>I think there is a huge difference here. First of all, the restriction on 4K has a lot more to do with technical limitations than anything else. Very few devices can actually handle 4K. While your laptops screen might be able to handle it, your browser might not be able to decode h.265 at all, and might not be fast enough to decode h.264 at 4K resolutions.
The exact same setup (Chrome on this Linux laptop) works just fine with 4K youtube streams. Yet both Netflix and Amazon have restrictions for 4K where it basically only works with closed set-top box type devices. There's no reasonable technical motivation for the restriction.
>Secondly, if Netflix doesn't provide you the service you need, you can switch to Amazon, or Hulu or any of a number of providers.
There isn't "any number of providers". For relevant content my two options right now are Netflix and Prime Video, there is no third.
>If your ISP doesn't provide you a service without restrictions, plenty of people have no recourse. It isn't unusual for natural monopoly industries to be more heavily regulated.
While I only have 2 choices, and those are the same two worldwide, I easily have 3 good ISP choices and those are local to each market, so worldwide there are hundreds or thousands. That's exactly my point. Worldwide the neutrality in content access is probably more important as it is a much more consolidated industry.
> I easily have 3 good ISP choices and those are local to each market, so worldwide there are hundreds or thousands. That's exactly my point.
I think your missing the point. You already have Net Neutrality (by your own admission) so that seems like a solved issue for you.
But the Americans don't have what you have -- almost nobody in the US can claim to "easily have 3 good ISP choices". Most Americans have 1.5-ish ISP choices or less (usually a shitty-but-usable monopoly cable provider, and occasionally a shitty monopoly DSL provider that is often so slow it not really competitive).
The Americans are simply trying to create regulation that would allow them to have a situation closer to the ones most Europeans already have.
>I think your missing the point. You already have Net Neutrality (by your own admission) so that seems like a solved issue for you.
Having a choice of ISPs isn't net neutrality. All the ISPs I have access to will sell differentiated access to their networks absent net neutrality rules. Europe has some (generally weak) net neutrality because it has legislated it like the US should too.
But my point isn't that we shouldn't fight for net neutrality. It's that Netflix/Amazon say that ISPs shouldn't be able to play favorites over streaming services (and I agree) while they play favorites over devices (and I disagree and say it's hypocrisy).
Right. A choice of ISPs (in my opinion) is actually better than net neutrality, for the things that matter most.
> while (Netflix/Amazon) play favorites over devices (and I disagree and say it's hypocrisy)
How do you draw that distinction?
Is it "playing favorites over devices" that I can't sign into Xbox Live from my PlayStation? Or that Apple won't let me watch my iPad-purchased movies on an Android device? Or that Spotify won't let me listen to music in iTunes? Is it playing favorites that Comcast can stream the Hallmark Channel, but Hulu TV can't? Or that Nintendo won't let me play my Wii U games on my Gaming PC?
I agree that you have a valid criticism of those video services. But your comparison of it to Net Neutrality feels forced. I don't think it's relevant to the discussion of Net Neutrality -- it's seems like a clear case of comparing Apples and Oranges.
If "Netflix is a hypocrite because they don't support 4K on my Linux laptop", then your basically upset with the entire tech industry, where every product has a list of platforms they've chosen to support, and a list they do not support.
>Right. A choice of ISPs (in my opinion) is actually better than net neutrality, for the things that matter most.
They're orthogonal, you can have net neutrality without choice of ISPs and vice versa. I also think net neutrality is much more important than choice of ISPs because ISP monopolies are unstable over the long term. Technology advances fast enough that today's monopoly will not hold once new access technologies are deployed. My ISP has already felt the heat from LTE providers to upgrade me to fiber for example. And Elon Musk is working on high-speed satellite internet for everyone. Over the long term ISP monopolies crumble. Content monopolies are much more long lasting because they have the copyright law hammer and net neutrality is a freedom of speech issue. Of the three topics ISP choice is by far the least important even if it's the one that currently inconveniences Americans the most.
>I agree that you have a valid criticism of those video services. But your comparison of it to Net Neutrality feels forced. I don't think it's relevant to the discussion of Net Neutrality -- it's seems like a clear case of comparing Apples and Oranges.
I'm not discussing net neutrality at all. As far as I'm concerned that discussion is a no brainer. I'm saying that Netflix is complaining that ISPs are using their monopoly in one area (internet access) to condition another market (streaming services) while at the same time using their monopoly in one area (streamings services) to condition another market (playback devices). If that's not an apples to apples comparison about business practices I don't know what is.
>If "Netflix is a hypocrite because they don't support 4K on my Linux laptop", then your basically upset with the entire tech industry, where every product has a list of platforms they've chosen to support, and a list they do not support.
