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Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

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Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#161

Post by tzs »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #33
wmf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are versions that are public and I doubt the "secret" studio requirements are much different: http://www.microsoft.com/playready/licensing/compliance/ http://www.aacsla.com/license/AACS_Adopter_Agrmt_090605.pdf (see Exhibit E on p. 90) In reality these requirements are not set in stone; they are a business negotiation. The first version of iTMS did not meet the record labels' DRM "requirements", but Jobs convin…

Why do you say that Free Software people aren't willing to negotiate? We are very willing to; it's just that every suggestion we've made has been shot down. I think it's very clear who is unwilling to negotiate here. It's true, though, that there's one point on which we aren't willing to negotiate: any W3C-endorsed standard must be implementable by anyone who chooses, without paying royalties or licensing patents. EM…

By that argument, tar can never be a proper open standard, because people can put non-open things in tar files, or would you give tar a pass because open things can also be put in tar archives?

EME is similar. CDMs used to implement DRM will probably be non-open, but there is nothing that requires EME only be used for DRM. One obvious non-DRM use is for privacy protection.

For instance, once could design a pretty nifty photo sharing system that shares encrypted photos and uses EME to interface to the CDMs that decrypt the photos for display. The EME/CDM mechanism would allow this to be done in a more user-friendly way than the password and account based systems that are usually used for this kind of thing. The CDM necessary for such a photo sharing system could be completely open.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#162

Post by simias »

gfosco wrote: post #139
MichaelGG wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which seems more rooted in the overall ease-of-use and lock-in Steam creates as well as goodwill towards Valve from their games. Steam's terrible - fight them on a transaction, and you could lose your entire library.

Maybe if you're a total jerk about it?... I purchased the full iD collection once for like $90+, and the next day I requested a refund because several of the old titles didn't want to run. Despite the no-refund policy, they reversed the transaction. I've heard more positive stories than negative ones.

Are you in Europe? Because I'm pretty sure european law forces them to refund you in that case.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#163

Post by bitwize »

Nursie wrote: post #69

Great. DRM. The best example of shooting yourself in the foot ever. Give customers encrypted content and the keys, try to prevent them from freely using the two together, undermine copyright fair use and first sale doctrines as you go along. Intended effect - No Piracy Actual effect - Paying customers get crippled products, pirates carry on regardless It's crazy. And the more they try to lock it down the worse their…

Let me tell you how things work in the real world.

When the people with money say "we want this", you don't argue. It doesn't matter if it's technically infeasible. It doesn't matter if it won't have the intended effect. When the people with money want something, YOU GIVE IT TO THEM. And let them deal with the consequences. Otherwise, you won't get the business, and life can otherwise be made very, very difficult for you.

The people who run Hollywood have lots of money to play with. The people who run the Web companies want a piece of that action. Hollywood says "no can do unless we have reasonable assurance that due diligence has been done to prevent piracy -- that means DRM." DRM isn't really about being effective -- it's about providing a nominal barrier to piracy that will dissuade casual pirates outright, and in the case of serious pirates, provides something that can be "broken" so the studios can go after the person who broke it with civil and criminal copyright infringement claims. Now you know why the DMCA anticircumvention provisions exist: so the copyright industry can do with the law what DRM alone couldn't do.

So the Web either gets DRM, or Hollywood makes content available on proprietary platforms that provide it.

Money shapes reality in this world.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#164

Post by masklinn »

simonsarris wrote: post #107

I suppose that the title assertion is to be expected. DRM only works if you don't know how it works. ~~~ I'm not sure I see anything wrong with DRM per se (this could be my fever talking), there are probably good uses I'm too dim to think about, but I do think it's unnecessary as part of the HTML specification. There's no industry or company that has switched to DRM-free content, that I know of, that has failed or su…

> * For games, Steam makes it easy to avoid SecuROM Hell

Steam has its own DRM, and games distributed via steam may have additional third-party DRMs (including SecuROM and other similar shite).

IIRC GOG is only DRM-free games, although it is less convenient.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#165

Post by zmb_ »

MichaelGG wrote: post #126
eridius wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For games, Steam makes it easy to avoid SecuROM Hell Steam is not DRM-free. It's just gamer-accepted DRM.

Which seems more rooted in the overall ease-of-use and lock-in Steam creates as well as goodwill towards Valve from their games. Steam's terrible - fight them on a transaction, and you could lose your entire library.

You don't even have to fight them on a transaction to lose access to your library. My Steam client (on Mac) is hanging on startup every time and as a result I can't play the games I've bought and paid for. And of course Valve's customer support is doing nothing but sending canned replies.

