I'm constantly amazed at the entitlement attitude so many have when it comes to APIs and other people's data. Netflix wishes to change the rules on their API so that it fits in with some broader strategy no one knows about, so what? They wish to restrict the flow of data that they collect for their own uses, so what? They no longer wish to allow third-parties to monetize data accessed from a public API, so what? Regardless of what the article states, it is their data and they can do with it as they please. A person's viewing history on Netflix is not that person's data, it is Netflix's data as they are the people who spent the money to collect it. No amount of whining or complaining will change that.
I can understand people thinking this might be a bad idea for them and I agree that it's possibly a PR mistake. But there is a difference between complaining about access and demanding access to a company's data.
They are not obligated. However, I'm fairly sure banks aren't obligated by law to send you statements* - they certainly aren't obligated to let you download them in, say, quicken format (who could be seen as a competitor). It's just such a big feature that no one would do business with a bank that didn't offer it.
Similiarly Netflix's APIs add value for customers, and apps and outboard memory are/have been a big part of Netflix for me. Will loosing that make me leave? I don't know - but clearly this is a major downgrade in their service.
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* It looks like they pretty much are obligated by law - thanks benatkin.
I've been under the impression that it's required by law that banks send statements, because I've been presented with the option to receive electronic statements but never with the option to not receive statements at all. I searched and found a U. S. government site where it says that statements are required for accounts that have EFTs (which seem to include debit cards). So my bank is obligated to send me statements. http://www.helpwithmybank.gov/get-answers/bank-accounts/gene...
I get an email each month, that I don't think I can opt out of, that says "New (name of bank) eStatements Available" and links me to the bank's website, where I can view and download it.
You're probably right that they aren't legally obligated to provide transaction data in a machine-readable format.
I agree, bank statements are not a good comparison simply because you have an agreement with the bank to store your money. In that type of agreement there would have to be some form of obligation to report your holdings in their bank.
banks used to that to gain customers. Some time ago, every developer working at banks knew that customers were measured in cost per customer. You'd had the cost to please them, and then you'd make money investing their money.
then, fast forward a measly decade, and banks are seen as obligatory. nobody things about NOT having their money in a bank. So banks drop all of the benefits, and we start to measure clients as profit per account. banks now are profiting from investing your money AND holding that money for you just because you never though about not paying the bank.
So, that's the time when we started to have some regulations and minimal service the bank's supposed to provide.
It seems unfair to me to paint all banks with this broad brush... credit unions, and even some traditional banks, are quite worthwhile. There is a lot of competition in retail banking.
No, it is not your data. If it were to reside on your server and be collected by your application/code/whatever then it would by your data. You willingly provided them information that they then collect to use for whatever reasons they deem fit. From my point of view your two statements contradict each other. If it is your data then Netflix does have an obligation to act as your memory when you ask them to do so. Since you agree that they have no such obligation then you clearly point out that it is, in fact, not your data.
By "my data" I'm referring to the information which my brain processed/generated. I watched it, I rated it. That Netflix obtained a copy of that information incidental to our interaction does not obligate them to give me access to their copy, any more than I am obligated to Netflix to provide them with a list of what I've watched should their servers "forget".
I think this is a disagreement on the definition of data in this example. I am speaking of ownership of the data in question.
True, you provided the information. But, to me at least, since Netflix is the one who collected it and are actively storing it then it is their data in terms of ownership. Unless there is some language somewhere that states that Netflix is storing this data on your behalf it belongs to them to do with as they please.
For me it seems that you are referring to the data as something you provided and I'm referring to it as something Netflix collected and is storing. These two ideas do not necessarily contradict each other.
If you go to a site and sign up for their newsletter, that data now belongs to them. If you go to your Google Docs account and type the same information into a text file to store there then that data belongs to you. The difference being is that Google Docs is storing that data for you, while the other is not.
Netflix could easily say that you do get your cut by them being able to lower prices due to any income stream they manage to get from the data they collect. Realistically that's the only way it could work unless you're suggesting that Netflix should pay you for watching their service.
> What you've watched & thought of it is, of course, your data.
And you have always been free to write that down in your own notes, if you wish, however you wish. Some folks actually keep their own simple written text notes on what movies they've seen and want to see. same with books, albums, etc. It's free, fast and simple, and nobody has or probably can take that ability away from you.
When you build your house on someone else's foundation, your house is at the mercy of the foundation's owner's plans.
Publically available APIs are great, but at times I am troubled by how many people develop entire products and applications around other's data, and then scream bloody murder when their business model goes up in smoke because the parent decided to evolve and innovate their own business.
