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W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards

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Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards

#21

Post by Pxtl »

Funny how some of the largest sites on the internet can base their entire business model on stolen pictorial content - completely with stripping off the identifying information of the original artists - and nobody at the W3C bats an eye.

But the moment the MPAA muscles their way into the debate, suddenly we're all about DRM.

If you want DRM, you use a plug-in or a separate application. There's no reason that an app like Netflix or whatever can't use pure-HTML for everything but the video-stream and use a plug-in based object for the stream.

Keep HTML free.

Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards

#22

Post by AlexanderDhoore »

Touche wrote: post #15
tikhonj wrote: post #2

How will this work with open-source browsers like Firefox? After all, what's to stop somebody from publishing an extension or even a modified version of the browser itself? DRM seems fundamentally unenforceable, after all. Are the people pushing for this hoping it's just too much hassle? These questions aren't rhetorical: I'm interested in what exactly the DRM people are pushing and how they expect it to work. Just n…

DRM is not in the browser. The browser just acts as a gateway to allow the website to talk to a DRM component in the OS (or potentially in hardware).

Take for example a DRM protected video. That video is being send to the framebuffer of my video card. If I use an open source OS and open source Browser, what on earth is stopping me from capturing that video output?

Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards

#24

Post by jonahx »

Touche wrote: post #15
tikhonj wrote: post #2

How will this work with open-source browsers like Firefox? After all, what's to stop somebody from publishing an extension or even a modified version of the browser itself? DRM seems fundamentally unenforceable, after all. Are the people pushing for this hoping it's just too much hassle? These questions aren't rhetorical: I'm interested in what exactly the DRM people are pushing and how they expect it to work. Just n…

DRM is not in the browser. The browser just acts as a gateway to allow the website to talk to a DRM component in the OS (or potentially in hardware).

So at some point in the transaction you have to click "Allow" and install this component, similar to how a java applet works now?

Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards

#25

Post by Pxtl »

mikeryan wrote: post #18
tikhonj wrote: post #2

How will this work with open-source browsers like Firefox? After all, what's to stop somebody from publishing an extension or even a modified version of the browser itself? DRM seems fundamentally unenforceable, after all. Are the people pushing for this hoping it's just too much hassle? These questions aren't rhetorical: I'm interested in what exactly the DRM people are pushing and how they expect it to work. Just n…

The DRM isn't actually implemented by the browser its more of a plugin architecture (Encrypted Media Extensions) which commercial closed source DRM plugin can fill.

If it's just going to end-up plug-ins, I don't understand why DRM is being treated specifically at all instead of tweaks to the existing general-purpose plug-in architecture. If you want DRM, deal with Microsoft Silverlight or Adobe Flash or roll your own.

Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards

#26

Post by marshray »

jeremiep wrote: post #7
tikhonj wrote: post #2

How will this work with open-source browsers like Firefox? After all, what's to stop somebody from publishing an extension or even a modified version of the browser itself? DRM seems fundamentally unenforceable, after all. Are the people pushing for this hoping it's just too much hassle? These questions aren't rhetorical: I'm interested in what exactly the DRM people are pushing and how they expect it to work. Just n…

Most likely there was a lot of lobbying for this to happen. People with big money but no clue about how the internet really works. I'm quite surprised to see Tim Berners-Lee approve this in fact, I wonder what made him say yes to this.

We should watch closely what his career does next.

Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards

#27

Post by dubcanada »

jeremiep wrote: post #7
tikhonj wrote: post #2

How will this work with open-source browsers like Firefox? After all, what's to stop somebody from publishing an extension or even a modified version of the browser itself? DRM seems fundamentally unenforceable, after all. Are the people pushing for this hoping it's just too much hassle? These questions aren't rhetorical: I'm interested in what exactly the DRM people are pushing and how they expect it to work. Just n…

Most likely there was a lot of lobbying for this to happen. People with big money but no clue about how the internet really works. I'm quite surprised to see Tim Berners-Lee approve this in fact, I wonder what made him say yes to this.

It's actually mostly Netflix wanting this. They don't want to rely on SilverLight forever.

Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards

#29

Post by chadwickthebold »

I think that many people are drastically underestimating the effect this may have on the open web. The response "oh, well we'll just build a browser that will avoid the DRM" isn't going to work quite as well as one might hope. It's not such a stretch of the imagination that content providers will detect such browsers and refuse to supply any content at all. This would be similar to what many sites do now for users of IE6-8, where a message is displayed prompting them to upgrade. Except in this case a message would be displayed telling you to download an effectively locked-down browser. Ugh.

Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards

#30

Post by Touche »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #22
Touche wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRM is not in the browser. The browser just acts as a gateway to allow the website to talk to a DRM component in the OS (or potentially in hardware).

Take for example a DRM protected video. That video is being send to the framebuffer of my video card. If I use an open source OS and open source Browser, what on earth is stopping me from capturing that video output?

The website targets specific DRM schemes that they approve. Since your open source OS doesn't have any DRM schemes you're SOL.
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