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

W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

boingboing.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 1001 posts

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#481

Post by wolfgke »

KGIII wrote: post #465
wolfgke wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> That's not your decision to make. They own their sites and content.

They try to spread DRM-malware over the EME interface onto the user's computers.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#482

Post by bhhaskin »

fiatjaf wrote: post #409
bhhaskin wrote: post #33

We are allowing large corporations to dictate and push the web toward a closed system. A future where there has to be an App for that, and if you don't keep your head down you will be censored and cutoff from the rest of the online world.

We? talk about yourself. I didn't have the chance to choose any of these.

Do you use any Google/Apple/Facebook products? You are choosing with your wallet or personal data if you are. They only have power because we give them power either by using their products or giving them more data points.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#483

Post by emodendroket »

nix0n wrote: post #440
emodendroket wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And which browsers are going on this fork?

GNU IceCat[0], which is a Firefox fork. [0] https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/IceCat

There's a browser lighting up the usage charts.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#484

Post by wmf »

jandrese wrote: post #6
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

Basically, unless you are writing a browser with decent marketshare, you defacto have no voice in making the standards. Basically, the only voices that matter are Mozilla (Firefox), Apple (Safari), Google(Chrome), and Microsoft (Edge/Explorer). Despite what any standard says, web developers are going to go by the behavior of the browsers do. The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to…

This is really the issue. If we could convince media rightsholders that DRM is harmful and unnecessary then all of this heartache wouldn't be necessary. I don't expect this to happen in my lifetime. Any slight glimmer of hope from Apple ditching DRM on iTunes has died as nobody else shows the slightest interest in following their lead.

Or we could convince media rightsholders that they don't need to deliver their DRMed content through the Web.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#486

Post by emodendroket »

4bpp wrote: post #373
untog wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I am saying that browser manufacturers should slightly increase their vulnerability surface area (and maybe not at all - I don't know the internals of EME) in order to provide a locked-down feature to users that they would only otherwise get by downloading a native app that has access to their local file system, amongst other valuable things. It's the same logic that leads to them to support JavaScript.

Assuming the motivating reasoning here is that the overarching goal of the browser vendor should be to protect the user, the question still is what timeframe it is appropriate to consider. If the browser does not implement DRM, the user may download an infected native app to watch Netflix or porn from some far shadier website or whatever, sustaining more harm in the short run; however, if the user then is repeatedly…

> however, if the user then is repeatedly infected with malware, chances are it will not take long for a general understanding that downloadable video players are garbage-piled-up-on-grandpa's-computer bad (in the same way that IE toolbar plugins or warez websites' "special download managers" were) to take root

This is clearly written from the perspective of somebody who never did help desk work or helped family or friends with computer problems.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#487

Post by sogen »

ashark wrote: post #327
sboselli wrote: post #38

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…

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…

C-HTML maybe? [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-HTML

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#488

Post by emodendroket »

wolfgke wrote: post #366
Sargos wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure "doesn't work with most major video sites" is an actual selling point.

> I'm not sure "doesn't work with most major video sites" is an actual selling point. You just have to reframe it to something like: "protects you against websites that try to plant DRM-malware on your computer".

"... And by the way you can't use the streaming services you pay for."

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#489

Post by frivoal »

ashleysmithgpu wrote: post #87
wolfgke wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is the EFF a big enough presence to "fork" the W3C standards? I hope so.

That's the wrong question. W3C itself is relatively tiny, and has fairly ordinary (albeit well tuned) software/server infrastructure. Reproducing the legal framework would be more of a pain, but even that could probably be done. But W3C is mostly its member companies, and the're not switching, since the majority of them, including all browsers, were in favor of this. So if all existing specifications continue to reside on W3C's web site, and all new specifications continue to be produced (by member companies) in the same place, there's not meaningful forking possible.

If members are disgruntled, you can fork. That's happened before when there was disagreement about what to do with HTML, and it led to the creation of the WHATWG.

By and large, members this time are supportive. Not all, mind you, but all the large players.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#490

Post by jfrankamp »

kerkeslager wrote: post #423
ashark wrote: 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…

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 HT…

An interesting choice of example because recipes are one of the best defined and used micro formats on schema.org and used practically by google (which encourages adoption). Writing a generic recipe reader is relatively easy, I've done it although not for your use case. Your point stands though, just not for recipes IMO.
Post reply on HN