Slashdot Mirror
Hulu Munging HTML With JS To Protect Content
N!NJA writes "Hulu has started encoding the html that they send to people's browsers, and then decoding it using javascript before rendering it. [...] They then run the character stream through a series of javascript functions to convert it back into plain text before pushing it into your browser using DHTML. That's quite a lot of effort just for fun, so I assume that is to stop screen scrapers from parsing content." I really can't understand all this effort. Boxee displayed the Hulu advertising perfectly. I suspect Alec Baldwin is to blame.
Couldn't an enterprising screen-scraper also just run it through the same Javascript code? Hulu is forgetting what I like to call the Fundamental Law of DRM: if you make data possible for users to see /hear, it will be possible for a reasonably enterprising user to copy it.
I am officially gone from
I'm all for boxee, but if they wanted aggregates to link to their content I would think hulu would have provided an API to allow it. Maybe instead of trying to work around every change hulu makes they should work with them instead.
They *want* you to go back to watching regular TV, where the ad revenue is greatest.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
It's probably more targeting people like me. I've already considered writing an app to scrape the pages, and download ALL their movies to a large hard drive or two.
I'm sure it's on a lot of other people's minds too with similar skills.
I do that from time to time for web archives of images too. Curse that 1000 hit limit on images.google.com!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
As long as Hulu continues to work with a Linux-based browser, I'm happy. This is unlike ABC, whose system doesn't support Linux at all.
Their loss (or perhaps I should say "They're Lost").
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
They *want* you to go back to watching regular TV, where the ad revenue is greatest.
As you probably know, that cat's not going back into the bag. I wonder whether the inability to admit this and work with it is a special trait of media companies or if it's just true of large organizations in general?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Hulu is a joint venture of NBC Universal and Fox Entertainment Group. The Hulu management might not precisely be content providers, but the folks holding the purse are.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Hulu is owned by Fox/NBC, and they are trying to attract other content providers.
Simply put, the ad revenue on Hulu is much, much less than on TV. Sure, it beats piracy (a little money and control over how long your content is on there) but if people were to cancel cable or watch Hulu on their Xboxes more, both cable/satellite providers and the content providers themselves would be unhappy.
Just another game of cat & mouse: Hulu makes changes, and Boxee updates. The hope is that if you make the workarounds unreliable enough to the point where people are too irritated, most will switch back to TV, with a few using Hulu just online on their computers and a few turning back to piracy.
Why all the effort to apply DRM to free streaming content? Is it just because the networks think that everything needs to have DRM?
Even still, if they're using javascript to decode the HTML, they're not really protecting themselves. Your app can just run their javascript and still work perfectly.
This is modded as funny, but it is rather insightful. The people who make business decisions (or what they think are business decisions) don't necessarily understand the things they are messing with. In this case, they obfuscate because they are worried about people pirating content.
Honestly? Hulu is a great service (if you live in the US) but its not a high priority target for piracy. Why go to the effort of ripping a stream with ads in it when the torrent is already out?
These guys do understand that nothing prevents me from plugging my laptop into a TV and running a browser on it? And nothing prevents me from plugging a tuner card into my computer and showing TV on the monitor? So regardless of what they do, they can't make something show on a computer but not on a TV?
Wait a minute, my assistant is handing me an envelope he says will explain everything.
(envelope opening noises)
The note inside says "They're total idiots".
Yep, that does explain everything.
Hulu is a BRAND. It wants to live in its own world and be exclusive.
So their attitude is "Frak Boxie", as boxie is trying to DESTROY the brand of all the video sites to be replaced by the Boxee brand.
Why should Hulu play nice?
Test your net with Netalyzr
No, trust me, the freakin' programmers and IT people make it impossible. All us MBAs want to do is output a freakin graph, and you put us through all kinds of process steps, and gates and usability testing, and then decide it will cost $1Million just to make a simple change. No wonder nothing gets done without a multi million dollar budget.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
And to anyone complaining about having to dance through proxies to watch Hulu internationally, it's for the same reasons. What benefit does Charmin see from advertising toilet paper to people in the Netherlands?
