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W3C Declares DRM In-Scope For HTML
FredAndrews writes "The W3C has ruled DRM in-scope for their HTML standard. A lot of big businesses have supported advancing the Encrypted Media Extension, including Google, Microsoft, and Netfix. The BBC calls for a solution with legal sanctions. The EME could well be used to implement a DRM HTML engine. A DRM-enabled web would break a long tradition of the web browser being the User's Agent, and would restrict user choice and control over their security and privacy. There are other applications that can serve the purpose of viewing DRM video content, and I appeal to people to not taint the web standards with DRM but to please use other applications when necessary."
Looks like the web is becoming more like Xanadu, but not in a good way.
It seems like it should be incumbent upon those that want to restrict your freedoms to bear the full burden of that cost. That is, we do not help them develop a standard for this, and force them to do all the work necessary for their restrictions to try to propagate in the browser ecosystem via plugins, extensions, custom applications, etc.
I would never go so far as to restrict *their* ability to do so, but we should never EVER encourage such behaviour in open standards.
The standards committees should be spending their time (and money) developing technologies that would help people, rather than hinder them.
No. HTML, Hyper Text Markup Language, is a standard for describing documents. It is NOT the place to implement or enforce Digitally Restricted Media(DRM). Other applications already exist for this purpose and new application will also follow that can all be integrated into your HTML document if you insist on using it. But it belongs in an external application, not HTML.
DRM being bad is a not a "idealism". It's not some persons *opinion*. It's not like arguing about whether Inception was a good movie (it was).
DRM is faulty *by design*. This is a mathematical truth. And you either accept that truth, or you live in denial. This isn't a "weelllll, it's really annoying for business". Ok, so what? Gravity is really annoying for the American Airlines. Those are the breaks.
The hardware, at the most bottom layer (assembly), has the instruction: mov eax, ebx. This instruction copies data freely. All digital hardware has an equivalent function. You cannot do anything with computers without this basic function.
When you hold a computer, you are physically holding this magical copy instruction. This copy instruction does not know about copyright, or rights holders, or fair use, or DRM, or business models. It simply duplicates a digital value. No computer could exist without it.
So, how do you propose to remove this function, without destroying the computer in the process? It's, ultimately, impossible. You can make things very difficult -- that's fine! Because all you need is one bored determined hacker to break it (which must always be possible, as long as computers exist), and "unlock" the media. Then it will be traded freely.
The only way to stop it is to destroy the computer. Destroy the `mov ax, bx` instruction, that freely copies digital data. But the computer provides so much *other* value, that you can't do that either.
So you just have to live with it. And the sooner you realize that, and realize that this isn't about "idealism", but instead about a mathematical truth that people are living in denial about, the sooner you stop propagating this delusion that DRM is some sort of "solution". It's snake oil. Get over it. I know it sucks. It sucks for me too -- I make music. It sucks. Adapt, or die.
Open standards and DRM are fundamentally incompatible. If you know how to decode something to display it to the user you also know how to decode it and save the results of that decoding to a file. Therefore any standard that includes drm will either be trivially broken (see conventional pdf "usage restrictions") or not truely open.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Because cross-platform implies open standards so that everyone is able to implement it on his platform. OTOH, DRM implies a secret component, so that only licensees can implement it. So DRM will only be available on platforms which are popular enough that the implementation pays off the licensing cost (assuming he is even able to get a license). And it will be completely unavailable on open source platforms because it is incompatible with open source.
DRM is a broken concept. If it is possible to read or display the data anywhere, then it is possible to make a copy of that data.
No DRM schema will ever work, even if you make custom hardware to enforce it. How has custom hardware helped out the XBox? just solder a mod-chip on the motherboard and now you can run unsigned code. as soon as someone else has physical access to the hardware you can't stop them from altering it.
It only requires a single person to break your DRM for DRM free versions of your data to leak out. and many times DRM free versions are available before the official version is even released, meaning insiders were involved, so they can't even secure their own facilities.
In the end DRM is only punishing the honest customers and degrading their experience, it isn't even slowing down the "pirates".
No it is possible: with legislation. That is why the BBC is calling for legal sanctions.
This will result in invading your privacy at home just like any DRM:
However, the BBC is unlikely to be able to use any such mechanism unless we feel that it is sufficiently secure that there would be the possibility of legal action in the event of bypassing it.
Television is generally a more expensive medium than music to produce due to the amount of labour involved, and therefore for consumers to purchase. Business models that enable content to be available to them on a temporary (or rental) basis are usually able to do so at significantly lower cost than would be the case for permanent copies.
That is definite not true on the Internet. "Television" on the Internet is cheaper then permanent copies. Once the infrastructure is in place, you just pay for the bandwidth.
An example of this effect in action can be seen with the BBC’s iPlayer – by limiting the window of availability, the BBC is able to make content available for no additional fee to UK licence fee payers.
Yes because the current copyright model is broken. If the copyright terms were not astronomical high, the producers wouldn't be so greedy and would not impose artificial limitations by hiking up prices for unlimited availability. That is the only reason public entities like the BBC needs to artificial limit availability. There are no real cost in making a video available once or unlimited on the iPlayer.
We require the ability to securely identify a type of device, and enable or disable video playback based upon the answer.
Goodbye free operating system and free browsers. I can see a future where Mozilla needs to negotiate a license with the BBC (or any other producer) to be able to play their videos.
The ability to pass further restrictions to the graphics rendering path if available.
Goodbye your privacy, goodbye open source. Now every component needs to be verified that it is "trusted".
Instead, the high-quality video content that the broadcast industry produces will be made available only to closed devices and application stores where such security can be implemented.
It's just the same anyway. Either you close up the Web with DRM or you use closed solutions like Flash or Silverlight. What is the advantage for the Web again? There is no way under those conditions from the BBC that an open source browser like Firefox or open source system like Linux can operate.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
The proposal is to extend HTMLMediaElement (which is an ALREADY existing part of HTML) so it supports DRM in a standard way. ...
HTMLMediaElement is a specific DOM element that correspond to media elements (audio, video) and extends the standard element with media specific features: play, pause, length, volume, etc
The proposal is to recognize that DRMs are an widespread feature used in conjunction with media elements. As such, it is worth standardizing.
If the DOM accepts having play/pause features on a media element, it could also support DRM methods on a specialization of this element.
As you said, the implementation and enforcement of DRM is EXTERNAL to the DOM/HTML. Have you read the proposal ? I guess you didn't because the ONLY thing this proposal adds is a bunch of events and methods to allow javascript to provide the key to decrypt an encrypted flow.
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I understand that DRM has legitimate purposes,
No it doesn't.
What it does is annoy the paying customer and serve as no impediment to the pirate.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
DRM isn't fool proof. However it is a case of keeping the honest, honest.
How much work are you willing to do to watch that movie for free where you can pay a $10 a month subscription or rent it for $2.00?
Is it worth trying different patches made by people of questionable ethics, perhaps having to rebuild you OS every once in a while until you find the good patch.
Are you willing to solder a chip to your hardware, risk breaking it?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It is not banks that are driving this. What banks what is generic HTML with security. Brokerages pretty much the same. Banks want your session to be secure, they are very well setup for securing their network against you.
Consumer entertainment is what is driving DRM.