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Will Google Oppose DRM On HTML5 Video?
An anonymous reader let us know that "Mozilla has committed to not implement DRM in Firefox for WebM HTML5 video even though it is theoretically possible. Microsoft has asked Google and the WebM community several other questions that still have not been answered, but this one seems more important: will Google commit to keeping WebM in Chrome DRM-free? Does our community think that is important for the open web and free software?"
Direct Rendering manager belongs in the kernel, not in a user process ;) ;) ;)
Why are we leaving the decision up to Chrome? iOS devices are a giant chunk of the mobile market and play H.264 fine, and so do Android devices and Palm's WebOS. I'm not sure about Blackberry, but it's odd that Windows Mobile doesn't support H.264 given Microsoft's support of it. Also sites like YouTube's Mobile site are using H.264.
In light of all this, why is WebM such a big deal? Are there any vendors (aside from Google) that have products out using it (or using only it)?
Funny, I thought DRM was theoretically impossible. Something to do with Bob and Eve being the same person.
PEOPLE WILL
PEOPLE DO
ain't that from the 70's?
DRM can be effectively and easily implemented by XORing a Copyright Notice on top of the data. it's as good a measure as any, costs virtually nothing in terms of performance, does not interfere with distribution mechanisms (IP Multicast for example), can be "claimed" to be "encryption" under the DMCA, and makes it bluntly, bluntly clear that anyone dumb enough to remove it and spread the resultant file around the internet is DEFINITELY violating Copyright.
even as a free software developer (apart from the stupidity of the DMCA itself, which destroyed opportunities for me to make money from some of my skills and abilities), i see no reason why such a simple broadcastable scheme should not be more widely deployed.
Flash will continue to persist on a large scale until such a time that HTML video is standardized and has acceptable DRM written into the standard. Until that happens, publishers simply aren't going to stop using Flash. Mozilla is shooting themselves in the foot, and Google will be doing so as well if they make the same decision.
DRM isn't evil, people. Publishers WANT you to be able to view their content, or they wouldn't be putting it online. They wouldn't implement some DRM scheme that would ruin your ability to watch it, or why even publish it? They are NOT, however, going to publish it without some sort of control mechanism. If Mozilla and Google don't realize this soon, then all the effort they've been putting into the HTML video standard is for nothing.
// ok, not that funny, but what can I say? I'm a karma-whore-wannabee.
So Mozilla wants everyone to switch to WebM, but also thinks that a company like Hulu would be happy if people were able to download it's content by looking at the source code and seeing ??? Really? Come on now. There's standing up for a "free" internet and then also making sure that people can't easily steal web video content with a simple click. NO business in their right mind would agree to something like that.
If you're confused by the fact that Direct Rendering Manager and Digital Restrictions Management share abbreviations, what name would you recommend to replace Digital Restrictions Management?
I spent a long time opposed to DRM because of the lock in effect. Except that reality has pretty much rendered DRM as obsolete.
DRM does not and has not protected video game publishers.
DRM does not and has not prevented every significant song, movie, or other work from being easily, readily, and widely available on torrents.
DRM does not and has not generally resulted in an improved customer experience.
In a very real sense, it is frequently easier to use the pirate version of a game than the normal one. I love the GTA series on PC, and every single game I ever purchased I almost immediately installed the No-CD cracks. Yes, that's right. I bought all the games of GTA I ever played, and I cracked all of them just so I didn't have to dicker with the stupid DRM.
So, other than annoy the end users, what purpose does DRM serve?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
For DRM to work(to the degree that it ever does) it has to be implemented in something that the user cannot successfully modify to be less user hostile.
Hardware, because it is comparatively difficult and expensive to modify, generally poses the greatest obstacles to the user.
Closed source software, if sufficiently crafty, can be comparatively difficult(but much cheaper, so it usually falls faster).
OSS, by design, is modifiable, so it would last mere minutes. Is it nice that Mozilla won't do DRM? Sure. Would Mozilla committing to DRM stop Iceweasel from being released in a 100% compatible except when it comes to shafting the user build about 20 minutes later? No.
That is what I don't understand about this "question". Obviously, it would be architecturally trivial to add a 'dontcopythatfloppy' option to the HTML5 Video tag. However, nothing short of the wholesale annihilation of the general-purpose computer and its replacement by a dystopian mass of tivoized appliances and TPM-backed "secure remote attestation" mechanisms would make it remotely relevant. Barring such an outcome, "DRM" would essentially be a polite request to the browser that it please hide the "download" button.
Right now the BBC serves H.264 streams via flash and it has pretty lousy performance (Flash) or pretty awesome performance (via the same stream in XBMC). If they want to shed Flash entirely and still serve a large proportion of the web then a limited amount of content protection is almost inevitable because the content producers (ie, not the BBC but the people who own some of the shows they broadcast) demand it.
Sure, ideally there would be no content protection at all (it really doesn't affect the free distribution of the content at all) but right now that is just not a reality.
I would love BBC iPlayer to be able to serve H.264 with HTML5 (it already does to iPhone user agent strings) since it would free me from the flash performance hog that makes HD streams stutter even on a powerful desktop machine. It won't happen if a sizeable portion of the browser market won't support it.
I'm only talking about iPlayer here, but it applies to many video services across the web - trying to force the DRM hand too early will just perpetuate Flash.
In the long gap between Windows Mobile 6 Professional and Windows Phone 7, iOS rose to handily beats mobile Windows. Only recently did Android, a mobile environment using the Linux kernel, surpass it in installed base. In addition, with Google's failure to certify devices that aren't phones for Android Market access, iPod touch holds a virtual monopoly on PDAs that aren't phones.
