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RMS Urges W3C To Reject On Principle DRM In HTML5
gnujoshua writes "In a new article, GNU Project founder Richard M. Stallman speaks out against the proposal to include hooks for DRM in HTML5. While others have been making similar arguments, RMS strikes home the point that while companies can still push Web DRM themselves, the stance taken by the W3C is still — both practically and politically — vitally important: '[...] the W3C cannot prevent companies from grafting DRM onto HTML. They do this through nonfree plug-ins such as Flash, and with nonfree Javascript code, thus showing that we need control over the Javascript code we run and over the C code we run. However, where the W3C stands is tremendously important for the battle to eliminate DRM. On a practical level, standardizing DRM would make it more convenient, in a very shallow sense. This could influence people who think only of short-term convenience to think of DRM as acceptable, which could in turn encourage more sites to use DRM. On the political level, making room for DRM in the specifications of the World Wide Web would constitute an endorsement in principle of DRM by the W3C. Standardization by the W3C could facilitate DRM that is harder for users to break than DRM implemented in Javascript code. If the DRM is implemented in the operating system, this could result in distribution of works that can't be played at all on a free operating system such as GNU/Linux.'"
It's like a secret code, just for us: RMS Urges W3C To Reject On Principle DRM In HTML5
BlameBillCosby.com
There seems to be a false assumption that all DRM is bad. What about transient content. Say a sample, demo or rental that has a limited lifespan.
Such things are quite different from content you "own".
So many acronyms! It's a good thing I'm in the industry, or I'd have no idea what that headline means.
I imagine trying to communicate this to my friends and family: RMS (sounds vaguely British) urges WC3 (the successor to Warcraft II) to reject on principle DRM (Dr. Mario) in HTML5 (they've probably heard that buzzword by now)
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
If he's successful in preventing HTML5 from being adopted by Netflix, Amazon, etc., that's a big win for non-open technology like Flash and Silverlight.
Stallman is a good example of what happens if you don't pick your battles carefully.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Oh the conflict, agree with RMS or agree with DRM. It's like voting Republican or Democrat, doomed or doomed.
Like anyone gives a shit what some freetard smelly hippie thinks. The fact of the matter is that DRM is *critical* to protecting the commercial interests of content developers in the modern age. If you freetards don't like that, then start making your OWN popular shows like Mad Men and give it away.
Ron Paul 2016. Take back America from liberals, leftists and freetards.
Keep web tech free of DRM, leave DRM to be implemented in plugins.
There is NOTHING wrong with plugin-based webpages and people shouldn't think this way.
Trying to replace every single use-case for plugins is moronic.
And more to the point, it bloats the hell out of the codebases.
RMS is overestimating the amount of control that goes in to the whole DRM system. In any case, regardless of the browser solution, the system has to be secured and protected according to the specific instructions of the DRM maker (e.g. Microsoft). Without that, this EME browser layer is but a useless shell (only encryption) that doesn't do DRM anyways. As DRM will by default always be "security by obscurity", the risk of lowering the level of acceptance is low for any open system. Let's concentrate on more truly open systems instead, and refrain from using solutions that are not truly free. That is the best protection against DRM.
And should this not land in W3C now, I can predict it will land there in the future: it will become a de-facto standard supported by major players (Google, MS) and will land in any 'semi-open' solution out there. In fact, it carries another risk: by not accepting this into W3C, it could find itself being taken less seriously in the future by the same major players, leading to more de-facto standards and a return to past times: DOM0, more user-agent inconsistencies and more of these ghosts from the past.
(expert knowledge on this subject, and generally not in favor of any of such restrictions)
They won't rest until the web is like television. Unidirectional, full of corporate messaging, highly polished emptiness. Think back to the web in the late 1990's. They're already 80% of the way there.
-- "Oh. This guy again."
I'd be quite happy if they'd standardize the DRM in HTML5. That way there would be one common DRM to crack instead of everyone having their own peculiar variant.
Why not incorporate a viewing cost in the standard? Make it a mandatory attribute in the HEAD tag or something, And couple all browsers to MC and VISA right away. That way we're all set to make some real business happening on the Internet! Because this is what is needed to get business happening, right?
