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

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#981

Post by oceanswave » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 3:36 PM UTC

near wrote: post #710

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…

The web has been engineered to a complexity level so grossly obscene that it is all but impossible for independent developers to produce fully independent web browsers anymore. You would need hundreds of millions of dollars in capital and strong leadership to produce a browser that would be successful in today's world. I could dedicate the rest of my life working 100 hours a week on a browser, and I would die before…

Why stop with creating a browser from scratch? You'll need hundreds of millions of dollars in capital just to build your own compiler technology that would be successful enough and incorporates enough instruction set optimizations present in commercial CPUs that your custom browser can be built upon.

Maybe you'll need your own hardware as well...

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#982

Post by snakeanus » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 3:47 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #977

cjsuk wrote: post #964

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really fine for casual documentation. I wouldn't write a book or a paper in it though.

For a straight-text book, actually, Markdown is excellent. You can include images, or for technical content, tables, easily. Technical papers with formulae and complex references are slightly more detailed, but that ends up being gloss. Even LaTeX for a simple text is quite minimal (though you need the starting template). Source: I've made something of a hobby of marking up source docs into HTML, LaTeX, and Markdown.…

> For a straight-text book, actually, Markdown is excellent. You can include images, or for technical content, tables, easily.

I would probably use org-mode for that.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#983

Post by tptacek » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 3:51 PM UTC

Furmark wrote: post #970

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.

Not banning, simply not providing api for them.

That doesn't work. Look what happens with AV providers: they hack their own plugin interface into the browser, and everybody loses more security.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#984

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

snakeanus wrote: post #982

dredmorbius wrote: post #977

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a straight-text book, actually, Markdown is excellent. You can include images, or for technical content, tables, easily. Technical papers with formulae and complex references are slightly more detailed, but that ends up being gloss. Even LaTeX for a simple text is quite minimal (though you need the starting template). Source: I've made something of a hobby of marking up source docs into HTML, LaTeX, and Markdown.…

> For a straight-text book, actually, Markdown is excellent. You can include images, or for technical content, tables, easily. I would probably use org-mode for that.

Another solid option, yes.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#985

Post by saganus » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 5:03 PM UTC

holon wrote: post #931

saganus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the harm will be realized in the long run, when you want to watch something that is no longer available? For example, the Netflix library changes every now and then (at least that I've been able to detect), and there's more than one show that I can no longer watch anymore that I wish I could. That to me is harmful because I don't really know when this happens until I search for it and it's no longer there. So I…

Netflix announces which content will be added/removed months ahead of time. The decision to remove content is driven primarily by the principal right holders - Netflix is largely just "leasing" the shows that it presents (hence the company's shift to producing its own content). To present it as a decision solely made by Netflix grossly underestimates the contractual complexity and involved parties responsible for tur…

I didn't mean to imply that shows got delisted at the sole discretion of Netflix. I understand that it's a complex decision with multiple stakeholders, and would even like to think that Netflix benefits the most from NOT delisting shows (i.e. they are on "my" side).

I was merely trying to point out that whoever decides what gets delisted (in this case for the sake of simplicity I said Netflix), has control over what I will be able to watch instead of me.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#986

Post by eridius » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 5:14 PM UTC

Crespyl wrote: post #638

eridius wrote: post #519

> 58.4% of the group voted to go on with publication, and the W3C did so today, an unprecedented move in a body that has always operated on consensus and compromise. What exactly is the EFF saying should have happened? More than 50% voted to go ahead with it. The majority voted for it. I don't see how the W3C going with the majority vote is a dick move. Consensus and compromise is obviously very important, but when o…

Part of the EFFs frustration is that the anti-DRM side were willing to compromise, by passing the standard with the addition of agreements to, for example, not sue security researchers who might try to fuzz a CDM or figure out how it worked. It was the pro-DRM side that were unwilling to make even such a minimal good-faith compromise.

How many people of the anti-DRM side were willing to pass it anyway? Because judging by all of the HN commentary I've seen in the past there are plenty of people who are hard-line no DRM under any circumstances.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#987

Post by wiz21c » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 6:58 PM UTC

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…

This radical thought have been more or less argued in court by Eben Moglen. He failed (and I can feel he was very sad about that - I certainly was)

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#988

Post by gsnedders » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 1:26 AM UTC

realityking wrote: post #980

nradov wrote: post #976

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood. There is no "spec" for handling all of the invalid HTML out there. That's part of what makes writing a browser so hard. It's far from being menial work.

AFAIK all major browsers have converged on the parsing algorithm described in the HTML5 spec. It‘s super lenient and very messy but at least it‘s consistent. IMHO this was one of the biggest benefits coming out of the HTML5 efforts.

Indeed. 15 years ago it was a huge amount of work reverse-engineering other browsers around parser behaviour; 10 years ago it was a huge amount of work finding where the draft spec broke sites; today it's pretty much just implementing the spec.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#989

Post by thirdsun » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 5:25 AM UTC

vertex-four wrote: post #974

thirdsun wrote: post #961

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about temporary offline access to Netflix movies or buying/renting a movie via iTunes. I meant purchasing a real video file that I can put on my NAS and view in a player of my choice. Similar to music. I'm not aware of any video services that offers that.

> buying a movie via iTunes, Amazon, etc Why, precisely, do you think you can't play the video file in a player of your choice? That is literally what DRM is - technical restrictions against using content you have purchased in a manner you desire. They provide the file in an encrypted format that only their own player can decrypt. When iTunes used DRM for music, only Apple's devices could play music you bought from i…

I'm aware of that and have been criticizing the movie industry's requirement to ship content with DRM for a long time, particularly as an avid and frequent buyer of DRM-free, lossless music.

However you're right - the iTunes purchasing example shouldn't have been part of my previous response. On the other hand I think DRM is fine, if not a necessity, for a subscription service like Netflix. It is basically renting content and my expectations towards these services are very different from a store that offers purchasing, which should absolutely be a DRM-free experience. The fact that it's not is exactly the reason why I don't buy films on those platforms, unlike music, which is available countless large and niche stores.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#990

Post by ascagnel_ » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 3:27 PM UTC

mimsee wrote: post #229

ascagnel_ wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chrome and friends will refuse to load unsigned content, and then the death of the free web will be complete. I'm going to need some citations that this is even remotely in the plan (and requiring HTTPS isn't the same as refusing to load unsigned content, since that's on the transport level).

I don't think he ever said HTTPS. By "unsigned content" he meant that video files for example can't be played unless a Hollywood rightowner has granted playback access for the file. However in the future this DRM will be an freedom-of-speech issue. The goverment could use it as means to silence people. North-Korea is currently ahead of us. Any videos you take could be automatically signed and later on pulled by the g…

I only mentioned HTTPS in the sense that browsers now actively push users away from unsecured transport connections.

And please provide some example of any browser vendor making moves to block/delist unsigned videos/photos for _any_ reason.