This and your other comparisons are disingenuous. I'm not saying Netflix needs to write a custom app for every platform under the Sun. I'm saying they shouldn't be allowed to actively disallow platforms that would otherwise work fine if they didn't arbitrarily restrict them. That's how Youtube works for example. Anything that can work with it's webpage gets to stream video and anyone can implement an app that works with their API.
Google Search's interface is a standards compliant web page. Do you think it would be ok for them to implement software to make it so their web page only worked on some browsers, didn't work for FreeBSD users and only provided low quality results to Linux users? Because this is exactly what Netflix does today.
> This and your other comparisons are disingenuous. I'm not saying Netflix needs to write a custom app for every platform under the Sun. I'm saying they shouldn't be allowed to actively disallow platforms that would otherwise work fine if they didn't arbitrarily restrict them. That's how Youtube works for example.
It's not disingenuous though, it's the exact same problem you've described.
You cite YouTube as an alternative, but YouTube specifically has done the exact same thing you criticize Netflix for -- YouTube is also arbitrarily blocking some players from accessing it's videos (Samsung Smart TVs, LG Smart TVs, 2nd Gen Apple TV devices, and a handful of other STB devices).
These players all already exist, have had fully-working YouTube access for many years, some were even sold with the explicit promise of YouTube access on the box but YouTube has arbitrarily decided to restrict the API those platforms use, so they're dead now.
> Do you think it would be ok for (Google) to implement software to make it so their web app only worked on some browsers, wouldn't work for FreeBSD users and only provided low quality results to Linux users?
No, but that's exactly what YouTube does to a bunch of other platforms today. In fact, it's worse than Netflix. At least Netflix still sends your platform 1080p, Google just killed YouTube off entirely (no video playback at all) for a handful of platforms.
---
That's why I use them as examples, because they specifically mimic the behavior you cited. If "Netflix has a monopoly of their 4K content" and is "using it to condition another market" then every tech product is guilty of the same thing. YouTube is using their monopoly (of their videos) to condition playback devices too (to force you to dispose of working Smart TVs and buy new ones). Nintendo is using their monopoly (over their games) to condition consoles (make you buy a Wii U / Switch / 3DS). Apple is using their monopoly (over OSX and iOS apps) to condition other markets (laptops, phones and tablets). And so on.
>YouTube is also arbitrarily blocking some players from accessing it's videos (Samsung Smart TVs, LG Smart TVs, 2nd Gen Apple TV devices, and a handful of other STB devices).
Do you have a source for this? I'm not aware of any devices that are blocked on the web interface and I suspect the API access going away is only for technical reasons.
Edit: As I suspected Google deprecated the v2 API and the v3 one can still be used just fine. The fact that "smart" TVs are pieces of junk that don't have software updates breaks their youtube support. This would only be a counterexample if Youtube API v3 was actively denying service to specific devices which it isn't.
>In fact, it's worse than Netflix. At least Netflix still sends your platform 1080p, Google just killed YouTube off entirely (no video playback at all) for a handful of platforms.
There is no 1080p Netflix for Linux and as far as I know any platform can stream the Youtube HTML5 player in 4K. Don't know about the API.
>Nintendo is using their monopoly (over their games) to condition consoles (make you buy a Wii U / Switch / 3DS). Apple is using their monopoly (over iOS apps) to condition another market (phones and tablets). And so on.
These are not reasonable examples in my view because they are not cases where someone is actively preventing something that would work otherwise. They've just built software that only works on a specific platform. When Nintendo writes an HTML5 game and then blocks the Xbox browser it will be comparable. And I'll be here to argue they shouldn't be allowed to do that either.
>Again, I don't claim this is "good", and I agree with your root complaint (Netflix should support 4K on Linux).
That's not my complaint. My complaint is that Netflix has actively disabled 4K on Linux (and on most platforms actually). I don't think they should start supporting anything. I think they shouldn't be allowed to actively block platforms.
>But I don't believe your particular comparison is fair -- if you claim this is a monopoly behavior, then by your definition every tech product is using their "monopoly" (over their own product) to push into another market (of whatever devices they choose to support).
This is wrong in two ways. First is that most services are not monopolies. There are plenty of fart apps so the fact that your particular one doesn't support Android is not relevant. A monopoly "over their own product" is not really a thing. Netflix and Amazon however do have a relevant monopoly over streaming services. There are no more than 2 or 3 in the world and network effects makes this stable over time. Second the fact that a given platform is not actively supported is not the issue. The issue is that there is an active blocking of platforms by Netflix/Amazon on purpose. This is actually highly uncommon behavior. Most companies will welcome the fact that more platforms work with their service.
I think your getting hung up on the particular method an API exists, which doesn't sit well with me. There's nothing magical about HTML that makes it more special than JSON. YouTube cutting access to devices API seems no different to me than Netflix not allowing Linux to get 4K video. In both cases, they're using their own tech to prevent something that would work if they touched nothing.
