Re: Encrypted Media proposal

On Sat, 3 Mar 2012, Mark Watson wrote:
> 
> Again, authors have the right to license their works however they choose 
> (within the law). Software authors and movie authors alike. You may not 
> agree with all their choices but I hope you support their right to make 
> those choices.

I support people's rights to make whatever choices they want *up to the 
point where it infringes on other people's rights*. Which is what DRM 
does. So no, I certainly do not support their right to make the choice to 
use DRM: it's unethical.


> At Netflix we don't have customers telling us that we 'don't get it'. 

I just did a Google search for [netflix drm]. On the first page of 
results, I get the following results:

 * a bunch of links to forums talking about DRM errors preventing them 
   from seeing NetFlix content.
 * A link to a blog post complaining about a problem that only happens 
   because of DRM.
 * A news item about NetFlix's choice of DRM provider.
 * Another post about problems with DRM.
 * A page explaining how to remove NetFlix DRM.
 * A blog post from a content distributor who would like to publish their 
   content on NetFlix without DRM, being told *by NetFlix* that they must 
   have DRM (!!!) and cannot even tell people that the content is 
   available elsewhere without DRM (!!!!!). (No lock-in indeed.)
 * A forum post about errors that only result from NetFlix using DRM.
 * Another blog post about a similar issue only resulting from DRM.
 * Yet another blog post on the same subject.
 * And another.

The "searches related to netflix drm" feature, which lists query 
suggestions that are based on queries made by other users and are 
therefore representative of what people care about, contains two 
suggestions regarding removing NetFlix DRM, and four suggestions regarding 
errors caused by NetFlix DRM.

So yeah. You have customers -- and content providers! -- telling you that 
you don't get it. You might not be listening, but that's not the same.


> It's often argued that all customers want is easy, convenient, 
> reasonably-priced and legal access to content and they become frustrated 
> with industries that refuse to offer them that. But that is exactly what 
> we are offering and what we want to make possible with HTML5.

It is often argued indeed. But it's not at all what you are offering. It's 
not what your proposal enables -- HTML video can _already_ be used to 
provide content easily, conveniently, at a reasonable price and legally. 
Your proposal is to add DRM to this, which *by design* does nothing but 
reduce ease and convenience. It *by design* provides nothing but 
roadblocks to customers. What customers are frustrated by is precisely 
shenanigans like DRM (and what DRM enables, such as regional restrictions, 
device restrictions, non-skippable preroll warnings that use the FBI's 
name to scare law-abiding customers, etc).

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Saturday, 3 March 2012 06:40:06 UTC