Tim Berners-Lee approves Web DRM, but W3C members have two weeks to appeal • Hacker News Board

Re: Tim Berners-Lee approves Web DRM, but W3C members have two weeks to appeal

#51

Post by javajosh » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:08 PM UTC

__jal wrote: post #26

II2II wrote: post #17

Everything that I have read suggests that this is standardizing what has already happened with video, which is a great deal better than the bad old days when companies relied upon Macromedia/Adobe for video streaming. (Or worse, a plug-in from an obscure company with an unknown track record). As much as I would like to avoid DRM, relatively few producers are going to budge on the issue. The only options are standardi…

I disagree. "Doing without" seems the most sensible to me. There is no rule that industries whose business is built on copyright need to be able to live in the browser. Netflix demonstrated that quite nicely. Just because the want it doesn't mean they should get it. I personally cripple EME on my browsers, and if your content won't display for me, I'll happily go elsewhere. (Haven't had the problem yet, but fully exp…

Well, "doing without" is certainly the principled stand. But there is a lot of (almost certain, moderate) pleasure hiding behind one of door #1 (EME) or door #2 (torrent), and it is difficult indeed to go through door #3, (not this pleasure).

Re: Tim Berners-Lee approves Web DRM, but W3C members have two weeks to appeal

#52

Post by agildehaus » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #25

asadotzler wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing stops them, and in fact each of the major browsers have already implemented EME.

Chrome has been using EME with Netflix since early 2013. This fight was lost years ago.

And yet, because it's not "integrated with the operating system", Netflix content providers do not trust Chrome's implementation and thus Chrome users are intentionally given lower-quality video.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee approves Web DRM, but W3C members have two weeks to appeal

#53

Post by cyphar » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:11 PM UTC

bcheung wrote: post #20

What's the reason DRM can't be implemented as an open-source solution? Is the closed source just to prevent people from easily accessing the secret key or are there other reasons it needs to be closed source?

Not to be a pedant (who am I kidding), but this is actually one of the examples where distinguishing between "free software" and "open source" is more than a philosophical disagreement.

You actually can create an open source DRM solution, because none of the OSI definition[1] makes reference to user freedom or other issues that DRM violates. As far as the OSI is concerned, DRM is can be released under an OSI license. Of course, you have to consider that according to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, breaking DRM is _very_ illegal (regardless of whether or not the DRM'd media is still under copyright -- which means that DRM has no expiry).

However, if you subscribe to the free software definition[2], then you run into a problem. DRM in principle violates freedom #0: the freedom to run the program for any purpose. Now, there exist free software licenses that don't protect you against this threat (I believe only the GPLv3 actually addresses this issue), but note that just because a piece of software is under a free software license doesn't make it free software (there are whole classes of programs that might be GPLv3 but are still not considered by the FSF to be truly free -- DRM falls under that example).

[1]: https://opensource.org/osd [2]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

--

Another reason is that I guarantee their EME implementations are going to be full of bugs and making the source available would just make it easier to find them. This is the same AAC conspiracy that gave us the Sony rootkit after all[3] (which then went on to be used by other viruses).

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

Re: Tim Berners-Lee approves Web DRM, but W3C members have two weeks to appeal

#54

Post by marksomnian » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #43

jandrese wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As dumb and broken as it is, the state of the world is such that you can't deliver most video without something like it. So the options are: 1. Stick to your guns and keep it out of the standard, free browsers will be unable to play Netflix, Hulu, HBOGo, BBC, etc... Propriety plugins that only work on one browser and/or one platform will exist and be annoying and buggy. 2. Give in and allow this braindamage in the st…

Option 1 is the best because playing DRM content should be Netflix's problem. Why in the world would you want to subsidize Netflix's development? So what if Netflix's DRM plugin would be proprietary and buggy? Heck, that's a window of opportunity for DRM-free competition. By making it a standard it means that we'll never, ever get rid of it. Even if DRM is fundamentally flawed. #2 is in fact the worst solution.

Put yourself in the shoes of a browser dev faced with a torrent of angry users asking why you "broke Netflix". They won't listen to what seems like a wishy-washy response about the principles of "the open Internet", all they will care about is that they had Netflix and now they don't and it's your fault.

Devil's advocate, I'm no fan of DRM, but from the end user's point of view, it's a necessity.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee approves Web DRM, but W3C members have two weeks to appeal

#55

Post by zdkl » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:16 PM UTC

4bpp wrote: post #28

II2II wrote: post #17

Everything that I have read suggests that this is standardizing what has already happened with video, which is a great deal better than the bad old days when companies relied upon Macromedia/Adobe for video streaming. (Or worse, a plug-in from an obscure company with an unknown track record). As much as I would like to avoid DRM, relatively few producers are going to budge on the issue. The only options are standardi…

The standard argument against this says that while every bug, security breach and inconvenience that arises due to the alternative (non-standardised, proprietary DRM, or no in-browser DRM at all) may individually make engineers thinking about the system from an engineering standpoint break out in hives, the discomfort will also be felt by end users and associated with DRM, therefore serving as an obstacle to its publ…

Exactly, not all tough problems have to be solved. In this case we probably should optimise for choice rather than an elegant system!

