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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

If the price you are paying for that is your privacy and security (i.e. proliferation of DRM), then the price is not $7.99 a month. You are just fooled to believe it's such. It's the same misleading perception people have, when they say that Facebook is "free". No, they are paying with their personal data for it.

So, the argument that it's "cheap" is invalid, and a separate question to ask is, how much do you value your privacy?

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Are you saying my data is being sold/used by Netflix for millions of dollars? Are you saying that Facebook should run a charity? I can understand and I do think FB should be more respectful (hell to LinkedIn) to user's privacy and security preference, but even average users can understand that true free services don't really exists. You think Github is free? Well, they store your repositories and your issues and your commits. They store a lot about you as a professional. But why do people use it? Because they don't sell your data to corrupted companies out there mining? Well, a lot of search engines are mining repo data. A few startups out there are mining github data to make profits.

I am paying $7.99 and I am happy to tell Netflix my preference (my ratings) because doing so do help refine results show up in my dashboard and also gives netflix an idea what people like XYZ. There is an equal opportunity for both users and the service to improve.

I am paying $7.99 for unlimited service. I can watch at any time, resume at any point, re-view at any time. I can always watch - downtime is statistically low. The streaming / connection is usually very good even for poor internet access. I am not giving up a lot of personal data to be honest. If I don't want to watch the movie / tv show after 20 mins I am still paying $7.99. I am not charged per movie. I can actually stream with my girlfriend instead of paying another $3.99 on Amazon for us to watch a movie together.

Tell me if this is not a bargain.

This is a purely a decision people can make. On the other hand, I never said FB isn't exploiting users' privacy to gain more profit. But if the argument is free services comes with a cost, well, "no shxt Sherlock."

Let's look at it this way. Do you think free software are truly free? Some people release free software in order to provide a premium version later time. Some people provide free software to build their skills and reputation. Some people provide free software to benefit everyone, and that's cool!

Do you think docker.io being an open source project really is free? How much $$ can dotCloud save by open-sourcing it? How many more customers will they get after releasing docker? How many people will now trust dotCloud now? There is a price and a gain, even from a pure altruist view.

See my answer below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6502485

That really is a bad argument for Netflix. What privacy am I giving up exactly with Netflix? None.

Running any DRM code is giving up your privacy and security, or to say it more properly increasing risks of their breach on your system. Since DRM is never trustworthy. It's like voluntarily running some malware.

You keep saying that, but fail to provide any reasons it has to be so.

DRM by nature is little different to public key encryption - it's a method of proving you are who you say you are. Usually there is some component that makes it resistant to tamper, but that in itself doesn't have to increase risk of breach.

You may raise the Sony rootkit debacle, and I say so what? That says more about Sony's failures as a consumer friendly company than anything about DRM.

You make points about how DRM implies contempt for the consumer, but I don't see why that is the case at all. DRM can be a technology that enables more choices for consumers, and that implies respect for consumers, not contempt.

I'm no fan of DRM, but it seems to me you are overreaching in your arguments, which is making your point weaker.

I see no place for DRM in the open web, but at the same time I want the open web to be able to compete with other platforms. I don't know what that means the best choice is here.

> You make points about how DRM implies contempt for the consumer, but I don't see why that is the case at all.

Simple. Do you think placing surveillance cameras in everyone's home is an acceptable crime prevention practice? Or may be attaching a camera to each person right away? That's what DRM is. DRM is invasion of people's private digital space. And if you don't see it, it makes it even worse, since secret and massive surveillance is even more unethical, since people get "comfortable" with it. So all this "unobtrusive" DRM is actually even worse.

> DRM by nature is little different to public key encryption - it's a method of proving you are who you say you are.

No. DRM by nature is a way to restrict what user can do with the data, or if it goes further - reporting tool for those paranoid groups who deploy DRM. By its own nature, DRM implies surveillance and contempt to the user.

DRM (and abusive surveillance) does not enable any choices. All it does is taking away people's privacy and ability to exercise fair use to the data they bought.

If I have to authenticate and stream from Netflix's servers anyway, they're going to know what I watch anyway. DRM makes literally no difference.

How do you know what else that DRM can or can't do? I doubt you have any idea. Yet for some reason to blindly trust it?

You can say that about any software. By that logic you could denounce indie games or word processors or to-do list software. Even if it's open source it could have been built with a contaminated compiler that installs backdoors that root your system and report all your network traffic to the Freemasons.

In theory - any of course. But we are talking about the level of the risk here. DRM gives you more reasons to expect it to be malicious. Because it's built on contempt towards you (the user), on treating you as a potential criminal by default.

And intentions of those who push for deploying DRM aren't even secret: http://boingboing.net/2013/05/26/us-entertainment-industry-t...

So, are you suddenly supposed to trust them blindly when they insult you by not trusting you?

I've used a lot of software that was obviously designed with contempt towards the user: Lotus Notes, ClearCase, and Xilinx ISE to name a few. Netflix's streaming software is not one of them.

Netflix runs custom clients to make sure I'm authenticated and authorized before streaming video to me and streams it in a format that only their software can decode. Sometimes these clients are built into my TV and other times they are written in Silverlight and are built into my browser, but that doesn't automatically mean they're a rootkit any more than Lotus Notes is a rootkit. The only reason it seems otherwise is that you have this weird manichean worldview where any DRM is morally equivalent to the Sony rootkit.

The view I have is that DRM is always prone to be a malware, because it always treats users as infringers. Sony rootkit just proves the point. Trust should be mutual, otherwise it's not trust. If they treat users as potential criminals by default, users should treat them as potential criminals by default as well.

DRM is unethical not because it's always a rootkit. But because it's overreaching. The fact that it's prone to be malware just demonstrates the potential for abuse of overreaching preemptive policing.

I think Lotus Notes is overreaching, but that doesn't make it prone to be malware.

Why not? Untrusted code running on your computer is a clear security risk. And you still didn't explain why DRM should be trusted, when it doesn't trust you.

If I had to trust all the code running on my computer, I would have no computer.

It's the question of the level of trust. Some code is trusted enough to run it. DRM is never trusted enough to run it (IMHO). You seem to be saying that since there is always risk, one shouldn't care about anything at all.

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