I hear what the proponents of non-DRM browsers are saying, but for media streaming companies content is their bread and butter. I am not sure what the alternatives are.
Content providers will stick with technologies like Flash because HTML5 alone could not provide EME. Lack of such feature set HTML5 backwards because huge content providers would shy away from using web as the dominant platform of media delivery.
> I hear what the proponents of non-DRM browsers are saying, but for media streaming companies content is their bread and butter. I am not sure what the alternatives are.
The alternative is non-DRM browsers. EME does nothing to protect content, so the "content is their bread and butter" argument doesn't work.
> Content providers will stick with technologies like Flash because HTML5 alone could not provide EME.
Or, they'd give up on EME because all the major platforms were hostile to it and it provides them no defensible value.
> Lack of such feature set HTML5 backwards because huge content providers would shy away from using web as the dominant platform of media delivery.
Including EME sets the web platform back because we no longer have control of that part of our browsers.
> Or, they'd give up on EME because all the major platforms were hostile to it and it provides them no defensible value.
That's absurd. Netflix would sooner stop supporting web browsers on desktop OS's before they started allowing DRM-free streaming. Regardless of your own view on DRM, Netflix's licenses to the content they provide almost certainly requires the use of DRM, and the companies that own the content would never be willing to relicense them for DRM-free streaming.
Without EME, Netflix would be relying on proprietary browser plugins forever, and if a platform with a significant userbase appeared that didn't support any form of proprietary plugin, and they wanted to support that platform, they'd develop their own proprietary application for it instead of providing DRM-free streaming (think of how Netflix has applications for mobile OS's and even consoles, both living room consoles and handheld consoles).
> the companies that own the content would never be willing to relicense them for DRM-free streaming.
Don't be so sure. People were saying exactly this several years ago about music. We owe it to Jobs that he realized it's stupid idea, and put an end to it.
> they'd develop their own proprietary application for it instead of providing DRM-free streaming (think of how Netflix has applications for mobile OS's and even consoles, both living room consoles and handheld consoles).
That seems better to me, than poisoning a whole standard just to get their way, or the highway.
You don't rent out stuff and let people keep it after they stop renting.
> That seems better to me, than poisoning a whole standard just to get their way, or the highway.
The open web has been losing a lot of traction to a closed competitor on iOS and Android. Businesses in China are on WeChat long before they are on the web. Giving up streamed music and video completely to apps would damage the world wide web immensely by shifting more user to over to closed app systems. The web would go the way of the newsgroup.
> Don't be so sure. People were saying exactly this several years ago about music.
Music and video have always been very different markets. Among other things, music has always been available in high quality form without DRM (on CDs). And the consumer habits around music are different than those of video. And as wodenkoto said, we're talking here about streaming video, not purchased music
The idea that the existence of EME somehow destroys the rest of the web is completely insane. Remember, NPAPI is a web standard, so we've already had the existence of closed-source proprietary binary blobs as part of web standards for many years. EME is a huge step forward.
> That's absurd. Netflix would sooner stop supporting web browsers on desktop OS's before they started allowing DRM-free streaming.
So let them, and let a competitor arise that allows a similar service with DRM-free streaming. That's what the free market is for. I'm not sure why implementers of the open web should care about Netflix's concerns.
> Without EME, Netflix would be relying on proprietary browser plugins forever, and if a platform with a significant userbase appeared that didn't support any form of proprietary plugin, and they wanted to support that platform, they'd develop their own proprietary application for it instead of providing DRM-free streaming (think of how Netflix has applications for mobile OS's and even consoles, both living room consoles and handheld consoles).
So let them do that and suffer the consequences of the inferior user experience that would provide.
What makes you think it's even possible for a competitor to arise with DRM-free streaming?
The reason you don't see any DRM-free video streaming of non-independent content is because the content producers require DRM. They won't license their content without it. It's quite literally not possible for a DRM-free Netflix competitor to arise, because they'd have no content (or at least, no content worth watching).
The content producers, not the distributor Netflix, insist on DRM. If Netflix is streaming the same content to a native application instead of a browser, they will have the same DRM requirements.
