The Dark Side of Amazon's New Pilots 312
For ages now, Amazon Instant Video has worked with Android devices supporting Flash and, more importantly to many people (and me) it seems, through an unofficial XBMC plugin. It seemed like Amazon was happily using RTMPE to prevent casual stream interception, at least for content funded by others. But with the release of their new pilots, they enabled "Flash Access," Adobe's DRM that (for now) is actually effective.
This effectively kills access for everyone using GNU/Linux, even with the (officially unsupported) Adobe Flash plugin! The Adobe plugin relies on HAL for some DRM magic, but HAL is unmaintained, deprecated, and was removed from most major distros ages ago. You can't even install it by hand thanks to udev removing a few features HAL relied upon. Naturally, the Adobe Flash plugin is equally unmaintained so there is little hope even for people willing to install a piece of unmaintained software with a history of remotely exploitable security holes, instability, and poor performance.
But it seems the loss of access from XBMC is more widely felt: RMS cultists and pragmatic Windows users alike now suffer equally. And the folks who aren't GNU/Hippies with an anti-cloud-chip-on-their-shoulder might even be suffering more: they've lost access to shows and movies that they purchased.
There are a dozen pages on the XBMC forum of people pretty pissed, hundreds of angry posts on their Facebook wall, lengthy threads on Amazon's official forums. But so far the response from Amazon has simply been: it was never supposed to work, and we've fixed it.
In the absence of a clear response from Amazon, wild speculations as to why they decided to institute DRM abound: it's not intentional, piracy is a problem for them after all, Jeff Bezos personally wants to eat every XBMC user's cat, or it has something to do with those pilots.
I'd wager it had something to do with the pilots, or was somewhat unintentional (maybe they only meant to restrict HD content).
An XBMC forum member claims to have chatted with a support representative and gotten a suggestive answer:
Amazon Support: Okay, for Android devices we unfortunately don't support them except for the Kindle Fires so it was really lucky your phone was able to play our instant videos before. As to why they aren't working now, we just recently updated our Flash video playback support which is more than likely why it won't play now. I'm really sorry for any inconvenience this will cause you!
Me: I see. Was the flash video playback updated because of the new Amazon Original Pilots that was released recently?
Amazon Support:I'm honestly not sure if it was due to the pilots that came out, though the timing with the pilots and the update can't be coincidental :-)
Assuming it's not just a technical glitch (it happened once before, and Amazon turned the harder-to-break DRM off) and related to the pilots, why only now have they enabled proper DRM? Surely if content they fund is worth restricting then all content is worth restricting? After all, the party line has always been that DRM is imposed by those evil card carrying MPAA members, and not by enlightened tech companies who are just doing what has to be done to free us from the tyranny of broadcast television.
Is it that the content they already provide is widely available through piracy that they haven't cared before? Perhaps; stream ripping from Amazon/Netflix/Hulu and transforming it into a shareable form is not something a normal person would do if only because the video is streamed in mostly real-time. But there are entire groups dedicated to capturing television and uploading it, so someone out there would probably do it.
The problem is that they are going to break the DRM and pirate everything anyway. In fact. they already have (possibly nsfw, because piracy). The same goes for Netflix; their onerous DRM did nothing to stop piracy of House of Cards (finding it is left as an exercise for the reader, but Knuth would rate it 00), and yet they just posted incredible financial results and strong subscriber growth (in utter contrast to this time last year).
The cat's out of the bag: a good chunk of the world population own Infinite Copying Machines and those machines are networked. You cannot stop a determined individual from making a freely copyable version of anything digital unless you ban all output devices (certainly would make Haskell programming nicer) and burn every camera and piece of audio equipment ever built.
It seems that the same toxic thinking about distribution control that pervades the traditional networks has infected the online distributors. It's clear that torrent trackers offer something the traditional channels do not: (mostly) effortless access to content how and when you want it. But these are things that Netflix, Amazon, et al could offer as well... that they do offer. However, instead of liberalizing distribution as time goes on, the New Distributors have fallen into the same clearly failed mentality about restricting distribution that led to the entire media industry becoming a former shell of itself in a mere five years!
This mentality will only lead to failure. Pursuit of it is insanity: we are witnessing the end stages of an industry-wide collapse because of it! And it seems these new distributors have quickly forgotten that it was only the desperation of their predecessors that they were even able to license what they have now.
So, Amazon, why do you insist upon flogging people who are yelling "Shut up and take my money!"?
Roku (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple solution: Stop giving Amazon money if you don't like their service.
Decade long dearth of any good television? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is - it's called a Kindle Fire (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, there doesn't appear to be an Android app for amazon prime.
