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!"?
Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
I was gonna call the guy who wrote this a complete moron, except for this...
http://forums.androidcentral.com/tablet-apps/239022-amazon-prime-video-app.html [androidcentral.com]
http://betanews.com/2013/04/22/why-is-there-no-android-app-for-amazon-instant-video/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed+-+bn+-+Betanews+Full+Content+Feed+-+BN [betanews.com]
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000645111 [amazon.com]
We're missing something here namely something like this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.netflix.mediaclient&hl=en [google.com]
Yep, there doesn't appear to be an Android app for amazon prime. So either Amazon is telling android users to f off, or they're unaware of the issue they'd cause with DRM.
Annoyed yet? It's available for iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amazon-instant-video/id545519333?mt=8 [apple.com]
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Well this is what I think is basically a dick move on the part of Amazon, namely taking the Android platform, making it their own, and then giving the finger to those who provided it to them for free to begin with. I knew this was going to happen the minute they launched their app store, even expressed that it was a dick move, and got shouted down for it wherever I brought it up.
Anyways, I'm actually thinking about letting my prime subscription run out. They charge sales tax in my state now, and where I live it is pretty close to 10%. (They keep increasing it because they say they need more money for firefighters and education - though I'm trying to figure out how they didn't manage that back when it was 6% only a decade ago. Raising the rate to compensate to lost out of state purchases doesn't help because people will just want to do that even more.) Fry's electronics will price match just about any website out there, so I can get their prices locally anyways. Although Amazon's larger selection is nice, I can probably manage just fine with the free super saver shipping when I need to. If there's a hot deal somewhere, I'll just go to a website that doesn't charge sales tax.
Re:Consumers using Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
Having something you already paid for stop working is pretty reasonably within the category of "newsworthy corporate bullshit." If there's any evidence at all that amazon is going to pull the rug out from under me on the things I already bought the moment it becomes profitable, I'd like to know to stop buying the moment it happens to someone else, not when it happens to me.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually trying to give amazon money is hard as a linux person.
Short version of the story is about a book reviewed here on slashdot.
Only available in kindle, physical copies non existant unless you import it - i asked did the kindle reader 'app' work in linux Answer back was no as i was in the wrong region. A kindle was also more than it would cost to import the book from a foriegn land.
Six months later i find a physical book in a charity shop in my region. I dont plan on buying a kindle now.
Libraries can also be brilliant places and are worth supporting.
Re:Roku (Score:5, Interesting)
> For all the time you spend messing with Linux setups and devices, a $100 Roku 3 will last you a decade and save you time and shelf space
The only thing that Roku will buy you is the extra shelf space. It will still be an inferior device despite being a 3rd generation unit. It will still be unable to handle it's own content decoding and be inferior to a 6 year old HTPC in this regard.
I have an HTPC that's older than the entire Roku line and it's still more capable than any ARM appliance once you get past the whole proprietary DRM thing.
A Roku is a nice supplement for an HTPC, not a replacement for one.
Re:Roku (Score:3, Interesting)
A Roku box is a great front-end that eliminates the need for an HTPC. Why should I care about where decoding takes place in order to enjoy something? That is being pedantic. It streams from every major video provider (Netflix, Amazon, MLB.tv, etc), and I can stream videos & music stored on my desktop via Plex.
Re:Linux Workaround (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a good reason to have content production and distribution handled by different entities. Content producers are paranoid and afraid that everyone will abscond with their special little flower, while content distributors are overly liberal in distributing to as wide an audience as possible. It makes sense for these two groups to fight it out to decide what the best compromise of protection vs. distribution is.
Personally, I want compulsory licensing. Posessing or obtaining content would always be legal, and the question becomes who you're supposed to pay and how much (a non-discriminatory licensing fee). It turns the question into an economic one, instead of a criminal one. An entity distributing content without collecting the licensing fee could be sued, but only for an amount proportional to the licensing fees.
Re:Linux Workaround (Score:4, Interesting)
Aside from your in-file technology, what you've described is exactly what currently happens with ASCAP. The problem is that since ASCAP is a slow moving entity, they don't understand new business models and technologies. For example, 1 play on radio != 1 play on a telephone hold system != 1 play in an elevator != 1 play on broadcast internet stream != 1 play on direct individual internet stream.
They try to price based on audience penetration and leave the business model up to the actual distributor, but their rates prevented various business models. Remember how many Shoutcast channels their used to be? (aka iTunes radio). Most of the independent ones completely dried up because ASCAPs rates only worked in favor of large radio stations. Independent distributors had no way to meet the revenue requirements to support the licensing. It didn't help that radio play (estimated audience size) was priced differently than internet streaming (accurate audience size).