> I hear what the proponents of non-DRM browsers are saying, but for media streaming companies content is their bread and butter. I am not sure what the alternatives are.
And the DRM does absolutely nothing to stop anyone from doing whatever they want with it. DRM punishes paying customers at the expense of being a slight pain-in-the-ass for pirates. Plain and simple: they delivered content to my computer and I have a key to decrypt it - there's nothing stopping me from doing whatever I want with those bits but the time to break their silly DRM scheme.
Had Apple, Google, Netflix et al. the backbone enough to stand up to the media companies, we'd never have been inflicted with such stupidity. Now, Google's taking it upon themselves to start using their own DRM module with their own media - so much for the company that prided itself on Do No Evil.
It's a quirk of classical information theory that you can't transmit a piece of data for a limited period of time. As an approximation, they apply a silly DRM scheme that takes time to break, and ask customers if they are willing to pay for time-limited access.
Unlike with DRM on music downloads or (worse) physical copies of software or games, there's no expectations mismatch here. If you sell a download, the average buyer expects to be able to copy that download, etc. If you stream a movie, the average buyer no more expects to be able to retain a copy than the average movie-ticket holder does. They didn't think they paid for a copy of those bits for all time.
There's nothing stopping someone who visits a movie theater from doing whatever they want with those photons, other than the time to build a sufficiently concealed camera, is there? And pirates do show up to movie premieres with concealed cameras... but would you argue that the security guards stopping you from carrying in a giant camcorder are "punishing paying customers" while not effectively deterring pirates?
If they paying customer would pay anyway, it is punishing, because it requires that they: are limited to the set of browsers that support the DRM scheme, are limited to the platforms that the DRM scheme is available for, and perhaps most importantly, the content provider can dictate rules that may not considered to be entirely fair. E.g. Netflix makes it impossible to temporarily download a copy to view when you don't have a (high-bandwidth) internet connection (e.g. those of us traveling a lot outside their country).
Also, if DRM was not supported by the technology companies, it would be more attractive to come up with a form of subscription that would offer both streaming and downloading.
'Pirating' doesn't have all these downsides.
Of course, on the flip-side for many people DRM-ed 7.99 p/m streaming services are more price-effective than the previous 7.99 per album DRM-free purchases. But you may be left out if you run FreeBSD or Linux on non-x86_64.
You must be young, forgetting about formats like WMV or WMA where you couldn't open the file without the proper license installed on your computer.That's what DRM is about.And of course you needed to log to a server regularly to renew the license, or you couldn't listen or watch the media anymore.
Just like games, pirates don't have issues with online license verification,since they play pirated games that got rid of them.
Obviously vendors did a nice job not only brainwashing the legislator but also the client.
I remember those formats clearly! Online streaming seems like a very different sort of thing, is my point. When you have a DRM-locked download, you expected to have an unlocked download. When you have a DRM-locked stream, did you expect to hold on to the stream in any form?
I think that we are remembering "DRM" from the days of DRM'd downloads, which was a terrible thing, and applying that memory here where it does not fit.
Over thousands of years of human history, new technologies have changed the ways people communicate, from language to writing to the printing press, and so on. Every change shifted the economic balance, so things that once were prohibitively expensive became easy, and people who derived economic benefit from former scarcity became disadvantaged.
I hear what the proponents of DRM-encumbered browsers are saying - media streaming companies control huge chunks of our popular culture, and significant political power, and it's expedient to give in to their demands and stop threatening their business model. But when I look back at the last thousands years of technological progress, I cannot bring myself to say "yes, this is good enough. We should legislatively freeze our technology at early-21st-century levels forever." Our civilisation has benefited from technology so much already, I can't in good conscience deny people the benefits of future technology, even in exchange for the right to stream Game of Thrones.
Media producing companies that have no way of safeguarding their revenue stream would like the technical threshold for copying to be at least a minor deterrent, because otherwise people have no incentive to pay them; many many people are in fact OK with being freeloaders.
