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Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

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Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#251
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…

There is another party that you are ignoring. DRM is pushed by plataform sellers, and from the point ofview of the plataform sellers:

Intended effect - Lock people into your plataform, and externalize the cost into content distributors

Actual effect - Exactly as intended

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> forced You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Depends... He could live somewhere that he can't get access to legal copies of TV shows he wants to watch (Some TV shows take months, if ever, to show up locally). Or live somewhere like Australia where everything costs prohibitively more than elsewhere. If I want a TV show - Say House of Cards - and it's not available, or it's available much later than elsewhere, or it's prohibitively more pricey... They want the sh…

>> "They want the show and the only reasonable way to get it... then it will "force" people who want it to Piracy."

I would very much like a Ferrari California. It's unlikely I will ever be able to afford one - it is prohibitively expensive for me. I am not being forced to steal it. I understand like a rational human being should that if I can't afford something or it isn't available to me and it isn't essential to my survival I have no right to take it. I know that physical theft analogies aren't very good when comparing to piracy but seriously - you are not being forced to do anything. You make a choice to steal it. Whether that's morally right or wrong is your decision to make.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#253
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me tell you something about the state of the real world: The content Hollywood produces is already fully available on the Web. They try to fight that, but they lose. So the w3c is in no position where it is necessary to accommodate them to get their content. Besides, for the w3c, where is the business incentive, where is the money involved?

> The content Hollywood produces is already fully available on the Web. For people willing to pirate, it, yes. However, it's far less convenient to pirate movies and get them to your big screen TV than it was to use napster and listen to songs on your mp3 player. On the flip side, Netflix (i.e. content with DRM) accounts for roughly 1/3 of nightly internet traffic in the US. DRM facilitates consumer access to restric…

> For people willing to pirate, it, yes.

What good is protection against piracy from people not willing to pirate?

And no, pirated content is far more convenient than DRMed content. DRM can only reduce the conveninence, not increase.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can't get a pure HTML5 DRM experience! All the HTML5 bit is, is a Javascript API to a CDM decryptor that is every bit as crappy, proprietary, closed-source, insecure and buggy as Flash or Silverlight.

I'm still unclear as to how users are supposed to get the CDM decryptors. Are they installed like browser plugins? Or are OS vendors going to provide built-in ones for other companies to use? Either way, the actual user experience is going to be a pure HTML5 player. If I have to install something first, that's unfortunate, but once it's installed I'll never have to think about it again, unlike the current situation w…

Currently CDM decryptors are bundled with the browser, which in turn is generally locked to a particular OS or device. Browser vendors don't have to provide a way to install different decryptors and many of them aren't planning to.

Also, the actual user experience is not going to be a pure HTML5 player. Since this is intended to support hardware DRM that overlays the video onto the rendered page itself, sites have to assume the video is basically a rectangle crudely inserted into the page just like with plugins. They might be able to overlay stuff like controls on the top using HTML, but it's not clear if they'll even be able to rely on that.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've misunderstood the facts. The PS3 security was not fully compromised with the first hack, and locking down the console was a motivation to those who ended up cracking the security properly (news released December 2010). Watch this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEFMAP0mTvY#t=0

Doesn't change the fact that Hotz was working on the crack before otheros was removed. So, the removal of otheros was not the seminal moment that the op described. That is, the ps3 did not take so long to crack due to insufficient motivation. It took as long as it did, because it was a more difficult platform. There are similar trends in other areas as well like rooting/jailbreaking phones and installing Linux on UEF…

Hotz's hacking may have been a contributing factor for getting OtherOS removed, but it's removal does appear to be a motivation to those behind the more complete hacks that followed (I believe it's mentioned in the video series I linked to). So with a timeline of April 2010 to December 2010, fully exploiting the PS3 security took less than 12 months.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The content Hollywood produces is already fully available on the Web. For people willing to pirate, it, yes. However, it's far less convenient to pirate movies and get them to your big screen TV than it was to use napster and listen to songs on your mp3 player. On the flip side, Netflix (i.e. content with DRM) accounts for roughly 1/3 of nightly internet traffic in the US. DRM facilitates consumer access to restric…

I don't think it's the DRM that facilitate anything. DRM is a tradeoff between pirated stuff and going to the theater. Netflix is a legal Napster while Hollywood are content with DRM as good enough protection.

It does, in that it allows business agreements to be signed. Without DRM, old content industries aren't interested in playing.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's the DRM that facilitate anything. DRM is a tradeoff between pirated stuff and going to the theater. Netflix is a legal Napster while Hollywood are content with DRM as good enough protection.

It does, in that it allows business agreements to be signed. Without DRM, old content industries aren't interested in playing.

and we aren't interested in the old content industries. they are "considered harmful" at best

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The content Hollywood produces is already fully available on the Web. For people willing to pirate, it, yes. However, it's far less convenient to pirate movies and get them to your big screen TV than it was to use napster and listen to songs on your mp3 player. On the flip side, Netflix (i.e. content with DRM) accounts for roughly 1/3 of nightly internet traffic in the US. DRM facilitates consumer access to restric…

> For people willing to pirate, it, yes. What good is protection against piracy from people not willing to pirate? And no, pirated content is far more convenient than DRMed content. DRM can only reduce the conveninence, not increase.

> What good is protection against piracy from people not willing to pirate?

It's about business. Protection that works for 99.5% of the population is good enough for the old content industries. Netflix couldn't exist in its current form without DRM -- Netflix does not succeed because of novel technologies, but rather because of successful content licensing.

To be clear I'm not a fan of DRM, especially not when it's baked into the HTML standard.

> And no, pirated content is far more convenient than DRMed content.

I didn't say that - you're arguing against a position I didn't state.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#259
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even understand what the term "Open Web" even means. I don't see how driving video on the web away from flash and onto a standardized system is against the principals of openness, even if DRM is a requirement for content creators.

Because it's not standardised! Only the interop between the browser and CDM is standardised - the CDM itself is a closed-source, proprietary blob like Flash or Silverlight.

Actually, it's worse than that. The interop between the browser and CDM isn't standardised at all. The only thing this standardises is the browser API that websites should use to request that the browser communicate with the CDM on their behalf.

The interface between the browser and the CDM is proprietary and unspecified, so browser vendors and CDM providers have to negotiate that themselves. The format of the encrypted binary messages passed to the Javascript API is proprietary and unspecified. The API used to communicate with the license server is also proprietary and unspecified, so it doesn't even provide much interop from the media provider perspective - they still have to write a whole bunch of DRM-provider-specific code for every DRM scheme, and it looks like every browser vendor will have their own one.

Basically, it standardises just enough to give media providers the ability to claim they're using pure HTML5, without offering any more interoperability than if every browser vendor just had their own proprietary HTML5 extension for DRM. It's a PR stunt rather than a meaningful attempt at interoperability.

Re: Requirements for DRM in HTML are confidential

#260
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally as one of those pirates they are trying to stop piracy is only an issue when your content is not easily accessible the legal way or it is too expensive. I have experienced both. For instance songs are very cheap when your monthly income over £1,500 but when your monthly income is £300 (that's the equivalent in pounds in the country i grew up in) that's a bit too much for just one song. Same for everything…

You are NEVER forced to steal things that aren't essential to survival. Starving on the street and steal a loaf a bread, that's one thing. Don't want to participate in many varied ways of listen to music for free legally and so choosing to steal the next big album you want to hear, not ok, ever.

You are NEVER forced to steal bread. Don't want to participate in gathering seeds and wild fruits for free legally and choosing to steal bread, not ok, ever.

I guess "essential" has many definitions, huh...

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