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

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211–220 of 222 posts

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

#212
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Not sure if you are trying to be intentionally dense. Have you heard of DMCA notices ? You get them if your IP is in the swarm, and are uploading copyrighted content. Hence the need for anonymity.

>WTF does this mean? You can't distribute content over Tor or VPNs?

Again, you seem to like being thick for no reason. You can distribute content over every medium imaginable. That doesn't make it the best or an efficient medium.

>Wrong. It works incredibly well.

You can't have adaptive streaming bitrates. The tracker model still relies on a central tracker. Magnet links solve some of those issues, but not everything. There are still some things that are, or would be better off, being centralised. There are several limitations that we don't need to go into length, but it's a far cry from incredible.

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

#214
post #204
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but what part of the pipeline is responsible for the verification of the 'unmodified' trait? If it's a part that's open-sourced (hardware or software), then won't it simply be _modified_ to allow it to pass and allow extraction of decrypted content? If it's _not_ open-source, then you don't have a fully open-source DRM scheme.

open source does not imply modifiable

From the Open Source Definition:

> 3. Derived Works

> The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

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

#215
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

No, Netflix always used DRM (either via an app or via FairPlay).

The argument has a tiny issue in that it's not actually true. At all.

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

#216
post #154
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…

> 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.

Unambiguously, no, they didn't.

They used applications that had Playready or Adobe Access or Widevine built in, or a little bit later they used Apple FairPlay inside the browser. Some also used root level Apple certificates to limit streams to iOS devices only.

Unambiguously, this argument is factually false.

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

#217
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash and Silverlight were low friction. And both are deprecated or unavailable on a lot of players now. Making DRM harder for the end user is the only effective push-back. It worked for music. It's working for e-Books. It would have worked for movies... if it wasn't for this.

> It's working for e-Books. How is it working for ebooks, when the leading vendor has introduced more severe DRM?

It didn't work for music either. The industry is now majority distribution via DRM subscription streaming.

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

#218
post #140
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They seem to care quite a bit. For instance, browser-based DRM and constrained devices have made the experience vastly better than it was just a few years ago. No plugins, you can download content for offline viewing, etc. So I'm not really seeing how they're making it utterly shitty.

How is not being able to download files at all, not being able to just move them to another device and being forced to have a n internet connection to watch HDR Blu-Rays a better experience than just double clicking a mp4 file?

You're not forced the have an internet connection to watch UHD Blu-rays.

The spec allows a disc to require it, but it not a single disc has ever turned it on. It was also in the blu-ray spec, and not a single disc ever turned it on there either.

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

#219
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it normalizes the fact that _it's DRM_ That ship has long, long sailed and, despite all predictions to the contrary, has actually been pretty good for users. Again, it's you who suggested everyone should stop and shittify the existing user experience that most people like. That's neither realistic nor constructive.

Earlier this year I downloaded a season of a TV show I wanted to catch up on, into Google Play on my tablet. A few weeks later I was on a plane, and finally had a chance to watch them. Google Play had blithely decided to save space (possibly prompted by the OS) and had removed my downloads. If they weren't DRMed I would have just downloaded them into space I control and there would have been none of this "oh he's not…

If the file wasn't DRMed I'm not seeing why the app or OS wouldn't have decided to do exactly the same thing.

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

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that spotify has DRM is inconsequential to it, and those like it stomping out a ton of music piracy. It's all about the distribution model, and the DRM is just to make the rights holders happy.

But Spotify is a native app. It can have all the drm it wants. It's not part of the open web.

I always listen to spotify through web browser. I think it uses flash then.
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