Forget business models – I find it frustrating as a consumer to see the value proposition of a service I value being reduced.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to be unhappy about a reduction in value to me, the end consumer. Do I understand it? Perhaps – I still view it as a poor sort of competitive behavior because it's built around increasing information asymmetry and reducing consumers' ability to compare offerings – rather than making their own offerings stronger.
What you say is true, but I don't think this article is demanding access to Netflix data. They've noted rather dispassionately that Netflix is making technical and legal changes, analyzed its impact on Netflix users and third party developers, and concluded that this will be a net loss for user, third party developers and probably Netflix its self.
That sounds about right to me. I'm sure Netflix expects the net effect of this change to be beneficial to the company, and they may be right, but they are going to loose the benefits of the ecosystem that exists today. I certainly don't see any whining, complaining or demanding. It's more of a heads up to everyone involved in the Netflix ecosystem that this is an important change with significant consequences.
AFAICT, goodfil.ms is informing and preparing it's community for changes they're going to have to make. Surely you don't expect them to protect Netflix from the negative PR that this move will generate?
When someone states that the data Netflix has is not their data but that of the viewer and Netflix should not alter access to it, I take that to mean demand of access. I could be wrong but that's my take on it.
The definition of "deserve" stops to matter so much when enough people get involved. I'm not saying this particular story has any sort of groundswell of protest behind it, but if it did legal definitions wouldn't matter much at all. An obvious example of something that has a movement behind it is piracy (illegal, but widespread and unstoppable)
What I will say relating to the Netflix story is that they probably shouldn't put themselves in a position where they alienate power users (read: evangelists) of the site. They've had a rough couple of years (content loss, product stumbles). Hunkering down and putting up fences is exactly what old media has tried to do, and it hasn't exactly been going so well for them.
> but if it did legal definitions wouldn't matter much at all.
I was thinking in more of an ethical/common-sense kind of way. If I pay NF $8/month for their streaming services, is it reasonable for me to claim that I deserve a fully-featured and well-documented API, complete with access to my historical data? Legal questions aside, it seems unreasonable from a gut-check point of view to expect the services of all the engineers & tech writers responsible for making that happen (and keeping it updated) in addition to the streaming service.
If my business depended on access to this Netflix data, you can be sure I'd be making calls and in-person visits if possible to try and form some kind of partnership with them. I think it would be reasonable to assume that kind of business model (NF's model WRT data access) is probably unsustainable and I'd have to do something to protect my business.
I'm betting NF is in the process of creating developer accounts. For $xxx, you get an API key that you embed in your apps that turns these features/this access back on. I wonder if pricing is what's keeping dev accounts from showing up yet -- NF seems against utility billing for end users, but they must deal with it all the time on the back end. Hmm. To your point about the power users, some kind of freemium model would work fine for keeping them happy, I'm guessing... once usage is "Real Business" level, make them pay for it, Google Maps-style.
The fact that they had this api made me choose to be their consumer in the first place. And i was already looking for a reason to ditch them since the price changes and recent focusing 100% on series instead of any film.
This is exactly how it is supposed to work. Now, freshly empowered, will choose another streaming service. That service presumably distinguishes itself by offering such APIs. So the number of people who switch helps train the market.
Perhaps there is a startup opportunity for an API driven unbranded movie streaming service where the product is the viewing API/data rather than the streaming.
> Perhaps there is a startup opportunity for an API driven unbranded movie streaming service where the product is the viewing API/data rather than the streaming.
Maybe that's exactly what Netflix intends to offer -- a separate product that's just API/data. Developer account?
These look like great changes. An alternate interpretation:
1. Third parties can't do nefarious things such as share my data with Facebook or tell my insurance company should I have watched some "surviving cancer" documentary in the past. They're enforcing laws which protect the privacy of my viewing history.
2. Someone can't gouge consumers by layering on additional fees to access what you've already paid for. eg: "Want to watch Netflix on your mobile device? That'll be $5/movie, please, and will show up on your next AT&T statement."
3. An application presenting itself as being a Netflix app can't pull the rug out from under you and make it easy to accidentally click on an iTunes version of the movie, get charged $4.99, and the third party gets an affiliate commission.
4. Third parties can no longer in bad faith scrape the Netflix database and use it for non-Netflix purposes. Do they really need to enforce common sense and decency here? There are many other sources for movie data if sites need that info.
Given how many companies are now rushing to get API's ready, opening them up at hackathons and getting developers motivated this seems like a really big own goal.
Consumers just like nice ways to use the services they're on, developers like nice ways to integrated services into their projects. Companies like revenues from people discovering their service outside of their normal channels. So, without knowing their genuine reasons for changing the API access it seems like Netflix basically have made a really stupid decision.