> These are not reasonable examples in my view because they are not cases where someone is actively preventing something that would work otherwise.
I mean, OSX works great on X86/X64 hardware if you hack out the mac-specific checks. You could run OSX on many Linux boxes ... if Apple didn't put work into preventing it. (The Hackintosh scene is living proof of this)
> Netflix and Amazon however do have a relevant monopoly over streaming services. There are no more than 2 or 3 in the world and network effects makes this stable over time
There are over a dozen streaming services. Your conveniently leaving out Hulu, YouTube, SlingTV, PlayStation Vue, Acorn TV, DirectTV NOW, and a bunch of others.
They might not have the specific show you like. But just like your "fart app" scenario, these services have plenty of shows so the fact that your particular favorite one isn't on that service isn't relevant, right?
If they're providing those games on the web and blocking certain browsers then that's wrong as well. As far as I can tell that's just a device specific framework that happens to use web technologies.
> I think your getting hung up on the particular method an API exists, which doesn't sit well with me. There's nothing magical about HTML that makes it more special than JSON. YouTube cutting access to devices API seems no different to me than Netflix not allowing Linux to get 4K video. In both cases, they're using their own tech to prevent something that would work if they touched nothing.
I'm not making that distinction. I think cutting access to APIs is the same as cutting access to the Web page. And if Google did indeed do that they're also wrong to do it. Note that I don't think the same applies to discontinuing service completely. If Netflix decides to stop providing 4K content completely then that's fine. It's the arbitrary restriction between platform that I take offense to.
>I mean, OSX works great on X86/X64 hardware if you hack out the mac-specific checks. You could run OSX on many Linux boxes ... if Apple didn't put work into preventing it. (The Hackintosh scene is living proof of this)
Yep, and I also fully support the right for people to buy OSX and do it whatever they want including putting it onto different hardware. Even if Apple only sells OSX bundled with hardware these days I fully support the right of customers to buy that hardware, discard it, and install the same software on other hardware they also own.
>There are over a dozen streaming services. Your conveniently leaving out Hulu, YouTube, SlingTV, PlayStation Vue, Acorn TV, DirectTV NOW, and a bunch of others.
Most of those are not available to me at all, none of those carry the content Netflix and Amazon produce themselves.
>They might not have the specific show you like. But just like your "fart app" scenario, these services have plenty of shows so the fact that your particular favorite one isn't on that service isn't relevant, right?
You're ignoring the second part of the argument. The fart app may not work on my Android phone because it's an iOS app. The Netflix app doesn't work on my phone because Netflix has specifically forbidden it to work, even though it technically would work fine.
And if a fart app became a part of our civilization's shared culture you might have a case. Popular TV shows are not just interchangeable entertainment content. If net neutrality is about free speech I need to be able to access our culture to have something to say. When the same companies that want me to help them rile up the population to secure their access to the market are actively working against my ability to choose computing platforms I take offense. I find it even more appaling that Netflix will publicize their use of FreeBSD to run their infrastructure, benefitting from the hard work of the FreeBSD volunteer developers, while at the same time actively preventing FreeBSD users from accessing their service.
So not technical and completely unreasonable for content that they own themselves. There's no reason Netflix can't just send me House of Cards in 4K or Amazon can't send me The Grand Tour in 4K. Increasingly those are the shows I actually do want to watch as the two streaming giants overhaul the content business, further consolidating the industry. So they can't really hide behind the licensing restriction argument.
Oh come on, once the content is displayable it's piratable and they damn well know that.
This is more a matter of restrictive terms and conditions they can enact due to their monopoly-like position.
Streaming DRM'd video to a closed system (XBOX, PS4, set top box) is orders of magnitude less piratable than streaming video to an open system like Linux (DRM'd would be harder to pirate but I'm sure someone could lash up their own Chrome to dump the video after the unDRMing step.)
(How would you get the video content out of a DRM'd stream to an XBOX?)
Pirates are determined enough to break all the schemes and once one does the cat is out of the bag and everyone can access it without restrictions. Ultimately this makes the user experience of the pirate service better than the paid one. Netflix used to say, to convince license holders, that once it entered a market pirating went down because convenience went up. They're now falling in the same trap with their own content...
Not really - getting content off Usenet/torrents isn't something your average person will be doing. And then you probably need to transcode it for a closed system like XBOX. etc.etc.
(And yeah, this is probably something everyone on here can do with their eyes closed - but HN is the top 0.0001% of computer users when it comes to competencies.)
That's why you should tell your friends about youtube-dl & vlc and other tools like that. It hardly gets any simpler than that, and it's as good an introduction to terminals/programming for non-techy friends as anything else I can think of.
Well if you can stream your desktop that's half the work done already. Vlc transcodes just about anything you can throw at it so there's the other half.