Actual working DRM serves to somewhat slow down release groups operating in countries that lack a counterpart to the U.S. DMCA.
Without DRM support, they can only play non-DRMed content. With it, they can play both DRM and non-DRM content.
To most people, that's a win, and it's one of the problems limiting Linux adoption right now. People WANT to play their netflix streams an blu-ray disks. Linux can't do that, but systems with DRM support can.
So it'd be foolish of anyone to promise they won't support DRM. If the next browser over supports it, then yours loses market share as people move to a platform that meets their needs.
i keep having to point this out to people, time and time again: broadcasting and DRM are mutually exclusively incompatible. Free Software people recognise this, and anyone who fails to recognise it is just plain dumb. or is being paid to pretend to be dumb. let's do a simple maths demo. go get your calculator, and hit the following buttons: type in 1, then hit "-". then type 1000, then hit 1/x, then hit equals. then hit "power (x/y)" and then 1000 again. press equals, and you should have 0.36769 or thereabouts. now do the same, substituting 10,000, then 100,000, then 1,000,000 and keep doing that until you reach the limit of the digits of your calculator.
the number displayed on your screen is 1/e (2.7818281828) which should mean something to you.
now do this: instead of 0.999999 to the power of 1000000, try even something like 0.9999998 to the power of 1000000. you should notice something VERY quickly: it's almost zero. now try 0.9999991 to the power of 1000000 - you should notice something even more startling: it's almost 1.
this demonstrates something very very simple: that it doesn't MATTER how complex the DRM is (0.0000001 or 0.00000001 probability of one person breaking it) - sheer weight of numbers of people around the world WILL break it, period. that really is the end of the matter. the sooner that people recognise and accept this, the sooner we can get on with something more constructive to do with our time, such as watching the next episode of Stargate on the device of OUR choice.
DRM does not and has not protected video game publishers.
Yes it does. The digital restrictions management on video game consoles protects established video game publishers from competition from smaller indie developers. Console makers have a history of not granting licenses to micro-ISVs, and "homebrew" software relies on fragile jailbreaks that the console maker can and does fix with an update to the console's firmware.
So, you didn't even read the subject line this time? Just saw "google" and "html5 video" and noticed it was time for some anti-google FUD?
c++;
because it's royalty-free for implementations of VP8 algorithms when those algorithms are free software implementations. this is HIGHLY significant when it comes to cost-sensitive products. even the MPEG LA group has recognised the importance of automatic royalty-free patent grants, in their call for contributions to the upcoming MPEG-2 algorithm. you should read slashdot, you know ;) or did you miss these stories last week, or did you not understand the significance?
Door locks don't keep burglars or determined attackers out, either. So, what purpose do they serve?
They make it hard to *casually* invade a room or building. They make it so there's at least a small hassle involved.
I think it's more or less true that carrots probably work better than sticks -- it's probably better to combat piracy with affordable prices, convenient availability, and a feelgood sense of legitimacy. But I can kindof understand why some content purveyors would also want to do something to stop casual piracy. And as long as DRM is optional -- as long as every codec that allows DRM also allows un-DRM'd content -- I don't see a problem with letting people see how offering restricted content works out for them.
Tweet, tweet.
I think the point he's making is that if there's no standards-based mechanism for delivering DRM-protected video, content providers will simply keep using Flash to do it, reducing interoperability and leading to inferior user experience.
Which is a fair point.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
Given the whole "living standard" shite re: HTML5, we're already fucked anyways.
Also, wtf is this tripe regarding "having to wait before posting short flames?" :-\
Anyone catch that?
Mozilla committed to not implement DRM in Fidonet
DRM is ONLY a factor for your LEGITIMATE customers.
And, eventually, that DRM will be out-dated and your LEGITIMATE customers will no longer have access to material that they LEGITIMATELY paid for.
I have CD's that I purchased 20+ years ago that still work.
How many of you can play content from a DRM limited product from 10 years ago?
I'm building a website where I hope people can either post videos or where at least they can embed open videos. DRM doesn't help anyone. It is important to have a free and open internet. A shopping mall is a closed space, where business people can have their mall cops do whatever. The internet is like a public park. Short of being drunk and disorderly, people are allowed to do what they like. Its a public space. DRM reaks of private space; it builds fences and borders, not an open public space. Its in the nature of microsoft to monetize everything they see. HTML is in the public space. Keep it DRM free.
HTML5 is a W3C standard. A standard can't be anything but open. A DRM scheme can't be anything but closed.
Problem is, there can't really be a standards-based mechanism for delivering DRM anything, at least not in the sense of open standards on the Web.
Right now, if I stick to HTML5 and stuff like WebM, there is the theoretical possibility of me taking nothing but existing open source stuff, or even starting from scratch, and writing software that can consume that media. Pretty much any DRM which allowed me to do that wouldn't really be doing its job as DRM.
The better route is to suck it up and leave the DRM behind.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If web video is going to get DRM, the "client" will have to be implemented by a trusted party.
Google can play the role, but I don't think Mozilla can.
So if DRM is going to be implement it will need support from the OS - where the OS plays gatekeeper, and browsers relying on it for decoding.**
I don't see a problem to be honest with DRM for web video, it would be up to the content creators whether they want their video protected by DRM.
Those who don't want DRM can just post without it.
**Ya, I know, problem for Linux. Some day they will probably move it into hardware like on the video card itself.
like ... What is D.R.M. ?
The better route is to suck it up and leave the DRM behind.
We can't really decide that, content providers will. And instead of using WebM and HTML5, they will use Flash, Silverlight or other plugins that do provide DRM methods.
If we want content providers and sites to use HTML5, we need to provide the tools they need. No matter how much you hate it, DRM is one of them.
