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

901–910 of 1001 posts

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#901

Post by scriptkiddy »

cjsuk wrote: post #765
tudorw wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want to win that war, we should focus on content not technology, Mosaic got a lead in the game because, despite the 'techies' seeing no use for images, image support was added, with images came the transition of media, users were au fait with articles containing text and images and could now experience similar on line, this alone was not enough, content creators starting creating content that people wanted to c…

I agree. Back in the dark ages, when the battle of www vs Gopher was still on, I sided heavily on the side of Gopher because it didn't get in the way of the content. Gopher was a means to navigate the maze of content and most of the content was textual, postscript and neatly typeset. You could sit down with it and read it focused or print it out. We've regressed to the point where 5KiB of text comes with 2MiB of crap…

> We've regressed to the point where 5KiB of text comes with 2MiB of crap, meaning a noise to signal ratio of 26dB which is insane!

Unfortunately that's what the average layman wants. They want the SPA experience. That's what they want to pay for. What kind of professional am I if I don't give people what they want to pay for?

> I've even had enough of building things on the web. It is a horrible horrible thing to have to do. I envy system programmers who never see the pain of trying to keep a very large web application secure at even a basic level.

I build and maintain full stack web applications for my day job. Man, is it a pain. Between the database setup, server setup, back end application, front end application, security concerns, and browser compatibility issues, I rarely get to spend any time at all working on the business logic. Seriously, modern web development is 90% chasing down bugs, security enforcement, and fixing compatibility issues. Writing the business logic is the easy part.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#902

Post by snakeanus »

cjsuk wrote: post #765
tudorw wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want to win that war, we should focus on content not technology, Mosaic got a lead in the game because, despite the 'techies' seeing no use for images, image support was added, with images came the transition of media, users were au fait with articles containing text and images and could now experience similar on line, this alone was not enough, content creators starting creating content that people wanted to c…

I agree. Back in the dark ages, when the battle of www vs Gopher was still on, I sided heavily on the side of Gopher because it didn't get in the way of the content. Gopher was a means to navigate the maze of content and most of the content was textual, postscript and neatly typeset. You could sit down with it and read it focused or print it out. We've regressed to the point where 5KiB of text comes with 2MiB of crap…

> And not postscript. Something you can author by hand.

How about TeX? Many sites already use js libraries that integrate latex.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#903

Post by kerkeslager »

chrisweekly wrote: post #614
kerkeslager wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Respectfully, I see your complaint as conflating or combining several orthogonal issues. Addressing your sight-impaired grandmother's needs is a matter of accessibility; user-centric responsive design considerations relate more to CSS than JS. Gotta push back against the "create more standardized doc types" bit (wat) -- it sounds like you want more APIs and more user-friendly tools for consuming them, which would be…

> Respectfully, I see your complaint as conflating or combining several orthogonal issues. Addressing your sight-impaired grandmother's needs is a matter of accessibility; user-centric responsive design considerations relate more to CSS than JS.

That's exactly what I'm saying. JavaScript isn't the only part of the problem: HTML and CSS are also components of the problem.

Your distinction between applications and documents is an insightful one. Perhaps one way to describe the problem is that HTML and CSS contain elements of "application" rather than "document". If we think of a document as being purely semantic and layout/style as being elements of an application's rendering, then it becomes clear that only a fraction of HTML is actually document-relevant. CSS and the rest of HTML is application.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#904

Post by dTal »

kibwen wrote: post #313
dTal wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good is Firefox if it doesn't have integrity?

I can't tell if this is satire. Does anyone seriously believe that surrendering the war when you've lost one battle is an intelligent strategy? Mozilla contributes a whole lot to OSS, including providing a browser that can be trivially used without any black-box DRM-enforcement code hitting your system.

I didn't mean to suggest I categorically disagreed with the decision, in this case. I simply note that you can't extend that logic indefinitely, or you lose the thing you're fighting for.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#905

Post by scriptkiddy »

Freak_NL wrote: post #753
Alex3917 wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. One of the main reasons we need so much new content is because a large percentage of old content is no longer accessible, mostly for reasons related to rights management.

There are so many excellent films made in the second half of the twentieth century that most people will only encounter when, ironically, a broadcaster shows it on classical linear television. I had hopes that Netflix becoming a global phenomenon meant that a vast library of content would become available, but instead we are now in an era of increasing fragmentation of content offered, with content providers becoming…

> There are so many excellent films made in the second half of the twentieth century that most people will only encounter when, ironically, a broadcaster shows it on classical linear television.