Steam's DRM is still DRM and has all the downsides that come with it. You're exactly right that it's accepted by gamers due to Valve's cult status (which I honestly don't understand given that I only have mediocre to terrible experiences with their games and services) and the fact that people have bought huge libraries through Steam and have to defend their decisions.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#166

Post by static_typed »

Simple question: why do the muppets at W3 pervert the open Web to suit the content barons flailing business model, and should we as a community be looking to fork and abandon at this point for truly open standards on the Web, and a committee with members who possess the vital criteria of both backbone and the awareness of a little word called 'No', both of which they can use against the content tards when they come knocking.

And to all those who complain "but, I want drm, I want my Netflix" - Fuck you.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#167

Post by pmr_ »

byuu wrote: post #94
Nursie wrote: post #69

Great. DRM. The best example of shooting yourself in the foot ever. Give customers encrypted content and the keys, try to prevent them from freely using the two together, undermine copyright fair use and first sale doctrines as you go along. Intended effect - No Piracy Actual effect - Paying customers get crippled products, pirates carry on regardless It's crazy. And the more they try to lock it down the worse their…

The DRM is becoming increasingly complex and elaborate, and taking longer and longer to fully crack. Compare PS2 to PS3 crack times, for instance. The media executives are of the firm belief that unbreakable DRM is just around the corner, and that when they reach it, piracy will end and they can go back to charging whatever they want again. A return to the good old days of $25 CDs for one song you like and eight fill…

How much quality loss people are willing to accept if they are not really keen on the content is astonishing. If you go to the pirate bay and look at some of the comments on the tele-synced copies, R6 with hardcoded Chinese subs and all the other sub-par quality rips there still is a large amount of positive feedback. Sure, there is always someone who doesn't know what any of the cryptic abbreviations in the title mean and is upset about the quality, but those seem a minority to me.

I would really like to see more scientific results on how low the quality can be if the viewer doesn't exactly desire the content but uses it to just pass the time and how that compares to the price of going to the cinema.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#168

Post by threeseed »

gfosco wrote: post #139
MichaelGG wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which seems more rooted in the overall ease-of-use and lock-in Steam creates as well as goodwill towards Valve from their games. Steam's terrible - fight them on a transaction, and you could lose your entire library.

Maybe if you're a total jerk about it?... I purchased the full iD collection once for like $90+, and the next day I requested a refund because several of the old titles didn't want to run. Despite the no-refund policy, they reversed the transaction. I've heard more positive stories than negative ones.

Do you seriously not understand the situation ?

It's great that you had a good experience with your particular customer service agent. But what if you request a refund from someone who is feeling unwell that day, had a death in the family or is just feeling like being an asshole. Then you're account could be blocked with limited recourse.

In this day and age there really is limited point to DRM. Everything becomes available on Torrent sites anyway and all it ends up doing is treating legitimate, paying users as second class citizens.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#169

Post by onli »

simias wrote: post #162
gfosco wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if you're a total jerk about it?... I purchased the full iD collection once for like $90+, and the next day I requested a refund because several of the old titles didn't want to run. Despite the no-refund policy, they reversed the transaction. I've heard more positive stories than negative ones.

Are you in Europe? Because I'm pretty sure european law forces them to refund you in that case.

Sure, but they ignore the law. Had that with GTA 4, which didn't run fully because the integrated Microsoft-Always-Online-DRM didn't work. Got the "no refund" answer despite having a 8 year old account (at that time) and a not so small, albeit not massively large, library, and without ever having requested a refund before. I'm still angry about that and minimized my purchases there.

Edit: This also means, to the original comment, that Steam does not necessarily make it especially easy to evade SecuROM Hell or other DRM methods, as games on Steam can still have their own protection schemes. It only makes it easier insofar as those are normally marked and games have with Steam only another, better option. Maybe that was meant.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#170

Post by x123 »

nemothekid wrote: post #145
byuu wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DRM is becoming increasingly complex and elaborate, and taking longer and longer to fully crack. Compare PS2 to PS3 crack times, for instance. The media executives are of the firm belief that unbreakable DRM is just around the corner, and that when they reach it, piracy will end and they can go back to charging whatever they want again. A return to the good old days of $25 CDs for one song you like and eight fill…

The PS3 only went uncracked for so long because Sony offered the option to install Linux on the PS3. Once Sony removed that option the people with the smarts to crack the PS3 did so. Once a magnifying glass was put under the PS3 it turned out that the "DRM" was actually horribly implemented (like Rand() functions that were essentially returning constants). http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4lo.…

> The PS3 only went uncracked for so long because Sony offered the option to install Linux on the PS3. Once Sony removed that option the people with the smarts to crack the PS3 did so.

It's funny how the facts change over time. Just to correct the facts here: the reveal of the PS3 hack occured on January 26, 2010 and then OtherOS support was removed on April 1, 2010 citing security concerns as the rationale. And to top it off: if you look at the hacker's reasons for hacking, Linux was nowhere in his motivations.

Off topic: This is why I hate history. If we can't even remember what happened 3 years ago even if we have all records available at our fingerprints then how can we be sure what happened like 100 years ago?

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