More importantly, how do I get the WebM video I just downloaded to work in my iPod? Or my TV? They only do Apple and MPEG codecs.
I can't help with your iPod, and in fact, Apple's poor support for free formats is part of why I bought a Samsung Pebble instead of an iPod shuffle and an Archos 43 instead of an iPod touch. But you can play WebM on your television with a home theater PC.
I hate DRM on purchased music/video downloads. But for streaming services it is absolutely necessary, and not to keep dedicated pirates from stealing content. For streaming services such as netflix it keeps honest users honest. Netflix allows 5 devices per account and you can only stream when you are paying the subscription fee. If there was no DRM, then there would be easily available programs that would let you download movies to your computer to be watched after canceling. And remove the 5 devices per account limit.
Honest users would do this, but with DRM they would not. It is in some ways similar to anti-shoplifing measures at retail stores. Sure a professional shoplifter can avoid this, but it provides enough security to keep the honest shoppers honest.
because it's royalty-free for implementations of VP8 algorithms
It's free of royalties from Google, but third parties that Google doesn't yet know about may hold essential patents and join a patent pool that MPEG-LA is forming.
even the MPEG LA group has recognised the importance of automatic royalty-free patent grants, in their call for contributions to the upcoming MPEG-2 algorithm.
MPEG and MPEG-LA are separate organization, and MPEG-2 is the codec used for DVD and US digital TV, not the new royalty-free MPEG standard effort.
Once Google states no DRM in WebM, Microsoft will win the battle and get hollywood on their side by offering DRM in whatever they cook up. That's the only reason they're asking this question. Without DRM there is no Netflix in HTLM 5 and for that matter any number of video options that may exist because the xxIA's require it.
no, DRM makes things not searchable... there's no way Google wants that. Most of what's on YouTube doesn't NEED DRM...
The whole point of HTML5 video is so that "everyman" can use video services... for family videos... i.e all the crap that's on YouTube, Flickr, picassa, etc. HTML5 video isn't about SELLING videos... it's something that should have been done ten years ago... why should every browser not support a modern video format, like they support gif, png, jpeg? That's what everybody misses in this discussion. Everybody has their own DRM versions... I don't really see those going away, there's no reason the big guys like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe will have their own anyway...
The whole thing is bogus anyway... the big guys aren't going to give up their private DRM schemes anyway... all they're doing is stalling the process to fuck over the little people. Once Open HTML5 video hits and Google and Mozilla start implementing it then Apple and Microsoft will come along. Hell, if Adobe was clever they'd tack Vorbis and WebM into the next Flash and all the enterprise businesses would be none the wiser and keep using IE6!
A MSN blog? No way I am going to read that crap!
... so whether or not it has DRM is unimportant.
Which current web standards require a license fee to implement?
Which of the two video formats would require a license fee to implement?
Which would be better suited for the web?
Besides, why would MS have a say in interoperable web video formats when their next browser won't even work on a large portion of their users' systems? They have demonstrated being incapable of making even their own product interoperable with their other products.
Microsoft's usage share is dropping every month and with far superior competitors out there (all the other major browsers) that actually have a decent track-records for playing nice, I hope it's just a matter of time before MSIE is dead and gone. Long live !
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
How the hell would firefox and chrome implement drm? For it to even work they'd have to keep it closed source, or else any one could just read the source code to find the keys or read decrypted data. DRM on the desktop has always been dependent on obfuscation. Spend enough time starting at a disassembler and you'd get bluray keys, for example. TPM isn't close to protecting media. I can't see google or mozilla publishing a closed source library to decrypt video content. Even if they did, it would have to have a public interface like get_decrypted_frame. It would be super easy to attach a debugger and get the decrypted data, or just write your own program that links against the drm library to decrypt your data.
A video decoder needs the raw video bytes in order to update a frame buffer for display on the graphics card. Therefore somewhere between receiving an encrypted stream of bytes and processing a raw stream of video bytes, the decryption needs to happen.
In classical cryptography the objective is to protect a message that Alice sends to Bob from a man in the middle. However, with DRM, there is no man in the middle. To address this conundrum, a secure channel of communication between the provider and the consumer of a stream is setup such that the private key of the consumer is assembled from some unique hardware parameters. If the user knew the private key, then the secure channel would be broken.
Hence the objective in DRM becomes an absurd exercise in obscuring the client private key. The entire "security" of the DRM process relies centrally on obscurity. The "obscure" part is exactly how the private client key is built and what methods and protocols of encryption are used.
With open-source however, no protocol will be obscure and no method to assembly a client key will be obscure. Therefore it is impossible to implement DRM in open source, because the whole premise of DRM relies on implementation obscurity, and the whole premise of open-source relies in implementation transparency.
Experiments and other stuff
WebM is inferior. It's almost as bad as viewing MPEG2
No, MPEG-2 is several steps down from VP8. From most to least efficient, as I understand it, quality comparisons have run as follows:
but seriously, is Apple going to give up Quicktime and Fairplay? Is Microsoft going to give up h.264 and Windows Media Player? keep dreaming kids. None of the big companies have any intention of using "open" HTML5 video anyway. I wish Google, Opera, Mozilla, & the W3C would cut them off and stop listening to them.
Once Open HTML5 video hits and Google and Mozilla start implementing it then Apple and Microsoft will come along.
Umm, Apple is driving the adoption of HTML5 video. It's already there. I can watch HTML5 video in Safari just fine now using any codec I've installed including Ogg, and HTML5 is really the only way to easily watch video on iPhones. It is an open standard implemented by multiple parties and has been for quite a while. Now whether or not specific companies preinstall specific codecs, is something else.