I'm so sick of seeing Game of Thrones offered as the standard example. Sure, HBO has more more money than any of us would know what to do with. I, on the other hand, make my living working on films with budgets that only amount to a few hundreds of thousands of dollars, and believe me that does not go very far - the lower cost of digital vs. celluloid film is only one line item in the production process, whereas you still have to pay for locations, costumes, props, housing, transport, food, lighting, and a whole bunch of other things before you even get to handing out any wages.
It's very, very hard to monetize a low-budget film. And there's constant downward pressure on production budgets, because indie films don't usually have fat box-office payoffs, and instead depend on small-scale releases in festivals and the art-house cinema circuit, followed by (you hope) some international box office and (you really hope) a long tail of DVD/streaming sales. And that long tail is highly vulnerable to piracy, and the existence of piracy is a big deterrent to investors.
So when you're saying Big Studio makes enough money with their latest superhero franchise movie, or HBO makes enough money with their huge base of cable subscriptions, and so you don't feel bad about pirating Superhero 4 or Game of Thrones well sure, I understand that - none of the producers are in any danger of losing their shirts, everyone on the cast and crew got paid handsomely at the fairly generous rates their guilds/unions have negotiated over the years, and the shareholders still make plenty of money and get a nice dividend check every quarter.
On the other hand, lots of smaller content providers are getting fucked financially because it's a lot harder to answer the question of 'how will investors make their money back?' than it was a few years ago. So spare me the stereotypes of evil media barons trying to stop the brave plucky technological underdogs. That same technology is also massively disruptive to creative professionals and small businesses that work outside the Big Media tent, and actively hinders their ability to make a living.
I'm not saying that HBO is rich so it's OK to pirate their stuff, I believe the entertainment industry as a whole, from Big Five studios down to indie filmmakers, is no longer viable -- at least in its current form. Previously, duplicating a creative work was labour- or resource-intensive, so comparatively few entities could attempt it, and the effort required to police them was small compared to the economic and cultural gain. Now, duplicating a creative work can be done at the twitch of a fingertip, by anybody, anywhere, anytime. As a civilisation we could spend the time and effort to police such things, but I'm not sure it would be worthwhile.
As you point out, it's already hard to monetize a low-budget film and it's not getting any easier. But that's not because people are freeloaders or because they refuse to allocate their resources responsibly (although both may be true). Ultimately, the real problem is that the world changed, and things that had been difficult became easy. We can't put the genie of general-purpose computing back in the bottle, and I think it would be irresponsible to lock it down in its current state. The only reasonable alternative is to move forward: this will mean a great economic upheaval for artists, just like the invention of the printing press and recorded music and television were, but I don't think that's a deal-killer. Humans have been creating art, with or without economic recompense, for thousands of years, they're not going to stop now.
Duplication is only one half of the economic picture. You don't need to explain to me how the costs of duplication have fallen to zero, but I would like you to address the fact that the fixed costs of creating something people want to duplicate are very far from zero.
Humans have been creating art, with or without economic recompense, for thousands of years, they're not going to stop now.
And for the longest time art was the preserve of the wealthiest segment of society that used it as means of keeping the population in line. The idea that people who work in the arts should not be allowed to use technology to monetize the product of their labor is a bunch of self-serving bullshit. Nobody is entitled to have an artwork they produce become successful, but if it does become successful (in terms of people wanting to watch/listen/read) then they're entitled to something in return for the utility their product has provided to the consumer.
Although I don't have numbers, it is my impression that many more musicians / songwriters are making a full time living at their music than in the past. In today's world it is a lot easier to 'go at it alone'.
> How do you rationalize the movie industries increasing year to year profits...?
OK, so "no longer viable" is perhaps a bit of hyperbole. Perhaps a better word would be "doomed", which is to say that the economic axioms it was built on are no longer as firmly true as once they were, so the industry cannot continue in its current form indefinitely. It may continue for a little while from sheer momentum, and until the future becomes more evenly distributed, and it may eventually reinvent itself (and I hope it does) in a way that is sustainable under these new conditions, but something's got to change.
