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W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

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Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#441

Post by phailhaus »

thatzerodude wrote: post #346
mozumder wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRM is also how you get media companies to publish on the web. Media companies couldn't give any less fucks about the web. They can go 100 years without publishing on the web, since they have other revenue paths that they're perfectly happy with. This whole process of enabling DRM is web developer's efforts to kiss media-companies ass in order for them to publish their products on the web. Artists and other creatives…

> No one gives a shit about freedom. Everyone wants to use rights-managed content online. And the ONLY way to do that is with DRM. Finally a shill who speaks the truth! /s DRM will destroy the web, and the web will fight back. We don't like your spyware, your binary blobs, your control, and we will resist. However, drastic times call for drastic measures. Time to join p2p ZeroNet.io and force decentralization of the…

> DRM will destroy the web, and the web will fight back. We don't like your spyware, your binary blobs, your control, and we will resist.

Your average web user has no idea what those words mean, and all they care about is being able to consume content unimpeded. They can't tell how it's implemented. Your decentralized web is not user friendly, and it will not gain mainstream adoption until it is.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#442

Post by yarrel »

MBCook wrote: post #395
MBCook wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DRM is only necessary because there exist (too many) people who don't have a zero-tolerance policy against DRM. Really? I can see a pretty good argument for why it SHOULD be legal. If I want to post some content I make online why shouldn’t I be able to try to protect it? And let’s not go through the ‘But Sony rootkit!’ stuff. You can make safe DRM. Rooting someone’s computer is already a crime, that’s why Sony in t…

Well that comment went as well as I expected. Can someone give a good argument why someone shouldn’t be able to use DRM to protect their content?

Because it does not allow them to protect their content.

Their content will still be distributed without their consent, because DRM is broken as quickly as it is implemented.

And they will not be the one using DRM to control distribution of their content, the DRM vendor will be.

Next: why shouldn't I use the magic beans the mafia are offering me to protect my content?

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#443

Post by throwaway613834 »

Latty wrote: post #435
throwaway613834 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It could be easy to view but hard to save and distribute. Why can't it? > Not really. If it's available to view, it's available. Full stop. Best case: you make it marginally more difficult for a mom&pop computer user to copy your content. Anyone with a lick of understanding and 100 dollars to buy some hardware will be able to get it without any problem. You literally just agreed with my point though.

The issue you are ignoring is that only one person needs to "save and distribute" it, then the pirated version becomes easier to view than the DRMed version. The proof in the pudding is that every TV show and film is instantly available online to anyone who can work a BitTorrent client.

No, I'm not ignoring those. See my prior comments:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15279688

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15279855

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#444

Post by tptacek »

icebraining wrote: post #369
tptacek wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know a lot of software security people who work on browser security that agree with this. The prevailing sentiment is the opposite: that standardize DRM reduces the attack surface of proprietary DRM down to that of a CDM, rather than full-featured browser plugins. By doing so, EME is improving security, not damaging it.

We could have neither, though.

By what, banning plugins? Now you're asking the anti-DRM people to do exactly what they're angry at the pro-DRM people for doing: preventing people from running a particular kind of program on their computer. It's an incoherent position.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#445

Post by epistasis »

khedoros1 wrote: post #386
epistasis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a big shift from historical standards. Where has the pushback been for plugins that permitted DRM? Or from allowing them in, say Firefox? I'm wondering why this proposal gets so much more attention than all the past DRM that's been on the web. Did people just not realize that it was there?

Flash and Silverlight DRM (as an example of 2) weren't previously web standards, and even the 3rd party plugins that included them had significant non-DRM-related uses. This is a different animal: Adding standardized interfaces to browsers specifically designed to talk to dedicated DRM modules.