The intent of WebM is not to be the end all and be all of codecs and containers. It is meant to be an open standard that can be utilized by any one, not that has to be used by every one. Even if you included some form of DRM in WebM not every one would adopt it because some will want a different form of DRM or more specifically their form of DRM. IMHO adding DRM to WebM would be a death knell for it. You can't have free DRM it has to be closed and propriatary or it will be quickly bypassed. I'm not saying making DRM closed and proprietary saves DRM from being bypassed. Just that it can extend the length of time until it is cracked. And if you put DRM in WebM and it gets cracked what then? We abandon the standard for some thing else and every thing stops working? Is that how the internet is supposed to work?
But basically what DRM has succeeded at doing is keeping casual users from being able to pirate games (on consoles at least)
It's also succeeded at keeping casual users from being able to create what on PCs would be considered legitimate mods to the single-player or local multiplayer game, such as new characters, new campaigns, or fixes to game-breaking defects. This sort of digital imprimatur has thrown the participatory culture baby out with the copyright infringement bathwater.
If we want content providers and sites to use HTML5, we need to provide the tools they need. No matter how much you hate it, DRM is one of them.
I think you've got this exactly backwards. I think Content providers know full well there's a game of chicken here and they're scared shitless. That's why they are poisoning the well asking seemingly innocuous questions like "how will we deliver our video if you don't help us protect our rights?" They know they will fold and offer DRM-free delivery when DRM is impossible- Amazon already sells me DRM-free music, and Justin Bieber is still making great music. I see no reason to believe Netflix won't similarly capitulate.
because it's royalty-free for implementations of VP8 algorithms
It's free of royalties from Google, but third parties that Google doesn't yet know about may hold essential patents and join a patent pool that MPEG-LA is forming.
The same applies to h.264 incidentally - free from royalties from known patent holders that are members of the MPEG-LA, but third parties that they don't yet know about may hold essential patents. Same is true of almost anything in computing these days, sadly.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb975643.aspx
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
I don't know that they would. Netflix hits a pretty sweet price point for what they're offering. I'd actually say it's much more likely that the convenience of the service keeps dishonest users honest. I could very well go out and download whatever movie or television programs that I want, and often I do. But if it's available on Netflix streaming I won't even bother because I can just turn on the Xbox or PS3 and watch it whenever.
[AVC is] free from royalties from known patent holders that are members of the MPEG-LA, but third parties that they don't yet know about may hold essential patents.
Due to the cost of hiring lawyers and the lack of "statutory damages" in patent law, the economic bargain for an AVC patent holder outside MPEG-LA's pool is in favor of joining the pool rather than tossing lawsuits around left and right the way record labels have. A group of companies that discover patents that they hold that cover VP8 would form a similar pool and advertise it in cease-and-desist notices sent to a bunch of prominent VP8 users. Because the whole gimmick of VP8 is that it is royalty-free, this would kill VP8.
What I said still applies to Sony and Nintendo consoles.
Even considering XNA, how does one port an existing game written in standard C++ to XNA? The XNA environment runs only verifiably type-safe IL, and I'm not aware of any automated way to translate code written in standard C++ into any language that can be compiled to verifiably type-safe IL. There exists something called C++/CLI, but its verifiably type-safe subset is a syntax error in standard C++.
Well... :)
Patent holders DO have the right to prevent use/distribution of infringing "devices". So an" AVC patent holder outside MPEG-LA's pool" could use that right to force users, distributors and implementors into paying ridiculous, perhaps even retrospective, license fees, to continue operating. Given in many fields h.264 is so entrenched it would be almost impossible to change, some relatively large customers would just have to pay up. Plus - not all litigiously-minded companies decide that the sane economic approach is best, as some have proven in the last few years
is to be DRM free!
And my point was that nowhere in the subject, summary or article does google mention anything about not having DRM or having DRM. In fact, they don't say anything at all because the two links in the article are from Mozilla and Microsoft. The GP is just spreading FUD about google in this case. The headline is an open question asked by Microsoft.
c++;
That would be about as effective as DRM.
from the /. FAQ http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml
Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma. You have to be smart, not just a smart-ass.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Err... no. No one pirates from Netflix because all of their material is already on Pirate Bay before NetFlix gets it.
I'm not sure about Netflix, but the DRM that Hulu and BBC's iPlayer use, RTMPE, was broken a long time ago. However, while it's possible to find programs for saving the streams from these services, but there don't seem to be widely distributed, user friendly programs to do so. I don't see why the situation would necessarily be any different if there were no DRM at all. People seem sufficiently happy with the service Hulu and iPlayer provide that they're not going to the trouble of downloading software to get round the services terms and conditions.
And you know this for sure, how? Or are you just spreading (paid-for) FUD?
c++;
StreamTransport I'm not sure how much more user friendly you can get.
I've gone to bat for content providers before, and stood up for DRM as a best effort by content providers.
Knowing that though, given that HTML5 needs to be an open standard, attempting to implement DRM would be even more pointless. DRM video would be nearly impossible to implement in a meaningful way. Given that the content keys would have to be transmitted via http, a greasemonkey script, a proxy, firefox/chrome/safari/IE addon, etc. would all make implementing this incredibly difficult. Even if they used websockets or some other malarky, I think similar techniques would be able to easily defeat DRM systems implemented for HTML5.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I believe in the power of the market.
If customers want a harsh and unforgiving DRM increasing their costs for hardware and media, then they'll ask to buy it.
Therein lies the problem. People forget that Joe Public putting his holiday videos etc on his web site is just as much, and in some ways more important, a content provider as the TV stations and MPAA members. The HTML standard should be accessible for anyone, not just commercial content providers, to create web pages including multimedia.
