W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns • Hacker News Board

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#691

Post by baddox » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:31 AM UTC

objclxt wrote: post #477

civilian wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

I actually don't see how using the browser would provide any practical value. If you pay for a streaming service you might as well just watch the legit DRM'd version. If you're watching a pirate stream you might as well stream from a pirate who cracked the DRM on their side.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#692

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:33 AM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #604

rotrux wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh but don't worry! As soon as someone breaks www.cookbooksRus.com's "Encrypted Media Extensions," you or someone totally benevolent will be able to help render ANYONE's www.cookbooksRus.com browser-experience! Server-protection isn't always a 0-sum game against client-protection, but in this case it totally is.

When the files being passed around are self-contained documents, the central server becomes less and less even a necessary component of the system.

As it should be. I hope the DRM folks will ignore IPFS until it's too late.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#693

Post by orangecat » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:36 AM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #570

colde wrote: 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 option of there being no DRM was realistically never on the table, as much as people would've liked it to be.

Way back in the 2000s when HDTV was getting off the ground, the networks demanded that all recording devices support a "broadcast flag" that would allow them to prevent recording. CBS in particular said that unless this was legally mandated, they would refuse to broadcast in HD. Instead we called their bluff, and they backed down because it turns out they don't hate money: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/06/dtv-era-no-broadcast

Sure, media companies would prefer a world where everything is DRMed and all computing devices are locked down, and if we hand that to them on a silver platter they'll take it. But I don't believe for a second that they can't survive without it.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#694

Post by baddox » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:44 AM UTC

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #419

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…

I think you're too quick to put DRM and WebAssembly in the same bucket. Yes, WebAssembly could lead to a future of closed-source proprietary technology on the web (and in that sense is similar to DRM), but the difference is that WebAssembly offers technical value. WebAssembly is a tradeoff for the public, whereas DRM exists strictly to restrict the public.

I don't really see any new threat from WebAssembly. Isn't the only threat that the same malicious code can run with better performance than JavaScript? As far as I can tell, WebAssembly doesn't provide any additional access to native system features like this DRM spec does.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#695

Post by anilgulecha » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:45 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #559

Paul-ish wrote: post #325

My fear is that DRM for video content will quickly become DRM for text content. Say goodbye to adblocking and tracker blocking.

This is what canvas+webASM is designed to do. Legit content and tracking scripts will be delivered to your browser as a single binary blob.

That will only be slightly more difficult than blocking today, technically.

What would be worse is that there's a plausible text-DRM coming up next, which would make altering contents of webpage illegal, hence making ad-blocking unlawful.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#696

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:46 AM UTC

madez wrote: post #569

tptacek wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can have arbitrary exceptions to ensure coherency. There is no reasonable need to have a position without exceptions. Reality isn't that simple.

[deleted]

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#697

Post by baddox » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:50 AM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #537

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…

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'll point out anyway that literally every single feature of the current internet is opt-in. Most of the time it's not even difficult to opt-out. If you really want a separate internet without the "bad parts", you can still use Gopher. There are still sites around, and you won't even get images, which were the first thing to "ruin" the internet, and were the launchin…

I'll point out that, unless you have data suggesting otherwise, for all we know those two groups of people on HN have no overlapping members.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#698

Post by forapurpose » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:54 AM UTC

Iv wrote: post #628

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…

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…

> In politics, very often, there are no strictly enforced rules, there are groups of pressures pushing in opposing directions.

All power is ultimately politics, not rules. People can use politics to change the rules, which happens often through lobbyists, influence, or even force.

Powerful actors operate on the level of politics; they write the rules. The plebeians operate at the level of rules. If I'm unhappy with something a major corporation does, I can operate within the rules and complain to a regulator or take the company to court. If the corporation is unhappy then they get the rules changed, for example by having laws passed that prohibit my lawsuit, eliminate their liability, or hamstring the regulator. It also happens in smaller domains, such as among employees of a business: those skilled in politics get the internal decisions and rules made in their favor.

The exception is, broadly speaking, more common than the process described above: The issues most people deal with in their everyday lives aren't important enough to motivate political action.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#699

Post by icebraining » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:55 AM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #503

icebraining wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Doesn't seem obvious to me. Why wouldn't they use their existing native apps?

Why isn't all software native apps? It comes down to the same set of reasons.

Most software don't have to choose between giving up DRM or not using web apps. I'm not convinced at all that their choice would be the former, especially since their clients already use native apps heavily.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#700

Post by d--b » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:57 AM UTC

What people don't get is that EME sets a strange precedent in the history of HTML.

Web browsers have always been very hackable. HTTP meant you could always look at the traffic being exchanged. And because there was little point in obscuring anything, web browsers allowed you to look into and modify everything:

- view/modify document source

- view/modify DOM

- debug script

- and so on

This is how CSS was defined too. It was supposed to be a compromise between how the user liked things styled, and how the vendor suggested styling the content.

EME brings something new to the table: locked LOGIC. This not a bad thing per se but takes html in a completely different direction than what it used to be.

The main concern is not DRM. The main concern is that this is a step in a direction where web browsers become unscrutable virtual machines running code that cannot be looked into. It's basically a step turning HTML into silverlight. This may happen for instance if the gaming industry decides that they need EME for in-browser games.

And most importantly this is done for all the wrong reasons: EME cannot stop anyone from copying the rendered content. And it certainly doesn't prevent anyone from downloading copied content.

So EME is just a stupid thing that technology-dumb media dudes are imposing on web developers for no reason and that may have far reaching consequences on the future of html... That's what's worth talking about.