W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

Good! Let them do that, and let us keep working on things like ipfs, blockchain naming systems, matrix and host identity protocols. The more they try to corrupt the web, the more energy goes into fixing the broken architectures. Then one day, nobody will use the broken DRM net. Politics is a programmer's most wasteful use of his time. Code them out of business.

Ultimately, I think the failure of the open web runs deeper than that. When I visit, for example, a cookbook website, when I view a recipe, the problem isn't just that the site can run arbitrary scripts on my computer. It's also that I have no control over how that recipe displays because so much of that display is in HTML. I can't pull it into a useful format and store it with all my other recipes because it's in HTML. And contrary to its goals, HTML isn't a semantic markup language. I can't automatically convert imperial into metric units, because they aren't represented as measurements at all. I can't configure the display of the recipes for my nearsighted grandmother because that configuration happens when the recipe is rendered from a recipe document into an HTML document. The failure of the open web is that we need JavaScript to reasonably render the various kinds of documents which are being stripped of their metadata so they can be shoehorned into a non-semantic document format.

Removing JavaScript prevents malware and adware vendors from running their programs on our machines, but it doesn't empower users. We can control or data but we still can't analyze data websites give us.

The way forward, I think, is to create more standardized document types and let people build renderers for them. If I go to a cookbook website, I should be able to download recipe documents. If I don't like how my cookbook program renders the recipe, I should be able to download another program can render it. This breaks the power that websites have as the sole entities with the capability to render their documents, and gives the power back to users.

The security holes that the standard introduces into my browser.

If I can compile it out, or get a version that someone I trust has compiled with it removed, that only leaves the rest of the web as a botnet attack surface.

That's what changes. Or doesn't improve, depending on how one views the timeline.

Maybe you can persuade your partner with:

1. Cancelling Netflix saves money.

and ...

2. Watching less TV gives you more free time to get outside, exercise etc.

> to make it easier for there consumers.

No, never. DRM Is never easier for consumers.

What happened was that Apple banned alternative browsers and plugins like Flash on iOS which meant there was a sizable platform of - importantly - semi-rich people that did not have a usable DRM solution outside being told to install an app.

The user dropoff from demanding you install an app is huge.

They were losing money, plain and simple, on people who didn't A. download a plugin or B. install an app to push DRM on them.

This battle was over years ago. Safari adopted EME, all the corporate powers that be that wanted to have their cake and eat it too on the buffet of consumer ignorance to how dicked over they are when companies shovel proprietary code down their throats. No major browser wanted to even try fighting this. New browsers that turn up will never gain traction if they don't "support Netflix".

Those of us who care about ethics go on using Firefox without the DRM bullshit plugin / Chromium / etc and the rest keep being ignorant as they always have been.

Really, DRM isn't even helping anyone. It is a lawyer requirement for legal contracts between media producers and distributors. "We require you fuck over your customers to give our old rich men investors who have no clue what technology is a false idea that nobody can copy our floppy". Pirates will continue to circumvent and distribute better quality versions of everything than any company is willing to stream you anyway, and people who were using the streaming services in the first place weren't pirating to begin with.

What this does mean is what should be straightforward user experiences for online video are going to start becoming a clusterfuck of broken, insecure proprietary blob DRM drivers every video site "automagically" downloads and runs on users computers that either don't work cross platform or breaks all the time. Web video will have peaked in 2016, when ubiquitous mp4 support meant almost any site can just host videos and have them work, and 2018 and on will be the era of everyone trying to use shitty DRM plugins that will fail and break everywhere just like Flash and Silverlight did years ago. But having the option available is going to inspire companies like newspapers that have no business trying to DRM lock their newscasts to try to use DRM anyway because fuck ethics.