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> No, blame the movie studios, record labels etc. They're the one which require asinine DRM support for web browsers. Google/Microsoft/Apple/Adobe want to support media content, but to do so requires towing the line with the media companies otherwise they refuse to license the content (at least in HD+).

Let's say Google, Microsoft and Apple announce that they will be removing any DRM from their browsers on 2020-01-01. They will also remove any DRM playback app from their App Stores. So no Netflix on PCs, Macs, iPhones, iPads or any Android device (including stuff like Android TV).

What do you think would happen?

Media companies would rejoice. Since such a coordinated move from Google, Microsoft and Apple would destroy streaming for everyone indiscriminately, it would re-level the playing field and enable everyone to start competing anew. Disney, HBO and others would fork Chromium and add DRM support back, then market the shit out of it. They'd start signing deals with phone and TV manufacturers to get their DRM back, each preferably in a way that excludes the others. There'd be a lot of churn as whole media space gets re-balkanized, but that's all good, since churn means they make money.

A lot of smaller companies would die, and a lot of users would suffer - but none of the parties involved actually cares about the users; we're just a natural resource to be stripmined.

The internet before streaming (when downloading postage stamp clips took 3 hours) was close to that described state, and people just exchanged burned CDRs right and left.

Even elderly people were using and watching pirated stuff installed by their kids as they just couldn’t bother.

No DRM support in major browsers would mean pirating becomes the #1 way to see anything again.

That is a realistic outcome.

Then again, the way media companies are balkanizing the streaming space, this could become (again) a reality soon anyway.

Just as the only browser with DRM would have a huge advantage in that scenario, the one streaming service without DRM would have, too. I honestly think Netflix would take that chance for their own content.

Simple: You'd have to install a plugin or a separate special app to watch video, like the bad old days of RealPlayer.

This is the most plausible outcome. Netflix wouldn't just leave that money on the table and the most obvious thing to do would be to provide the support they want from browsers themselves.

Users follow use cases and would not be averse to spending 30 seconds installing something in order to watch their favorite content.

There's also sort of a game theory situation with the removal of DRM, as it would be a competitive advantage being the only one that supports it.

All Netflix movies are on PirateBay already, in spite of their DRM. I’ve seen movies pop up on PirateBay the day they are released. They wouldn’t leave any money on the table.

People paying for Netflix are paying for convenience. That wouldn’t change in absence of DRM.

I think you're greatly underestimating how much more cumbersome torrenting is even compared to a plugin, especially for "normal" users who are not necessarily tech-savvy.

This argument is repeated ad nauseam but it’s false, all it takes is a torrenting app installed, that’s the only threshold.

But back to the point, if Netflix wouldn’t use DRM, it would change absolutely nothing since copyright infringement is still illegal and those DRM protections are completely useless.

Can my torrenting app stream my video, or do I have to wait for a full assembly of the pieces from torrent hosts and enough downloaded to watch it?

If the latter, torrenting is plenty cumbersome enough that if the studios are pushing movie-viewing to "Pay us money or you have to torrent it," they're winning.

> Can my torrenting app stream my video

Yes, and this functionality has been built into many of the largest torrenting programs out-of-the-box for quite some time now. In the case of µTorrent, it was added in version 3.0 all the way back in 2010.

Obviously, how quickly the stream will buffer depends entirely on the state of the swarm. Popular items will work almost immediately, while particularly unpopular items won't be streamable at all.

Anecdotally, I have personally witnessed my (very nontechnical) friends streaming 4+ GB 1080p ...popular cat videos... that weren't available from Netflix. They did not struggle with the process in the slightest.

Pop-Corn Time would like to have a word with you

I don't think it would, unless it begins playing within thirty seconds of the user choosing a video and provides an uninterrupted streaming experience?

Last I checked, the BitTorrent protocol didn't provide packet sorting that would allow for this behavior (by forcing the beginning of the movie's bytestream to be the first data downloaded), so my mistake if the protocol has improved and I was unaware it provided this service.

The downloading client is in charge of which parts of the file it gets first. It can easily go in order.

How easily, and how much setup is necessary? Remember, we're talking about competing with a service that doesn't even make the end-user consider whether that is a problem that needs to be solved (just plug in a credit card and off you go).

A coder spent an hour changing the code, once, and now it requires zero effort for users. They never know the difference. Open popcorn time and wait for it to quickly buffer.

> You'd have to install a plugin or a separate special app to watch video

How is that different from the current state of EME plugins? Other than that proprietary browsers ship with the most popular plugins installed.

Edge and Safari have the appropriate tools to deal with DRM, so significantly different. The built in browsers already just work.

They could block that, too. (It won't work on Android and iOS anyway)

This would be an authoritarian action, compared to just opting out of supporting something. There's a huge difference and I think these organizations' supposed interest in ethics precludes that sort of move.

DRM is not illegitimate. It just sucks and operates in a way that is immune to free market competition - the reasons for that immunity are the true thing to fix. Users should have alternatives as there is a clear market there. If DRM is so bad, then that's what should kill it.

This is the correct solution. The big tech companies control the distribution channels. Currently, they bend to the requirements of large content producers. If they leaned the other way, toward open source and DRM-free distribution, the producers would have no choice but to comply.

Of course, content producers could run back to the state for more protection (as they always do) and get legislation forcing browser makers to comply. And around and around it goes.

> Of course, content producers could run back to the state for more protection (as they always do) and get legislation forcing browser makers to comply.

Implementations of such forced-by-court features tend to be buggy. ;-) The implementation bugs might differ in subtle ways in each new browser release. ;-)

Mac and PC, Netflix would make their applications available outside the App stores. Apple would have to shut down its Apple TV operation.

Then Apple and Google would get deluged with complaints from their customers and Jailbreaks would once again become popular.

> What do you think would happen?

Consumers will have to purchase or rent horrible and overpriced hardware supplied by broadcasters. Like they were doing for decades with satellites, and early IPTV.

Piracy will raise a lot. Many users don’t want to pay, or can’t pay for that custom hardware. I was using Netflix service for some time without major issues, but they don’t have anything in my country, too small one, they won’t be selling and supporting their set top boxes any time soon. Unlike accepting credit cards and broadcasting videos, physical retail doesn’t scale that easily.

Why would they need to remove the DRM playback app in your scenario?

If they would only remove it from the browsers, they would start pushing their native applications like Netflix for Linux, Netflix for Windows, Netflix for Mac. And browsers would be free of their DRM which causes all this.

Because that would still prevent Metastream from working with Netflix ;)

Simple, which ever one switches first will lose all their users as they scramble to use a browser that still lets them watch the content.

Antitrust complaints / lawsuits?

Good point. I wonder if that would apply though.

The weird thing about this is I can find a high-quality torrent for anything on Netflix in under a minute.

Torrent is something that I have nothing to complain about. It's decentralised. No big corporation is trying to control it. It's truly by the people for the people.

I wonder if more protocols like this will get invented and become mainstream. Or those glorious days are already behind us? Since every big corporation is just trying to grab market share by creating walled gardens for everything.

I assume that policing of torrent networks by the authorities will continue to increase. As a result, I'm hopeful that darknet (ie social connection based) solutions might emerge at some point. Why use a VPN and a tracker (private or otherwise) if I could request things via (anonymized) friend-of-friend-of-friend in a straightforward manner? That way you only trust your immediate network.

DRM are like locks on a house, just keeps honest people out

DRM are like locks on a gated community, just creates economic moats to enable rent seeking and prolong the status quo.

Except the lock is remotely controlled by your adversary.

And your house also belongs to them. According to your analogy.

And if you bought something from them, they're permitted to come in and take it away from you whenever they want.

You never bought it in the first place. The Adversary doesn't sell things anymore, it only rents them out.

