I can't think of a single way where this hurts the consumer:

- I don't own the video, so there's no need to be able to do a backup to multiple places, or to have an un-encrypted copy.

- I get better battery life (although this isn't related to DRM, but if we wanted a native playback in the browser, we'd need this.

- Sounds like WebCrypto will probably do hardware-accelerated encryption/decryption (using AES-NI probably?), which is a win overall on the security side.

Cons:

- I don't get to rip the video anymore.

- I can't just play the video on any device (although it's hard nowadays to find a device that doesn't have Netflix playback)

- I can't look at the back and forth JS-based traffic on this netflix site

Where I get more mad is if I _purchased_ the movie, and it's encrypted and I can't do anything with it.

Rentals? Don't care.

You already listed it, and without even thinking about it described why it's such a serious problem:

> I can't just play the video on any device (although it's hard nowadays to find a device that doesn't have Netflix playback)

Suppose that I want a device I can verify. The reasons for this have nothing to do with movies. I just want to know that the device I'm using for my business doesn't have a backdoor put there e.g. by the Chinese government or any other government or corporation when it was manufactured. I want to know nobody has access to my trade secrets, so I want to be able to verify the device myself, or be secure in the knowledge that someone I trust has verified it and that anyone can who wants to.

This should have nothing to do with movies. I don't care whether or not anybody else wants to watch Batman on their iPad, I just want to look at all the bits I paid for and be able to change them as I please.

But if somebody releases a device I can verify, that device would be incompatible with DRM, because DRM can't withstand transparency. And devices have network effects. Hence why "it's hard nowadays to find a device that doesn't have Netflix playback" -- because having Netflix creates more sales for a device than being approved by neckbeards, so the manufacturers all respond to the market. Anyone who tolerates DRM is making everyone less secure.

And it's even worse than that, because it's not just that you can't verify a device with DRM. You also can't make a device with DRM. If you don't know what's in the black box then you can't reproduce it. The only way a system gets DRM is if Netflix et al will do the work, which they don't do for anything without enough existing market share. And how is a system supposed to get any market share if it can't display any content? This is why Microsoft likes DRM. It destroys the ability of newcomers to enter the market. That's the real consumer harm. Can you imagine what the landscape would have looked like if Microsoft had "provided" DRM for images and web pages in the 90s? No Firefox and no iPhone.

Plus, who actually has the expertise to truly verify that a device has no backdoors? Security Experts? Well they can do the same with these devices (MSE seems to be a W3C standard). How far will you go? Hardware?

Like I said, when I purchase something, I hate when it has DRM applied. I own about 50 books on the Kindle, and they are all DRM-encumbered, and I hate that I can't lend them to other members of my family like I could do easily with a paper book. These are my books. I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with them (including backing them up).

But I read this post about Netflix video rentals and I think "awesome, I can watch a hi-def movie on my laptop without burning my lap." I suppose others just can't get past the fact that this involves DRM.

But these are rentals. I have no such expectations.

DRM is a black box with privileged access to hardware whose purpose is to download encrypted information to your computer and prevent you (the computer's owner) from reading it. It would be more effective at hiding the installation of a rootkit than at its stated purpose.

> Plus, who actually has the expertise to truly verify that a device has no backdoors? Security Experts? Well they can do the same with these devices (MSE seems to be a W3C standard).

Please identify the location where the source code to the black boxes they require can be viewed for auditing by members of the public.

But I absolutely care of the music that I own is encrypted.

What you're saying is that A) doesn't matter. What I'm saying is that B) really does matter quite a lot, and in a way that has nothing to do with downloading vs. streaming.

The ironic thing is that Hollywood is shooting itself in the foot. You want to commoditize your complements.[1] DRM is doing the complete opposite and creating a huge barrier to entry in the markets complementary to streaming video. Look at the book publishers and Amazon -- is that really the position Hollywood wants to be in when negotiating with Apple or Google? Hollywood benefits from more competition in the systems market. Dropping a boat anchor in the form of the inability to display their content on any small timer who tries to compete with one of their powerful third party distributors is masochism. Which is why C) isn't half as implausible as some people seem to think.

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

Conversely, I know of old school internet radio stations (shoutcast/icecast style) that charge for high bandwidth streams. I can play those streams on any player I want, over any network I want.

No-DRM is better in all cases.

The video will have DRM. That's not up for debate.

What's up for debate is whether you need a plugin (which runs in a sandbox) or you can decode using code closer to the metal (browser native).

To be able to play these videos natively in the browser without sandboxed plugin code, you need to still have DRM. Whether you like it or not, this is what the studios want.

The better battery life comes from begin able to decode the video in hardware, because you aren't using a plugin anymore. And you aren't using a plugin anymore because you natively support the DRM.

It really should be.

The music companies couldn't accomplish this. Maybe the studios closely watched and learned from the "failures" of the music industry.

One example of how DRM will hurt the consumer is what I hear about DVDs starting with unskippable ads. The studios have shown nothing but contempt for customers. Don't think I'm advocating for DRM by being excited about this news.

But seriously, in this case, I've just never heard anyone complain about DRM with Netflix or be hampered by it. I don't see how this is anything but a win-win for consumers without adversely affecting the content-watching experience.

Has there been any point in history where it has been easier to make a movie, record a song, or write a story? Has there been any point in history where our culture has been more free? Man it would be a shame if we didn't get to see the latest Hollywood blockbuster, but culture will always continue. There's no way to remove that right within any legal framework.

What you're worried about is that we won't be able to buy a copy of the next superhero movie. Oh well. There's still plenty of free and worthwhile works of media that can never be forced to close.

But, what does Netflix gain from using DRM?

A business. Without DRM their is no way they'd be able to get the content they charge for.

The studios will license them video.