> The exact same setup (Chrome on this Linux laptop) works just fine with 4K youtube streams. Yet both Netflix and Amazon have restrictions for 4K where it basically only works with closed set-top box type devices. There's no reasonable technical motivation for the restriction.
That doesn't mean it will do that smoothly with DRM on top of it. It also doesn't mean that most users have equally capable hardware, since it might not be accelerated in hardware. While pretty much any device today will do 1080p H.264 with hardware acceleration. Have you ever tried explaining these nuances to customers who says their movie playback is terrible, if so, I think you would reach the same conclusion as those providers. Youtube is free and doesn't really have the same issue as people don't expect to be able to contact Youtube support and complain about quality.
> While I only have 2 choices, and those are the same two worldwide, I easily have 3 good ISP choices and those are local to each market, so worldwide there are hundreds or thousands. That's exactly my point. Worldwide the neutrality in content access is probably more important as it is a much more consolidated industry.
Well, good for you. But not every ISP market is the same, not every country is the same. I wouldn't mind that somebody looked at how content licensing works, but me being able to access Wikipedia or any number of other websites, a lot of which might be discussing my ISP in negative terms is IMHO much more important than i get to see the entertainment i like.
>While pretty much any device today will do 1080p H.264 with hardware acceleration.
And yet Netflix won't give me even that.
>Have you ever tried explaining these nuances to customers who says their movie playback is terrible, if so, I think you would reach the same conclusion as those providers.
If that was the issue the help line should be able to enable this for me once I've specifically asked for it. They don't and I very seriously doubt that's even 10% of the reasoning.
> wouldn't mind that somebody looked at how content licensing works, but me being able to access Wikipedia or any number of other websites, a lot of which might be discussing my ISP in negative terms is IMHO much more important than i get to see the entertainment i like.
My point isn't that net neutrality isn't extremely important. My point is that having Amazon and Netflix fighting for net neutrality while being so blatently anti-consumer is hypocrisy.
I'm considering it. But it means having no legal source for House of Cards. It's like saying "stop going to Wikipedia" if the problem is that lack of net neutrality means you don't have a decent connection to it.
I don't even own a device that can read a DVD anymore but even if I did that's a 20+ year old technology that's only readable on Linux because someone broke the encryption specifically designed to disallow it. Hardly an example of how content providers support reasonable options for all users. Blu-ray is worse. I've never owned a device capable of reading it and the playback restrictions are even harsher.
>Agreed! But they won't provide an easier option if we'll just accept DRM anyway.
Oh sure I think we should break DRM any chance we get and fully support the DVD and Blu-ray reversing efforts. If there was someone breaking the Netflix DRM I'd support that too (and use it probably). But my argument is that just like we should regulate ISPs so they can't prioritize traffic we should regulate streaming services so they can't block platforms. In some jurisdictions we've gone the complete opposite way and started regulating that breaking DRM is illegal. That's the nail in the coffin of content being able to enter the public domain or having fair use exceptions.
I'm in Portugal but it's probably common throughout Europe. In urban areas having at least 2 and often 3 providers that can give you a reasonably priced 50 or 100Mb/s connection is common these days. Rural areas are harder but it's actually improving a bit. I've recently been upgraded from a flakey 8Mb/s ADSL with <1Mb/s upload to 100Mb/s symmetrical over fiber in an agricultural area where previously there wasn't much competition between ISPs. I think the combination of LTE offerings and cheaper fiber technology may have tipped the scales making a simple fibre installation on existing telephone poles an attractive proposition for the ISP.
Yeah, in the US, you usually get a "choice" of: cable, dsl or dialup. Dsl can't usually do better then 5/1 (anywhere I've lived, at least). And the cable companies pretty much have split the country between themselves. Only 1 truly high speed isp is not a choice!
I live in UK, city in the North East, and there's at least 5 major ISPs(BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, PlusNet) available here, plus there will be a plethora of smaller ones which are subleasing from the larger ones(so I can get broadband from the same company that I get electricity from, but they are most likely subleasing from BT)
The exact same setup (Chrome on this Linux laptop) works just fine with 4K youtube streams. Yet both Netflix and Amazon have restrictions for 4K where it basically only works with closed set-top box type devices. There's no reasonable technical motivation for the restriction.
>Secondly, if Netflix doesn't provide you the service you need, you can switch to Amazon, or Hulu or any of a number of providers.
There isn't "any number of providers". For relevant content my two options right now are Netflix and Prime Video, there is no third.
>If your ISP doesn't provide you a service without restrictions, plenty of people have no recourse. It isn't unusual for natural monopoly industries to be more heavily regulated.
While I only have 2 choices, and those are the same two worldwide, I easily have 3 good ISP choices and those are local to each market, so worldwide there are hundreds or thousands. That's exactly my point. Worldwide the neutrality in content access is probably more important as it is a much more consolidated industry.