Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

defectivebydesign.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 222 posts

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

#151

Post by pvg »

syshum wrote: post #146
kelnos wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but for the vast majority of users, the experience is much better. You can certainly argue that they should care more about minority users such as yourself (and me, Linux desktop user here), but it's a hard sell when the cost of the development and maintenance effort exceeds the revenue brought in. I don't think there's a great solution here. Content producers believe that DRM reduces copyright infringement to…

>>it's how they feel about it that matters Yes and that is how a Technical Standards body should be making decisions, based on people/companies feelings .... That is filling me with Confidence that the open web is in good hands with the w3c...

This started with someone claiming what should happen is DRM'ed video streaming should be made a difficult and unpleasant experience. Standards bodies and implementors aren't going to do that. What's more, their collective efforts have made the usability better, the availability of content better and as a free bonus, the security is better. That's all.

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

#152

Post by kelnos »

frivoal wrote: post #122
ngneer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Technologically it is possible to build a content protection system without obscurity, using open source software and open source hardware (and suitable cryptographic bootstrapping). That no one chooses to do so is another matter.

How so? The effect of DRM is to prevent the user from doing things that would otherwise be technically possible, such as copying. Once the software has decrypted the media, it can do whatever it wants with it. It is just so designed that what it wants to do with it is not the same as whatever the user wants to do with it. Free or open-source software give the right and the ability to the user to modify what the softw…

I think the parent's point is that it's absolutely feasible to build hardware and software that successfully enforces a DRM scheme, and also release the specs for the hardware and the source of the software.

That doesn't mean that a content producer will verify any old (modified) version of the software and allow it to play (and possibly "leak") their content.

Put another way: it's possible to build a secure DRM pipeline and then release all the source to it while maintaining the security of _that particular version_ of the pipeline. It's perfectly possible (cryptographically) to set it up so an unmodified version of that pipeline will be able to play protected content, while modifying it to (for example) dump decrypted bits to disk will cause the content to fail to play at all.

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

#153

Post by kelnos »

asdfpoiuqwer wrote: post #113
ngneer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Technologically it is possible to build a content protection system without obscurity, using open source software and open source hardware (and suitable cryptographic bootstrapping). That no one chooses to do so is another matter.

If you plan on putting a chip in my head that speaks DRM, then yes. Ultimately my screen has to show me the pixels and my speakers have to play the audio.

Sure, and you can point a camera at the display device, but you'll suffer lower quality.

And you can also buy some expensive hardware to sit between the HDCP decoder chip and the output to the display panel, and buy some more expensive hardware to deal with the huge volume of raw, uncompressed video that comes out of it.

But the content producers are betting that most people won't consider the first option good enough, and will find the second option prohibitively expensive. They're also betting that most people will opt for the convenience of getting it through the browser or mobile device (for a fee) and won't want to deal with getting it from not-so-legit sources. They're comfortable with these tradeoffs, for now, so they're doing what they're doing.

They absolutely don't care about the small minority of people who will do anything to get hold of the content unencumbered. They know they can't control that group of people, but they aren't losing sleep over it. Because, for now, that minority is too small to hurt their bottom line. If that changes, I'm sure they'll pursue a new strategy. But for now, they don't need to.

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

#154

Post by chii »

kelnos wrote: post #139
chii wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> same technology stack (HTML5 video+JS) for DRM-ful video as for DRM-free video this isn't a pro in my books - i want DRM to be a difficult and cumbersome stack to use. More specifically, i want the end user to go through hassle to obtain the proprietary plugins, so that the end user feels the hurt from DRM. This makes a non-DRM version much more simple to view (just click and play), so that users would vote with th…

This already happened. We had Flash and Silverlight. This didn't make the Netflixes of the world drop DRM, and it didn't make customers flee for DRM-free solutions. All it did was decrease security for all of us. But yes, you do have a point that making DRM easier will likely make more content producers consider and implement DRM than before. I'm not sure there is a good solution to this right now, and yours is just…

> We had Flash and Silverlight.

and when apple decides to drop flash support, what happened? Did netflix or any other video content producer suddenly decide to stop supporting those devices? No, they went with html5 video (and at that time, free of DRM). That was a great step forward for DRM free content for the web.