Bingo! Give that man a ceeeegar! All Google has done by starting this little pissing contest between WebM and H.264 is make sure that flash wins by a country mile. Because whether FOSS users yell "free as in freedom" all day long or not the simple fact is there are millions of paysites out there and thanks to the pissing contest they will simply use a combo of H.264+flash.
Does anyone HONESTLY think all the paysites in the world are just gonna join hands with RMS and sing "free as in freedom" around the campfire? HELL NO! We are talking billions of dollars worth of content which we all know would end up on P2P 15 seconds after you dropped the DRM. So no DRM is WebM is just yet another reason (along with no iDevice support) why WebM is gonna bomb. If I am a website owner I can cover a good 99% of the planet by sticking with H.264+flash and simply keep a copy of the pre-wrapped H.264 file if I want to support iDevice users.
WebM brings NOTHING to the table, not better file sizes nor picture quality, and now no way to protect my content from ending up on P2P. Yeah, I don't think this is gonna fly.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
We are talking billions of dollars worth of content which we all know would end up on P2P 15 seconds after you dropped the DRM.
It already is, and will anyways regardless of any DRM both through the analogue hole and digital format. Even if people have to hack the protected pathway of windows or solder pickups into the unencrypted signal lines in their TV or monitor.. DRM just restricts fair use.
Right now, there are a lot of videos that are poorly labeled ("Hey, this is funny, watch it"), so I'd imagine Google is investigating searching the content of video. DRM would make this far more difficult, if even possible (legally). However, DRM would ensure sites like Youtube have more content from the major studios. It's a tricky position, as DRM would hurt Google's primary product, but perhaps increase ad-revenue in some of their others. I'm not sure which is the better move, since the latter is more profitable in the short-term, but the former promotes long-term relevance. Google is financially well off enough to be thinking long-term, but their investors might not be...
You're suggesting that they will simply do away with loss prevention if you resist long enough? 99 cents for a song probably isn't enough to get worked up about. If they make the price reasonable then DRM is not needed, however, there is a lot of content on the internet that is more valuable than 99 cents, and thinking that they will (or should) eliminate DRM for the greater good is foolish at best. Many of the free services you consume on the internet are based on profits business take in from other aspects and products on the internet. If you remove that profitability from more expensive services, you shoot yourself in the foot.
Not all DRM is bad, as long as it is reasonable and the price for the content is reasonable.
This decision won't change a thing. If Hollywood can't do what they want in HTML5 they will just stick with Silverlight or some other 'screw-the-user' solution.
The only certain thing about this decision is that it for sure will not achieve is its apparent objective of making DRM itself any less attractive to people that want to use it, like Hollywood or their bitches like Netflix.
All that will happen as a result of this decision is that Linux and other opensource users will be even more denied access to services implementing DRM. Netflix have already demonstrated that they don't give a crap about what their Linux customers think or do, including leave. Other websites are and will just adopt the same stance.
Actually, it's not even asked by Microsoft. If you follow the link to Microsoft blog in TFS and read through it, it does not talk about DRM at all. It talks about licensing of the codec and standardization model.
A digital-rights-"managed" web is not an open web. So it's essential to keep the common web DRM-free. DRM Is ok for deliberate use in payed communities or the like, but the general web is not vendor specific (as DRM for online content generally is).
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
As many times as ive been called a dork,i still cant help but find the posts funny(sarcasm reigns)but still so ever intelligent..
DORKS and NERDS Rock!!!
millions of paysites out there and thanks to the pissing contest they will simply use a combo of H.264+flash.
Netflix already uses Silverlight, so no, it's not just Flash winning. YouTube has a fair amount of their content working on HTML5. Would these "millions of paysites" be anything anyone cares about?
Does anyone HONESTLY think all the paysites in the world are just gonna join hands with RMS and sing "free as in freedom" around the campfire?
I didn't expect them to with respect to the rest of their websites, but it did happen once before. Firefox got big enough that they were forced to drop their "Works best in IE" buttons and make actually cross-browser sites. Safari and Chrome have finished the job -- there's now too many important browsers for any one browser to become a defacto standard, or for any website to just pick a browser and ignore the others.
I think this is what Chrome was trying to do here. I don't think that'll work by itself, but by the same token, do you really think an actual Web standard will deliberately adopt DRM?
We are talking billions of dollars worth of content which we all know would end up on P2P 15 seconds after you dropped the DRM.
Oh, it's all there. In fact, 15 seconds is about how much time the new iteration of your DRM buys you until your new content is up there too. That's assuming it's even done through the DRM after all -- quite a lot of piracy these days comes from insiders.
I admit I'm surprised there's anyone on Slashdot who still has the delusion that DRM is actually effective at preventing piracy. That's never been what it's about. As far as audio and video, it always has been about controlling legitimate use, not about preventing illegitimate use. It's about being able to sell you the song once on a CD, then again for your iPod, then again as a ringtone, then again every time one of your existing DRM'd versions screws up -- particularly when, say, a DRM-based service goes out of business and you suddenly have to buy all your music again.
If I am a website owner I can cover a good 99% of the planet by sticking with H.264+flash and simply keep a copy of the pre-wrapped H.264 file if I want to support iDevice users.
The better route, if you're going to stick to the H.264 file, would be to start with the HTML5 version, and gracefully degrade to the Flash version for browsers which don't support it. Why would you assume an iDevice is the only place where people would rather not have Flash?
It's also funny that you suggest this after bitching about the lack of DRM. Hey, guess what? H.264 vs WebM has nothing whatsoever to do with DRM. Using the H.264 version in HTML5 on the iDevice means you've got no DRM, so you're back to where you started.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
...It's already there. I can watch HTML5 video in Safari just fine now using any codec I've installed including Ogg, and HTML5 is really the only way to easily watch video on iPhones. It is an open standard implemented by multiple parties and has been for quite a while.
