<story><title>Netflix ditches Silverlight with support for HTML5 video in IE11</title><url>http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/06/26/netflix-ditches-silverlight-with-support-for-html5-video-in-ie11-available-today-with-windows-8-1-preview/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wmf</author><text>A DRM-free subscription service would immediately lead to a ripper tool that would download everything in one month, which would immediately lead to Hollywood studio execs pitching hissy fits.</text></item><item><author>weavejester</author><text>Why do you equate DRM with subscriptions? It&amp;#x27;s perfectly possible to have subscriptions to content without DRM.</text></item><item><author>thezilch</author><text>I think your feelings and assertions are valid, but I can&amp;#x27;t really blame Netflix here, which was my reaction, and I don&amp;#x27;t really think you meant to paint them in that light. I feel they are hamstrung between staying profitable and trying to court the dinosaurs that are content providers.&lt;p&gt;It always strikes me as odd that it would appear the &amp;quot;internet crowd&amp;quot; would both like to abolish advertising (re: commercials) _and_ DRM (re: subscriptions). I don&amp;#x27;t know that Netflix or Steam exists without the later, and I much prefer the &amp;quot;price&amp;quot; I pay for that &amp;quot;burden&amp;quot; over the alternative(s?).&lt;p&gt;And I have to say, it&amp;#x27;s hard for me to cast stones at MS for the innovations IE5 brought to market, in the late 90s. It&amp;#x27;s pretty crummy to subject MS to feelings that only manifested many years later and only because of things they didn&amp;#x27;t do -- continue supporting and innovating in the browser space. We&amp;#x27;re just pissed it was so good that people could hold onto it until pried from the cold, dead hands.</text></item><item><author>isomorphic</author><text>You are correct in asserting that the EME should become standardized, and that Netflix is participating in that process.  I should not throw stones unless I&amp;#x27;m willing to help.&lt;p&gt;I admit to being conflicted about the philosophical need for such extensions--although I have no pragmatic objections.  Netflix makes their coin by selling limited access to an artificially-restricted resource; the resource would probably not exist in its present form without the restrictions.&lt;p&gt;However, as someone who lived through web development in the 1990s, my brain shut off after reading &amp;quot;away from using proprietary&amp;quot; followed by &amp;quot;Microsoft MarketingTerm&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>thezilch</author><text>&amp;quot;Continue to shift away&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t mean proprietary steps can&amp;#x27;t or shouldn&amp;#x27;t be taken nor does it mean there will never be proprietary parts behind the scenes. The API to these Extensions are trying to become stable and not proprietary [0]; do you have suggestions or time to contribute? If Netflix is made to simply talk to a ratified API, it is a big step forward from a non-standard API exposed by the likes of Silverlight.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted-media/encrypted-media.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;dvcs.w3.org&amp;#x2F;hg&amp;#x2F;html-media&amp;#x2F;raw-file&amp;#x2F;tip&amp;#x2F;encrypted-med...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>isomorphic</author><text>Quoting Netflix, from the article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  We expect premium video on the web to continue to shift away from using proprietary plugin technologies to using these new Premium Video Extensions.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Quoting the article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  According to Netflix, Microsoft made this possible by implementing three features in its still-unfinished IE11:

  The Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) using Microsoft PlayReady DRM.

