Live data from Hacker News

W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

boingboing.net

461–470 of 1001 posts

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#461
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple open source web browsers. You are free to install one without DRM and free to visit websites that don't need that feature. What changes for you just because there is a standard?

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.

> If I can compile it out, or get a version that someone I trust has compiled with it removed

You can. https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2015/05/12/mozil...

> that only leaves the rest of the web as a botnet attack surface.

1. Every new feature added to the web platform increases the attack surface of the browser, so this concern is not unique to EME. In this case, it removed a reason somebody would otherwise install Flash, which has a significantly larger attack surface.

2. All the major web browsers implemented EME before it became a standard, so the standardization of EME does not change anything here.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Mozilla has any integrity, then I suspect Firefox might.

Mozilla is playing a double game of pretending to be on the users side while completely being in Google's pocket. For Google this ensures they cannot be accused of being a monopoly. And those working for Google attempting to divert attention to Hollywood are symptomatic of the reality distortion field and self deception of SV. Google is a spyware company engaged in mass surveillance and creepily following everyone on…

Mozilla is not funded by Google anymore, and hasn't been for several years (the Google contract ended back when I was still working at Mozilla).

If you're interested, I wrote up some notes/thoughts from my experience in one of the sessions about EME and whether to implement it:

http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2013/oct/16/eme/

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#463
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I understand that server-side rendering is basically dead. Server-side rendering is a mature technology, don't measure it's pervasiveness in how often you see articles in the news about it...

Hey, I love ASP.NET as much as the next guy. But there's no mistaking the large trend from what used to be entirely server-side rendering (LAMP days) to REST services with JavaScript front-ends.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#464

Shame, shame, shame. We're losing the internet day by day, if we haven't done so already. I've seen people and posts here and there calling for attention on these issues, but imho it's all too subtle. We should start using harsher terminology for what's actually happening. This is flat out CORRUPTION, and I'm not seeing anyone express it as such. It's probably too late already, and unfortunately, this is merely a ref…

BBS on HAM Radio? I've been toying with the idea for a while. The exact stack is not clear yet, but it has to 'liberate' me from the current web/internet insanity. It could be slow and imperfect, but dammit it would be ours again.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#465
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want a text-only web, with no major content producers on it, you already have that. Just disable your browser's multimedia plugins. Or use Lynx, or some other browser of the 90s. The open parts of the web will still work. Anyways, Netflix, Google, Apple, and Microsoft (probably - they aren't making their votes public) support this, so this is a great time to cancel your subscriptions and stop using their produ…

> If you want a text-only web, with no major content producers on it, you already have that. And that (the web as it is) is exactly what I want. And I want that the media companies who cannot accept that the web is free of DRM to stay away from it.

That's not your decision to make. They own their sites and content. You are, of course, free to ignore it. If you don't like a site, use the back button.

You can complain, of course. What you can't do is control others. That's something the web is good at working around.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#466

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.

Unfortunately network effect is HUGE when it comes to the internet. Just because you can code a superior internet, doesn't mean people will move to it en masse.

All networks have a lifespan. Some of those lifespans are longer than ours. But there will come a day when another user-facing network supersedes the internet.

Many "superior internets" will have lived and died before then, so your statement holds. But progress depends on someone who doesn't resign themselves to failure.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple open source web browsers. You are free to install one without DRM and free to visit websites that don't need that feature. What changes for you just because there is a standard?

Websites that otherwise wouldn't have used DRM start to use it, that's what changes.

If you can point to one example of a website that implements DRM that otherwise wouldn't have, I'll buy this argument.

On the other side, I can point to many websites that removed Flash/Silverlight/other security nightmare plugins after implementing EME.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#468
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fun thing about DRM, is that people love to defeat it. They (the general public AND 3DM, to TorrentFreak, bunch of whiners IMO) said Denuvo was the death of cracking and piracy. 3DM: No games crackable in 2 years time, said the headline. now the cracking scene, which was mostly dying, has seen some revival. It has adapted, but it's a slow moving ship. Now a new generation (or the older generation, who knows, I'm…

"No games crackable in 2 years time, said the headline...now the cracking scene, which was mostly dying, has seen some revival" Do you have a citation for this? Every game, dvd, stream, book etc ever has been cracked. Software protection has a 0% success rate.

Excerpt from wikipedia's article on Denuvo

In January 2016, 3DM reportedly nearly gave up attempting to crack Just Cause 3, which is protected with Denuvo, due to the difficulties associated with the process.[8] They also warned that due to the current trends in encryption technology, in two years' time, the cracking of video games may become impossible.[8][9]

[8] Owen S. Good (9 January 2016). "Piracy group nearly gives up on cracking Just Cause 3, warns of bleak future". http://www.polygon.com/2016/1/9/10741274/just-cause-3-crack-.... Retrieved 17 January 2016.

[9] Robert Purchese (8 January 2016). "Finally, tide turns in war with PC game crackers". http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-01-08-denuvo-game-cra.... Retrieved 18 January 2016.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#469
post #327

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 . This Web's about to be eaten by DRM and WebAssembly anyway. Pretty soon it'll just be a way to deliver QT apps (or some other framework that runs in WebAssembly and…

Upvoted you, so count me in. Hard to believe in 2017, but as recently as five years ago Google (of all people) published the Caja compiler [1] for sandboxed/statically verified JavaScript subsets, and there was AdSafe aiming for safe JavaScript as well. [1]: https://developers.google.com/caja/ [2]: http://www.adsafe.org

adsafe, and all static lint of ads, was dead from the beginning. If companies serve whatever comes from the ad networks, specially dynamic URLS, there is absolutely no way to enforce anything. You can check, but you can't enforce.

the only sane solution on ads is SafeFrames [1]. Which does not do much, but at least it prevents ads from scrapping the page and stealing your cookies from the main domain you are visiting. That is already a win, considering the mess it is now without it.

[1] https://www.iab.com/guidelines/safeframe/

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#470
post #71

Shame, shame, shame. We're losing the internet day by day, if we haven't done so already. I've seen people and posts here and there calling for attention on these issues, but imho it's all too subtle. We should start using harsher terminology for what's actually happening. This is flat out CORRUPTION, and I'm not seeing anyone express it as such. It's probably too late already, and unfortunately, this is merely a ref…

> We're losing the internet day by day, if we haven't done so already. Let's just "fork" the web from W3C (or 3WC as some people like to call them by now) instead.

All I ask is that you don't use W's in your acronyms. If you just fix ONE THING with your reboot--
Post reply on HN