Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hugoc 4806 days ago
With the current scheme house of cards was outside netflix within a week (if not the same day) So content producers are already doomed, why saddle html5 with DRM and binary blobs?
1 comments

Well Netflix has less of an incentive for DRM on their own content, since they don't have any DVD/Blu-Ray sales to protect. But to the extent that unencrypted streams make it easier for unsophisticated users to rip DVDs from streams, it's a relevant consideration for the big media companies that offer content on Netflix.

In the long run, content producers will survive because the general purpose PC will be marginalized as a platform. The future is not people watching torrent-ed rips of movies on their laptops, it's people watching Netflix and similar services on their Apple TVs and iPads. At that point it doesn't matter if the content is encrypted or not, since it won't be convenient for your typical user to watch a ripped copy.

You're quite the prognosticator.

I would argue that the content producers will survive in spite of the fact that they lose the battle to create an entirely hands off encrypted media path from the website to your viewing device.

They will survive because they make their content easy to buy. They will survive /well/ if they make their content easy to buy and to license.