&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Netflix is using some doublespeak here.  Yes, Silverlight was a &amp;quot;proprietary plugin&amp;quot;, but they&amp;#x27;ve just shifted to using proprietary DRM with proprietary extensions to HTML5.  They got rid of the plugin--great!  But they&amp;#x27;ve replaced one proprietary experience with another.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tbirdz</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not like having DRM is really stopping piracy, especially in Netflix&amp;#x27;s case. For example their new original series of House of Cards and season 4 of Arrested Development were both pirated (I assume using some kind of desktop screen recorder?) and posted online within days of their netflix release. So the use of DRM did not stop people from pirating their content, in only prevented potential customers on other systems, like Linux, from legally purchasing their content.</text></comment>
<story><title>Netflix ditches Silverlight with support for HTML5 video in IE11</title><url>http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/06/26/netflix-ditches-silverlight-with-support-for-html5-video-in-ie11-available-today-with-windows-8-1-preview/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wmf</author><text>A DRM-free subscription service would immediately lead to a ripper tool that would download everything in one month, which would immediately lead to Hollywood studio execs pitching hissy fits.</text></item><item><author>weavejester</author><text>Why do you equate DRM with subscriptions? It&amp;#x27;s perfectly possible to have subscriptions to content without DRM.</text></item><item><author>thezilch</author><text>I think your feelings and assertions are valid, but I can&amp;#x27;t really blame Netflix here, which was my reaction, and I don&amp;#x27;t really think you meant to paint them in that light. I feel they are hamstrung between staying profitable and trying to court the dinosaurs that are content providers.&lt;p&gt;It always strikes me as odd that it would appear the &amp;quot;internet crowd&amp;quot; would both like to abolish advertising (re: commercials) _and_ DRM (re: subscriptions). I don&amp;#x27;t know that Netflix or Steam exists without the later, and I much prefer the &amp;quot;price&amp;quot; I pay for that &amp;quot;burden&amp;quot; over the alternative(s?).&lt;p&gt;And I have to say, it&amp;#x27;s hard for me to cast stones at MS for the innovations IE5 brought to market, in the late 90s. It&amp;#x27;s pretty crummy to subject MS to feelings that only manifested many years later and only because of things they didn&amp;#x27;t do -- continue supporting and innovating in the browser space. We&amp;#x27;re just pissed it was so good that people could hold onto it until pried from the cold, dead hands.</text></item><item><author>isomorphic</author><text>You are correct in asserting that the EME should become standardized, and that Netflix is participating in that process.  I should not throw stones unless I&amp;#x27;m willing to help.&lt;p&gt;I admit to being conflicted about the philosophical need for such extensions--although I have no pragmatic objections.  Netflix makes their coin by selling limited access to an artificially-restricted resource; the resource would probably not exist in its present form without the restrictions.&lt;p&gt;However, as someone who lived through web development in the 1990s, my brain shut off after reading &amp;quot;away from using proprietary&amp;quot; followed by &amp;quot;Microsoft MarketingTerm&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>thezilch</author><text>&amp;quot;Continue to shift away&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t mean proprietary steps can&amp;#x27;t or shouldn&amp;#x27;t be taken nor does it mean there will never be proprietary parts behind the scenes. The API to these Extensions are trying to become stable and not proprietary [0]; do you have suggestions or time to contribute? If Netflix is made to simply talk to a ratified API, it is a big step forward from a non-standard API exposed by the likes of Silverlight.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted-media/encrypted-media.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;dvcs.w3.org&amp;#x2F;hg&amp;#x2F;html-media&amp;#x2F;raw-file&amp;#x2F;tip&amp;#x2F;encrypted-med...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>isomorphic</author><text>Quoting Netflix, from the article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  We expect premium video on the web to continue to shift away from using proprietary plugin technologies to using these new Premium Video Extensions.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Quoting the article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  According to Netflix, Microsoft made this possible by implementing three features in its still-unfinished IE11:

  The Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) using Microsoft PlayReady DRM.

&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Netflix is using some doublespeak here.  Yes, Silverlight was a &amp;quot;proprietary plugin&amp;quot;, but they&amp;#x27;ve just shifted to using proprietary DRM with proprietary extensions to HTML5.  They got rid of the plugin--great!  But they&amp;#x27;ve replaced one proprietary experience with another.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>weavejester</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;A DRM-free subscription service would immediately lead to a ripper tool that would download everything in one month&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why would anyone bother doing that when they could just download what they wanted over bittorrent?</text></comment>