If you have to distribute the key to the client (dvd player, browser, etc) isnt it just a matter of time before the key is discovered and the content can decrypted at will?
How does this standard prevent that?
W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
161–170 of 314 posts
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#162Ok, it sounds to me like this is way, way, over blown. First, the DRM is NOT going to be built into the browser it self. It's basically a new name for a plug in system, nothing more. So, to everyone who thinks they can roll their own browser and avoid the DRM, no you will not be able to. It's not bad or good for consumers, at best, it's about the same. It's very simple, studios will not allow you to rent their movies…
Consider that of the four major browser vendors (Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, Google) three are also major DRM vendors (Google's Widevine, Microsoft's PlayReady, and Apple's FairPlay).
What exactly do you think will prevent them from building their already-existing in-house DRM (three different systems, note!) into their own browsers?
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#163I wish a browser vendor would step up and say no to this. As in "we won't support a DRM future in the browser". Firefox, Chrome?
Mozilla (makers of Firefox) campaigned strongly against this in the W3C. But they haven't promised never to support DRM in their browser, and they are not likely to as it would marginalize their browser. What is more likely to happen is that they won't be able to pay the licensing fees for the DRM software and therefore won't include it, and then their browser will become marginalized. ("Firefox: the browser that can…
For a preview of how this approach would turn out for Mozilla, look at the H.264/WebM debacle. Mozilla refused to implement H.264 for a long time, but after Google reneged on its promise to drop support, Mozilla finally caved to keep its userbase.
I doubt they'd even try again, seeing as they've already seen this movie and know how it will end.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's a place where the next Tim Berners-Lee or Mozilla, if they were building a new browser from scratch, couldn't just look up the details of all the "Web" technologies. They'd have to negotiate and sign compliance agreements with a raft of DRM providers just to be fully standards-compliant and interoperable. I may be totally naive here, but I'm not really sure why this matters. That there is a WC3 standard does n…
It matters because of two things: 1 - We'll lose the W3C. We'll have to either create another standards body, or go back to the 90's situation when nobody agreed on anything. 2 - There are a few places where actualy reading the data somebody sent to you is a crime. Despite the drawbacks on those kinds of law, some of those places are still very importantly economically, and we can't just ignore them, at least for now…
> 1 - We'll lose the W3C. We'll have to either create another standards body, or go back to the 90's situation when nobody agreed on anything.
We already lost the W3C once for about 10 years. Remember XHTML and XHTML2? Those, and a bunch of special purpose not particularly interesting niche XML standards (P3P? XML-FO?) were pretty much all they worked on for a decade or so. It wasn't until the WHATWG was formed by some browser vendors who wanted to start working on a standard for features that users would actually want, rather than what architecture astronauts thought would be a nice design, and the W3C realized that's what people were actually interested in and so replaced XHTML2 with HTML5 based on the WHATWG spec that they actually became relevant again.
Now, I will have to give credit that there were still a few groups at the W3C doing work relevant to the actual open web, such as SVG and CSS. But given how the WHATWG took over work on the HTML standard and actually did work towards a standard that was useful and relevant to browser vendors when the W3C went off the rails the last time means that I'm not too worried if it goes off the rails again this time, you can always form another standards body if it becomes irrelevant. You just need to be sure to recognize this early on, so you don't waste too much time and effort waiting for the W3C to get its act together again.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Browser vendors don't have to implement any DRM scheme, but they will and sites will use them. What this means in practice is that there will be 100% standards compliant, pure HTML5 websites that can only legally be rendered in specific, proprietary browsers. The stated purpose of HTML5 EME is to make it a criminal offence under the DMCA anti-circumvention clause to develop an unauthorised browser or extension that d…
If anything it's the opposite. Defining a standard interface for content decryption allows such a system to be browser agnostic. You install a module and it works in any browser which implements the spec, whether proprietary or open source.
Yes, but it wont be OS agnostic. So it might work on all browsers on Windows but not in any one FreeBSD.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's a place where the next Tim Berners-Lee or Mozilla, if they were building a new browser from scratch, couldn't just look up the details of all the "Web" technologies. They'd have to negotiate and sign compliance agreements with a raft of DRM providers just to be fully standards-compliant and interoperable. I may be totally naive here, but I'm not really sure why this matters. That there is a WC3 standard does n…
"> It's a place where the next Tim Berners-Lee or Mozilla, if they were building a new browser from scratch, couldn't just look up the details of all the "Web" technologies. They'd have to negotiate and sign compliance agreements with a raft of DRM providers just to be fully standards-compliant and interoperable." What the hell are they even talking about here? Since when has ANY browser been "Fully, 100% W3C Complia…
Sure, not everything is standards-compliant, nor fully interoperable. But part of the transformative effect of open Internet standards has been that anyone can implement them without permission from others (indeed, the IP policy of the W3C is pretty much engineered to make this the case).
If you want to implement a DRM binary blob with EME, you're going to have to negotiate a compliance contract of some kind with the DRM vendor, probably connected to some hook IP. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_and_Robustness )
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#167Funny 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 l…
>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. That's exactly what this standard would allow.
Except the plugin is the responsibility of the browser, not them. This is effectively a way to shift the maintenance burden on browser and OS vendors.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#168"So long, and thanks for all the GIFs."
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anything it's the opposite. Defining a standard interface for content decryption allows such a system to be browser agnostic. You install a module and it works in any browser which implements the spec, whether proprietary or open source.
Yes, but it wont be OS agnostic. So it might work on all browsers on Windows but not in any one FreeBSD.
Not true at all, there is nothing in the spec that mandates the use of any particular OS.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#170I'm just curious about what all of you opposed to this would offer as an alternative to companies like Netflix or other streaming sites. No DRM? That's simply not going to fly. If you really want to undermine DRM in an honest and ethical manner, you should leave those DRM'd properties to their owners and support non-DRM media. How many of you listen to itunes media and are raging about this...
DRM-free is the way to go, and has been the way for music on iTunes since March 2009 (http://www.macworld.com/article/1137946/itunestore.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store#Movement_against_D...)
I seem to remember reports that iTunes sales increased quite a bit as they removed the DRM, indicating that removing DRM does indeed make the most business sense, not just the most moral sense or whatever. The best source I've been able to come up with quickly is this: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1022890/emi-drm-fre...