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

181–190 of 280 posts

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#181

Post by Qantourisc »

shmerl wrote: post #113
cynicalkane wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. Steam is still DRMed and can be annoying enough. Try to get Loom there to play on your Scummvm and good luck with that. I don't use Steam since I don't want to support DRMed approach. I use GOG and other DRM free distributors for gaming.…

Steam is kind of the least worst DRM, why: it has more advantages ! - Easy installation, no hassle with CD's: Check - Automatic updates: Check - Price: Sales from time to time: Check - Does it get in the way ?: Only slightly. However there are quite a few bad risks attached: - Need internet ? Yes :( - Can the block your account and screw you over ? Yes :( - What if they go bankrupt ? So all in all I don't prefer steam, but for Linux atm it brings in a few games :)

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#182

Post by belorn »

icebraining wrote: post #174
dorian-graph wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see people often saying to vote with your wallet and then go illegally download whatever movie, TV show, videogame or piece of software—which I find kind of funny. Why don't people vote with their time? Don't watch something, for example. I suppose the main thing I find funny is how outrageous people become when something isn't provided which seems trivial to life. I live in Australia where it seems we are one of t…

Why don't people vote with their time? Don't watch something, for example. I'm not quite sure you understand the idea of voting. It's about making your preference known, and it doesn't quite work when your action has no impact on anyone else.

100% Correct. The only way a boycott works is by people taking a stand, and then letting everyone know about it. Same goes for canceling subscriptions, vegetarians boycotting MC-donalds, people staying home and not voting in elections, or hunger striking in a prison.

So the alternative to pay for an movie, TV show or videogame is to organize a movement to let people know about the issue. This happens. Remember people voting down Simcity on Amazon? Remember people producing jailbreaks? Remember people picketing outside studios or shops? All those are the alternatives to buying and supporting a broken businesses model. Pressing or not pressing a download button in silence has in contrast zero impact.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#183

Post by dorian-graph »

icebraining wrote: post #174
dorian-graph wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see people often saying to vote with your wallet and then go illegally download whatever movie, TV show, videogame or piece of software—which I find kind of funny. Why don't people vote with their time? Don't watch something, for example. I suppose the main thing I find funny is how outrageous people become when something isn't provided which seems trivial to life. I live in Australia where it seems we are one of t…

Why don't people vote with their time? Don't watch something, for example. I'm not quite sure you understand the idea of voting. It's about making your preference known, and it doesn't quite work when your action has no impact on anyone else.

Well, perhaps I don't. The reasoning was similar to that of money. People have indicated that if you stop paying for things (DRM-laded goods and services, for example) the companies will notice the lack of sales and change their behaviour accordingly. Now, for not watching, perhaps if they noticed that torrents that previously had tens of thousands of people downloading only had a handful—or better yet, the different warez groups/whatever stopped their releases—the companies would notice that people are making a stand by not even watching. Popularity of TV show x would go down and what happens when TV shows aren't popular? They're killed. Also, supposedly people pirate things, come to like them, and then buy them so limiting watching also leads to making your preference known.

I think that not watching could be even more powerful than not voting with your wallet. It shows greater self-control, dedication, etc. It says "Screw you guys, we won't even watch it!" Though, as mentioned in my previous post, I doubt many people would do that as they simply want something for free nor are they so invested in the whole anti-DRM thing.

Even if I don't understand voting, I would still love to hear why the hell people are so up in arms about not being able to watch a TV show especially so when their complaint is that it's released a week later. It would be fantastic to see the pirates look at themselves and what they're doing wrong. A last thing I would like too is an answer to a question: If I create something and will only sell it for $1000 and it is not a human right/basic necessity, if I ask or tell you to not acquire it and use it without paying, would you follow what I've said or ignore it? -- you here isn't meaning you, icebraining.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#184

Post by greggman »

mwcampbell wrote: post #82
cynicalkane wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a case of pushing at the margin; exposing more details of the CDM plugins than would otherwise be exposed. Opening the CDM spec is also a design win for reasons that should be obvious to people who've worked on software. It's been the general trend in web browsers to minimize the permissions you need to give to plugins--I would expect CDM plugins to evolve the same way.

You may be right about minimizing the permissions given to CDM plugins. In the current Chrome dev build, the Widevine CDM plugin is a Pepper plugin, which suggests that it might be sandboxed. However, DRM has sometimes been very over-reaching. Perhaps the most infamous example of this was the content protection introduced in Windows Vista, which went very deep into the OS. [1] After that, can we really expect that DR…

Being a Pepper plugin doesn't help at all. It's still a black box. It still has full access to your machine. It can not be sandboxed because it's up to the CDM to decide how to validate and how deep to connect to the machine. The CDM will want to control the bits from the time they get delivered to the CDM from the browser, all the way to the monitor with whatever tech the CDM author feels like employing.

Chrome can not validate the code nor the inputs to the code. It's a giant security hole. For all you know some CDM will just implement the blu-ray standard, Java and all. Yep, unsecured code execution.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#185

Post by duncan_bayne »

m_eiman wrote: post #179
duncan_bayne wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this standard - EME - isn't for CDMs, it's for the interface between CDMs and Javascript. So yes, your Linux-based browser might well have EME support. But if the company who makes the DRM CDM doesn't support Linux, you're out of luck. The existence of the EME standard does not in any way increase the likelihood of DRM vendors supporting any more platforms than they do now.

