To solve it, we need to tackle the root problem and not blame the browsers: those who want to infect our open web with DRM.
Cancel your Netflix subscription. Let them know why. Same with Hulu. Same with amazon video. same with anyone who tells you to that your open web is less important than their unwillingness to embrace the new, digital frontier.
Don't give money to the asshats who push this crap. Simple as that.
This is only the beginning if you let them in. What will you accept next? Drm infected Images? HTML infected source which can only be decoded on windows? This is not the end. The line must be drawn and it must be drawn now.
Canceling your streaming service subscriptions won't be sufficient, even if everyone did it.
You have to stop consuming Hollywood content. Stop going to movies. Stop watching TV shows. Stop listening to recorded music.
Then you might actually make a difference.
The streaming services are just stuck in the middle here -- Hollywood won't sell them, or anyone, content without DRM.
DRM actually makes sense for a streaming service, where you only have a temporary license to the content anyway. You're buying the right to watch or listen one time -- how is that supposed to be enforced?
You live in a very sheltered bubble if you think DRM is not effective.
For most people, DRM is enough to stop them. It's only a select few people with a deep understanding of technology who can defeat even the most basic DRM.
> For most people, DRM is enough to stop them. It's only a select few people with a deep understanding of technology who can defeat even the most basic DRM.
I don't think you get the point. Most pirates never try to beat any DRM. They pirate what other capable few provide to them DRM free. Yes, some initially break that DRM. But it takes one knowledgeable pirate to do it in order for the rest to get it DRM free ever since. So, going back to the point above - DRM is not effective for anything except degrading the product for legitimate users.
So long as you're still consuming it you're still propagating the resulting culture, and encouraging other people to pay for it. Not everyone is in a position where they can so easily choose to flaunt the law.
It's best to support liberally licensed things and other alternatives; then your friends and family can share in them without taking the bigger step of choosing to ignore the law.
I think it's worse than that: DRM is serving a market of users ASKING to pay a lower price for renting movies instead of buying them. Many users are very happy to trade freedom of sharing with cost, and I personally don't think you can expect a business model based on an agreement of sharing restrictions to work without any layer of technical enforcement.
Even outside of movies, there are surprisingly few examples of successful artificial restriction policies without any kind of enforcement. Socially, people assume that they will be physically restricted from doing things that they are not supposed to be doing (from key locks to bank safes to packaging boxes with safety labels to bodyguards to keep out signs to whatever). I'm not sure it makes sense to go chicken/egg here: we can simply accept that people expect restriction policies to be enforced somehow, and they find totally reasonable that there is some kind of enforcement.
The whole business model of movies is based on restricted consumption; you pay more to get a better experience (e.g.: more quality) or less restrictions (e.g.: buy instead of rent). You can't expect this to continue to exist without a technical enforcement, and at the same time you can't expect Hollywood to come up with a radically different business model for a mature industry. You need disruption to arrive from somewhere else.
IMO, fighting against DRM for movies is ignoring the big picture. There are absolutely zero possibility that you will be able to experience Hollywood digital movies without DRM, because people accept and DEMAND to be restricted in order to access to discounts. The only alternative that makes sense is to boycott Hollywood and finance an innovator that can setup an alternative movie industry not based on restricted consumption (and good luck with coming up with a workable, scalable business model; that would easily make you billionaire and it's thus quite hard to achieve).
While I share your sentiment and never use any DRMed services to vote with my wallet, the critical mass of users don't care. It gives an ability to crooked publishers and distributors who oblige them to get away with unethical practices like DRM.
To solve it, we need to tackle the root problem and not blame the browsers: those who want to infect our open web with DRM.
Cancel your Netflix subscription. Let them know why. Same with Hulu. Same with amazon video. same with anyone who tells you to that your open web is less important than their unwillingness to embrace the new, digital frontier.
Don't give money to the asshats who push this crap. Simple as that.
This is only the beginning if you let them in. What will you accept next? Drm infected Images? HTML infected source which can only be decoded on windows? This is not the end. The line must be drawn and it must be drawn now.