That's right. I can watch .ogv (Ogg video) files via Firefox 3.6 and using VLC (that very good open-source, cross-platform a/v player) http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. I didn't have to install any additional codecs. It's great for watching videos from conferences and expositions (and VLC has a full scripting API for browsers that don't yet support HTML5's <video> element). Both Firefox and VLC also handle fuill-screen playback quite well now.
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
Notice how I got modded down for daring to point out that "free as in freedom" doesn't always work? And as for the "analog hole" you might want to look up Janus DRM, which has been out nearly 5 years now with no major hacks because it supports kernel level DRM in Windows and OSX.
Look folks it really is simple: You can have DRM on the front in or lawsuits on the back end, which would you prefer? Would you prefer to have the content protected so that the one douchebag that posts everything he can get his hands on to P2P doesn't ruin it for everyone else, or would you like to see thousands of lawsuits ala the infamous "Shemale Yum" case we saw here a few months back?
It really is simple: Content owners need to make money or they will close down and bandwidth along with content creation costs. Now everyone wants the convenience of having everything on demand, and the content owners want to provide that to you without getting royally fucked over by the douchebag that posts everything to P2P, so how would YOU suggest they do it? And don't say "piracy exists you should ignore it" because we have seen without even token protection the piracy becomes truly rampant. IIRC the last numbers I saw was something like 86%+ of the adult videos on the "tube" sites are pirated content, and smaller films like The Hurt Locker are having to go after P2P users because the movie won't break even with all the piracy.
So how would YOU solve it? Just refuse to sell to web users? Do like Netflix and just ignore HTML V5 for Silverlight which supports Janus DRM? Because whether you like it or not content owners aren't gonna just put all their content in a format that is as easy to snatch as telling downloadhelper to download all, so you either make compromises or HTML V5 and WebM will BOTH end up being used only by niche players, just like Theora and Vorbis is now. H.264 can be wrapped in flash which supports DRM, and both .NET and Silverlight support Janus, so it isn't like the content owners don't have choices.
So what EXACTLY do you have to offer them besides "free as in freedom" which has no appeal to them whatsoever?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Whem Microsoft "asks" something, the only appropriate response is "Fuck off!". What, I believe, Google, Mozilla, and even Apple are well aware of.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Evidently you missed the 'wannabee' part of the above.
A nerd left a rude comment on a website !
Some lessons will have to be learned the hard way. How about this for a lesson? Multiple generations raised upon the demonstrated idea that they can't be trusted. Anyone with secrets want to hire individuals with a lack of respect for others?
Google is primarily driven by ad revenue so they will oppose anything that threatens their ability to make money on advertising and data mining your information.
All of those "free" services that Google offers are not actually free. You have to be willing to give up your freedom and anonymity to use them.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
And as for the "analog hole" you might want to look up Janus DRM, which has been out nearly 5 years now with no major hacks because it supports kernel level DRM in Windows and OSX.
Sure, because nothing really uses it. Netflix is easily the most popular thing that uses it and they never get any new content before it's out on DVD, so the pirates don't have any reason to bother with it. It's like claiming your vault is secure because no one has broken into it, except that nobody has any reason to try to break in because the vault contains nothing of value.
Also, it doesn't solve the analog hole. Or the fact that HDCP is thoroughly broken and would require bricking every television everywhere to replace.
You can have DRM on the front in or lawsuits on the back end, which would you prefer?
Lawsuits. Definitely lawsuits. Once the courts get tired of the industry's shenanigans and figure out a way to prevent witch hunts against innocent people, either the lawsuits will disappear too or they'll only target people who actually infringed copyright and will impose only reasonable damages for doing so. Unlike DRM which punishes paying customers who don't infringe anything.
It really is simple: Content owners need to make money or they will close down and bandwidth along with content creation costs. Now everyone wants the convenience of having everything on demand, and the content owners want to provide that to you without getting royally fucked over by the douchebag that posts everything to P2P, so how would YOU suggest they do it? And don't say "piracy exists you should ignore it" because we have seen without even token protection the piracy becomes truly rampant. IIRC the last numbers I saw was something like 86%+ of the adult videos on the "tube" sites are pirated content, and smaller films like The Hurt Locker are having to go after P2P users because the movie won't break even with all the piracy.
Everything is already on P2P notwithstanding the DRM and the major studios are still making plenty of money. The Hurt Locker didn't make any money because it was a crappy movie that people didn't want to watch. So yes, "piracy exists and you should ignore it."
Does our community think that is important for the open web and free software?
Do the editors think that no-one will see through their loaded questions???
then they wouldn't need to encrypt their content. After all, only people that encrypt stuff have something to hide, right?
Be seeing you...
Re:Kernel Level DRM. It doesn't matter, and that's not what the analoug hole is. The data has to be unencrypted somewhere for you to see it. Thus someone can take a HD camera, and point it at thier monitor and make copies of anything they can see. Also likewise the signal going into the LCD array is unencrypted, meaning you can tap those leads and record the data that way. And Janus like all other DRM schemes has bugs and weaknesses that can and will be exploited.
On lawsuits and P2P: Don't you get it, sharing istn't going away, there is no possible way technologicaly or legally to absolutely prevent some work from ending up in a torrent. Again back to the topic, DRM does not impede piracy only impedes use and fair use by your consumer. You fight piracy by providing a quality product at a fair price. You can also do it by providing and experience simply not availiable in the home, like putting your movie in a theater. People who want to support the arts will generally pay, and those that won't probably weren't weren't your customer in the first place. DRM tangibly reduces the quality and usability of your product making is less likely to successfully compete against the piracy that will happen unless you can encrypt data going into the optical nerve,
Yes, most DRM can be hacked in a matter of seconds or minutes or hours, depending on the DRM. Yes, if the format is put out in DRM, it will probably still end up on P2P sites. The problem is content owners want the "IMPRESSION" they are being secure with their content. It doesn't matter if the DRM is hacked after they send it out, at least they have given the appearance of trying to protect the content. Also, if they get into trouble with Shareholders, etc, they can then turn around and blame the DRM provider.
Scott Carr
True, but indie game devs usually do not have the man power to develop in C++
My experience differs. And even you disbelieve that it does, please replace "C++" in my comment with "any language not known to compile to IL that 1. is verifiably type-safe and 2. doesn't use Reflection.Emit". One situation is that someone has an existing game in an "unsafe" language working on one platform and wants to port it to 360. Or that a scripting language engine works on the DLR but the 360 doesn't support the DLR because the 360 lacks Reflection.Emit (source). Just as your team has skilled F# coders, my team has skilled Python coders, but IronPython uses facilities that aren't present on the 360.
And even beyond programming language barriers, the Xbox Live Indie Games review policy bans any written or spoken text in a constructed language. This would appear to ban the plot device of a community that speaks a foreign language until you get a plot coupon representing having learned that language, after which the translation convention sets in and you begin to see or hear that foreign language as English or whatever other language you're playing the game in.
An order of magnitude means a factor of ten. Three orders of magnitude are a factor of 10*10*10, or a thousand. "A few orders of magnitude" sounds like three orders of magnitude. Three orders of magnitude over last June's iDevice count would be a hundred billion. I have trouble believing that there are a hundred billion PCs in use, fourteen for every man, woman, and child in rich and poor countries.
Remember when all the content providers protested that nobody would broadcast anything in digital if the broadcast flag was struck down? How did that work out?
So in other words the answer to why they should go to HTML V5 is "they shouldn't, as we won't give you what you want since we are Pirate party. Please stick with Silverlight and .Net so that FOSS users can't have native access at all, like with Netflix. Thanks"
So glad you cleared that up! Of course I figure ultimately that is what is gonna happen anyway, as FOSS has been tilting at the DRM windmill for nearly 15 years now and have made squat for headway which in a way is sad, but really not surprising. But all you are doing is cutting off your nose to spite your face as the "must have" ATM and for the foreseeable future is Netflix which without DRM will NEVER run native on Linux which simply gives both Windows and OSX a "killer app" that makes them more valuable to the common user.
So in the end Google making HTML V5 into a FOSS battle will do jack and squat and will probably kill the video tag dead except for a tiny niche ala Vorbis and Theora. Despite what Google thinks Youtube isn't the only video site on the web, not by a long shot, and it will be trivial for content owners to simply go elsewhere if they desire. So my prediction is this: the "winner" of the HTML V5 fight will be....drum roll....Flash! It will be H.264 in a flash wrapper followed by Silverlight and .NET because all of these formats allow for DRM which whether you like it or not the majority of content owners aren't gonna just go DRM free ala .mp3.
The ONLY reason you have DRM free music right now is Apple, and their attempts to get into the video business have frankly failed when compared to iPod's dominance of music. Since Apple supports H.264 and has deals with MSFT to support Janus my guess is a Silverlight or .NET Janus based DRM for iDevices and Flash for everyone else. But hey, please enjoy your completely free an open design that is only supported by less than 2% of the video out there! While DRM free everything is nice in theory reality has a way of nipping those ideas in the bud, and if anything we are seeing more DRM being placed upon content via Internet required connection and such, not less. And honestly the average guy doesn't give a shit about "free as in freedom!" as long as his video plays, which with the Janus DRM like Netflix it "just works". But thanks for playing and have a nice day!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
As far as I can tell, the following represents the truth.
Google recently (December 2010) bought Widevine, a technology company on the massive DECE consortium (the largest industry-wide effort ever summoned for interoperable DRM), who have a large number of DRM patents and have developed what apparently amounts to a connected, polymorphic DRM system. The notion of their system is that the algorithm required on the clients to decrypt content frequently changes, disabling any known hacks and probably giving the ability for the centralised authority to disable/reject individual endpoints. Whilst the specifications for this system remain unpublished, initial implementations have been made and are in limited distribution.
The usual holes still remain, as with any DRM system the thing is ultimately flawed. However, the question is whether Google will place Widevine DRM support in to ChromeOS and Google Chrome on other platforms, in an attempt to market secure (cheap, paid for) on-demand distribution of premium content (feature length films, TV shows, etc.). Google also recently purchased a new Los Angeles office (the home of Hollywood) with little or no explanation.
For more information on DECE see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECE
For more information on Widevine see: http://www.widevine.com/
Keeping the bastards honest.
FOSS has been tilting at the DRM windmill for nearly 15 years now and have made squat for headway
It supports all of the DRM that have been broken, doesn't it? Which is to say basically all of the popular ones.
Netflix which without DRM will NEVER run native on Linux
Never is a long time. Wait until Android has 60%+ market share in smart phones for a while and see if they don't find a way to make it work on Android, which somebody else makes work on desktop Linux.
Also: WTF do you want Linux to do? Implement Janus on Linux and then get sued for violating the DMCA or some Microsoft patent? The primary purpose of DRM is vendor lock in and control and all of the DRM schemes are designed with that purpose in mind. That's why they patent them all.
whether you like it or not the majority of content owners aren't gonna just go DRM free ala .mp3.
The record companies did, didn't they?