What can you do with a bare kernel though? The GNU apps are the best part IMO.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
A modern browser should be able to serve most user's common needs without plugins. Don't let your politics impede technology. Plugins should be optional, only for esoteric things.
The kernel is Linux. Pretty much all of the software is built with GNU tools (e.g. GCC). GNU/Linux is a label that describes the Operating System (not just the kernel).
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Textbook ad hominem
I should have asked him in the Q&A thread, I don't think he'd answer honestly anyways...but I think those are not his real positions on the topics, but he doesn't want those things to be illegal because laws against child porn, bestiality etc. are used as WMDs against software & Internet freedom.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Like anyone gives a shit what some freetard smelly hippie thinks. The fact of the matter is that DRM is *critical* to protecting the commercial interests of content developers in the modern age. If you freetards don't like that, then start making your OWN popular shows like Mad Men and give it away.
Ron Paul 2016. Take back America from liberals, leftists and freetards.
I don't want Mad Men for free, much less for not free.
Ron Paul does have my vote though.
Would linux, the kernel, had any chance to spread out in the world without all the GNU software running on the top of it? I think Linus owes RMS more than RMS owes to Linus and so it goes for linux and GNU.
I've never heard of a free operating system called "GNU/Linux!"
In Stallman's GNU/Linux, every utility is a reinvention of an existing project, and every package is brutally out of date, if even present. Think Debian...
And you fell for it.
Perhaps you should read up on A Modest Proposal. First, we can use RMS's idea about screwing them, then we can cook them and eat them to prevent overpopulation!
Or maybe we can just tune up our satire detectors, see RMS's rant for what it is (satire with a possibly unhealthy dose of libertarianism), and get back to living a normal life.
I consider children sexual attraction to older people impossible because children are de facto subject to so much crap that they can't express their own personality and wishes anymore;
even if we went all back to desert islands, I think consent is not enough for such acts, consent can be easily tricked out of ADULTS, never mind youngsters. So Stallman has done a shallow analysis on the problem, in other words he's terribly wrong.
Yet I don't understand your post. Do you refuse math if stallman writes that 2+2=4?
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
"It's like voting Republican or Democrat, doomed or doomed."
Not being able to figure out the difference is what will doom you.
So we should prepend "Linux" with every entity that ever contributed? That's a long name..
If the DRM is implemented in the operating system, this could result in distribution of works that can't be played at all on a free operating system such as GNU/Linux.
Aren't both of the above the *desired* configurations for closed-source and/or media/content providers - and possibly the government?
[ Now, where is my tin-foil hat? Okay! Who took my frelling hat? ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/the-pauls-new-crusade-internet-freedom
Ron Paul is against *government* intervention and legislation on the internet. RMS is interested in keeping the internet free, just as Ron Paul is. RMS's argument is that it will lead to proprietary hardware and kernels to view pages and sites that are supposed to be standardized. The beginnings of this can be seen in places like Netflix, where one platform is supported where others are ignored. They may have different economic and social viewpoints, but I guarantee you both at the core Ron Paul and RMS share a common interest. There is common ground between RMS and Ron Paul if you stop and think and avoid the knee jerk reactions. Your post is FUD, but I would expect as much from AC.
Not really. The most popular Linux distribution, called Android, uses Java as their userland. Not GNU.
Wait... you promote Ron Paul while promoting the government regulation of markets and infringements of natural rights by enforcing the copyright monopoly?
Hypocrisy much?
As far as I understand it, DRM in HTML5 would be like the Video tag; no actual specific format specified, just a standardized method for declaring its existence. Just as people can put proprietary, patent-encumbered video formats in an html video tag, so too could they with the DRM standard in HTML5. Folks would still have to install or have proprietary DRM blobs/programs of sorts for any of this to work. Ironically, this puts DRM in webpages potentially even less tied to web technologies, as they'll be passed through to OS-provided methods.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
If we standardize it in the browser (HTML5) - we won't have to implement it in the OS.
