[ale] Netflix, etc. on Linux

[Scott McBrien]

Netflix uses a Microsost technology called Silverlight.  Apparently  
Novell has created a browser plugin to work on Linux called Moonlight  
or Silvermoon or some such.  So it's out there somewhere.  You could  
also run ie under wine and access the plugin from there, though I'm  
guessing that's not what you want to do.

My guess would be that Roku uses wine or something similar to get the  
Netflix stuff to work.

Scott

On Oct 1, 2009, at 1:53 AM, Omar Chanouha <ofosho at gatech.edu> wrote:

> I am hoping someone can shed some light on something for me.
>
> If the Roku runs linux, and the Roku plays netflix movies, then why
> can't any linux distro play netflix movies? I am assuming that the
> content is DRM via some method, and they do not want to release the
> code to unDRM it because that would defeat the purpose of the DRM.
> However, it seems to me that the binary can be included with a linux
> distro(roku linux) without the code being open source. If I am right,
> then why don't they release the binary? Also, by MSFT not releasing
> the binary (or some way for other OSs) to play these movies, is that
> not an anti-competitive business practice?
>
> The thing I really don't get, is why bother? I can torrent any movie I
> want in hour, but I would rather pay $20 a month for the convenience
> of VOD. Anyway, until it runs on linux, i won't touch it. I have made
> bigger sacrifices than movies for my software freedom, and I don't
> plan on budging for this nonsense.
>
> Sorry for sounding so green, this law stuff makes no sense to me,
>
> -O
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