> Although I don't have numbers, it is my impression that many more musicians / songwriters are making a full time living at their music than in the past.
My impression is that a lot of these musicians and songwriters are finding fans over the Internet, playing small venues and touring small areas, with maybe the help of a manager or two. When most people think of a phrase like 'rock star', they probably imagine someone who finds fans by paying for lots of radio play, who fills stadiums and tours the world with the help of a giant record label who might have hundreds or thousands of artists signed to it. When I say 'the entertainment industry is doomed', I'm heavy on the 'industry' - the giant record labels, the world tours and saturating advertising are doomed because digital reproduction puts a cap on how much money can be extracted from a particular recording. These musicians and songwriters you talk about have already figured out how to earn a living in the post-Internet era, and I hope they can serve as an example to artists in other media who currently believe that the existing industry must be propped up indefinitely so they can earn a living.
It's far, far easier to record a song or even an album than it is to make a movie. The former is something you can literally do alone in your bedroom with a fairly modest outlay on equipment, if you're willing to work on the craft of sound engineering or team up with someone skilled in that area if your main skill is as a musician/songwriter. Of course it's not the same as going to a studio with outstanding acoustics and great session musicians etc. etc., but it's very feasible nonetheless.
Making a movie is simply not something you can do on your own - it's orders of magnitusde more complex and expensive, in both time and dollar terms. Also, you can't make money on live performances or merchandising swag in the same fashion that musicians do; it's not impossible to build other streams of revenue besides ticket/rental channels, but it's a lot more difficult and the ancillary revenue potential varies enormously with the subject matter.
Thanks, as someone outside the media producing business, I found this very interesting to read.
I often like to think that we don't really need big budget productions; sure, they're fun but they are stifling our culture with marketing, big name actors, risk/controversy-free scripts.
Distribution is the other big problem. The internet has changed/balanced things and it looks like DRM is just attempts to curb that.
My sincere questions for you:
In the end, do you consider DRM good for you?
Also, aren't you afraid that if we keep going like this, with DRM embedded in our OSes and processors (with no alternatives), we will soon reach a point of no return? I'm talking App-Store like distribution, where they get 30% and handle everything for you, even what you're allowed to say.
I consider DRM a slight net positive - not because it prevents copying, but because it makes it somewhat inconvenient, and thus provides an economic incentive to use a commercial service, where the DRM is implemented transparently.
No, I'm not afraid about the OS thing to be honest. In ~30 years of using computers the trend has continually been in favor of openness, and I think anxiety over DRM taking over OSes and CPUs is wildly overblown, and largely a psychological projection of sociopolitical anxiety.
I'm talking App-Store like distribution, where they get 30% and handle everything for you, even what you're allowed to say.
Well it's not like the existence of DRM means you lose the ability to give it away in another format if nobody wants to publish it on a commercial platform. This, too, is continually getting better in historical terms, and it's an issue I care very much about personally.
"Piracy is a service problem." -- remember that? There's nothing on Netflix you can't download illegally. People would pick Netflix still because it's a superior experience to what most people perceive as shady sites.
This has always been so with DRM: the only ones it inconveniences are the paying customers. Incredible stupidity.
I use Netflix every day. The DRM doesn't inconvenience me at all. I'm sure someone will be along in a minute to tell me they have to go down a salt mine and they won't have any internet down there and it's such a tragedy that they won't be able to finish watching the thing they started watching on Netflix because stupid DRM.
Sorry, but those are bullshit first world problems. Your life is not significantly impacted by this.
My wireless network is very slow in my bedroom. Also there's often no internet connection on most railway lines in Germany. So we aren't just talking about going down a salt mine.
Like I said, first world problems. You can upgrade or move your wi-fi router. The idea of internet on a train was practically unheard of a decade ago. I'm sorry, but I don't think that being able to watch a movie is so important in every situation that DRM is intolerable, even though I'm a filmmaker.
