What happened to the concept of the User Agent being a representative of the user, not the content provider?
It is now a user-double-agent.
W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
81–90 of 314 posts
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#82Can someone PLEASE explain to me the following: If my computer is playing the video and playing the audio. How on God's green earth can they stop me from capturing that? ... It's playing right in front of me... I can hear and see it. It's not hidden or secret. Look. If you ask me, the only reason DRM has worked up to now, is because code/file formats/protocols were secret. People didn't have access to the source. But…
What makes you think DRM has worked up to now? Which content is unavailable for pirating because of DRM?
As far as I can tell DRM has only ever punished, and still only punishes, legitimate users.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#83I don't get it. If they want a plugin, they should build a plugin. Why would any sane person (1) create redundant infrastructure for DRM plugins (2) get all the same security problems and more just because some hipsters at Netflix get a hardon when they can't use HTML5 video tags and have to embed a plugin? We certainly shouldn't offload Netflixs woes with content producers onto every browser maker in existence.
What a bizarre discussion. Should have been laughed out from the first proposal.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#84This could have really huge and ugly long term consequences for search engines.
OTOH, with a little help from the OS to guard the path through to the HDMI spigot (which is probably already in place) I may be able to see all my Amazon Instant Prime content via my browser in HD. :-)
There's an upside to the downside. Some things will be closed by this and some things will be opened. The impact on the non-pirating media consumer will mostly be positive.
The impact on the cable companies and other parasitic channels through which content must now pass will, to our benefit, be negative since content producers will need them for nothing to maximize the returns on their investment. Many hands that dip into the revenue stream between the producer and the consumer to merely protect the stream can be easily eliminated. The same is true of all the various music channels from the labels through iTunes to Spotify.
I like this because artists and producers will be able to negotiate with us directly which will lower the cost and the motivation to pirate. I'm all for artists and producers making money on their work, but not all the various middle men this can remove from the picture.
I'm very concerned, however, about the possibly negative effect on things other than media content like the general flow of news and information. Any item of information can now easily carry a price for internet access independent of the channels through which it moves.
Verdict: mixed bag.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#85Look! The prison's so big you can't even see the walls! How nice.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the WHATWG's position on this? They represent the browser makers. If they support DRM then it's game over. Another break-away standards group won't be able to do anything to sway the browser makers. What could they do?
The WHATWG doesn't really "exist" in quite the same way that the W3C does. There isn't Process for obtaining an opinion that you can then ascribe to an organisation rather than one or more individuals. It only represents the browser makers insofar as the specs hosted at whatwg.org accurately reflect what browsers implement. Sometimes this is achived by adjusting the browsers to match the specs; oftentimes the opposit…
The W3C though is an organization you can buy. Their process is not reasonable and we should not recognise their authority. Especially after this.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#87The 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…
"> 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 Compliant"?? Answer: None. Ever. Seriously.
There are rafts of non-compliant features, both legacy and newly introduced, in every single one of the most popular modern web browsers. (Even Opera!!) Certainly, with the last decade of popular support pushing Browser Vendors towards W3C compliance, the web has been more standards-based than ever before.
But this is just a silly argument. I agree with the political aim of the EFF here. But let's not just invent things or misrepresent things. It makes them lose credibility in my eyes.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#88How will this work with open-source browsers like Firefox? After all, what's to stop somebody from publishing an extension or even a modified version of the browser itself? DRM seems fundamentally unenforceable, after all. Are the people pushing for this hoping it's just too much hassle? These questions aren't rhetorical: I'm interested in what exactly the DRM people are pushing and how they expect it to work. Just n…
I'm curious how with the whole open source community how this will be at all enforceable... there's nothing stopping me releasing a browser that says "To hell with DRM, I'm just not going to enforce any of it"... and because it's open source and out there in the wild, there's not a whole hell of a lot anyone can do to shut it down...
The idea is that the browser is going to ask some lower-level DRM system to decode everything, only displaying it to the user. In theory this is supposed to go all the way down to the TPM, so that you cannot subvert it with a debugger or rootkit. In practice, there will probably be bugs that lead to video streams being captured anyway, and the whole thing will only serve to further divide people and make free software harder to use.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#89Wow. This isn't just adapting DRM, they're literally saying that they can change the HTML5 standard at a whim and we'll only have access to the CC0 licensed spec.
Time to fork HTML5.
Re: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards
#90I don't understand why everyone is up in arms about this. Some content cannot go anywhere without DRM. That's not going to change. Do you think the Universal is just 6 months away from streaming the latest blockbuster with VP8 in a video tag? Right now we have Flash and Silverlight everywhere and it's a PITA. How open are those two? This adds the option of moving this stuff out of plugins. If you want to live in some…
There's a difference between a closed plugin and a closed browser. Let the DRM content stay in their plugins in their paywalled sites, while the web in general remains open and benefits from the creativity and innovation that flows from that openness.
EME CDMs are closed plugins for open browsers. It's literally the status quo except with a smaller breakage surface due to a more specialized purpose.