[blueblob]

Perhaps this is why Pandora has the annoying "I'm still listening" button, so they don't have to pay out royalties on things their users aren't listening to.

[bluetidepro]

Somewhat related: It's also probably why services like Netflix have the same thing built in ("I'm still watching" button after watching like 3 episodes of a show without clicking buttons), so some bot computer doesn't just stream and record everything.

[Sambdala]

I remember a Netflix engineer posting somewhere that Netflix needed to implement this for legal reasons.

If they don't require you to keep clicking a button to "request content", it doesn't count as an on-demand service.

[tokenizerrr]

I always figured that button was for people who fell asleep or had to leave their computers. It would be trivial to automate that prompt away for a malicious user.

[bluetidepro]

Good point, that is probably true. Or possible so Netflix doesn't waste bandwidth on users that are not even there watching/listening.

[isaacremuant]

not as easy but still, doable by someone with determination and a simple knowledge of computer vision and UI simulation.

[GFischer]

It is really trivial, there are several programs that automate UIs, I remember them from trying my hand at automating trading for a game which didn't provide an API :) .

Automate 7 was really impressive, and they're at version 9 now

http://www.networkautomation.com/automate/automate/

[aestra]

Hulu has it too, IIRC.

Also - if you are a real human but fell asleep or walked out of the house/room.

[gordaco]

Youtube's playlists also have it. It's annoying when I'm listening to a playlist at work and it suddenly stops, although if I'm deep enough in the zone I don't notice it until some minutes later.

[spyder]

But bots can click on that too, so soon there will be captchas but then bots will do captcha solving or they will outsource it.

[poopsintub]

Yep. This won't last for long.

[sudomal]

It'll be a similar reason for Spotify's [former?] monthly limits.