It's certainly not intolerable to not watch movies on the train, but it's inconvenient. I spend a significant chunk of my time on trains every week where I can watch movies. And due to DRM the illegal product is superior. Guess what people are doing? I've never seen anyone watching Netflix, but I see VLC on a daily basis. It's a service problem.
I mostly see people reading, or texting, or trying desperately to keep their eyes closed.
You're not the first person to claim this, so I have to wonder: is there an unspoken guideline for finding the "DRM-free video watchers car" where I can hang out with these VLC-using folks?
Took the train home yesterday and was sitting behind someone watching a movie. I couldn't connect to the trains Wi-Fi, though I tried the whole trip :(. I really wish I would have brought a movie to keep me company rather then watching their login page load.
Sometime not being allowed to conveniently do something is good for the brain and the body. Here in China YouTube is not convenient and going to MacDonald is not either. And tv is shit. Do we do not have connected the tv at home, eat white rice with veggies and pork, drinking green tea. As a result I an quite fit and in good health, and I have plenty of time for my side projects even with a daily job and two kids (three soon).
So, reading about your no netflix in the train inconvenience, I thought: what a great occasion to read plenty of books, or a handful of long and important books that make you a better/finer human being (e.g. Proust).
I'm not sure what the benefit of HTML5 video is if you still end up being forced to use some proprietary component. You ditch Flash but now you have to run some DRM software.
And there's so much more to HTML5 than video; I disagree that lack of DRM video support would set the rest of HTML5 back in any way.
EDIT: I guess the sandboxing aspect of EME is a significant improvement over Flash running as a plugin.
The benefits of html5 video are practical ones: it simply works better than flash does. It plays without stuttering, the audio works properly, it doesn't steal my mouse focus. Also, it doesn't get webcam permissions by default, or all the other crap that comes along with flash. Sure, its still DRM, but flash was terrible for plenty of reasons that aren't DRM.
Which is funny, because flash was also great for creating content... If you were building learning demos or content, flash is still better than having to hand-code an alternative with html+svg+js... Though one of my early hopes when Adobe bought macromedia was that they'd push the authoring tool to export an archive file (similar to xaml) that would contain a manifest along with svg and javascript as a bundle. That never really happened though... I still hope that now it can.
I know a lot of elearning content creators that really miss being able to use flash for most things... yeah, the player was horrible, and the formats sucked.. but the content creation experience was so nice. Creating data driven projects with Flex wasn't bad either.
But with EME it will only work on those phones and tablets which are running on an architecture and platform that the EME CDM has chosen to bother supporting. So it's pretty much as bad as flash.
And video file formats are not physical objects you put in a physical disc player. False equivalence makes your point idiotic.
Hard to believe how customers are willing to accept more and more of this bullshit, vendors did a great job at brainwashing them.
And you don't own those intangible things, you license them, so how is it you expect to be able to do MORE than the average consumer of a tangible product like a blu-ray?
It's not a false equivalence fallacy when the alternate argument only inverts the parameters while violating the same logical foundation. And it's insulting to suggest I (or anyone else) have been brainwashed because my world view is a bit more pragmatic than, "give me all the rights."
I'll eat the down votes for that, no problem, because this shouldn't be an adversarial debate between producers and consumers. There may be better ways to approach acknowledging producer rights and consumer usage, even if the consumers who feel their rights are violated are outnumbered by those who have no problem. Sure, the argument could be made, "if only they knew how their rights are being violated!" That argument could be made about any number of situations where one class feels like they need to lift up another one. And it's just as meaningless unless you do something to change the situation.
DRM is evil, blah blah blah, I get it, as a consumer, I do. I also get that there are arguments for DRM that are perfectly valid from the point of view of the producer, even if the consumer thinks that the producer is off his nut. Surely there are people out there on HN who aren't so polarized by this issue? Sometimes, it feels like the US Congress in here.
Actually, for most online video sites users are their bread and butter. (Since they are ad supported) In fact users also provide the content in most cases.
Content providers will stick with technologies like Flash because HTML5 alone could not provide EME. Lack of such feature set HTML5 backwards because huge content providers would shy away from using web as the dominant platform of media delivery.