By making the web standard include a mechnism to include DRM natively, this means content producers once again will have a hassle free way to include DRM. The end user won't care as long as they can get their content, but the slippery slope is there, and one day, the web will only contain content that is DRM'ed (and there would be no way of format shifting, or saving the video for offline viewing or sharing). That is not the web I want to see in 5/10 year's time, and the way to stop that is to prevent the cracks from appearing.

It's actively harmful to consumers of content producing companies, but only if those companies do not move to DRM free platforms. But because companies ultimately have to make the user experience smooth, forcing them off DRM like this to make a smooth user experience is worth it in my books.

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

#155

Post by mnm1 »

bubblethink wrote: post #90
seltzered_ wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but maybe we need to look at it from relative numbers. Example: DRM music hasn't stopped music piracy, but better models for the content distribution (i.e. DRM music platforms like spotify, etc.) have demotivated more people from bothering to pirate music.

A big problem with piracy is that piracy tech hasn't advanced in 2 decades, whereas the rest of the world has moved on. There are two major challenges. Due to DMCA, anonymity is a major obstacle for which there isn't a good solution yet. TOR, vpns etc. aren't well suited for content distribution. Second, the bittorrent model itself doesn't work very well for streaming.

"Second, the bittorrent model itself doesn't work very well for streaming."

Wrong. It works incredibly well. That's why the anti-piracy companies are all up in arms over things like PopcornTime. All you need are a couple of other people to download from. Hell, there's whole pieces of software whose whole purpose it is to stream torrents and they do it extremely well. Nothing even compares to the video quality, which is the same as if you downloaded the file ahead of time.

"TOR, vpns etc. aren't well suited for content distribution."

WTF does this mean? You can't distribute content over Tor or VPNs? I only do it every single fucking day without any problems and with ease.

"Due to DMCA, anonymity is a major obstacle for which there isn't a good solution yet."

The DMCA created anonymity? Whatever, I'm not even going to try to understand this one.

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

#156

Post by josteink »

agentdrtran wrote: post #129
chii wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> same technology stack (HTML5 video+JS) for DRM-ful video as for DRM-free video this isn't a pro in my books - i want DRM to be a difficult and cumbersome stack to use. More specifically, i want the end user to go through hassle to obtain the proprietary plugins, so that the end user feels the hurt from DRM. This makes a non-DRM version much more simple to view (just click and play), so that users would vote with th…

> i want DRM to be a difficult and cumbersome stack to use. More specifically, i want the end user to go through hassle to obtain the proprietary plugins, so that the end user feels the hurt from DRM. so you want to make stuff like netflix as much of a PITA as possible? why? why be this vindictive?

> you want to make stuff like netflix as much of a PITA as possible?

Not op but yes, using DRM in a browser should be hard.

Netflix should just make a native app, like everyone else who needs drm do.

This clearly scopes what is open and webby and what is closed and DRMy.

Nobody has issues installing Spotify to stream music. What makes Netflix special?

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

#157

Post by abecedarius »

kelnos wrote: post #144
abecedarius wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should distinguish interactive things like games from the sort of title that's copyable via the 'analog hole' -- for movies/songs/books, effective DRM is incompatible with human liberty, but I don't have that problem with DRMed games. (This isn't to argue in favor of DRM on the web . It ought to stay in its restricted-device ghetto.)

From a sales standpoint, I don't see the distinction. If DRM of movies is broken past the initial sale craze, and the content producers feel they've made their money before it gets broken, then they'll certainly feel that it's been a value-add for their business. If web-based DRM actually does remove the browser as an attack vector entirely, and the majority of copyright infringement occurs in other places (studio le…

The distinction I'm drawing is that to consume a movie (etc.) you need the images to make it into your brain; OTOH a game can be played without its code ever leaving the device. To effectively stop people from saving the images means stopping freedom of thought; that's different from "I'll rent you this program only on this closed tamper-resistant platform" which doesn't claim a right to control what happens in your own brain. Maybe it's clearer if you think of a cochlear implant -- should it be against the law for me to run my own software on my own cochlear implant? Fuck no. Likewise for future cognitive prostheses. So DRM can't be more than a tiny speedbump to a person wanting to copy a movie, in a free society; but it might still work for things like games, if sellers can keep convincing people to accept good-enough DRM platforms.