For a company like Netflix it isn't non-DRM HTML5 vs DRM HTML5, it's DRM HTML5 or Flash/Silverlight/other proprietary plugin.

(For any downvoters: this was meant as a compliment.)

http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/04/html5-video-at-netflix.h...

I doubt that's true, myself. It'd be nice, but I don't see it happening.

My online video watching is primarily Netflix with a healthy dose of Hulu Plus, iTunes, and Youtube. Not much of it is available without DRM. That is not a technical choice. That is a commercial choice being made by the people who own the content. Since I'm not going to steal it from them, their choice matters more than mine.

So DRM stays. Might as well have it built-in, more efficient and more secure.

Now, I have no choice. And the EME spec branches out beyond HTML5 Video. If additional working groups dictate it, soon you won't even be able to view page source or take content.

    >Now, I have no choice.

You will miss out on a lot of DRM'd content out there, but you can still choose.

That said, I would like a more secure, more efficient built-in method for any non-DRM video source that chooses to be distributed openly too!

"a more secure ... non-DRM video source" - more secure compared to what? What does security means to you? If you are going to watch non-DRMed video, it's already as secure as it can get, all you need for the efficiency part is better codecs, think of VP9, or Daala.

I don't think the qualifier "premium" and DRM are so tightly coupled as Netflix suggests. I could imagine a universe in which premium, that is high quality content, could exist without DRM. So it's not "needed" as such. Those are weasel words.

Edit: To clarify, if someone wants to make a service like Netflix and have it actually ship today (or any time in the near future), then yes, DRM is "needed."

Also, this is for rentals, not stuff you own, so for me, at least, it's not a big deal if there's DRM on it.

I was traveling for work to another country. I went to launch Steam to play a local game and either because the network was misconfigured, Steam didn't like me being in another country, or something else I don't care about, I couldn't launch it to play my downloaded, single-player game. I live in a major US city with Internet from a major cable company. Hulu tells me I'm using a proxy and won't let let use the website anymore. When emailing support they offered no help. Back when iTunes had DRM I was at a wedding at a location without Internet. The bride/groom planned their own music but hadn't authenticated the computer with the playlist for the wedding. These are all companies with more "user-friendly" DRM than most.

I like downloading lectures and conference talks. I'm concerned if major video host, like YouTube, were to adopt this I won't be able to download these things and watch while commuting or traveling. It could just as easily happen if Netflix becomes the only host for public domain content or opens to user-submitted video.

Also, EME isn't limited only to traditional Movie & TV uses of video. It could be used for web-like content (rendered and encoded at the server) with un-blockable ads.

The net effect of this was that the average video on the internet was not DRM'd, and couldn't be without losing significant potential marketshare. Once all browsers natively support DRM this will likely change.

Nonsense. Folks have installed Flash forever in order to watch cat videos. Youtube was Flash based and Flash has even been bundled with Chrome. If folks have wanted to DRM their cat videos they've had the ability and its not happened. Its not client side compatibility thats prevented this its that the DRM encoding and streaming costs and complexity that make this a poor choice for content providers.

Flash has (had?) already won. Everyone already has it installed: almost all consumer computers have it installed by default and Chrome runs it without even having the adobe software installed.

I think it is an absurd claim mistake that a random website running silverlight would have remotely the same view rate as one using flash. That delta cost more than outweighs the tiny benefit of DRM, and when everything is HTML5 video and DRM comes with actually zero cost to potential users it will be significantly more widespread.

Is DRM in Safari on Yosemite really taking away a freedom?

My biggest concern is that it will be easier for people who are against sharing to continue their way, and will not make it easier for people who are for sharing. I want to respect the decision of the people who create, but if it is easier for them to make sure we can't see their movie more than once, it feels like more and more content (and people) will be against the principles of sharing.

At the moment I get the "install flash" message on Youtube videos a disappointingly often amount of the time. Weirdly I've had the experience where embedded HTML5 Youtube videos will play, but they won't when I click through to watch the full-size video on Youtube.

Here's a tip I've found useful: if you run into the "Install Flash" message, you can usually edit the URL to play in HTML5 instead. Change "watch?v=" to "embed/" (and if there are other querystring arguments starting with an ampersand, just strip them off). There are a few YouTube gateway sites that do something similar, but I remember the 'embed' trick better.

Am I missing something or do I just not watch enough YouTube to come across the problem you are describing?

If you want a short term solution, I usually just swap to an iPad user agent string if I want to force html5 video.

IE, Chrome, and Firefox users who haven't updated their browser.

It runs Silverlight through Wine as a plugin in Firefox/Chrome on Linux. Works flawlessly for me even with HD video.

As for the future, I believe Chrome already supports the underlying technology, and Firefox confirmed they will be adding it in the future, so they will probably support Netflix's HTML5 DRM at some point. Although I'm not sure that it's any more of promising for Linux compatibility than existing propritary software - it will still need to be compiled specifically for each platform, and may even have some OS level requirements too (not sure on that, but the fact this is only working with Windows 8.1 and OS X 10.10 makes me think so). So Linux may still be left out and not be able to run certain DRM extensions.

Before someone says "Chrome OS is not Linux": well it is Linux-based, it runs the Linux kernel, and the Linux version of Chrome. I am not aware of any of our (Google's) internal plans, but I presume the intent is to eventually make all the HTML5 Premium Video Extensions functional on plain Chrome with no dependencies on bits of software currently in Chrome OS. This would make streaming possible on all Linux platforms, providing Netflix doesn't artificially restricts playback to only Chrome OS. (I am also not aware of any of Netflix's future plans).

"Should" or "would"? Not likely, because it will be easily circumvented. There are also more fundamental reasons why linux and DRM are at odds: https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-condemns-partnership-between-mo...