This is where the MBA and Marketing guys are falling down on the job. They should be selling regional ads for international viewers... instead of Charmin, they could sell Nokia ads for Dutch viewers, Weetabix in the UK, and Nutella in Italy, etc...
Sadly their marketing is so clever and hilarious I think it's making many of us forgive their stupid actions with regard to boxee and such.
I mean, come on. They're ALIENS.
Do you really believe that all of this content is going to get less available over time? Note that this would essentially contradict all of history.
Yeah, don't bother making copies of those documents at the Great Library of Alexandria.
This is just more proof that the people who run the big media companies not only do not understand technology, but cannot be bothered to learn it either.
There is an old saying: "It is impossible to teach a man something, when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it."
They make their money the old way. If they learn this new way, they realize that their old way is doomed. Thereforefore, they cannot learn the new way.
I'd be interested to know where the division lies, actually. Their blog posts when Boxee was cut off had a distinctly irritable tone - they were very much making their point that the content providers don't understand the new marketplace they're operating in; basically, they were saying of the content providers the exact same thing most of the posts on this story are saying of them.
To me, that means they're autonomous to a reasonable degree but the studios have the final say. I would guess that the Hulu team themselves made all the relevant points about how this obfuscation won't work, and were overruled - just because their company is owned by the studios, doesn't mean the employees working there share the same ideas.
Riiiiiight.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Honestly, we just want to get the code written and have you leave us alone. But we can't do that.
Instead, we have to follow the rules implemented by management, usually non-IT management. So while the code change itself might be all of 10 minutes, we have to follow Six Sigma, or have all changes go through 3 weeks of requirements gathering, or have to follow some horrible process workflow like the Waterfall model because they read about it in CEO Magazine.
It's management who make your life more difficult. And oddly enough, almost all of them have MBAs...
What about if your internet goes out and there's jack-crap on TV?
Read a book?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I wouldn't say I have a right by any stretch. I don't. These guys provide the content to me at their discretion.
I think what people are "upset" about is the fact that:
1) Companies (Hulu or otherwise) seriously think that they can control HOW someone access their content. Technology or not, you can't force me to listen to a song on the radio anymore than I can force you to play the song I want to hear. You can't force me to listen to that CD I bought in my car vice my house.
2) People were more than happy to access the content via legal means via Hulu. No one WANTS to pirate anything. It's a pain in the ass. A standard non-HD conversion of a tv show without the commercials over bittorrent still takes in the neighborhood of 30 minutes to download on a standard internet connection. God forbid I want something that is more than a few weeks old.
With Hulu I could sit down and watch the shows on my couch with my wife (when the kid was in bed). Now? Not so much.
The absolutely ASININE part is that users were screaming for this for years. For once, it seemed like the media companies actually GOT it. We were naive. Hulu was working on Boxee for the better part of a year if not longer. It wasn't until Boxee started gaining attention that someone said "You mean people aren't watching this stuff on a computer?"
Let's ignore for a minute how fucking stupid that question is. I *AM* (well was) watching it on a pc. It just happened to be hooked up to a television. What possible idiot doesn't have such a grasp of technology that they don't realize that you can hook a computer up to a television? Who, on the grandiose payroll of the media companies, didn't see this coming?
In the end, they DID hurt themselves. Ad revenues are already down. The company I was laid off from was in the business of television advertising. Between DVRs and P2P, you have a choice. Either provide the content and get at least a sliver of revenue or don't get any at all.
Sure, it may be costing you up front to build support for Hulu advertising among the advertisers but once the ball is rolling, it becomes a more viable outlet for advertising.
Here's the thing. Television advertising is a split bag. Local networks sell ads. National networks sell ads. There's a whole business around brokering advertising spots between buyers and the people with the air time. It's a complex machine. Hulu essentially cut out a few layers of that.
In the end, Hulu was a step in the right direction. Boxee was the "killer application" for Hulu. They really did screw themselves.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"