Welcome to what happens when the company that controls your content stream also provides hardware.
There's no other Android client because Amazon would much, much rather you buy a Kindle Fire to watch Amazon Prime with.
I've been wondering how much longer there will be an iOS version... but at the moment the desire to gain viewers overrides the desire to force hardware sales.
Competing with piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately without locking both platform (walled garden) and distribution DRM is futile. Why unfortunate? Because inevitable conclusion of all failed DRM is not to open it up and monetize, but to build more walled gardens.
Idea that DRM only has to defer casual pirates is an intellectually bankrupt idea - defense has to be breached only once for the information to become freely available. As such it inevitably turns into vs. Internet battle, and Internet always wins.
The only sane thing to do is to compete with your content based on merits - provide it on demand, at high quality and at low price. Some will always pirate and some will always pay - but majority will go with whatever is the most convenient.
Capitalize on laziness and stop building walled gardens!
Re:Not right (Score:4, Insightful)
Why shouldn't I be able to stream on any device I own?
Because the device you have is not one that's locked down to Amazon's standards, and doesn't provide them with the consumer information they're looking for. Please purchase an approved device to enjoy your content better. I mean at all.
Even with HAL (Score:4, Insightful)
I've installed HAL in my Arch box just to see if it'll work, and nope, it still doesn't.
Not in Firefox with the last supported Flash for Linux that uses NPAPI (11.2.202.280), nor on Chromium, with Pepper Flash (11.6.602.171). hald is running and everything.
Why don't these guys learn from Steam? Make an effort, and they get some of the most loyal, most vocal platform zealots money can never buy; shun them, they get the most rabid haters.
I seriously hope Amazon reconsiders this move. I was this close to actually paying for an Amazon Prime subscription, but since I won't be able to stream on my PC (which solely runs Linux) nor on my phone (Android 4.1), they just lost a potential loyal customer to piracy (I downloaded Zombieland and Alpha House through TPB).
Re:Retro-active (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the major problem with DRM I think. You do not own the material that you mistakenly thought you purchased, instead you purchased temporary permission to access the content, and this can be rescinded at any time for any reason. Since the affected people are in the minority the complaints will be happily ignored (they think you're criminal scum anyway for not using properly approved devices).
Re:Retro-active (Score:5, Insightful)
Heinlein quote:
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
Re:Retro-active (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Linux Workaround (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Torrenting to the rescue yet again, and yet again the pirates have a BETTER product than the broken-by-design DRM crap.
Re:Linux Workaround (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of all, I Liked telling fellow Linux users bitching about Netflix, "Just Use Amazon Prime, because they work with Linux." Glad I didn't "buy" anything and actually expect to have access to it later. When will they realize that the reluctance to streaming distribution is that We do not trust you to let us keep using the stuff we have paid for!
Re:Retro-active (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that, according to the story's poster, the change not only affect new pilots, but also all the old previously bought and previously accessible content. Suddenly, all the part services which you did like and for which you gave money, stops working too.
That is something I still do not understand. How is it that making an unauthorized copy of something without payment is theft, but depriving me of paid for content is not?
Re:Retro-active (Score:4, Insightful)
That is something I still do not understand. How is it that making an unauthorized copy of something without payment is theft, but depriving me of paid for content is not?
It was in what was formerly known as "the fine print," and is now colloquially referred to as the "Terms of Service." The one advantage "fine print" had over "ToS" was that a company generally couldn't change their "fine print" very often, and if they did, they'd have to inform their customers of said change in writing, which would be expensive (think stamps, paper, and envelopes, and man-power to fill, seal, address, and affix stamps to them) not to mention that the idea that one party can unilaterally re-write a contract "after the fact" is a relatively recent addition to our jurisprudence.
With ToS they just insert a clause that says "or anything else we choose to add later" and your only recourse is to stop using the product--immediately--if they institute a change you don't like.
Re:Retro-active (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the problem with DRM is that a) you are assumed to be a dirty pirate even if you pay and b) it takes your rights away.
a) Even if you play the game and pay for the video or music, the distributor assumes that you are a dirty pirate anyway and you will share it with your friends (yes you are a dirty pirate if you share with your friends) or seed it in Pirate Bay. So the distributor needs to restrict your rights like in b)
b) for DRM to work a part of the hardware or software needs to be restricted from you, the user / owner. So even you pay for the Intel Core i8 and the Nvidia Geforce XXL, a part is restricted from you and you can't access it. The restriction will affect your rights like video recording, time shifting and format shifting, fair use rights and so on. Even with TV it's perfectly legal to record the shows and watch them later.
Re:Linux Workaround (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)