Netflix and MS Silverlight/PlayReady

[loaba]

Netflix has a feature called Instant Watch, were you can stream a movie directly from them. This video streaming is accomplished via MS Silverlight and includes their DRM app, PlayReady.

Okay...

Windows and Mac OS can use this feature, but any Linux distro (along with other Unix distros) can't. My question is, who cut Linux out of the loop? Is it Netflix choice not to make the DRM code available, or is this a MS decision?

Sub-question - since Mac OS can use this function, who is Apple paying a licensing fee to? Is it Netflix, or MS?

 

[Lordbob75]

Because like 1% of users use Linux.

~Lordbob

 

[loaba]

Because like 1% of users use Linux.

~Lordbob

I get that, and there is also the issue of Linux being open source as well. Be that as it may, that wasn't really my question. I want to know whose decision it was (MS or Netflix) to not fully support Linux (no DRM support for Moonlight.)

What I would really like to know is, who is Apple paying? Are they paying MS (which would amuse me to no end of they were) or are they going through Netflix?

Regardless who Apple is paying a licensing fee too, I don't buy the argument that they're getting MS DRM tech for free. If the DRM app was free, it would make absolutely no sense for Netflix to exclude Linux. That leads me to believe that MS is licensing its product to both Netflix and Apple.

Basically this question stems from a conversation I was having with a few Macophiles. The said zealots simply couldn't accept that Cuppertino would license any sort of technology coming out of Redmond.

 

[Trucidation]

I want to know whose decision it was (MS or Netflix) to not fully support Linux (no DRM support for Moonlight.)

Typical how MS automatically gets rolled into the possible villain role. It's Netflix website, and the content is presumably Hollywood's (hint, DRM). THEY decide what to roll with. Netflix is free to engage people to develop something so that people running Linux boxes are supported as well, but it's totally up to them whether they want to, do they have a budget for it, do the shareholders agree there's enough of an ROI to do that, etc.

OS zealots of whatever stripe are amusing. As if business decisions can simply boil down to a simplistic my-OS-or-yours kind of thinking.