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W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

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Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#661
post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that, with killer features like breaking out of DRM, the market share could change. That's not a killer feature to the market: I bet 99/100 people don't know what DRM is or what it stands for. They just care that they can watch videos or not. For better or the worse the overwhelming majority of browser users don't know, care, or have any idea about how the internet is standardized, how DRM works, and why it…

Of course for the worse. As usual worst things in the world come with a silent agreement of majority.

Ignorance != agreement

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#662
Battery life and data minimization should take precedence over extras. It is time to standardize on precisely the bare minimum necessary to render content, and that certainly excludes DRM and auto-play video ads and other endless cruft.

Simply put, I don't want my battery burning through unnecessary restrictions-addition software (both downloading and running).

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#663
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be absolutely no change. All major browsers already implement EME (this includes Edge, IE, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera and a bunch of minor ones). I personally think it is a step forward, as it is much better than Silverlight. Now all the client behaviour is out in the open, and only the DRM piece is proprietary. There is no way that removing EME will make things better, that would just require all stre…

People were naively thinking/hoping that once Flash and plugins die, DRM would magically disappear and media companies would start putting all their content on the open web, for anyone to access. I'm with you, I'd much rather have a clean, secure and well implemented option, rather than each company trying to hack together a solution that will be buggy, insecure and inefficient. The option of there being no DRM was r…

The compromise mentioned in the article would have only helped with making it more secure.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#665
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.

There are some blockchain based systems in the works that may help with this mess. If a middleman can be removed, content creators could publish directly to p2p networks without losing the ability to earn money from their contributions. Instead of relying on some rights mgmt company to authorize content they could create a smart contract to programmatically allocate earnings to all parties involved. Time will tell bu…

That article seems like a winning buzzword-bingo game by someone selling blockchains.Anyone who wants to sell online already can and there are plenty of people who do with either no middlemen or by picking a third party who shares some philosophical goals. Similarly, unless you're trying to sell completely illegal content it's trivial to buy or sell content which the major players choose not to carry — e.g. iTunes and Netflix not offering porn hasn't seemed to prevent anyone from watching it.

The actual problems here are discovery and piracy. The former increases the benefits (real and perceived) of middlemen with promotional channels, speaking to both to the creators wanting their work to be found and anyone finding it. The latter is similarly important: most artists don't make money so every lost sale counts and for every artist who believes content should be unencumbered there seem to be more who demand DRM, especially the mainstream ones with the most customers.

Not addressing both of those is fatal: if customers can't find what they want easily, the service is unlikely to make it out of the indie market. The key thing to remember is that outside of the diehard anti-DRM community, nobody sees this as a problem – most people find what they want on a major service, pay an acceptable amount, and leave satisfied.

Blockchains don't solve those problems and add new ones, like performance and irrecoverably failing open if there's a bug, which are likely showstoppers.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#666
post #91
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're discounting the opportunity cost here. In a world where browser manufacturers, as a block, refused to implement DRM, it's seems obvious that sooner or later visual media producers would be forced to the table, to gain access to paying consumers. We could be in a DRM-free world, without the inconveniences of elaborate technical restrictions on pass-through and mutual device compatibility, or black box b…

I see how that gets us to a DRM-free world, but not so much why ordinary consumers would care. To a first approximation, no ordinary consumer uses TPB. Unauthorized copies are less convenient (especially since mainstream playback devices won't play them) and frequently of lower quality. The price point for legitimate copies is low enough that the purchase decision isn't that hard. A standards body is a great place to…

Unauthorized copies tend to be more convenient, since the days of region free DVD players.

I strongly believe that the convenience of Netflix and iTunes only exists because of piracy, and the industry would never have chosen it otherwise. They'd be stuck on pay per view.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#667
post #628

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…

It took me a while to understand how politics are very different than the binary world of logic and strictly enforced rule of my CS universe. In politics, very often, there are no strictly enforced rules, there are groups of pressures pushing in opposing directions. W3C has no way to prevent proprietary browsers for doing what they want, they just put some pressure on them. They know that going through W3C is the eas…

As several people have pointed out elsewhere in these comments, Mozilla has already implemented EME. That makes it seem unlikely that it would quit over the adoption of this recommendation, even though Mozilla also stated that DRM is bad.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#668
post #91
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're discounting the opportunity cost here. In a world where browser manufacturers, as a block, refused to implement DRM, it's seems obvious that sooner or later visual media producers would be forced to the table, to gain access to paying consumers. We could be in a DRM-free world, without the inconveniences of elaborate technical restrictions on pass-through and mutual device compatibility, or black box b…

I see how that gets us to a DRM-free world, but not so much why ordinary consumers would care. To a first approximation, no ordinary consumer uses TPB. Unauthorized copies are less convenient (especially since mainstream playback devices won't play them) and frequently of lower quality. The price point for legitimate copies is low enough that the purchase decision isn't that hard. A standards body is a great place to…

Your points about usage of TPB, less convenience, lower quality, cost being low enough - all of them seem to be from the U.S. or first world perspective. In many other countries, TPB or equivalent is very common across classes of people (not just students but also workers in different non-technology industries). Unauthorized copies are more convenient because most people watch media on a tiny laptop or a small monitor desktop (often several years old or low end), where a free VLC or other player will play whatever is thrown at it. Quality of the video/audio isn't a big deal on these lower end, smaller screen and older devices (plus, many people may prefer lower quality for the lower data consumed from a broadband connection).

One might argue that these people would never pay for content and so mustn't be considered when talking about paid content. But given a chance not to jump through hoops and with geography specific pricing, there are ways to get people to pay. That could add up when done right on a large population base. Right now the big content houses are literally leaving money on the table and encouraging piracy (to put it in a different way)!

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#670
post #668
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see how that gets us to a DRM-free world, but not so much why ordinary consumers would care. To a first approximation, no ordinary consumer uses TPB. Unauthorized copies are less convenient (especially since mainstream playback devices won't play them) and frequently of lower quality. The price point for legitimate copies is low enough that the purchase decision isn't that hard. A standards body is a great place to…

Your points about usage of TPB, less convenience, lower quality, cost being low enough - all of them seem to be from the U.S. or first world perspective. In many other countries, TPB or equivalent is very common across classes of people (not just students but also workers in different non-technology industries). Unauthorized copies are more convenient because most people watch media on a tiny laptop or a small monito…

TPB quality is usually very good, 1GB per hour is common and 4GB per hour is possible for high demand stuff. Plus you get a much better library. A fast internet connection makes the inconvenience of downloading vs. streaming go away.
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