That's what I'm asking about; where was the pushback on those two bits of DRM? The position advocated by the poster I was responding too would take a very harsh view on Flash and Silverlight, even with their other uses.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#446

Post by civilian »

objclxt wrote: post #276
featherverse wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest not underestimating Mozilla's market influence. It would be possible to create a browser that displays DRM content and ignores DRM. The only thing that content publishers could do is ban that browser. And then it would adapt to disguise itself as other browsers. DRM on the web can only happen if all of the major players (that is, browser publishers) agree to play along. I am very excited about this ne…

> I would suggest not underestimating Mozilla's market influence. They have no market influence. They have maybe ~10% of the market globally (I've seen figures between 5-15%), and that's primarily desktop - which is decreasing daily. On mobile it's even worse (probably less than 1%). Any influence they have solely extends to the desktop, and that's not the primary way people are interacting with the internet nowadays…

Market share isn't immutable! Market share changes based on capabilities. I dropped IE for FF when I got a basic understanding of computers, I dropped FF when it became clear it was a memory hog, and now I kind of toggle between Chrome and FF. I think that, with killer features like breaking out of DRM, the market share could change.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#447

Post by GhotiFish »

sigi45 wrote: post #309

I think i don't get it. A company called Microsoft builds a software which is able to render html. This company makes money and talks to another company called google which also is making money by selling movies and stuff and which builds a software which is able to render html. And those two companies are talking to a third huge company, who makes a shit ton of money and also makes a software which is able to render…

of course it wouldn't be gone. It would just be where it belongs.

somewhere else.

unfortunately.

that won't be happening.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#448

Post by jdmichal »

leggomylibro wrote: post #415
anonacct37 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone launches a new HTML-based Web with crippled javascript (no network comm access, for one, including ability to trigger links or forms), some small, restricted subset of CSS, and much better built-in dynamic table and form elements, I'm there. Me too. There will be dozens of us.

I already use noscript, but most people won't like having to hit 'temporarily allow' and reloading the page 1-3 times before most sites will function. Also, sites that lean heavily on trendy frameworks like fucking React often just white-screen because of their extreme reliance on JS. I'm hugely against its adoption for that reason, but I understand that I'm in the minority there. I dunno, it just seems like common s…

I mean, if a site legitimately needs a large amount of dynamic communication back to the server... Fine, whitewall me until I enable your JavaScript. I understand that server-side rendering is basically dead. But it's really frustrating when it's things that could be easily served statically, like blogs.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#449

Post by zaphar »

wolfgke wrote: post #255
untog wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and which no-one will download. To be clear: if DRM is not implemented in browsers, Netflix and the like will just make native apps, which are far larger vectors of malware attack than the locked down EME standard is. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but "people should just not watch DRMed video" is not an actual answer to the problem at hand.

So you claim that Firefox (and other browsers) should implement malware or a malware interface into their browser so that users don't have a reason to download and install some other malware?

If Firefox doesn't support DRM Video Mozilla dies. Users will not use a browser where they can't watch the videos they want to watch and those videos are under DRM.

You can't solve this problem at the standard level or the browser level. You can only solve by education users enough that they see no DRM as a feature and at the legal level by enshrining user protections in law.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#450

Post by gtirloni »

eof wrote: post #439
DCKing wrote: post #241

Can anybody explain to me what will change because of this decision? DRM has been very much part of the internet since 1995 when RealPlayer was released. DRM has been part of content delivery ever since then. It has not ever seem to have decreased in popularity, quite the opposite. The browsers that 99.9% of people use have already implemented this standard for years anyway. It's not obvious to me that this decision…

As a follow up, isn't all this DRM for naught? If you send the video and the audio to my computer, I can record it after it's decrypted. What problem does this really solve? I already use netflix/amazon because it's more convenient than torrenting, unless it isn't. Seems the possibility is nil DRM-free versions of DRM content won't be available anyway.

You're right, content will always be pirated. However, security and rights management is never about definitive solutions. DRM makes it hard for 99% of the people and that's enough for copyright holders. They can focus their resources on the other 1% (unfortunately including poeple with legitimate reasons).

I'm not agreeing with this but it's how it is and I don't see that changing. I agree with another commenter that it's been like this for virtually forever and this decision doesn't change much.

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