[majormajor]

Native apps on tablets, phones, and set top boxes are the future (present, really) of that, anyway.

Linux users could be a bit more screwed if publishers had to move to Windows/Mac apps if interested in desktop/laptop users, but otherwise it wouldn't be a big impact for the big properties.

What's the difference to a user of opening a Netflix app vs going there in the browser? Basically nothing.

Do we want apps on the web, or in the OS—that's the only question here. Browser vendors are incentivized to provide a path for apps in browser, because otherwise they become less relevant. And so this is the result.

(Personally I'd rather have OS-level native apps anyway. So please, kill DRM in the browser. Browsers are massive resource hogs. Netflix devs would probably be happy too to not have to deal with cross-browser-compatibility shit. The web is a mess already.)

[AnthonyMouse]

> Linux users could be a bit more screwed if publishers had to move to Windows/Mac apps if interested in desktop/laptop users

There is not any kind of real difference between not having a native app (or whatever WINE patches are needed to run it) and not having some platform-specific EME black box binary.

> What's the difference to a user of opening a Netflix app vs going there in the browser? Basically nothing.

For Netflix? Basically nothing. For the other 99.9% of websites that aren't as big as Netflix? Users balk at installing apps from little known sources, so those websites then won't have DRM.

[majormajor]

Linux is a small meaningless edge case for these companies anyway, I just mentioned it because the portability of a plugin is much higher than of a full native app - so if there's any chance it'll be supported, it's in the web-based world.

How many sites will be using this outside of stuff like Netflix/Amazon/PS Vue/Sling and co? Buying someone's DRM solution or building your own only makes sense for high-dollar content?

But again, from my perspective as someone who wants to write code for anything but browsers, anything that moves dev jobs away from the web is good news for me.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Linux is a small meaningless edge case for these companies anyway, I just mentioned it because the portability of a plugin is much higher than of a full native app - so if there's any chance it'll be supported, it's in the web-based world.

It's already supported both ways. Chrome on Linux can play Netflix, and before that there were third party packages that would install the Netflix app for Windows along with all of the patches necessary to make it run on Linux.

It should obviously also be possible to run the Netflix app for Android on Linux, as demonstrated by the fact that all the phones are doing it.

It doesn't really matter how hard it is to make it work, because for a high value target like Netflix, someone will make it work. And none of that will actually satisfy the free software people regardless, because it's a binary blob either way.

> How many sites will be using this outside of stuff like Netflix/Amazon/PS Vue/Sling and co? Buying someone's DRM solution or building your own only makes sense for high-dollar content?

How many sites used to use Flash?

You have to expect that somebody is going to produce a low dollar cost DRM system (which is correspondingly even more buggy and ineffective) and market it to managers who don't know any better.

[majormajor]

> And none of that will actually satisfy the free software people regardless, because it's a binary blob either way.

That's kinda my point. Browser vendors had a no-win which-is-the-lesser evil choice: accept an in-browser binary blob but keep the linkability, etc, of the web, or concede the rest of the already-vastly-shrunken ground of the premium video playback market to off-web blobs.

Thing is, in ten years, it's not going to matter, because long-form premium video on web will be such a vanishingly small niche.

> How many sites used to use Flash?

For DRM instead of for ease of development and portability? Not many, I'd wager.

[AnthonyMouse]

> That's kinda my point. Browser vendors had a no-win which-is-the-lesser evil choice: accept an in-browser binary blob but keep the linkability, etc, of the web, or concede the rest of the already-vastly-shrunken ground of the premium video playback market to off-web blobs.

> Thing is, in ten years, it's not going to matter, because long-form premium video on web will be such a vanishingly small niche.

But that is the point. Why permanently infect the web and destroy trust in our institutions for the sake of something that it would barely hurt anything to just let go?

[majormajor]

Because the number of people who believe this will "permanently infect the web and destroy trust in our institutions" is miniscule and limited to certain tech-savvy internet community bubbles, and browser vendors are also looking at the millions more people who would see Netflix et al ceasing to function on the internet as just another reason to ignore the web as a whole?

My claim is that the alternative isn't "more open" the alternative is "more closed, because the open web has yet another (this time self-inflicted) nail driven through it."

But I do think they're both lost causes, long-term. The open web will likely be increasingly relegated, for most users, to a dangerous place of viruses, malware, and shitty ads compared to their happy little walled gardens.

Not to play more-paranoid-than-you, but if you want to save the web, I think you've got to fix the web, first. DRM is a sideshow.

[kelnos]

> Users balk at installing apps from little known sources

Do they? With the rise of the Mac App Store and whatever similar MS is doing, I doubt they much care.

[AnthonyMouse]

What rise of the Mac App Store? The only reason anybody even uses the iOS App Store is that there is no other way to distribute iOS apps.

If it was easy to install mobile apps direct from the author's website as on a desktop, who would voluntarily be paying app stores 30% of their revenue?

[kelnos]

> If it was easy to install mobile apps direct from the author's website as on a desktop, who would voluntarily be paying app stores 30% of their revenue?

The developers (unfortunately) don't matter in this scenario. If the users want to install apps from the app store, that's what they'll do. Developers who don't list their app in the app store will increasingly find fewer downloads because their app isn't as discoverable as other, similar apps. I'd be surprised if this isn't already happening.

For your average user, only installing apps through an Apple-vetted install location is actually really great for security, especially considering the sandboxing that goes on. It just sucks that the developer loses out.