It's Now Possible To Play Netflix Natively On Linux Without Wine Plug-Ins

[Luke]

There will always be those of us who do not care about TV at all

Since the vast vast majority of their shows are only available with DRM due to the restrictions imposed by the copyright holders (unless you have evidence that the copyright holders say otherwise, you can't accuse them of "pretending"), it makes no sense for NetFlix to spend extra time making/supporting a player with dual DRM/Non-DRM mode - they have plenty of other bugs to be working out. It's not reasonable to think they could sell monthly subscriptions for only a couple of shows at this point anyway.

I dislike DRM as much, if not more, than the next guy, and would love to see it all gone. But you are mistaken if you think a boycott by a few (or even a few hundred thousand) Stallman fans,is going to even make NetFlix's radar... or end up doing us any good. The best thing for Linux and Libreness-in-general _at this point_ is if the product works such that our platform is on an even playing ground with the proprietary OS's.

I could care less about Hollywood TV shows with or without DRM, so I am free to disable DRM support in any machine I have. I would not run Chrome (google closed especially) as I go out of my way not to have any kind of Google history (search or otherwise) reachable by all those "terror" databases. There will always be alternative browsers and forks that make no effort to support DRM, and in Firefox it will be a "content decryption" module you can prevent from downloading. FOSS is about options, what we REALLY don't want is for Netflix or anything else to be able to force people to run Windoze.

What makes even the "srongest" DRM crackable is of course the old key distribution issue. Let's look at this from a role-reversal standpoint:
Suppose I need to transmit a video in such a way that only an activist pro-bono lawyer team can watch it, and the prosecution cannot. I can ask the legal team to send me a GPG key, and use that to send an encrypted message carrying a passphrase, then send an encrypted tarball containing a filesystem with the video on it. If that same video had to go direct to every ACLU intern on Turtle Island, I would have a real problem with key distribution and any shortcuts to simplify it (compared to the standard of each intern getting a separate PGP encrypted email with a different passphrase in it) would probably open the whole scheme to a side-channel attack. Worse, a single undercover cop working at ACLU could decrypt and repost the video. as all copies are the same once decrypted. As you see, this "DRM" would only be both usable and trustworthy if the recipient list is very small.

[LesserAnimal]

Error Code: M7063-1913 when trying to buffer with html5

I'm running Mint 17 with cinnamon. Both the beta and dev(alpha) versions get passed silverlight when paired with a user-agent using the correct corresponding version number. HTML5 is set as prefered in netflix. I bypass all requests for silverlight and acts like its starting to buffer with html5 before the following error code is shit out

Error Code: M7063-1913

it seems this is common with people running ubuntu so i'm not surprised i am having the same issue considering mint being a derivative. However seems some some with ubuntu do have it working? What is necessary to correct the issue. I'd like to be ride of firefox and pipelight.

[LesserAnimal]

never mind I re-read the thread. Gonna try the fix for ubuntu on mint and confirm it works though i'm pretty sure it will.

[jimbohale]

People should boycott Netflix for their hypocritical push of DRM into the HTML standard. Netflix always blamed that on the publishers and pretended it wasn't their fault. They have now a number of their own shows which they distribute. Where are they available DRM-free? Nowhere. So Netflix bears the blame for this push. By using it you proliferate this DRM garbage even more.

Oh, I'm sorry, you want them to make shows for free? So far people have NOT cracked their DRM and without it it enables extremely easy piracy. DRM is a necessary evil for TV shows and movies. Say what you will about software freedom, but movies take a lot of money to produce and need to make money to be viable. If everything on netflix was pirated (which is not the case, there are pirated copies available and you can easily take a screen recorder but that's not the same), netflix would not be able to make money and not be able to operate. I like TV shows and movies. I can recognize that profits need to exist for them. If you don't like DRM, don't watch TV shows and movies because that's the only way they're going to exist. This DRM is relatively non-intrusive compared to things like silverlight or Sony's modified bootloader, so I would get over it.

[Anarchy]

Oh, I'm sorry, you want them to make shows for free? So far people have NOT cracked their DRM and without it it enables extremely easy piracy. DRM is a necessary evil for TV shows and movies. Say what you will about software freedom, but movies take a lot of money to produce and need to make money to be viable. If everything on netflix was pirated (which is not the case, there are pirated copies available and you can easily take a screen recorder but that's not the same), netflix would not be able to make money and not be able to operate. I like TV shows and movies. I can recognize that profits need to exist for them. If you don't like DRM, don't watch TV shows and movies because that's the only way they're going to exist. This DRM is relatively non-intrusive compared to things like silverlight or Sony's modified bootloader, so I would get over it.

People HAVE cracked their DRM. Just look for "Orange is the new black" on thepiratebay or other torrent sites.

[jimbohale]

People HAVE cracked their DRM. Just look for "Orange is the new black" on thepiratebay or other torrent sites.

No, people use screen recorders which are mildly lossy.