It does make it easier to add support to new platforms, though. If Linux support is just a recompile with a different compiler away (supposing the browser/plugin interface is a simple C API with no GUI), it's more likely to happen.

deep, calming breath

Please, have a read of the proposal. You'll see that a browser implementing EME does not make it any easier to compile a DRM plugin on a different operating system. The proposed standard has nothing to do with that whatsoever.

All the EME spec specifies is a way to interact with the plugin using Javascript.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#186

Post by jiggy2011 »

josteink wrote: post #180

This DRM proposition definitely needs all the resistance it can get. We cannot allow DRM into our wonderful, open standards. This is not an option. Not at any price. I'm honestly surprised that Mozilla haven't been more vocal about this issue. Have they issued any statements what so ever? Seeing what amazing things the web have enabled the last few decades, purely by being open, who are we to deny the future the same…

"Open standards" are about documenting interfaces in such a way as that any person could develop a compatible implementation, nothing more.

There is already a massive amount of proprietary tech running the web. From internet explorer to the secret algorithms used by google. Pretending that the web is some hippy utopia is not accurate.

This proposal simply describes a standard protocol for a DRM system to be able to talk to a web browser. If you don't want to use it, simply choose a browser that ships with it disabled or disable it yourself.

You're not going to lose access to your favorite sites because of this. The sites that would want to do this are already implementing paywalls or existing DRM systems.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#187

Post by Moto7451 »

icebraining wrote: post #174
dorian-graph wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see people often saying to vote with your wallet and then go illegally download whatever movie, TV show, videogame or piece of software—which I find kind of funny. Why don't people vote with their time? Don't watch something, for example. I suppose the main thing I find funny is how outrageous people become when something isn't provided which seems trivial to life. I live in Australia where it seems we are one of t…

Why don't people vote with their time? Don't watch something, for example. I'm not quite sure you understand the idea of voting. It's about making your preference known, and it doesn't quite work when your action has no impact on anyone else.

I disagree. If you don't like the policies of a studio, boycott their content. This is not a new concept by any means[1][2]. If a content provider lacks an audience, it's going to hurt them financially. It doesn't matter if its paid media like a movie or ad based media like a TV show.

[1]http://betanews.com/2008/07/08/angry-youtube-users-boycott-v...

[2]https://www.google.com/search?q=movie+studio+boycott

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#188

Post by blinker »

josteink wrote: post #176
blinker wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not supporting it would be bad for Firefox OS. It would mean that platform is locked out from streaming video solutions (ie. Netflix). This would discourage carriers from supporting Firefox OS. On desktop it doesn't matter so much. They have a marketshare to make a difference when they take a stand. However now that they're in the phone market, if no carrier will take Firefox OS due to the streaming video issue then…

I think you generalize the absurd US cellular carrier situation on to the world. Most places in the world you have carriers which provides phone services, accessible by a SIM-card, and you have phones, which accepts SIM cards. These are two entirely separate things which you choose entirely at your own bidding. You chose the carrier which provides you with a service matching your needs at a price you are willing to p…

I may be generalizing incorrectly but given Mozilla's lack of comment either for or against the W3C DRM initiative I think they're not wanting to jeopardize partner arrangements by saying anything negative. Even if they have no deals requiring DRM, why turn off potential partners with statements that don't need to be made yet.

Usually they're publicly all over this sort of thing. I don't see any Mozilla people commenting in this thread about what they think either which is unusual but probably wise.

On the other hand I don't see statements from Opera either and they're usually pretty anti this sort of thing. Maybe they're both doing behind the scenes work to scuttle the DRM initiative and don't want to make it public yet.

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#189

Post by b0rsuk »

Shorel wrote: post #142
shmerl wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Steam is still DRMed and can be annoying enough. Try to get Loom there to play on your Scummvm and good luck with that. I don't use Steam since I don't want to support DRMed approach. I use GOG and other DRM free distributors for gaming.…

My opinion is that Steam's DRM is as ethical as it can be, and the only thing wrong about it is accepting other additional schemes like GfWL on top of it. I will oppose other forms of DRM, like everything Sony has done, but I think companies like Valve have to be rewarded for doing something good for game studios and players alike. I see your stance the same as I see the RMS stance on software licenses. Too extreme t…

It's not totally bad, but can be better.

  * No lending your game to a friend
  * No selling.
Piracy exists not only because people don't like to pay. It also exists because of... generosity, and human nature in general. Pirates get warm fuzzy feeling when they share something.

Unlearning To Share: The Industry’s Hatred Of Generosity http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/05/23/unlearning-to-sha...

Re: EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

#190

Post by [deleted] »

cynicalkane wrote: post #52

The market problem is that people want to consume expensive art. There is billions of dollars of interest in making this market clear. The market will not go away because a bunch of hackers find it unethical. As the war on drugs has demonstrated, the market interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it. I see a lot of opposition to DRM on principle . These principles will go nowhere. The interesting question…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN