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The W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal for all web users

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Re: The W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal for all web users

#61
Consumers don't care about DRM or No-DRM they care about convenience. Large players do not care about technology either they just want control over their market. Under this circumstances the question is what stand should W3C take ?

Should they try to keep web as open as possible or should they play to the tunes of Google and Microsoft and introduce features that benefit them.

As I see it, web standards should be as open as possible.

Re: The W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal for all web users

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with it is it drives people out of the browser and onto insecure plugins which end up hosting botnets, or it drives people off the browser entirely and into a tablet app. I don't think getting people in the cultural habit of going to the App Store for all of their needs is beneficial in the long term for the Web. The more you keep people in the browser, the better for the Web.

If people are set on doing bad risky stuff, having a safer way of doing it is a social good. I don't do heroin, but if people are going to do it anyway, I support giving out clean needles for them.

(reply to below). Only if you consider DRM unethical. I don't consider non-free software, or DRM software unethical. I consider it shitty, and I am free to ignore it if I want.

You don't have any "right" to non-DRMed content. I say this as a person who hates DRM and who spent most of my youth cracking copyright disk protection on 8 and 16-bit software. I don't have a single atom of love for it, but software producers are perfectly within their rights to do it and you are perfectly within your rights not to buy or consume their content.

Re: The W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal for all web users

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are set on doing bad risky stuff, having a safer way of doing it is a social good. I don't do heroin, but if people are going to do it anyway, I support giving out clean needles for them.

(reply to below). Only if you consider DRM unethical. I don't consider non-free software, or DRM software unethical. I consider it shitty, and I am free to ignore it if I want. You don't have any "right" to non-DRMed content. I say this as a person who hates DRM and who spent most of my youth cracking copyright disk protection on 8 and 16-bit software. I don't have a single atom of love for it, but software producers…

I consider DRM unethical, but even besides that, it by definition implies privacy and security risk. You can't have safe DRM. I'd say producers aren't within their moral rights to push preemptive policing on people. That's where the unethical aspect comes in.

Re: The W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal for all web users

#64
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but at least it won't be polluted by technically ineffective and poorly justified nonsense put there to assuage the fears of a handful of ignorant content executives. It's just dumb. DRM is just dumb. It doesn't work for anything but the most naive case. It won't prevent distribution of "pirated" content, ever. I'm not asking for a DRM-free world, but I still hold out hope that if we continue to push back forcefu…

It's just dumb. DRM is just dumb. It doesn't work for anything but the most naive case. It won't prevent distribution of "pirated" content, ever. Steam's DRM is why I've bought more games than I've pirated. iTunes DRM was why I've bought more songs than I would've pirated. They were both more convenient than pirating the content. Is a distribution channel a form of DRM?

> iTunes DRM was why I've bought more songs than I would've pirated.

Which DRM are you talking about? iTunes hasn't had DRM on music for years. Like you said, iTunes being convenient is what makes it good. But iTunes is even better now that the DRM is gone (I can now play the songs I bought on non-Apple devices). I fail to see how you can argue that DRM doesn't make things worse.

Re: The W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal for all web users

#65

What is the complaint. It isn't clearly summed up here. Noone will force you to use DRM on your website. Noone will force you to browse websites that use DRM. What do you care what others choose to do with their sites and content, unless you believe you have the right to access everything everyone creates, in an unrestricted fashion, for free, in perpetuity.

> Noone will force you to browse websites that use DRM. If you want to stay legal and watch their content, you bet they will. Major networks will require their distributors to use this DRM. Sure, you don't have to use their content, but the point of fighting it is that we want to use their content and are trying to prevent them from this step.

Then don't watch their content, if you're morally opposed to how they're distributing it.

Re: The W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal for all web users

#66
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question - why is having a framework that allows for others to provide some form of DRM different from any other plugin system that exists currently?

If one unethical junk already exists, why another needs to be created and specifically in HTML? Let's keep the Web clean.

To play to devils advocate - because that other unethical junk requires additional downloads and poses multiple security vulnerabilities. Right? Why wouldn't a sort of 'native plugin' be better in every sense of the word for the end user?

Re: The W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal for all web users

#67
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but at least it won't be polluted by technically ineffective and poorly justified nonsense put there to assuage the fears of a handful of ignorant content executives. It's just dumb. DRM is just dumb. It doesn't work for anything but the most naive case. It won't prevent distribution of "pirated" content, ever. I'm not asking for a DRM-free world, but I still hold out hope that if we continue to push back forcefu…

It's just dumb. DRM is just dumb. It doesn't work for anything but the most naive case. It won't prevent distribution of "pirated" content, ever. Steam's DRM is why I've bought more games than I've pirated. iTunes DRM was why I've bought more songs than I would've pirated. They were both more convenient than pirating the content. Is a distribution channel a form of DRM?

Steam has changed my habits too, but it's due to the convenience, not the DRM.

Re: The W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal for all web users

#69

Consumers don't care about implementation, they only care about the content, and until they do, suppliers of content hold all the cards. There is nothing to be won by resisting hooks for DRM in the browser however appealing it seems to take a principled stand. The content suppliers will gleefully go with native apps, flash, silverlight, even Emscripten-cross-compiled codecs. With content consumption going mobile, the…

One should never deal with the bad guys.

Re: The W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal for all web users

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Noone will force you to browse websites that use DRM. If you want to stay legal and watch their content, you bet they will. Major networks will require their distributors to use this DRM. Sure, you don't have to use their content, but the point of fighting it is that we want to use their content and are trying to prevent them from this step.

Excellent point. We take away the previous held concept of possessing media, making money by renting it to you repeatedly, then lobbying Washington with the profits to make it illegal to not play by our rules, and you're addicted so you can't break the habit.

What? Addicted? Really?
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