Comment by mljoe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mljoe | Hacker News Reader

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The recording industry was very hardline with DRM, until one day Apple decided they won't support DRM anymore in the iTunes Store. Thus no music is purchased with DRM from any of the major e-tailers.

If the choice is no DRM or literally not making any money on the Internet, content creators will choose no DRM every time. Technologists have all the leverage here. If the web simply didn't support DRM, do you think Netflix, Hulu, and NBCUniversal would pack their bags and lose on billions of dollars because of some theoretical increases in piracy? Of course not. They'd just offer their content with no DRM.

There are many file sharing, illicit streaming and torrent websites that have the entire HBO catalog available. They are pretty easy to find with simple Google searches. Piracy is not esoteric, it's pervasive even today. There is absolutely no technical obstacle to watching any HBO or major studio's content online for free. And that's arguably a lot easier then figuring out how to copy a huge file for non-technical users. DRM can't have any major effect here, people who want to pirate will pirate, DRM be damned.

The only thing DRM does is introduce barriers to legitimate interoperability and innovation. You get situations like "does this operating system or device support Netflix?" which is unheard if the web was truly an open system.

> The recording industry was very hardline with DRM, until one day Apple decided they won't support DRM anymore in the iTunes Store. Thus no music is purchased with DRM from any of the major e-tailers.

This is not comparable in my opinion. Music was bought, downloaded, stored locally and used on countless devices - from your living room setup, your NAS and media center, to portable players or your car. It made no sense to restrict that kind of content to specific software like iTunes.

A Netflix stream doesnt face the same problems. Compatibility isn't an issue here. Most consumers will never run into problems with Netflix' DRM.

That said, of course if it was possible to buy and download movies for permanent offline viewing, similar to music purchases, it would be absolutely necessary to provide that content DRM-free.

> That said, of course if it was possible to buy and download movies for permanent offline viewing, similar to music purchases

There's actually quite a few systems which do exactly that. Funnily enough, all use DRM.

I'm not talking about temporary offline access to Netflix movies or buying/renting a movie via iTunes. I meant purchasing a real video file that I can put on my NAS and view in a player of my choice. Similar to music. I'm not aware of any video services that offers that.

> buying a movie via iTunes, Amazon, etc

Why, precisely, do you think you can't play the video file in a player of your choice? That is literally what DRM is - technical restrictions against using content you have purchased in a manner you desire. They provide the file in an encrypted format that only their own player can decrypt.

When iTunes used DRM for music, only Apple's devices could play music you bought from iTunes, too.

I'm aware of that and have been criticizing the movie industry's requirement to ship content with DRM for a long time, particularly as an avid and frequent buyer of DRM-free, lossless music.

However you're right - the iTunes purchasing example shouldn't have been part of my previous response. On the other hand I think DRM is fine, if not a necessity, for a subscription service like Netflix. It is basically renting content and my expectations towards these services are very different from a store that offers purchasing, which should absolutely be a DRM-free experience. The fact that it's not is exactly the reason why I don't buy films on those platforms, unlike music, which is available countless large and niche stores.

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