I share your distaste for DRM, but wanted to throw in a comment of support for Netflix. A couple of years ago I was quite disgusted by how a Netflix employee was heckled on stage at the Linux Collaboration Summit. It seems hypocritical of our community to tout user freedom and then fail to treat a public speaker with decency. The right to redistribute other people's stuff unconditionally is not such a basic human right that it justifies such poor social behaviour.
I don't like DRM, and the impression I get from most Netflix employees is that they don't like it either. They haven't chosen to take the approach of Stallman and avoid all-things-DRM entirely, but theirs is an understandable choice and one I respect, even if I do not agree with it. They have contributed some awesome stuff to the free software community and are making media available in more readily accessible ways, even if it's not as readily accessible as some of us may like. It's the people producing the media who insist on such controls being in place in order to license their content to Netlix.
I think one could take a position in between between treating invited speakers disrespectfully and endorsing their work. (It seems like that's maybe actually the position you're taking.) It would be great to find a way to articulate and strengthen anti-DRM norms in more parts of the technical community, so that people don't keep thinking of DRM as natural or inevitable (and so other people can see that there's actually resistance to it in the tech world!).
>> It seems like that's maybe actually the position you're taking
That's definitely part of it. I'm all for free-as-in-libre software, but the fact is very few people are willing to bet their entire business on free-as-in-gratis software, and that's understandable. When we attack companies who contribute heavily to free software because they do not contribute exclusively to free software, we're harming the free software movement as much as they are.
As a side note, I agree we need to come up with better ways to stop consumers from thinking of DRM as inevitable. Like most people on HN, I'm sure, I'm often asked for help with technical things - I find it has a big impact on people (albeit one at a time) when I explain how the vendor of the product makes it difficult for me to help them or for them to help themselves, and how they should consider vendors who place freedom above profit.