I don't like DRM either - but I would like my services like Amazon, Hulu, Netflix or whatever to work across all my devices. As much as I would love to have these services simply unprotect all their content - I don't think they'll do it, and I wouldn't if I were them. If they choose to bog-down their services with anti-ad-skipping technologies and nasty things of the such (which Amazon and Netflix do NOT btw) - those service who don't will win out.
Time for a history lesson! Early linux users didn't use GNU utilities. They used minix utilities and ported over the BSD utilities. The FSF had to port their utilities and gnu libc to linux to remain relevant. Today, most Linux users are using android... no GNU needed.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I dare say Busybox has a good chance at edging out Android as the most popular Linux distribution.
I usually find his views a bit extreme but in this case I believe that DRM will be the thin edge of the wedge. Suddenly a huge amount of perfectly open content (say government data) will be DRM'd as a reflex. Plus the DRM will come out on Monday and be cracked on Tuesday resulting in just having a new buggy and useless layer to deal with. So now you will invite a whole new audience to the cracking party. So people will all start downloading FirefoxK'd.
No DRM means no content.
You do realize there was content before DRM was invented, and most content today has no DRM?
You're going to get modded down into oblivion for saying it. But it's true. No DRM means no content. So whether it's in the standard or not, it's coming.
That's why all digital music is currently under DRM, as is all Javascript, photographs, recipes, comics, web pages, newspapers etc.
Really... the only content areas still fighting the DRM fight are:
Video
eBooks
software
And software's easing off in favour of a walled garden approach.
No DRM doesn't mean No Content... it means No Content From A Few Rich Content Merchants (not producers). The content will still be produced, just differently. However, with DRM in place, that's no longer an option. Then the content will be produced, but the limit is put on consumption rather than on limiting means of production.
Could very well be the case. One way or another, GNU usage is in minority.
Most people think that DRM is about them as if it is supposed to keep movies from appearing on The Pirate Bay. It's ineffective at preventing this as it takes just one leak, any leak of a cracked or "analog hole'd" to be shared to render the whole scheme as ridiculous. And it is, ridiculous, as evidence by the fact that movies and the like are generally more easily obtained via TPB than commercially.
But that's not really the point of DRM. DRM prevents 3rd parties from being able to make a buck off the content being protected. Companies are extremely averse to liability, and even though cracked content is widely available, trying to make a buck off of it is nearly impossible to do without opening you up to legal liability.
DRM isn't really about you, it's about irritating you in order to prevent other companies from improving your experience with accessory services.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Not just that, as more GNU utilities, such as bash, gcc and so on have gone GPL3, they are like an albatross around Linux' neck, since a lot of companies don't want to touch that w/ a bargepole. Just as FBSD and others have gone to LLVM/Clang, don't be surprised as even Linux starts coming out w/ non GPL components in its userland, just like the recent ZFS-on-Linux. Ultimately, one will see a complete non-GPL non-GNU userland come up for Linux in order to make it yet usable. Even things like BTRFS are neither GPL3 nor CDDL - they are GPL2.
Why do we bother posting reporting on RMS.
His stance on these things are rather clear.
If it isn't Open (his idea of open) then he doesn't like it, and it must be because of pure greed and no other more rational measures.
RMS has already ranted against DRM, there is even anti-DRM measures in his popular GNU license. So why do you think he would be OK with DRM in HTML 5?
His views are ridged, he doesn't care that Netflix will not broadcast over anything that doesn't have DRM, his view is Netflix is pure greed, and we should just watch stuff available threw more open alternatives with little regard to existing copyright law, or just convenience.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That's why the term "GNU/Linux" makes sense - to distinguish between Linux systems with the GNU userland and those without.
You're going to get modded down into oblivion for saying it. But it's true. No DRM means no content. So whether it's in the standard or not, it's coming.
Having done standards-committee work, I'd phrase that differently. The standard is what's out there in the field, that you have to code against. All the committee produces is a document, which you hope enough vendors adopt (and interpret similarly!) to become standard.
Netflix and Amazon video and the rest of the commercial streamers are all contractually bound to use DRM. So it doesn't matter what the W3C says, the significant chunk of internet traffic that is legal video streaming will have DRM. Nothing the committee can possibly do will change that contractual reality. Better to standardize it as best you can then to childishly ignore it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Why do we bother posting reporting on RMS.
