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

Post by johnbm » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 12:03 AM UTC

lambda wrote: post #164

marcosdumay wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so…

Post by nailer » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 12:17 AM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #10

cyrus_ wrote: post #3

The EFF has strong words about where this is taking the open web [1]: "A Web where you cannot cut and paste text; where your browser can't "Save As..." an image; where the "allowed" uses of saved files are monitored beyond the browser; where JavaScript is sealed away in opaque tombs; and maybe even where we can no longer effectively "View Source" on some sites, is a very different Web from the one we have today. It's…

> 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…

Post by makomk » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 12:22 AM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #206

toyg wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's nothing compelling plugin developers to support all OS/browser combinations, so no, in practice it likely won't be OS-agnostic. This scheme basically just creates a special class of plugins; these plugins clearly won't be OS-agnostic, because they can't -- that's the whole point of the exercise: to restrict playback to devices that are fully authorised/controlled from top to bottom, with the browser pipin…

Isn't this the same with all software? There is never anything mandating that anybody supports your OS or browser of choice. If I want to watch netflix or play GTA5 on my haiku box I'm SOL as it is unless there is a business case to be made for doing the port. This actually makes things easier. For example netflix currently uses silverlight for their streaming, this means that in order to watch netflix you need somet…

Post by jiggy2011 » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 12:44 AM UTC

makomk wrote: post #225

jiggy2011 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the same with all software? There is never anything mandating that anybody supports your OS or browser of choice. If I want to watch netflix or play GTA5 on my haiku box I'm SOL as it is unless there is a business case to be made for doing the port. This actually makes things easier. For example netflix currently uses silverlight for their streaming, this means that in order to watch netflix you need somet…

It's not the same because HTML5 EME is designed to ensure anyone who manages to get media working on unauthorized platforms can be arrested under the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA and other similar laws. As in, this was actually one of the stated requirements.

Post by snowwrestler » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 12:54 AM UTC

bzbarsky wrote: post #162

x0054 wrote: post #112

Ok, 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?