Sounds familiar. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19536991

Ok? That’s a strong argument in favor, isn’t it?

You've missed the joke. In the DRM case the honest people are the ones who should be allowed in, but the DRM only allows the pirates in.

No, I think you’ve missed my point. A technology that prevents generally honest people from slipping casually into dishonesty sounds valuable. Battling people who are determined to be dishonest sounds much less valuable.

Making a personal copy of a video you've paid for is in no way dishonest, and the user downloading it from a pirate site without paying is in no way impeded by DRM.

The only thing it could even arguably be doing is preventing users from uploading videos to pirate sites, but that is empirically a massive failure given that all of the videos are already on the pirate sites.

So all you're doing is battling the honest people who have paid and then want to make a copy for format shifting or some other fair use. And the legitimate value of battling that is a negative number.

I suppose in the case of Netflix and the like, it stops me from getting some lossless downloader browser extension that would surely exist but for the DRM and... what? Getting stuff to watch after I let the subscription lapse? Giving copies to my friends?

The former is about the same effort as torrenting and about as obviously dishonest. The latter is mostly possible using Netflix as intended as long as I don't mind sharing my password with them.

More like locks on a motel room.

I'm pretty sure some method Netflix uses is broken anyway. People don't seem to have trouble uploading 4k rips to Usenet. (Though I haven't actually checked recently.)

We were sold DRM as "the evil legacy studios are evil and make us use DRM". Well, now that Netflix produces their own content and it's still DRM'd... I guess that isn't really the reasoning.

Netflix doesn’t make most of their content. They just have exclusive license to show it. The studio that makes it still demands DRM.

In the rare case of content that is actually made by Netflix, it’s easier to just put DRM on it, because otherwise every system dedicated to encoding and playback would have to have a code branch that was special for non-DRM content. It would be a maintenance nightmare. It’s a lot easier to push all content through the same pipelines.

Netflix only content isn't "rare" anymore, sorry if I don't purchase this particular red herring.

DRM benefits Netflix just as much, if not even more than it does traditional media companies.

It’s very rare. I’ll bet you can’t name a single show that Netflix produces. Remember all those big name shows are produced by other people and then sold exclusively to Netflix.

DRM does not benefit Netflix. It’s complicated and takes a lot of resources to run. They’d much rather not have to deal with it at all. Having DRM does not gain them any customers — in fact it loses them some. But it’s the only way they can get content.

Come on, that can't possibly be right. If they can get shows sold "exclusively" to them, why can't they get shows sold to them without DRM requirements?

(The closest I can get to an explanation is that the "exclusivity" deal might be limited to online streaming platforms only, and whoever is selling the content still worries about everything else. But streaming is a significant and growing portion of all media consumption (and could be even more so, were it not for that pesky DRM), so I'm extremely skeptical that this would be a real issue.)

They probably did negotiate DRM free licenses. But the cost for implementing a separate DRM free pipeline is very high, and there would be little ROI to the business. Not having DRM on just the Netflix content would get very few new customers, if any, especially given that this whole argument only applies to web streaming anyway.

> ...and there would be little ROI to the business. Not having DRM on just the Netflix content would get very few new customers, if any...

This is where your narrative is strategically short-sighted. It would be a very significant leverage point for their own proprietary content over the traditional media companies' - the kind of thing that 'disruption' is built on!

If Netflix is paying for shows that are produced, and they have exclusive rights, they can attach any distribution terms they want to them.

You can't tell me with a straight face that somehow they don't have this power.

DRM absolutely benefits them because it ensures that only parties they permit are allowed to access content, for the same reason it benefits other media companies.

> DRM absolutely benefits them because it ensures that only parties they permit are allowed to access content, for the same reason it benefits other media companies

The fact that every pi8ece of Netflix content is on the pirate sites within hours of release would prove otherwise. Netflix is well aware of the uselessness of DRM.

