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

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

#61

Post by acabal »

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…

But the web is the one in the position of power here. Media wants badly to be on the web--it's not the web that badly wants media.

Imagine if, back in the 90s, bigcorp still-image licensors like Getty or Bridgeman were able to magically foresee how big the internet was going to be. They campaign hard to include a DRM standard into the 90s web, so that nobody could right click and "save as" images from the web. After all, their bread-and-butter is licensing images. They succeed, and now it's the 90s, the web is in its infancy, and nobody can share or save images.

How would have the web evolved differently, if that was the case? I think most of us would agree that this would have put a terrible stranglehold on the evolution of the web as a technology and the web as a cultural force.

We're in a similar position today. Video is fairly new to the web, and bigcorp see how important a deal the web is. Instead of us making a stand and demanding the same freedom we got with images (freedom we largely received because of a combination of ignorance and benign neglect), we've caved and allowed videos to be locked away. Now we'll never see how the web could have evolved if anyone could have right click "saved as" a video.

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

#62

Post by izacus »

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…

Right now DRM is the death of you being able to preserve the TV shows you love (they'll just disappear from Netflix after some time and you're not allowed to download them even if you paid for them), the death of being able to watch things on planes and the death of being able to watch things if one of your increasingly unreliable ISPs drops a connection.

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

#63

Post by d8421l01vv4r »

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, for one, am perfectly happy not giving money to companies enforcing DRM. If only 1/10 to 1/5 of the population cared (which will never happen), I'm sure we would see a major change in attitude from media companies.

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

#64

Post by epistasis »

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…

I had a long reply, but when I went back and read your original comment, I realized I was just restating a portion of your original comment but with far more words. So I think I'm being unnecessarily contentious.

Standards serve the purpose of when user agents want to interoperate, so Mozilla was definitely ok with not implementing ActiveX, just as they would be ok with not implementing EME.

But if Chrome and Safari and Edge all want to interoperate with EME, they're going to do that. Whether it's a W3C standard or a WHATWG standard, or an RFC, or a IHateFreeSoftworeSociety standard doesn't really matter. It's just whether W3C wants to be part of the conversation or not. I see little benefit and little downside to having it be a W3C standard vs. anything else. Or even for that matter, whether the term "standard" is used; even if it's somehow disallowed it's still the same situation.

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

#65

Post by Simon_says »

javajosh wrote: post #51
__jal wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I fully expect torrenting to be made impossible or obscenely impractical and cumbersome inside the next couple decades. The rightsholders are too politically connected, and the general populace too apathetic and ignorant.

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

#66

Post by goldcountry »

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.

#2 is the worst solution if you care about principles over end user experience. Most organizations and corporations do not prioritize things that way.

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

#67

Post by metajack »

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…

Before DRM plugins could access anything. Now they live in a sandbox which was not possible when they were NPAPI plugins. So the security story is actually much better as far as I know.

It still sucks to infect the web with this nonsense, but at least it can't do as much evil crap.

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

#68

Post by seltzered_ »

A younger version of myself would be against Web DRM, but these days I wonder if there's a potential for it to help in democratizing distribution among indie content producers. Ideally I'd have some time to piece together an essay, but the major points are:

1) Ted Nelson's vision on how Project Xanadu would have some form of copyright protection / micropayments for authors.

2) Independent content creators that have called it quits. There's tons of examples, but here's one that highlights issues: http://www.tonycomstock.com/2011/09/12/why-i-dont-make-movie...

I guess I see a vision where webDRM is an improvement over the walls of 'Apps' where content may not be DRM-free, but at least be linkable/URL-addressable.

(Disclaimer: I'm writing this without actually reading into the WebDRM spec, so feel free to criticize)

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

#69

Post by metajack »

acabal wrote: post #61
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…

But the web is the one in the position of power here. Media wants badly to be on the web--it's not the web that badly wants media. Imagine if, back in the 90s, bigcorp still-image licensors like Getty or Bridgeman were able to magically foresee how big the internet was going to be. They campaign hard to include a DRM standard into the 90s web, so that nobody could right click and "save as" images from the web. After…

I feel like that case was true back when this fight actually mattered. These days people use native-ish apps on iPads and smart TVs and not just laptops. So I think there is less market power on the web's side than there used to be.

Google and Microsoft both sell the CDMs (content decryption modules, ie, the actual DRM components used in EME), and it was certainly a benefit they touted for consumers before Firefox had an implementation as well.

Now anyone who wants to make a web browser must pay to play, and the people you pay are your competitors. Even if you could write your own CDM and get it ceritifed/trusted or whatever, you'd still have to convince every DRM-using video provider to also use it in addition to the others, which is going to be a very tough sell. And of course, it may be that no one wants to license a CDM to you to start with, and now part of the web is closed off to your users.

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