While I think he's a smelly hippie with no appreciation of reality, he's still an interesting smelly hippie, because he provides a clearly reasoned argument for his (predictable) position for a given issue.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Or should we postpend "GNU" with every entity that ever contributed? That's a long name as well...
GNU/ means less these days because there are actually systems running without the GNU tools (busybox instead of coreutils, etc), but in the earlier days it really was a heavily GNU system. You could count the binaries on the system and see how many came from the FSF and think to yourself "Wow, it really is GNU/Linux."
Ask every android device or busybox router what you can do without GNU.
GNU apps are a bunch of incompatible hacks on old tools from real UNIX. They are fucking obnoxious at best as fucktards don't seem to understand their retarded arguments are mostly done otherways already and entirely incompatible with anything other than gnu tools.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
There is nothing libertarian about RMS - he's an extreme Leftist. Just see his site http://stallman.org/ if you disbelieve me - it's full of calls to action on every Leftist pet peeve - real AND imagined - that exists out there. There is nothing satirical about his positions either - that's what he actually believes, whether it's his opposition to national IDs, boycott of Coke for using child labor in Latin America (unsubstantiated), support of the Palis against the Israelis, boycott Apple, Amazon, Skype, Ubuntu, or worrying about the death of honeybees last winter. So yeah, I agree w/ the GP - I too ignore him on principle, and anything that I happen to agree w/ him on is just coincidental. I much prefer a more sane approach, such as by ESR, who doesn't hate everything about the US the way RMS does.
Yeah, Android/Linux is quite popular, what's your point? GNU/Linux is still an OS with a Linux kernel and the most central userland tools being GNU.
Rethinking email
Bad is a subjective concept, and DRM can't be it (at least, not for everybody). The following are objective characteristics that do apply to all forms of DRM:
1 - It doesn't disturb pirates in any way
2 - It destroys value for your paying customers
3 - It makes the communication channels proprietary
Rethinking email
You're going to get modded down into oblivion for saying it. But it's true. No DRM means no content. So whether it's in the standard or not, it's coming.
Yes DRM is coming on the web. Oh wait, DRM has been with us since the first days of Flash player, Shockwave player and Real player, Silverlight Player. RMS is against DRM in the standard. The companies can do whatever the hell they want, but the W3C must not endorse DRM in the standard. It's not only a symbolical stance it's a political stance as well.
And a good one at that.
Those that want DRM develop their own solutions. But the W3C should not endorse in any way such developments.
GNU/ means less these days because there are actually systems running without the GNU tools
In that case it means more, not less, because there's a tangible difference between GNU/Linux and other sorts of Linux. You may as well say "/Linux means less these days because there are actually systems running without the Linux kernel".
Critical thinking is *not* these idiots' strong points.
Textbook ad hominem
What're you talking about? That's a textbook non sequitur. Stallman's views on sex are entirely irrelevant to his statements about DRM in HTML5.
Unless you're abstracting it to the fact that this was meant as an attack on Stallman's character in general, but the manner by which the attack occurred was a non sequitur in and of itself.
Uhh busybox is just a collection of GNU apps under one binary, itself licensed under GPLv2...and Android? Well, there's a reason I'm using a GNU/Linux phone instead of an Android.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
GNU/Linux is not an operating system. It's something that some distributions call themselves, like Debian. Ubuntu on the other hand is not GNU/Linux.
"Not being able to figure out the difference is what will doom you."
Thinking there is a difference, or that you have choice, will doom us all.
I'm fine with no "big industry" content on the web. User content is far superior.
And those content producers can either write their own damn browser plugin, or app for mobile devices.
See this is WHY it's a problem. So let's say that I buy 2000$ worth of movies, music, ebooks from some BIG CONTENT provider, and then BIG CONTENT provider is bought by another one, and sells off the music business to some other content provider. Now when I visit their site or use their app I no longer have access to the music I already paid for.
THAT is the why DRM is bad and needs to go away.
