[mstade]

I agree, and from the (admittedly few) opinions I've read on the topic it seems both sides at a lower level (i.e. mailing list as opposed to blogs) have quite well articulated and reasoned contents. From reading those, I feel I have a better understanding of both sides. I also feel there's little consensus, yet a choice was made anyway. The (grossly simplified) argument being that vendors implement DRM anyway so may as well have at least some spec for it.

I personally don't agree with this, and get the feeling that there's a very heavy corporate hand in place threatening to move consumers (e.g. Netflix saying people just want to watch video damnit) away from the open web by using alternative technologies. We're better off with EME than Flash and Silverlight, essentially.

I'm obviously grossly over simplifying things, but what I'm trying to say is that I think you're right, it's not as black/white as the parent article tries to make it. I'm not trying to pretend I'm some sort of expert on this topic – far from it – and certainly recommend anyone interested in this to spend some time and actually read the reasoning of both sides.

[microcolonel]

The sad-hilarious thing is that I would pay Netflix exactly as much money if the content weren't DRM'd, in fact I might pay more since they currently limit to 720p on Widevine (which is disappointing for my 1440p displays).

The reason I'd still pay Netflix, is that I can already pirate all of the shows they license. I pay for their reliable adaptive-rate streaming technology, the content I can get from almost anyone. In trade for the convenience, I lose quality because the widevine streams only go up to 720p. Even sadder, I could torrent good quality screencaps of the 1080p Netflix streams if I wanted to.

The publishers are just being ridiculous, so the DRM is enabled for everything. Though I wish they would put their money where their mouth is and disable the DRM for Netflix originals.