Janus DRM like Netflix it "just works"
Does not compute. DRM can either be totally broken or "just work" but never both. If I can't plug my non-HDCP monitor into my computer and watch the video then it doesn't "just work" -- but if I can then the DRM is broken. (Also, it's broken either way because HDCP is broken.)
And Android is beating the crap out of it.
Android on four carriers is beating the crap out of iPhone on one carrier and iPod touch on no carrier. Once iPhone service begins on Verizon Wireless, watch iOS's share rise again. Besides, the fact that several apps are paid on iPhone but ad-supported on Android indicates that iPhone owners are more likely to actually buy something online than owners of an Android-powered phone.
Everything is now encrypted, with the exception of local channels, so not so great.
Sometimes it forces you to buy this years edition of the game because the multiplayer server is turned off
Why would multiplayer on a console need a server? Can't you just plug in another gamepad or three? I thought support in games for multiple gamepads was the big benefit of consoles.
Umm, the broadcast flag was all about over-the-air channels anyways. Have you seen any decline in content on those that could be attributed to not having a broadcast flag?
All the popular ones like Netflix? Oh wait, no it doesn't and as I pointed out Janus has been here OVER five years and all FOSS "hackers" have to show for it is a giant FAIL next to their score. Next!
BTW you want to see "the ultimate future" of FOSS? Do you? It is kinda sad but you can see the end result today of the "never compromise, down with the great Satan!" holy war pushed by RMS. All you have to do is look up what "PC" RMS uses to see how FOSS will ultimately end...in case you don't know he is stuck on a Loongson "netbook" that only supports a teeny tiny niche of software, no flash, no web video, hell I bet the man can't even listen to music unless it is a specially crafted Vorbis file, and frankly the machine is probably illegal in the west due to the fact the Chinese incorporated x86 instructions into their ARM chip without a license.
And your big "savior" is Android? BWA HA HA HA! You ever see "Pirates of silicon valley"? Remember the scene where Jobs is rallying against IBM and his engineer is pointing to the IBM video and to Gates, who is about to fuck him raw? Well guess what? Notice anything...funny...about Android? Like how Google refuses to allow ANY GPL V3 code into DroidOS? Why do you think that is? It is because Google is gonna buttfuck FOSS by pulling the TiVo trick which they can't do if they allow GPL V3, that's why! Your "savior" is gonna be about as useful to FOSS as TiVo! It is SOOOO funny!
As for Janus now who is spreading FUD? In case you haven't heard The EU busted MSFT and made them open their protocols so all the Linux foundation would have to do is ask for a Janus binary blob (and Get Linus to quit acting like an ass and support a stable driver API) and the EU would make MSFT cough one up or drop the banhammer on them to the tune of a couple of hundred million.
And again you go "la la la" and refuse to accept reality. In reality The ONLY reason the music companies allowed MP3 is because Apple has a monopoly with iTunes which means there was simply no way to offer DRM, since Apple refuses to license Fairplay and doesn't support Janus on WMA. Which means if they want Amazon and other music retailers to compete with Apple it HAS to work on an iPod and frankly the ONLY format that fit that bill was either MP3 or WAV, so it wasn't like they had a choice.
Now compare that to video where the studios have gone out of their way to ensure that Apple doesn't get squat since they don't want a repeat of the music debacle where Apple could pretty much dictate terms and could kill an artists sales by simply burying their ads to the back of iTunes, and where the X360 owns a significant share of the living room. Here you will simply never see a repeat of MP3 because MSFT has licensed Janus liberally, with the X360, PS3, Wii, and numerous set top boxes supporting Netflix and by extension Janus DRM. Google tried to force the issue and got the banhammer dropped on them making Google TV worthless when compared to even CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) set top box, so frankly this battle is over, like Mp3 VS Vorbis.
But in the end thanks to the militants wing of FOSS the future of FOSS is bleak with corps like Google "TiVo Tricking" away your four freedoms on one side (and which is being assisted by Linus who refuses to go GPL V3) and online DRM Video being "the killer app" which will ensure that not a single B&M will carry your product. Not Walmart not Best Buy not a single one shall be had. In the end without the ability to compromise FOSS will simply stay locked into an increasingly small web server niche because thanks to t
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
All the popular ones like Netflix? Oh wait, no it doesn't and as I pointed out Janus has been here OVER five years and all FOSS "hackers" have to show for it is a giant FAIL next to their score. Next!
Take a HD video camera play the movie, and record. DRM broken. Tap into the monitor leads to record the output, DRM broken. Use a box that strips HDCP out of the HDMI stream and record. DRM broken. If you can see or hear it, you can copy it. And Windows media player DRM has been broken several times by recovering the keys. DRM is deffective from day zero and does not stop unliscenced copying.
and frankly the machine is probably illegal in the west due to the fact the Chinese incorporated x86 instructions into their ARM chip without a license.
No they didn't, They added instructions designed to improve the efficiency or a Quemu emulated x86 system
Apple refuses to license Fairplay and doesn't support Janus on WMA. Which means if they want Amazon and other music retailers to compete with Apple it HAS to work on an iPod and frankly the ONLY format that fit that bill was either MP3 or WAV, so it wasn't like they had a choice.
The only way to get consumers to accept DRM is by forming a cartel. If even one studio were to drop DRM, the rest would eventually follow suit.
I'm just trolling
Yes, Yes, you are.
Also loongson is not an ARM chip, its an MIPS chip.
And MPEGLA have third party problems too. There may be third parties who hold patents on their work (e.g. Google). Bummer, huh?
DRM is THEIR lock on YOUR door. It's a lock to keep you out of your house, not a lock to prevent someone walking in to your home.