Where DRM is good is preventing interception and censorship, which can be accomplished by simply encrypting the point to point data streams or the entire file as a whole, and decrypting it when stored. Like I'm sure this benefits China more than it benefits anyone in the US.
Must be some way to kill this fucking nerd with some sort of logical paradox (like they wanted to do to Hugh, but Picard wouldn't allow it).
GNU/Linux is not an operating system. It's something that some distributions call themselves, like Debian. Ubuntu on the other hand is not GNU/Linux.
GNU/Linux is an OS in the sense that Android is an OS - both really describe a family of related OSes. Ubuntu certainly qualifies as GNU/Linux, at least at present. What they call themselves is irrelevant. Samsung doesn't really mention Android in much of its advertising, but that doesn't mean that they don't make Android phones (among others).
DRM is also quite effective at controlling what features appear in playback devices. For example, try to buy a 'region-free' DVD player from a major consumer manufacturer ... they don't make them, thus the end consumer has little choice but to accept the 'region' policies put in place by the content makers.
Now ask yourself: Are you satisfied with the amount content available digitally through legal channels?
Content producers want to distribute us digital entertainment through the Internet. DRM is required to get them fully on board.
Of course it's relevant what they call themselves. Why should anyone else than Canonical and the Ubuntu community decide that? GNU is not important enough to the average Ubuntu user that the operating system should be called GNU/Linux. Ubuntu is Ubuntu. If some other distribution wants to call themselves GNU/Linux then that's fine. Mac OS X has a ton of GNU utilities installed, that doesn't mean that it should be called GNU/Mac OS X.
While it's technically true that content existed before DRM, it's not actually meaningful the way you phrased it.
DRM used to exist in the form of the natural laws of the universe. Copying a book by hand with a pen pretty effectively meant you weren't going to be distributing it very widely. Copying a TV before the advent of the VCR was effectively impossible for almost everyone. Moreover, the inherent physical impediments to copying data was a far more effective form of DRM than anything that exists now. Technology has broken medium-inherent DRM, and now content producers are trying to build it back up in software. That's not meant to be a judgment on whether DRM is good or bad, just pointing out that in the general sense of something that prevents information from getting around, DRM has always existed.
The government has nothing to do with it. Corporations should absolutely be allowed to define their own standards for interoperability, and DRM in HTML5 is a perfect example of the Galt's of this world coming together to make sure welfare queens and freetards are not able to steal their property.
Ron Paul 2016. Take back America from liberals, leftists and freetards.
Of course it should be rejected, you don't include something that doesn't work because it is impossible.
Who cares what tools it was built with? If I build an operating system with MSVC++, do I have to prefix "Microsoft/"? I rather assume I'd get sues by MS for trademark infringement if I did so. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
What really frustrates me about the moding system, is that strong disagreement with my statements is enough to call me a troll. What is wrong with commenting on the excessive amount of protest that RMS does on every subject? Another poster here pointed out that RMS has picked the wrong battle because forbidding DRM into the HTML5 protocol will increase the importance of Silverlight and Flash ...
Too many Slashdot modders behave as if a strongly expressed emotion that disagrees with their emotion is wrong. It's not! It's valid human communication that says so much on its own. I shouldn't have to go into a lengthy argument every time I want to explain my disgust of over-protesting. I should have the right to express the emotion as a point of view without being chastize and labelled.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
You might or might not like the man, but RMS tends to have a clear view of long-term dangers to personal freedom, as they relate to the flow of information. "The right to read" struck many people as crazy when it was written, yet today it describes a plausible world.
In this case, RMS is right. DRM is all about control, and it should not be the business of the W3C to provide ways to restrict the freedom of web users.
THAT is the why DRM is bad and needs to go away.
Do you even have the most basic idea of what a technical standard is or does? Standards committees do not make moral pronouncements, and do not determine what happens on the internet. They are not priests; they are not lawgivers; they merely hope to describe a set of interfaces that you can write code against.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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No reason it can't be both at once. In fact, ad hominem attacks are almost always irrelevant to the subject under discussion: "DRM is opposed by Stallman, but Stallman eats babies and has icky hair, so yay for DRM!"