Which is really good, additional revenue streams are an excellent idea. Doing it like this? Less excellent. There's probably much better ways to monetize rather than upending the apple cart and having developers go 'huh, this isn't a great idea'.
Netflix is in a battle with the VPPA, which covers video rental history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act). This smells like some side-effect of a compromise they've been able to achieve in congress. Netflix's "broader objectives" are unattainable without changing some of the laws in the US, so they may be between a rock and a hard place here.
I mostly used their application on the PS3, but I also used the boxee implementation for a while. And yes, I do agree with you that the website is less-than-ideal.
Those are official apps, though, right? They shouldn't be affected by this because they're probably covered by terms negotiated between the platform provider & Netflix?
The wii app is the worst piece of software i've ever seen.
totally lack of understanding of system. dumb choices all around. the most limiting search ever conceived by mankind. absolutely no way to see related content from one movie like you can even on the official netflix site.
Update: We’ve received word that the new API Terms of Use aren’t as sinister as on first glance. From VentureBeat:
We are not prohibiting sites from showing competing services, however we do not want anyone to use Netflix content such as titles and descriptions to advertise a competing service.
We’re not prohibiting developers from monetizing their applications by selling them directly to consumers. We will not, however, permit resale of our information in a business-to-business fashion.
All developers should stop integrating netflix in their services and concentrate on the competition. They have nothing to lose as they are not allowed to make money using netflix anyways.
Can anyone see this going any other way? There will be no 3rd party apps supporting Netflix anymore.
Don't forget Amazon does the same for physical goods purchases (I don't know about their streaming service). Your purchase history is not available via their API. Product reviews are also no longer available via their API.
They don't mind listing their products alongside other retailers. Otherwise many shopping comparison engines would go bust. They probably allow it, not from the goodness of their hearts, but only because it drives sales seeing that they usually come out on top in price comparisons.
Netflix probably doesn't make much money off people coming to them via comparison apps (because they are already signed up anyway).
Building your entire business on top of one or two powerful companies' data and APIs will always be extremely risky. So, it's best left for hobby apps.
My take on this is simple: many competitors (Hulu, Amazon, Verizon, Comcast, etc.) are likely using the API or screen scraping services like Instantwatcher to gain critical competitive data about Netflix's catalog size and composition, deal term length, content popularity, etc. With the former dataset, you could basically build a list of average contract term length, suppliers, genres, popularity, etc. What leads me to believe this is the case is they first killed expiration date - obscuring when titles expire makes it difficult for competitors to pick of your best stuff. The recent changes probably came after Netflix took a closer look at how the API was being utilized.
From this vantage point they look like the next Blackberry. A company with so much going for it you'll look back and wonder how they threw it all away.
I don't think it's really fair to Netflix to say they're throwing anything away. They exist totally at the pleasure of big content, and big content has decided that they want people to use cable. There's not really anything you can do when your distributors buy out one of your competitors and start to cut out the middle man (you.)
I hope the [relative] corpse that Netflix will inevitably become is made a poster boy for copyright reform. Netflix was used as the "streaming delivery" guinea pig by big content, and now that they've seen it to be profitable, they don't see why they should give Netflix a slice of the pie (thus comes Hulu). I completely agree that the media companies are actively trying to harm Netflix.
Netflix, of course, is aware of this and is quietly attempting to procure rights to in-demand programming. This is the motivation behind picking Arrested Development back up. It's a good strategy if they believe they can swing it, but it's very threatening to the media conglomerates (who are already terrified of the internet); certainly a tough act to balance. Netflix is between a rock and a hard place.
My email client keeps crashing this evening for some reason, and what I want to say doesn't fit into the 'feedback' page you have there, so I say it here:
I'd like to use your site, but I don't have a Facebook account (removed it a couple years ago), and don't want to be bothered to remember what my twitter password (which I virtually haven't used once in the past years) was.
I understand why you might want to enforce a social network account (1. engaging people to be more social and bring their friends and 2. simpler management of accounts), but I personally have literally zero interest in what my friends like to watch, and have never and would never use Twitter/Facebook. Why can't I use your site? I know I'm not the norm, but you should allow everyone to use your service. If you're valuable to them, they'll bring their friends with them, and if they're not, then having their friends' usernames won't help you. Registering and keeping track of users is absurdly easy, so I think you should re-consider your choice of mandating social accounts.
(Sorry it's not relevant to this topic, just wanted you to know that there are people like me who shy away from any and every service that requires OAuth)
Regardless of your opinion on Netflix's decision, announcing any negative news on a Friday afternoon (though I'm not surprised they did so) is bad form.