[Luke]

I make news videos, all of them are distributed free

Oh, I'm sorry, you want them to make shows for free? So far people have NOT cracked their DRM and without it it enables extremely easy piracy. DRM is a necessary evil for TV shows and movies. Say what you will about software freedom, but movies take a lot of money to produce and need to make money to be viable. If everything on netflix was pirated (which is not the case, there are pirated copies available and you can easily take a screen recorder but that's not the same), netflix would not be able to make money and not be able to operate. I like TV shows and movies. I can recognize that profits need to exist for them. If you don't like DRM, don't watch TV shows and movies because that's the only way they're going to exist. This DRM is relatively non-intrusive compared to things like silverlight or Sony's modified bootloader, so I would get over it.

I prefer to IGNORE Hollywood movies, their studios could all go belly-up wiithout harming anything I care about. I produce news videos not for money, but to increase the strength of the activist community I am part of. Anything that impedes people from viewing them impedes my work, as maximum viewership maximizes the return on this sort of thing. I'm about as likely to use DRM as an adserver is on their videos- and for exactly the same reason.

As for music, if Hollywood went belly-up and all music was distributed free, a hell of a lot of small-time musicians who now can't compete even for downloads with Hollywood but can compete in playing performance and songwriting would be the direct beneficiaries, while record company bosses and a tiny number of rock stars would be the losers. No, you could not make a living at it, but few musicians can now anyway. I used to be one and know exactly what I am talking about. My proposal here would be like replacing the NFL with a strong and participatory neighborhood-based football program. Live shows would of course continue as always...

[Anarchy]

No, people use screen recorders which are mildly lossy.

No, I don't think you realize what's the point of DRM...

A quote from wikipedia, so there is 90 percents chance that it's correct.

With first-generation DRM software, the intent is to control copying; with second-generation DRM, the intent is to control executing, viewing, copying, printing and altering of works or devices.

So, if I can make a copy that contains 90-95 percent of the information of the original, then DRM doesn't work. In the case of "Orange is the new black" DRM completely fails, because the copy and the original (the one that I often stream on my tablet) for all purposes are indistinguishable. Maybe if you're that awesome you can find a difference, but in reality there is none, or at least it depends on the person that rips the video.

I rest my case.

[jimbohale]

No, I don't think you realize what's the point of DRM...

A quote from wikipedia, so there is 90 percents chance that it's correct.



So, if I can make a copy that contains 90-95 percent of the information of the original, then DRM doesn't work. In the case of "Orange is the new black" DRM completely fails, because the copy and the original (the one that I often stream on my tablet) for all purposes are indistinguishable. Maybe if you're that awesome you can find a difference, but in reality there is none, or at least it depends on the person that rips the video.

I rest my case.

That's cool but even so with Netflix I would rather watch it on Netflix than pirate it. It's easier and I can do it on any device. I don't understand your point. My original point still stands that you can't have media without some sort of copy-protection. Netflix does this in two ways, one via encrypted media extensions and two by making it easier to watch on Netflix than to pirate, at least for americans. They're not going to get rid of encrypted media extensions likely for a lot of reasons, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. You can easily open the binary in IDA and tell that it's not doing anything malicious, and if it's not doing anything malicious I don't care. I am happy that it is a very minor and rather unintrusive form of DRM, much like Steam's DRM that has proven to be successful. If you don't like DRM, then don't expect anything involving any production value to come of it. Occasionally it will, but for the most part you'll wind up with the shit end of the stick, and unfortunately that's the way it works.

[Anarchy]

That's cool but even so with Netflix I would rather watch it on Netflix than pirate it. It's easier and I can do it on any device. I don't understand your point. My original point still stands that you can't have media without some sort of copy-protection. Netflix does this in two ways, one via encrypted media extensions and two by making it easier to watch on Netflix than to pirate, at least for americans. They're not going to get rid of encrypted media extensions likely for a lot of reasons, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. You can easily open the binary in IDA and tell that it's not doing anything malicious, and if it's not doing anything malicious I don't care. I am happy that it is a very minor and rather unintrusive form of DRM, much like Steam's DRM that has proven to be successful. If you don't like DRM, then don't expect anything involving any production value to come of it. Occasionally it will, but for the most part you'll wind up with the shit end of the stick, and unfortunately that's the way it works.

My point was a rather technical one. While, generally speaking, no one has "properly" broken the DRM scheme that Netflix uses (to my knowledge), you can circumvent it to the point where it actually becomes irrelevant. That's why you can torrent all of the original Netflix shows available only for streaming on their site.

I fully agree with your other points. For the content available on Netflix it has become easier to stream it than to try and download it. My biggest concern with Netflix is that only something like ten percent of their whole content is available in Europe. Worst than that, some of the films that were available for streaming last year have disappeared. One example is the Korean film "Oldboy". I specifically remember streaming that film with my friends last year, but this year it's gone from the library (available in Europe). :/