Re: Tim Berners-Lee approves Web DRM, but W3C members have two weeks to appeal

#56

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:16 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #48

epistasis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been around since the browser wars, and disagree with your characterization here. Standards don't serve marketshare, they are about interoperability and documentation. A single user-agent technology shouldn't be standardized because that user agent has large marketshare. A tech should be standardized because multiple user agents want to use it, and be interoperable. The ActiveX comparison doesn't make much sense…

"User agents" serve the market. The market wanted ActiveX. There were many companies and government institutions requiring ActiveX for their interfaces. Mozilla could have implemented ActiveX btw, but they took a stand against it. So by your definition, what does "many" mean? Is it more than one? More than two perhaps? Should it be all of them? What if I create a browser and announce that it will not support DRM. If…

[deleted]

Re: Tim Berners-Lee approves Web DRM, but W3C members have two weeks to appeal

#57

Post by tveita » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:18 PM UTC

II2II wrote: post #17

Everything that I have read suggests that this is standardizing what has already happened with video, which is a great deal better than the bad old days when companies relied upon Macromedia/Adobe for video streaming. (Or worse, a plug-in from an obscure company with an unknown track record). As much as I would like to avoid DRM, relatively few producers are going to budge on the issue. The only options are standardi…

> relatively few producers are going to budge on the issue

They would budge if they had to - what are they going to do, stop selling their only product to paying customers out of spite? But of course it doesn't cost them anything to bluff, and they are used to get their way far beyond what their importance merits.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee approves Web DRM, but W3C members have two weeks to appeal

#58

Post by cyphar » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:18 PM UTC

marksomnian wrote: post #54

bad_user wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Option 1 is the best because playing DRM content should be Netflix's problem. Why in the world would you want to subsidize Netflix's development? So what if Netflix's DRM plugin would be proprietary and buggy? Heck, that's a window of opportunity for DRM-free competition. By making it a standard it means that we'll never, ever get rid of it. Even if DRM is fundamentally flawed. #2 is in fact the worst solution.

Put yourself in the shoes of a browser dev faced with a torrent of angry users asking why you "broke Netflix". They won't listen to what seems like a wishy-washy response about the principles of "the open Internet", all they will care about is that they had Netflix and now they don't and it's your fault. Devil's advocate, I'm no fan of DRM, but from the end user's point of view, it's a necessity.

If (in an ideal world) Chrome and Firefox had said "no, we aren't implementing it" then it falls back to Netflix to stop harming users. And they need to make business so they'll make a crappy SilverLight client that breaks every other week. It's not the browser developers' fault that a several million dollar company decided to build their business model around the need for DRM.

The biggest problem with taking the principled stand is that you run into the prisoner's dilemma. And every CS student can tell you that the game theory says you should always defect, if the other parties are adversarial.

I think the biggest problem in the "browser game" is that the different free browsers often see each other as enemies and not as friendly competition. It's a shame because monocultures are what almost killed the internet in the early days, and I don't understand why we're heading back to ActiveX.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee approves Web DRM, but W3C members have two weeks to appeal

#59

Post by zdkl » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:19 PM UTC

tveita wrote: post #45

davexunit wrote: post #9

This truly is the death of the open web. I hope the appeal is successful. Freedom seems to be losing on all fronts these days.

> This truly is the death of the open web About as much as music DRM was the death of music players. And as we all know the only way to play a music file today is to buy them in the Microsoft Zune store and squirt them over to your FairPlaysForSure(tm) certified KindlePod. It's not a good thing; it lets some very big actors hurt themselves and their paying customers by still pretending that people will eventually com…

> Is there any indication they would do that?

There won't be. Unless we actually make things happen to assure against "suddenly DRM", at some point the technology will be there that you cannot trivially bypass.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee approves Web DRM, but W3C members have two weeks to appeal

#60

Post by izacus » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 9:23 PM UTC

pornel wrote: post #46

W3C takes advantage of the ambiguity of what the EME spec and "standard" DRM is. People unfamiliar with the spec may think it's the end of plug-ins and a spec for a DRM that is somehow open, implementable and cross-browser. It's nothing like it. It's a small JS API that launches the same old, fully closed, proprietary DRM solutions. The NPAPI has been replaced with DMCA-protected interface, and previously separate DR…

Note that part of standard DRM schemes is also "Computer verification" - e.g. that they refuse to work if your PC doesn't have the correct kernel, drivers or software installed. If you need special drivers to fix compatibility, want to customize your Android or do anything but leave your system full untouched and bloated, might be that you'll be prevented from watching online videos.