When it comes to suing someone for distributing a work they copied, like you I don't see a difference between a game and a movie.

(added: I dunno why you were downvoted.)

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

#158

Post by lstamour »

chii wrote: post #154
kelnos wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already happened. We had Flash and Silverlight. This didn't make the Netflixes of the world drop DRM, and it didn't make customers flee for DRM-free solutions. All it did was decrease security for all of us. But yes, you do have a point that making DRM easier will likely make more content producers consider and implement DRM than before. I'm not sure there is a good solution to this right now, and yours is just…

> We had Flash and Silverlight. and when apple decides to drop flash support, what happened? Did netflix or any other video content producer suddenly decide to stop supporting those devices? No, they went with html5 video (and at that time, free of DRM). That was a great step forward for DRM free content for the web. By making the web standard include a mechnism to include DRM natively, this means content producers o…

Did Netflix ever support iOS devices without an app or DRM? Since iOS 6, there’s been FairPlay DRM available in Safari – and it added support for time-limited (expiring) keys in iOS 9. In many ways, I’m less worried about DRM and more worried about the value of content as expectations change to prefer free stuff from YouTube etc. Making things easy to watch/share is one of the only ways to compete...

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

#159

Post by chii »

pvg wrote: post #151
syshum wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>it's how they feel about it that matters Yes and that is how a Technical Standards body should be making decisions, based on people/companies feelings .... That is filling me with Confidence that the open web is in good hands with the w3c...

This started with someone claiming what should happen is DRM'ed video streaming should be made a difficult and unpleasant experience. Standards bodies and implementors aren't going to do that. What's more, their collective efforts have made the usability better, the availability of content better and as a free bonus, the security is better. That's all.

> DRM'ed video streaming should be made a difficult and unpleasant experience.

why can't DRM'ed video be difficult and unpleasant, but DRM-free videos be made much easier to implement, and have smooth experience for end users?

Why is DRM-free a non-starter? The whole point i wanted to make is that by making DRM'ed video easier to deploy (and consume), it normalizes the fact that _it's DRM_. Why are standards bodies putting in standards that consumers wouldn't ordinarily chooses, and is only meant to appease businesses? Why couldn't they be more socially oriented, such that anti-consumer mechanisms aren't added to an open standard?

Imagine if it weren't DRM, but anti-adblocking? What if the web standards bodies were attempting to prevent adblocking in a browser, in such a way that to be a compliant browser, you can't possibly intercept content? How is that any different to this DRM standard?

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

#160

Post by Dylan16807 »

kelnos wrote: post #144
abecedarius wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should distinguish interactive things like games from the sort of title that's copyable via the 'analog hole' -- for movies/songs/books, effective DRM is incompatible with human liberty, but I don't have that problem with DRMed games. (This isn't to argue in favor of DRM on the web . It ought to stay in its restricted-device ghetto.)

From a sales standpoint, I don't see the distinction. If DRM of movies is broken past the initial sale craze, and the content producers feel they've made their money before it gets broken, then they'll certainly feel that it's been a value-add for their business. If web-based DRM actually does remove the browser as an attack vector entirely, and the majority of copyright infringement occurs in other places (studio le…

> If DRM of movies is broken past the initial sale craze

What you're missing is that this delay is fundamentally impossible. The day a movie is available, it will be ripped, no matter how good the DRM is.

Game DRM can hold people off, because the game actually has to run once pirated. Game DRM has to be broken. Movie/audio DRM doesn't have to be broken; it can be ignored entirely by pirates.

Post reply on HN