other, I'm just saying that was the source of the problem.]

anonbanker 12y ago

HN's audience largely supports innovation and potential revenue streams above freedom. Complaining about DRM will inevitably get someone compared to RMS.