How to Watch Netflix in Ubuntu Linux | Hacker News Reader

How to Watch Netflix in Ubuntu Linux

jeremymorgan.com

82 pointscelticbadboy44 comments

Paying Netflix funds the companies that have made this bullshit DRM a reality.

Just torrent your media and play it in VLC. Works better, without WINE, and without subsidizing these dicks.

You're still giving your eyes and attention to "these dicks".

I suggest trying to find and support media that is offered without DRM in the first place, if that is what you consider important.

DVDs remain a video media which can be considered DRM free (their DRM is nominal and trivially removable). Most other video distribution channels remain seriously afflicted by DRM. Video is one of the few industries where DRM is still very dominant. Other industries such as e-books and gaming move away from DRM, though slowly. Or at least you can find decent DRM free channels for them. Music industry already dumped DRM for good.

So if you care, buy DVDs and ignore DRM afflicted distribution channels.

The problem with Netflix is not just in them using DRM, but in them actively proliferating it, up to pushing to build it into HTML standard. While the general trend goes in the right direction, Netflix pushes into the wrong one.

The DRM on DVDs, while obviously long ago cracked wide open, still carries the legal implications of DRM.

> Music industry already dumped DRM for good.

This is the part that really gets to me. The music industry is still largely dominated by the sort of companies that also dominate video, and music files are vastly easier to trade around due to their siz, and yet DRM in music is nearly completely nonexistent these days. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that these same companies just think they can continue to get away with it for video.

Really the proper course of action is to give them reason to reconsider that.

With music, they had a limited choices: 1) Keep DRM and deal with Apple but lose the non-Apple market; 2) Deal with a bunch of other DRM formats that don't work with iPods; or 3) dump DRM and be able to sell to everyone (with a side strategy of suing downloaders). For video, there is no dominate hardware manufacture that has a proprietary DRM format -- almost everyone that sells uses a software player of their own design. Ebooks are the one case I don't understand though.

It takes one player to break the trend and to demonstrate the benefits of DRM free distribution. So let's see if that will happen with video.

Someone should make a good service (site?) which will list DRM free distributors for various media where DRM is still present in general.

I think it's mostly about practical implications, rather than legal ones. Legal battle is about those who push some junk in the law vs those who attempt to repeal DMCA/1201 and etc (and that can take quite a long time to achieve). But practical battle goes about simply adding more DRM everywhere vs getting rid of it.

Companies of the RIAA/MPAA style don't operate with common sense and pure logic. Practice demonstrated it multiple times. They are driven by random impulses like paranoia, lust for control and so on. So don't expect them to give you a logical answer why they don't use DRM in music, but use it in video.

Video costs many times more to produce, and is generally consumed only once.

Music is cheap to make and people tend to listen many times over, making the try-it-and-purchase-it model a genuine possibility that video doesn't really have.

Good films have a solid replay value, i.e. you keep them in your collection to return to them later, the same way as you reread good books. And even if you view something only once, it doesn't really make DRM any more sensible than it is for something that you reuse multiple times.

For example games are hard to produce (and it usually takes a long time). Still you can get very good games DRM free, because in gaming the faults of DRM are especially apparent.

The downside of DRM - it insults paying customers, it lowers the usability of the content (restricting it to selected devices / players etc.), it also doesn't affect pirates, since the moment that DRM is broken by some skillful crackers - DRM free copies are widely distributed.

So let's see - no one benefits from DRM. Who is in downside? Paying users. So what is the point in using it anywhere?

If you don't like the terms they're offering, just don't consume the content they create.

This presupposes that one can own information in the first place.

The "terms" are that I download shit for free.

> This presupposes that one can own information in the first place.

I think the case for owning original digital creations is far stronger than say the case for owning patches of dirt that were here before you were born and will still be here after you're dead. If I make a song or write some software, I'm creating something of my own in the very purest sense. Something that didn't exist before me, something wholly attributable to me. Why shouldn't I be able to own it?

Because you can't own information. It is impossible.

The case could be made that you can't own real property, sure. But you will find few to back you when you shoot someone with a shotgun for maliciously singing a song you "own" versus maliciously trespassing in your home.

Bad analogy. The only reason it is acceptable to shoot a trespasser invading your home is the issue of safety. There aren't that many people who would back up a landlord shooting their delinquent tenants with a shotgun either. As with copyright infringement, the landlord would need to turn to the courts.

Hey Internet hippy, do you mind if people pass around your diary and photos.

