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W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

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Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#991

Post by sitkack »

rainbowmverse wrote: post #842
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The owners argue as if they create, the do not, they simply own the rights to distribute and take money. No. Creators are the owners of whatever they create unless and until they sign those rights away. And they sign it away for something they get in return. It may well be that the media industry is structured in a way that puts creators at an unfair disadvantage in their dealings with media companies. If that is so…

This. I think people forget that just because big companies are pushing it doesn't mean everyone who creates and wants limited protections is working under a big company's banner. For me, streaming is a concession to people who prefer it to owning their music. I don't want them ripping a stream I made $0.004 on (at best) thinking it's a fair exchange of value. My focus is on Bandcamp and other stores that offer DRM-f…

Which is why I buy my music from DRM free, full fidelity sites like Bandcamp.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#992

Post by sitkack »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #800
sitkack wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> between content creators and content consumers I think of it as the triumvirate of creators, owners (distributors) and consumers. The owners argue as if they create, the do not, they simply own the rights to distribute and take money. The vast majority of creators are getting shafted as well.

>The owners argue as if they create, the do not, they simply own the rights to distribute and take money. No. Creators are the owners of whatever they create unless and until they sign those rights away. And they sign it away for something they get in return. It may well be that the media industry is structured in a way that puts creators at an unfair disadvantage in their dealings with media companies. If that is so…

You are putting words in my mouth. I didn't use corporate rights holder argument to justify unrestricted copying. But DRM is enforce market and device segmentation, not to empower content _creators_.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#993

Post by kelnos »

krapp wrote: post #616
kelnos wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're conflating "the web" with "the internet". Media companies only need the web for discovery; for display they can release native desktop apps, which can even be launched from the web. I'm not thrilled with DRM in the browser, but at least it's heavily sandboxed, and is way preferable to a series of native apps that get full access to my desktop.

>Media companies only need the web for discovery; for display they can release native desktop apps, which can even be launched from the web. What percentage of consumers exclusively consume media through apps, though?

Doesn't matter, because we don't currently live in a world where that's necessary. If Netflix/Hulu/HBO/etc. weren't available through the browser, you better believe they'd install the native apps. Sure, there will still be plenty of (mostly long-tail) DRM-free content available through the browser, but the stuff with mass appeal won't lose much of that appeal just because people need to install an app.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#994

Post by kelnos »

slrz wrote: post #651
kelnos wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Heavily sandboxed, eh? On most devices that implement EME, the DRM implementations run with privileges exceeding that of any user code, e.g. in the TrustZone environment on most Android devices. The Microsoft DRM implementation is built into Windows (and made available to Websites via EME) and requires cooperating device drivers or no highres video for you.

Huh? TrustZone doesn't give apps extra privileges, it just isolates code and data so things can't leak out of it into the reach of untrusted programs.

"Cooperating device drivers" isn't really the right way to look at it. The drivers themselves don't have any code that will refuse to play high-res video. The EME is just able to use the trust chain to validate that the output path hasn't been tampered with.

Any application can make use of TrustZone and the trusted output path; it's not something special only EME can access.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#995

Post by kelnos »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #645
kelnos wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "miserable slum", though? Honestly, I find Netflix's Android app an absolute delight to use. Even if I'm sitting on my couch with my laptop, I'll pick up my phone to cast something to the TV before I use my laptop for that purpose. All in all, average customers (as in, not the majority of the HN crowd) seem perfectly happy with the current experience. Even if they had to install a native app to watch Netflix on…

Then what purpose does EME serve? That seems to be the false dichotomy. The claim is that EME is justified in order to get rid of the oh-so-evil Adobe Flash. But if using native apps is a satisfactory alternative that can also replace Flash then why do we need to corrupt the web?