Yep, I would have never discovers Jeremiah Johnson without TMC.

> Here is a radical though: reduce copyright to 28 years, and let the Netflixes and HBO's compete against that! Not going to happen of course — the best some of us can do in the meantime is pretend copyright did end after such a term, or just meekly submit to whatever is made available, DRM-shackles and all.

This is the real root of this issue. You're completely on the right track.

Originally, copyright only protected an idea for a very short amount of time. Basically the amount of time required to go to market with an idea. Copyright was intended to protect the little guy entering the industry so larger competitors couldn't steal their ideas until after the little guy entered the market.

Now, on the other hand, copyright accomplishes the exact opposite. It protects the big guys by ensuring that no-one can ever use or improve upon their ideas/products without their express consent for what seems like an eternity(see Disney constantly requesting copyright extensions on Mickey Mouse). There should be a hard limit on copyright of 5 years, maybe 10 for IP. As you said above, this will never happen as there are too many people and companies feeding off the current system. Disrupting the status quo would result in an eruption of outcry from studios, record labels, and publishers.

That said, I think we can all agree that is absolutely absurd that record labels are still profiting off of albums where every person who worked on them is now dead for an example.

Let's also be real here and address the issue that artists don't really benefit from signing on to contracts with large corporations outside of maybe better publicity. 90% of the proceeds from listens on spotify or shows on Netflix are going to the companies that own the rights and not the musicians/actors. That's why most non-mainstream music is moving into self publishing/independent labels.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#906

Post by nilved »

DCKing wrote: post #867
gsnedders wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can DRM images with EME fairly easily: you just have a single frame video. And you can always take the Twitter approach with text and just render it into an image, which is then just a single frame video. That said, the text option is not that realistic as long as there are legal obligations as regards accessibility, which will require the accessibility tree to contain a closed captioned version of the media (and…

Sure, everything can be hacked into a video on the web. But luckily that makes your web page unusable, unaccessible, and also un-SEO-able. It would also require you to have expensive DRM authoring tools to have you actually create DRM signatures (it's not just a switch you can flip on). Let me rephrase: EME can only be practically applied to actual audio and video. The point still stands. EME has been commonplace for…

Yep, but that's absolutely what's going to happen. People love to put square pegs in round holes. I'd be surprised if most things weren't DRMed within 5 years.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#907

Post by nulagrithom »

dannyobrien wrote: post #208
guelo wrote: post #107

For perspective here is W3C CEO's post about it https://www.w3.org/blog/2017/09/reflections-on-the-eme-debat... And Tim Berners Lee's original decision https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017J...

Here's the press release, with testimonials from the RIAA, MPAA, CableLabs, Netflix, Microsoft and Comcast. https://www.w3.org/2017/09/pressrelease-eme-recommendation.h...

> I know from my conversations that many people are not satisfied with the result. EME proponents wanted a faster decision with less drama. EME critics want a protective covenant.

I think that pretty much sums it up. The only thing that could've gone better for the corporations is if everyone else just shut the fuck up.

I don't know why he bothered to post that. What a joke.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#909

Post by looklittlejohn »

Aissen wrote: post #828
Buge wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not degraded only for Linux. The 720p limitation in Chrome and Firefox is also there for Windows and Mac.

Not Win10 + Edge or on ChromeOS. This is due to the level of obfuscation of the keys (hardware-assisted vs software only).

I think we're splitting hairs here. The point cpeterso was trying to make is that while Netflix is a large company that advocated for EME, Netflix is also trying to cater to all audiences. And with their track record of open-sourceing lot she of their internal systems, I feel it's safe to say Netflix as a company isn't nearly as corrupt as some of the other advocates for EME.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#910

Post by mfukar »

floatboth wrote: post #873
mfukar wrote: post #840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing? What about computer software? Maybe you meant to type 'the only thing I care about'.

I actually don't care about movies, very rarely watch them at all. The vast majority of video I watch is YouTube. I meant to type "I never actually saw DRM on the web in person". Also, proprietary desktop software is still usually "protected" by just a serial number :D

> Also, proprietary desktop software is still usually "protected" by just a serial number :D

Not really; there's a lot of sophisticated DRM going around at least since the 70's..

Post reply on HN