Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 280 posts

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#101

Post by youngerdryas »

cynicalkane wrote: post #91
shmerl wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the market interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it. You said it. DRM is close to censorship in its core idea - it's preemptive policing. The market will find routes around it. > I see a lot of opposition to DRM on principle. These principles will go nowhere. Not true. There is a lot of opposition in principle to the totalitarian approach (which DRM embodies). If there would be no opposition, then it w…

It's true that people are routing around existing DRM solutions. It's not true that this represents any threat to DRM. As the Steam platform has demonstrated, if you make paying the easy solution and piracy the hard one, the target audience (viz. people willing to pay money) will choose the easy one. The average consumer will not try to route around unfree information as long as it shows up when they click play. Poli…

Exactly. If your time has no value then all is free. Most people value their time, the system does not have to be perfect. People who claim there should be no copyright because the future is inevitable probably still go to the doctor.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#102

Post by jlgreco »

VonGuard wrote: post #93
jlgreco wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares if Netflix needs it? If Netflix wants to do DRM in the browser, then they can continue to do it the painful way with traditional proprietary plugins. Why should we oblige them and dirty the standard in the process?

Because not doing so concedes this type of market to Microsoft. Open standards are a way to ensure no specific company has control over stuff like this.

> Because not doing so concedes this type of market to Microsoft.

Bullshit.

1) I am able to gleefully avoid it these days, but in the past flash worked with Linux. Furthermore, all relevant DRM systems work with Apple devices including OSX. Netflix works on Android, and on Google's ChromeOS.

2) Even if it did, who gives a shit? I'd rather have people who absolutely must watch netflix on their laptop do it with windows than have the standard dirtied with this shit.

3) Nothing about this shit being added to the standard will make Netflix work on Linux with open-source browsers anyway.

You are high if you think this will allow you to use Netflix on your GNU/Linux box. Netflix already has their shit working with google-chrome, on a Linux kernel, in ChromeOS (Linux, but not "GNUy", for lack of better terminology). They don't allow that to work with regular GNU/Linux because they don't trust the rest of the stack to keep their precious bits secret.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#103

Post by throwaway2048 »

mythz wrote: post #57
mikeash wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does. "Don't" is a perfectly reasonable solution here. It won't satisfy all parties, but not all parties are worth satisfying.

The future of everyone being able to view online video (e.g. Netflix/Hulu/BBC) without a plugin is not getting anywhere closer.

EME is just as much of a platform specific closed source plugin as flash or silverlight.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#104

Post by jlgreco »

dragonwriter wrote: post #98
jlgreco wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares if Netflix needs it? If Netflix wants to do DRM in the browser, then they can continue to do it the painful way with traditional proprietary plugins. Why should we oblige them and dirty the standard in the process?

> Who cares if Netflix needs it? If Netflix wants to do DRM in the browser, then they can continue to do it the painful way with traditional proprietary plugins. I thought part of the reason for DRM-plugins-with-standardized-hooks-in-HTML is that it was the one particularly widely-used current use case for plugins that browser vendors weren't aiming to replace completely internally with HTML, CSS, and/or JS APIs, and…

Why do you think they want to switch away from the old general purpose proprietary plugin mechanisms, which are specific to the browser?

Because that stuff is a pain in the ass.

I say let us keep it that way.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#105

Post by VonGuard »

jlgreco wrote: post #102
VonGuard wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because not doing so concedes this type of market to Microsoft. Open standards are a way to ensure no specific company has control over stuff like this.

> Because not doing so concedes this type of market to Microsoft. Bullshit. 1) I am able to gleefully avoid it these days, but in the past flash worked with Linux. Furthermore, all relevant DRM systems work with Apple devices including OSX. Netflix works on Android, and on Google's ChromeOS. 2) Even if it did, who gives a shit? I'd rather have people who absolutely must watch netflix on their laptop do it with window…

1, 2 good for you. 3 is EXACTLY what this is about, actually. Read about VP9.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#106

Post by shawnz »

smackmybishop wrote: post #75
shawnz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, I very much doubt this standard will make DRM more platform specific than it already is. Of course not! In fact, due to the nature of the web, it will make DRM in general less platform-specific! The problem is that HTML will become more platform-specific.

How will this make the binary-only, proprietary DRM blobs less platform specific, exactly?

I suspect most DRM today exists for Windows only. Thanks to Android, there are now a ton of consumer devices powered by Linux that can browse the web. If publishers started using EME, they would probably be encouraged to compile Windows and Linux blobs for this reason.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#107

Post by jlgreco »

VonGuard wrote: post #105
jlgreco wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because not doing so concedes this type of market to Microsoft. Bullshit. 1) I am able to gleefully avoid it these days, but in the past flash worked with Linux. Furthermore, all relevant DRM systems work with Apple devices including OSX. Netflix works on Android, and on Google's ChromeOS. 2) Even if it did, who gives a shit? I'd rather have people who absolutely must watch netflix on their laptop do it with window…

1, 2 good for you. 3 is EXACTLY what this is about, actually. Read about VP9.

VP9 has nothing to do with this.

Why would netflix build their CDM for Linux? (They wouldn't, and they won't.)

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#108

Post by taybenlor »

ivanca wrote: post #19
chris_mahan wrote: post #13

when I first heard of DRM in HTML5, the first thing that came to mind was that web apps would be encrypted, and that the only interface people would have would be mouse or touch. This would essentially make the web like blue-ray: great for consuming content and playing scripted games, and not-so-great for everyone else. Also, how long before "safe" browsers only allowed drm-encrypted web apps, to "protect consumers"?…

That's the only natural evolution; for example the news sites will say: "Why the movie industry have protection but we don't? We need HTML5 DRM in our writings, is our copyright less important than theirs? I say no sir!" And slowly an internet where you can't use browser extensions, where you can't copy anything you read, where you depend on the existence of a company, a functional internet connection to play (just o…

I feel like you're falling trap to the Slippery Slope fallacy

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#109

Post by betterunix »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #41
betterunix wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the "safe" browser thing will never happen, so long as open-source is alive" So people who choose to use only free software will be excluded from large parts of the web. How is that a good outcome?

I'm curious: how do you think an EME standard in HTML5 will change that? Just because your browser supports EME doesn't oblige CDM vendors to produce a version compatible with your platform.

That was my point: someone claimed that a special, DRM-enabled "safe browser" would never happen as long as there is open source, and I am saying that no, in fact, open source is not going to save us here. The problem is that there is almost no chance of an open source CDM, and a near-guarantee that proprietary CDMs will dominate. Open source browsers will either capitulate and include DRM, or fail to do so and languish in obscurity as their users find themselves increasingly unable to use the web.

It is not just about Hollywood. The New York Times will use DRM to try to enforce payments. Scientific journals will use DRM to stop people from sharing articles. Photos will be DRM'd by companies that want to force you to go online to view them, to pay extra for setting them as your background, etc. How long do you think Mozilla can hold out against the pressure to include DRM functionality?

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#110

Post by betterunix »

cynicalkane wrote: post #92
tomp wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post includes a lot of words, but none of these even attempt to justify your claim that there exists open, uncrackable DRM.

The whole reason I started this thread is that it doesn't currently exist but I think it should.

An open DRM system would die in minutes, because we would just hack it to return its secret key to the user. In any DRM system, something needs to be closed.
Post reply on HN