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Defend the Open Web: Keep DRM Out of W3C Standards
jrepin writes "There's a new front in the battle against digital restrictions management (DRM)technologies. These technologies, which supposedly exist to enforce copyright, have never done anything to get creative people paid. Instead, by design or by accident, their real effect is to interfere with innovation, fair use, competition, interoperability, and our right to own things. That's why we were appalled to learn that there is a proposal currently before the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML5 Working Group to build DRM into the next generation of core Web standards. The proposal is called Encrypted Media Extensions, or EME. Its adoption would be a calamitous development, and must be stopped."
Because DRM shall be cracked. Deal with it. So it will not stop the pirates.
DRM isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. It is designed to make certain paths difficult and other paths easy. I can get any song I want for free, but I still use iTunes, because it's that much easier.
What I do want, though, is to be able to view/play/listen to the art that I legally obtained
The best part of DRM is that it forces value on actual artwork, rather than the media itself.
For example, you never "owned" a song - the copyright holder always did. DRM makes that concept explicitly clear. We now get to the core value proposition to you of why an artist made that song, and why you feel he should continue to make songs.
So, what exactly is that worth to you? Is $10 for an album OK, where you can pass the album on to your kids or your friends or parents or coworkers? What if the band wants to charge $100,000 for that?
And you know it's perfectly fine to not listen to music and not watch movies if you feel the copyright holder is charging a ridiculous amount for it.
Here's something: Artists actually want to qualify their buyers. In fact, in the actual world of high-end art, a gallery owner might not sell you the actual physical work of art if you don't represent their desired audience, regardless of price you might want to pay, for various reasons.
Populist art like songs or movies are no different. Producers and musicians qualify their audience as well, and they don't mind if people they don't value don't see/hear their works without cost to them.