> If I make a song or write some software, I'm creating something of my own in the very purest sense.

I think that's where our emotions fool us, here.

Let's say I write a song. You hear it and sing it every day. Does the song belong to me? Should I have remedies against you for singing MY song? The whole thing is insane.

Come on.

The "terms" are that I get direct access to the SQL database behind your application for free. You can mess around with your bullshit rights-management "privilege" and "account management" features all you want.

You know exactly what I'm talking about. You know exactly how dumb these "terms" are. Might does not make right. And if you're going to make a stand for some set of principals, can't you find something better to fight for than free mainstream movies?

Sure, provided I fail to secure it.

The analogy of "might" doesn't hold up when it's just signals, to me.

the ones offering the terms are not the ones creating the content

We say Microsoft "created" Windows, even though it's obviously engineers working for Microsoft that created Windows. Artists working for media companies, or film-makers working for studios are in functionally the same position.

My wife's ARM-based Samsung Chromebook now streams Netflix via HTML5 streaming (as of March 11th). I think a much cleaner solution on Linux is imminent - simply spoof enough of the information about your machine to make Netflix think you're also on a Chromebook. Here's one of the announcements: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/11/samsung-chromebook-netfli....

That's a great idea. I know part of the problem with Netflix and Linux is not only does Netflix not develop a solution, but they try to block Linux access, probably due to DRM. A good solution like you suggest might be the best bet.

It's going to take a little while. Netflix on Chromebook uses a compiled plugin to enforce the DRM. If you turn the developer mode on the plugin doesn't work.

It's not HTML5, it's a propietary plugin. This is like the old ActiveX days.

This came up on reddit a few days ago. The consensus was that there is dynamic library that is present on the ARM chromebooks which is used by netflix(and hence can not be used on regular x86 machines).

That said, it may be possible to reverse engineer it.

I bet that this library references a unique DRM key in the Chromebook's hardware.

The "One of the biggest hurdles to Linux adoption..." paragraph is just not true anymore. Steam for Linux is a good example of how things have changed.

It's more like Netflix is one of the few services that many people wish to use where they strangely enough have chosen to ignore Linux.

I must disagree. It's a sign things are changing, not that they have changed. I dual boot, and while I highly prefer my linux side, there are a handful of programs which keep me in windows most of the time. Steam was one of them, Netflix is one of them.

This is somewhat ridiculous.

Netflix is using a lot of open source software: Linux, Cassandra, Zookeeper, Java, etc.

And then they sign a sleazy backroom deal with Microsoft and only support silverlight, which is a technology dead on arrival. I don't get it.

It was not DOA when they first started using it -- it was better than the streaming technology available via Flash at the time - and also the only one with DRM that would meet the the qualifications of the media companies that they license their content from. I don't think Netflix wants DRM any more than the majority of us, but they don't really have a choice to offer such content.

I've seen this same "solution" posted 3 times now to HN (forgive me not back-linking). Every one relies on WINE in some form, and every single one is choppy for me despite a lot of customization. I'm not sure where to go with it.

Mine works and this is an old T60 Thinkpad. Maybe I just don't notice slight choppiness as much.

If you look at his website (http://www.compholio.com/wine-compholio/) apparently he is using some of his own custom Wine patches to resolve choppiness.

This is actually the specific solution to which I'm referring. I get major choppiness.

Netflix deserves to be boycotted for pushing DRM into HTML standard.

Netflix works (apparently) natively on my TV. That's why I use it: it's just far too convenient to ignore.

I still can't get the Netflix app to work on Windows 8 ... :P

Easy. Just run Linux in a virtual machine and then you can follow the directions of the present article to run Netflix in Linux.

blogspam

why do you say that, because it isn't a press release or some startup garbage? It's old news, but still news

Blogspam is a term used to indicate that the article in question is just a rehashing of the real article that adds no additional content or insight, the sole purpose of which is to increase pageviews of the blog.

He is not saying that the content is bad, he is saying that the provided link is bad. This appears to be the real article (i.e., not blogspam): http://www.iheartubuntu.com/2012/11/ppa-for-netflix-desktop-...

Yeah, I've seen those links before, but I don't see how this article applies, this is not an excerpt with a link to the "real article" it's basically a tutorial.

Updated my comment with what is presumably the real article.

Even so, this looks like a more accessibly explained tutorial, with original screenshots. I don't think you can legitimately call that blogspam.

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