Bad COPP No Netflix

Found on Davis Freeberg on Thursday, 03 January 2008
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Hollywood isn't quite as thrilled about my new HD Media Dream Machine and they've decided to punish me by revoking my Watch Now privileges from Netflix.

The minute I saw "this will potentially remove playback licenses from your computer, including those from companies other than Netflix or Microsoft" I knew better than to hit continue.

In order to access the Watch Now service, I had to give Microsoft's DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive. If the software found any non-Netflix video files, it would revoke my rights to the content and invalidate the DRM. This means that I would lose all the movies that I've purchased from Amazon's Unbox, just to troubleshoot the issue.

Because my computer allows me to send an unrestricted HDTV feed to my monitor, Hollywood has decided to revoke my ability to stream 480 resolution video files from Netflix.

The irony in all of this, is that the DRM that Hollywood is so much in love with, is really only harming their paying customers. When you do a DRM reset, it's not your pirated files that get revoked, it's the ones that you already paid for that are at risk.

It's as if the studios want their digital strategies to fail.

No wonder people download better quality without DRM. The move to HDTV is only starting, so you should expect more problems like this one. However, if you go to eg the Piratebay and download a movie, you won't have those problems at all. So not only it is free, but also less troublesome. It's somewhat funny that the industry often says "you get what you pay for"; well, just don't pay for DRM then. Or, remove the DRM with UnDRM (of course, you'd be violating the DMCA act, but non-US residents can laugh about this).