And you're right, they probably did negotiate DRM free licenses. But you missed the other part of my post -- the cost for implementing a separate DRM free pipeline was very high, and there would be little ROI to the business. Not having DRM on just the Netflix content would get very few new customers, if any. How many people would say "man I would totally sign up for Netflix if only their own content was DRM free, even though I'd need a DRM enabled player to play everything else, and oh yeah this only applies to web streaming anyway."

I would argue the increased customer satisfaction from being able to stream 1080p/4K quality in more browsers with less esoteric hardware would be worth the extra implementation complexity (currently higher resolutions are disabled on browsers with weaker DRM or hardware without a pure HDCP path)

Most people don’t stream 4K on a computer. And most people don’t have the bandwidth to stream at 4K. Ie most customers would never notice.

Netflix 4k streams are like 25Mbps at best. The US average broadband speed in 2017 was around 50Mbps. There is no problem getting 4k to consumers.

Whether or not they have a 4k display... that is probably the blocker. I have a 4k display but it's not my primary display (instead opting for a 165Hz 1440p panel) and I never bothered to buy a 4k TV, given how dirt-cheap high-end 1080p TVs are. Would much rather have the black blacks of a $500 1080p OLED TV than a $3000 washed-out 4k LCD.

That average broadband speed is deceptive, because it includes people who have gigabit at home. The more interesting number is the median speed. But even using averages, not a lot of countries yet have the speed to support 4K streaming[0], and like you said, even if they have the bandwidth, they need the equipment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...

Both Amazon and Netflix make the most money and are best known for their excellent original shows. Why did they bother to setup DRM for them? If they opposed it, they could have made it a selling point that you could watch them in 4K on any device without hassle.

Turns out Netflix is an evil legacy studio after all!

Then Google/Microsoft/Amazon and others who are being impacted by this issue should throw some non-trivial money at media creators who are willing to commit to DRM-free content. Like Creative Commons or the Blender Foundation, for starters. We had a comparable opportunity there when Netflix started offering streaming services, but they chose to go with DRM across the board. Fine, whatever. But unless the tech industry seriously gets behind this, Big Media will start to take their "content" hostage and mandate use of their own DRM 'solutions' to "protect it adequately" - with royalties for use set as high as the market will bear. Yeah, you can say that would be an antitrust violation, whatever. Legal processes take a long time, and Big Media have plenty of political support behind them. They don't have to care if they can make things crappy enough for everyone else.

We could just blame all of them, since they were all involved.

What is the point of this "blame", especially stating it as if it were exclusive? All of these companies are past the startup/responsive/customerserving stage. They're immune to public opinion when you just keep on patronizing them.

Rather, focus on concrete steps you yourself can take:

1. Make sure the hostile black box is not available / disabled in your browser. So when you end up at a page that wants to use DRM and it doesn't work, you simply attribute the problem to the website being broken (which it is), and move on. If you do need to keep using the DRM crutch for now, then only use it on a separate dedicated browser or device.

2. Base your media setup around a DRM-free pipeline (eg Kodi). Make torrenting content your default. If you want to pay indie creators for DRM free downloads, feel free. But don't fund any studios that generally push DRM.

3. Share downloaded content with friends (eg USB drives), encouraging them to not fund Netflix et al developing and promulgating more DRM. This is especially relevant for "exclusive" releases that are meant to push people into signing up for yet another subscription.

Why not blame everyone involved who let EME happen? Blame is not a limited resource.

As the OP explained in the backwards complaint, DRM support is NOT required for web browsers. You can make a web browser that does not render DRM content.

> No, blame the movie studios, record labels etc.

More specifically, those associated with the MPAA and the RIAA.

  Google/Microsoft/Apple/Adobe want to support
  media content, but to do so requires towing
  the line with the media companies

Sounds like the problem is the web browser companies also deciding to be movie streaming companies. Thus giving movie producing companies leverage over web browser tech.

If it weren't for Google Play Movies and iTunes Movies they could have just told the MPAA companies to take a hike.