That's definitely what got us going. We wouldn't have even done the diff on the legals if the blog post wasn't put up with such vague language so late on a friday afternoon.
This worries me as a customer. As a consumer, having access to other interfaces, even if I'm not using them, seems like better value than however Netflix thinks they can monetize their customers' viewing data. If they do find some other income stream, maybe they can use it to keep pricing flat or buy more content. But after the Qwickster debacle, I'm not too confident in their ability to do this. Discouraging other enterprises from building businesses around them isn't a good signal. If Netflix drives itself out of business, I hope someone else (Amazon perhaps) will pick up the lead. I really have no interest in getting a cable subscription.
I'm curious as to why you think a company discouraging a third-party from building a business around them isn't a good signal of the survivability of the company. Are you implying that Netflix needs these third-parties in some way?
I would imagine that the vast majority of Netflix's customers not only do not use this third-party app ecosystem, but that they have no idea it exists.
I disagree with the author's assertion that the following point means you can't sell an app that uses the Netflix API:
"charge, directly or indirectly, any fee (including any unique, specific, or premium charges) for access to the Content or your integration of the APIs in your Application,"
It seems pretty clear to me that this point says that you can't add additional fees to include the Netflix API data in your app, or charge an additional fee to enable such a feature. Nowhere does it say that you can't charge for an app that includes the API.
However, that no enterprise-app statement is quite odd. I wonder what the specific driver was for that addition? There was likely some straw that broke the camel's back there, and it would be entertaining at the least (IMO) to learn what it was.
"(including any unique, specific, or premium charges) for access to the Content or your integration of the APIs in your Application"
Is the actual text, the part you added was your interpretation of the meaning - however, there are some indicators (starting with the parenthesized text in the original) which imply you're reading it overly broad.
"For access to the Content" (the Content being the content served by the API), and "or your integration of the APIs".
Nowhere does it say, "You may not charge any fee for any application which accesses these APIs," which if it were the intent of the lawyers to ensure that only "free" applications used the APIs, they would've stated so.
Instead, they talk about fees for accessing the content and fees for integration, which seems to be to be clear that they are indicating that they don't want people selling the content served by the API or charging extra for using the Netflix API.
The word 'any' precedes the parenthetical statement which I take it to mean, well, any.
You are free to interpret the word 'any' however you'd like. I must say though, I do like your interpretation more. :)
1.9 Appropriate Conduct and Usage Restrictions. You are responsible for your own conduct while using the API and for any consequences thereof. You will use the API only for purposes that are legal, proper and in accordance with these Terms and any applicable policies or guidelines provided by Netflix from time to time. In addition to the other restrictions contained in these Terms, you agree that when using the API, you will not do the following, attempt to do the following, or permit your end users or other third parties to do the following:
...charge, directly or indirectly, any fee (including any unique, specific, or premium charges) for access to the Content or your integration of the APIs in your Application, or use the APIs to build an enterprise application (e.g., that you distribute to other companies);
I completely agree. Don't make Netflix an in-app purchase after-the-fact.
I think the enterprise clause is to prevent companies from selling software to do analytics against the Netflix DB. Netflix wants that pie. The problem is that can become a very gray area.
One thing I like about instantwatcher is that title do expire from netflix, and instantwatcher will sort by expiration date: http://instantwatcher.com/titles/expiring
Search for Netflix in the App Store or the Android play market.... There are a bunch of third party apps.. Especially on android (but none of them actually stream Netflix, they just allow you to manage your queue etc)
One of the devices in my house is an older blu-ray player that has the Netflix streaming ability, but it can only play stuff from your queue! So, I have to put stuff in my queue I if I want to watch it on that tv. Otherwise, though, doesn't seem so useful when you are just streaming.
Also check out my iPhone app that helps you to never forget about movies that you want to see, or miss movies from your favorite directors/actors: http://flickd.net
Unrelated directly to the article's content, but I found your type extremely difficult to read and reworked it in browser so I could read it more easily. Here's how it looks and the modifications I made - hope this helps!
I'd also suggest that you add some margin to your bullets - as it stands now the bullet is further left than the text, and then the text lines up with adjoining paragraphs. I think it would look better if the _bullets_ lined up with the other paragraphs instead.
It seems quite clear to me that we are in dire need of a redefinition of 'my data' and who owns it. IMO, if my brain thought it up and you aren't paying me -- it's mine.
OT, but I wondered if anyone with the new MacBook Air (either i5 or the i7) has tried Netflix to see if it still sets the fans spinning loudly, or if the processor is able to handle it like the MBP can?
I can understand people thinking this might be a bad idea for them and I agree that it's possibly a PR mistake. But there is a difference between complaining about access and demanding access to a company's data.