You're not the devil's advocate here. I remember talking about EME on here before and when it was being spec'd. The general attitude was, "I hate DRM! ...but then again, I DO like netflix!" It was pathetic to watch people sacrifice their principles just because they liked the convenience of netflix. Everyone who did that will regret it eventually.

20 years from now we'll all be reminiscing about the days when the web was still open. We'll kick ourselves for folding on this issue in just because we wanted to watch some throwaway movies on netflix.

Secondly, who cares whether netflix gets the rights to stream movies? That's their problem, not mine. Instead of finding a better solution, they make it everyone else's problem by pushing EME and shoehorning DRM into html.

"It was pathetic to watch people sacrifice their principles just because they liked the convenience of X."

You said a mouthful.

This is what the last 14 years look like in my rear-view. To be honest, I did get kicked off FB for being too old, my Ebay junky problem preceded this century and I did love playing euchre w/ my gramma on Excite. Then the dotcom refugees came back and those start-up search guys came & wrote in big letters on the wall(and plainly in the 1st paragraphs of their EULA). Of course, everybody eventually follows the easy money path and the privacy fleecing is thusly justified, "Everybody's doing it!".

>without EME how would movie studios agree to letting you stream their movies on Netflix?

They'll agree to it because they need the web to survive. Services like Netflix are the future of media distribution - physical media like DVDs and CDs are going extinct, and movie theaters are dying off. Mass media needs the web, but the web doesn't need mass media.

But is DRM really containing piracy? In most cases, no. What stops people from pirating content en masse is the existence of convenient, legal streaming services and the general disposition of most people to want to avoid breaking the law. People will tend to prefer legal services if they're convenient and inexpensive, even though piracy is free.

So, the pirates are still going to pirate, and DRM of any flavor likely isn't going to stop them. Copyright owners are going to have to put up with it because every distribution model other than streaming over the web will probably lose them even more money than piracy will in the long run.

The same way they do now: By making deals with Netflix. If they don't like Netflix, they can either make their own version of it, get a contract with a Netflix alternative, or just stop putting their movies online.

It's not like adding EME is suddenly going to allow anyone to do something that they've never done before.

Netflix has copy protection and yet movies are still all readily available on pirate sites. What difference does EME actually make to the movie studios' bottom line?

The answer you're looking for is here: https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2 (no, seriously)

The answer in link is already answered years ago. Publisher cannot stop piracy because it cannot control user device, because user has full access to device. So the only solution to problem is to gain full control over user device, which is impossible, because user device is in hands of user.

Except it's not impossible. Look at iphone and increasingly android. The device is locked down so hard that even the user doesn't have root access. Gaining root can be seen as a negative, borderline criminal thing and you lose warranty and repair service from the manufacturer. You also lose the ability to use some apps (Android pay, snapchat, etc.) just because you have root access.

The only ones with true root access are Apple and Samsung/Google.

Nearly 20 years old and more relevant than ever:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

More and more it feels like we are reinventing the mainframe/minicomp era.

That argument hasn't made them change their mind on copyprotection for decades. Why now?

DRM pushes people towards legit outlets, often because the pirate version is of lower quality, bound with malware, or arrives later than the legit version does. Stop seeing DRM as an unbreakable lock and start seeing it as a cost optimisation problem and you'll understand.q

DRM pushes people against legit outlets, often because legit version is of lower quality (e.g. HDCP), bound with malware (e.g. Sony rootkit), or arrives later or even never, because market too low to care about (e.g. Linux/BSD, or local markets of non-English speaking countries), that the pirated version does.

What malware? Piracy is a better product because it doesn't have DRM.

Shouldn't Netflix figure out how to solve that problem instead of the W3C?

Agree, I don't know much about Nflix, but shouldn't they be using their own native app?!

Without the broadcast flag how would networks agree to support HD? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/06/dtv-era-no-broadcast

Because the alternative is putlocker or watchmovies where they don't get a penny?

Without DRM how would movie studios agree to letting you watch their movies on TV?

Movies on TV are already paid for, and it's still illegal to copy and redistribute televised content in some cases (see:Aereo.)

Both of those points also apply to Netflix.