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Comment by mayneack | Hacker News Reader

Figured it would be worth a shot, signed up for the free trial. Doesn't work on linux. Guess I'll wait for the pirates.

Or accept the fact that Netflix not working on Linux doesn't entitle you to their hard work?

Figured it would be worth a shot, went to the store. Doesn't accept AmEx. Guess I'll just shoplift.

So let's say I pay for netflix, then pirate the show anyway because it's easier for me to use than netflix. Any problem there? They released the whole thing at once, so as long as I watch it within this month, it's the same on their end as if I got it, went through an annoying wine process and then canceled my month trial. After-all, I'm following the whole point of a free trial. I tried it for 10 minutes, decided I didn't like it, and canceled.

Now you're making a completely different argument. Now you're doing the whole stealing versus theft thing, which was not your original comment. Originally you were going to try Netflix, but it didn't work on Linux so you decided to try to steal the shows instead. This is exactly like going to buy something in a store that doesn't accept AmEx, getting all pissy when they don't accept AmEx, and trying to shoplift instead of pulling out one of your other payment methods (because chances are, you don't only carry AmEx). Similarly, chances are your only computing device is not a Linux computer. Android, iOS, XBox 360, Wii [U], PS3, and all sorts of other TVs and set top boxes also stream Netflix.

Same argument, more context.

If I go to the store, pay with my AmEx to buy a DVD, then bring it home and pirate the show because I don't want to go through the process of ripping it to watch on my computer sans TV, it's the same thing since I've already "paid" for the free trial.

My justification is absurd and arbitrary because it's highly unlikely that this is all I will pirate, but no more absurd or arbitrary so suggest that it's equally immoral to shoplift if they don't take a credit card. It's at least marginally more moral because of the whole infinite copy thing. In both cases (shoplifting and downloading), the content creator suffers the same "loss" associated with creating something and losing a potential sale, but in the shoplifting case, they had to put materials into the DVD, shipping and stocking. I'm saving them money on bandwidth (torrent) and still "paying" with their free trial.

I watch on Ubuntu using ppa:ehoover/compholio

I haven't even really looked into how it works but it looks like a wrapper around IE in Wine. Works pretty well on my 3 year old laptop although not being a native app, there are some weird interactions related to window switching and resizing.

they actually ported it to linux, let me find it for you.

edit: here it is http://lifehacker.com/5963726/netflix-finally-comes-to-ubunt...

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