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W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

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Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#581

Post by ianamartin »

I sort of hate the way things are turning out and also am not surprised. When I was 10 years old in the late 80s, everything was open to you if you wanted it.

My next door neighbor has a 10 year old son who wants to learn programming. I gave him an older laptop of mine and offered to do some coaching with him about learning to program on the condition that he always has to do his homework first before we do any programming work. And if he hasn't got his homework done or is having problems with it, I'll help with the homework first.

I had a pretty cool person in my life that did that for me when I was a kid. So I want to pay it back.

But when I think about things, man . . . it was wild as a kid. You could do anything on the internet in the 80s and 90s. It was the wild west.

Now days, I'm in the back yard teaching this next door neighbor's kid, and I'm like, "Yeah, maybe don't do that. That could get you in trouble."

When I was a kid, it was always, "Do it! Can't hurt that much!"

It's different now, I think. People are less free to explore for its own sake.

I could be wrong, but I think there was a golden moment of freedom on the internet that is past. And I'm glad I got to live in that.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#582

Post by kelnos »

nkw wrote: post #573
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…

>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. LOL. With what? Their paper? Their DVDs? Their CDs? Their cable channel subscribers?

Their in-house or contracted native app, of course. Which you bet they'd build if they didn't succeed in getting functional, reliable DRM on the web.

Most of them already have pretty nice mobile apps; writing a decent native desktop app or three wouldn't stretch their capabilities at all.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#583

Post by zerocrates »

dannyobrien wrote: post #153
oconnor663 wrote: post #63

Whenever compromise fails, both sides blame the other for refusing to give any ground. Obviously browser vendors have a lot more power than the EFF does, and don't necessarily need to compromise as much to get what they want. But I'm curious, for their part, did the EFF actually offer any compromises in defense of consensus? Edit: You guys are totally right, I missed it in the original article. Shame on me.

We offered to open a discussion about a covenant, modelled on the W3C's own patent covenant, that would mean that W3C members would agree to only prosecute those who had broken the DRM within a W3C standard, if they had another cause of action. That's to say, those companies could prosecute you if you broke the DRM and used it infringe copyright, but not if you only broke the DRM for lawful purposes -- such as securi…

The covenant would have been a nice step forward and it's unfortunate to see that it didn't happen, but I think you overstate the consequences here.

> You can now for the first time be prosecuted for revealing a flaw in a W3C standard, overriding a browser "feature" on behalf of its user, or making a HTML video accessible without first asking permission of the DRM vendor who obfuscated it.

Presumably you're referring to the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions? Your second two examples are just as illegal now as they were yesterday: EME was already a browser "feature," already being used for HTML video. The only thing that's changed is the "W3C standard" part.

The vendors presumably would have been fine to take EME, already a de facto standard and just leave it as-is, or "standardize" it in another body. Forcing that would have been nice for W3C's purity and image in some circles, and maybe even a good move, but it doesn't seem that it would have made any practical difference.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#584

Post by kelnos »

jgust wrote: post #347
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…

> The web needs these media companies more than the media companies need the web When you hear about the multi-billion dollar fines and the immense amount of resources spent chasing down and punishing pirates, I have a hard time following this argument. I'd argue that the content owners and media companies need to get on board with providing the most seamless, easy to use, and accessible product for consuming their w…

> I'd argue that the content owners and media companies need to get on board with providing the most seamless, easy to use, and accessible product for consuming their wares

Right, and that's exactly what EME is. Because DRM-free content is a show-stopper for them right now, but they recognize that DRM is a pain point for customers.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#585

Post by driverdan »

tptacek wrote: post #28
jandrese wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems self-evidently unharmful, in that we appear to be in a golden era of delivering content online so extraordinary that it threatens traditional television networks. I understand that this is an extremely unpopular sentiment on HN, but here goes: at least with respect to video content, the industry seems to have largely proven DRM concerns unfounded. Update: modulo the Hickson concerns below. Continuing: DRM ce…

It harms anyone who wants to use streaming content offline on devices they control.

I often have slow internet access in my home which limits my ability to stream. If I can download when I have a good connection I can view later when my connection goes to shit. This is not an option with most streaming services (eg Netflix). I pay for these services. I should have control of how and when I view the content.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#586

Post by kelnos »

imtringued wrote: post #560
mozumder wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do us a favor and actually think your cunning plan through for a minute. Why should content owners post their products for free consumption? What is the incentive for them to do that? How much money do you think they will make? In case you haven't noticed, the web is losing to apps at every level, from things like Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat to shopping apps. Even newsreaders are being turned into apps. My parents on…

Requiring a server to playback the media is already the strongest form of DRM possible. If that's not enough they can just make their own native applications that implement all the DRM that they could possibly want. The only disadvantage of a native application is that they are not crossplatform and EME CDMs aren't exactly cross platform either. They are native code that require the module to be ported to the operati…

> EME is basically Flash 2.0.

That's a gross exaggeration; it's nothing of the sort.

Flash is a generic application framework that gets more or less unfettered access to the network, local machine, and browser state (Chrome's Pepper Flash improved a lot of this, fortunately). EME is a heavily-sandboxed decryption and display engine, and nothing more.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#587

Post by Crespyl »

noir_lord wrote: post #210
mehrdada wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The really insane part is that the DRM is pointless anyway DRM may be pointless if you think its main goal is a way to prevent people from watching content they did not directly pay for. But that is missing the point. It does not matter that you, an individual, can break it. It's a divide and conquer strategy: we as a community have to follow the rules and that's what matters. DRM is about and has been extremely su…

> (you effectively cannot ship a playback device at any real scale without following the rules the content owners set) Except a desktop PC/laptop - hence https://youtu.be/HUEvRyemKSg

This is a really important talk, here's the Doctorow article based on it, if anyone wants to read instead of watch: https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

It's already happening too, note the way Netflix refuses to send higher quality streams to the PC, except through IE/Edge or the native app (which exhibits strange, tell-tale behaviors on multi-monitor setups).

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#588

Post by dsacco »

malloreon wrote: post #34
jandrese wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"It is very difficult to make someone understand something if their livelihood is predicated on them not understanding it."

Could we put a moratorium on just posting cynical quotes that almost everyone has heard without adding something original to the discussion?

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#589

Post by driverdan »

krupan wrote: post #553
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…

Who watches Netflix with their browser ?

Who doesn't?

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#590

Post by madez »

dsacco wrote: post #576
madez wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRM is harmful. Its prerequisite is that users do not control their hardware. This has far reaching consequences that go well beyond media consumption and entertainment.

That's not axiomatic; in fact, it's a normative claim, not a positive one. The argument is not that there are no consequences, but that DRM is a net positive because those consequences are the trade off for more and better content online. Why don't you clarify why you think the tradeoff is not worth it, instead of just saying DRM = bad?

But the consequences affect everybody, all the time, even those that do not want to watch DRM'ed stuff online. That price is too high.
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