Because "corrupting the web" is still going to be a better experience for consumers, and cheaper/easier to implement for producers. If EME didn't make it in, they'd build their own native apps, but they don't want to have to do that if they can help it.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#996

Post by kelnos »

jdmichal wrote: post #890
kelnos wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, that's not entirely true. To still allow for competition, you define a base feature set and representation, and then you allow vendor extensions. You need some sort of standards body that can promote vendor extensions to standardized, supported things. And clients can choose to support whatever (or no) vendor extensions that they want to. However, I agree with you that it's not very practical, but for different r…

> To still allow for competition, you define a base feature set and representation, and then you allow vendor extensions. You need some sort of standards body that can promote vendor extensions to standardized, supported things. And clients can choose to support whatever (or no) vendor extensions that they want to. Right. The problem is in the first step. The moment a consumer likes a vendor extension and begins rely…

That's just the tradeoff you make. The lock-in is only temporary until the new feature is standardized. If users like the non-standard feature enough to use it and want it in the standard, then it's a good thing. Otherwise you end up with stagnant crap and no innovation.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#997

Post by featherverse »

objclxt wrote: post #276
featherverse wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest not underestimating Mozilla's market influence. It would be possible to create a browser that displays DRM content and ignores DRM. The only thing that content publishers could do is ban that browser. And then it would adapt to disguise itself as other browsers. DRM on the web can only happen if all of the major players (that is, browser publishers) agree to play along. I am very excited about this ne…

> I would suggest not underestimating Mozilla's market influence. They have no market influence. They have maybe ~10% of the market globally (I've seen figures between 5-15%), and that's primarily desktop - which is decreasing daily. On mobile it's even worse (probably less than 1%). Any influence they have solely extends to the desktop, and that's not the primary way people are interacting with the internet nowadays…

> They have no market influence.

In other words you have no idea what you're talking about, and why should anything else you say be treated any differently?

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#998

Post by featherverse »

subroutine wrote: post #676
objclxt wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would suggest not underestimating Mozilla's market influence. They have no market influence. They have maybe ~10% of the market globally (I've seen figures between 5-15%), and that's primarily desktop - which is decreasing daily. On mobile it's even worse (probably less than 1%). Any influence they have solely extends to the desktop, and that's not the primary way people are interacting with the internet nowadays…

If what the above says is true (Though Im not sure it is possible), and Mozilla can provide a way to display DRM content without adopting DRM standard, I would think that would increase its marketshare.

You nailed it.

The user cares about access to content. The user does not care about DRM. The user does not care about corporate interests. Ad blockers are proof of this. The user wants what they want, and the people who provide that to them with the fewest hassles are the ones who win.

Everyone needs to appreciate that "cost" is a gigantic hassle to most people, no matter how much money they have. The concept of owning their content is another big consideration for people, which is why we saw "rental" models for video streaming fail in the past compared to "ownership" models.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#999

Post by featherverse »

admax88q wrote: post #683
featherverse wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest not underestimating Mozilla's market influence. It would be possible to create a browser that displays DRM content and ignores DRM. The only thing that content publishers could do is ban that browser. And then it would adapt to disguise itself as other browsers. DRM on the web can only happen if all of the major players (that is, browser publishers) agree to play along. I am very excited about this ne…

> It would be possible to create a browser that displays DRM content and ignores DRM. The DMCA makes this illegal. No browser vendor is going to take that risk. Maybe some anonymous developers will release a firefox fork or similar, but that's a big risk. Not to mention, most groups who pirate content tend to keep their methods secret and only release the content.

The only people who give a @!#$ about the DMCA are lawyers. It's going to be repealed eventually.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#1000

Post by featherverse »

jandrese wrote: post #16
wyager wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You build a plugin framework that lets users pirate keys without exposing the author to excessive DMCA risk.

I think the author of such a plugin would be at considerable legal risk.

So are all major piracy operations in existence today and yet most of them operate without any real penalties. Look at The Pirate Bay and Giganews, both of those have been operating under enormous "legal risk" for over a decade.

Piracy is never going away and this re-run of corporations trying to control content created by people (corporations are not people) will fail the same way that every single previous effort has failed. Piracy will outlive the old fools pushing for these programs.

I'm not saying piracy is the answer, but once these troublesome corporate fools have all died sanity will return to the market and piracy will be replaced by pro-consumer models.

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