For example, try to buy a 'region-free' DVD player from a major consumer manufacturer ... they don't make them, thus the end consumer has little choice but to accept the 'region' policies put in place by the content makers.
Or buy a $20 Chinese player which couldn't give a crap about region-coding and other DRM measures.
This whole "standardization" thing is a joke anyway, and I think the people dishonestly referring to it as standardization, ought to be called on their bullshit. They're standardizing an API, and people (even here on Slashdot, where you're supposed to at least pretend you're modestly informed; fake it if you have to)are getting the weird impression this somehow "solves" the problem of Flash, Silverlight and other proprietary nonstandard plugins. That is incorrect: you will still have a proprietary plugin, it still won't be maintained by your browser or OS people, it'll still be unaudited, and it'll still be very specific to dealing with one type of content and incompatible with competing content. You'll still have a bunch of flakey plugins written by the same usual suspects, assuming your computer is allowed to have them. The only thing these things would have in common from a standards PoV is an API.
Saying this is somehow "standardized" DRM is just plain bullshit, and they are doing that only for the purpose of hoping people will draw totally incorrect conclusions about it. It's a lie. Every time some misinformed person says "at least I'll be able to get rid of Flash" as though that amount of flakey code from untrusted-but-you-have-to-trust-them parties will change (it won't), the people who called it a "standards" push smirk, knowing their deception is working.
Furthermore, having W3C involved in this, is truly a mockery. Standards bodies exist to make things work with each other. But the entire purpose of DRM is to make things not work! The whole point of these proprietary plugins is that they can sometimes say NO, because you don't have the right kind of TV or something. If the plugins never said NO and refused to work, then nobody would be trying to make you use them. Keeping things from working, is practically the opposite of the entirety of the rest of the HTML spec.
The copyright lobby doesnt EXCESSIVELY speak out too? Everyday they are spouting new lies on how piracy will end the human race, and you are bitching about Stallman?
Good-bye
Ron Paul is against *government* intervention and legislation on the internet
Oh really?
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
If he's as mentally militant as that rant above, he's an idiot and you're right to ignore him.
And I'd rather stay out of his Mos Eisley-esque site.
(I wrote the post you replied to, btw.)
To be fair there are alternatives to a lot of GNU products these days. On the other hand, GNU still hasn't produced a viable kernel.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
So Stallman thinks that if DRM is a standard part of HTML, it will be "easy" and "convenient" and so smaller time web sites will end up using it. Which they wouldn't do anyway because DRM is hard? Because they didn't think of it? Is it really that easy to piggyback on a standard method of embedding decryption codes? How much cheaper is it really to do this with web standards than with Flash or Silverlight? Cheap enough to make a brand new market catering to all of those video sites that don't already use DRM? Which ones are those again?
What I really want to know is that if these web site owners are so stupid that they will start using DRM because it's more convenient, how much could they possibly understand about DRM? Couldn't we as open source evangelists just make something open source and call it DRM and hand it out to those dumbasses? It doesn't matter that it isn't really secure (was it ever secure in the first place?). It sounds like Stallman's concern is that once DRM is standardized it will become popular. All that being popular means in the technology world is that the name turns into a buzzword and everybody gets to claim they do DRM now.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
RMS doesn't use that word, "open" a lot.
Doesn't use "greed" a lot.
Those are probably your preconceptions of what he says.
RMS usually talks about freedom, as in not giving away your freedom.
DRM requires you to give some other entity control over your devices, more than what you have. That means giving away freedom, and that's why he is against it. I agree with him, also.
I thought itunes stopped having DRM for their music?
His site is useful for demonstrating what a fringe character he is - for the cultists who worship at his alter. I don't usually visit his site - it's too repugnant for my tastes.
What? You're actually debating me?
... ok, so what. They speak out. Let's say they're even lying. Ok. I'll grant you that. What does that have to do with my right to express disgust over excessive protesting that often achieves the wrong outcome?
Fine! That's great in fact. It's called discourse. And it's a good thing. What irks me is the self righteous modders that will call you a troll because they disagree with your emotion.
But on the copyright lobby
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
IP respect, specifically government-enforced IP respect (as opposed to a coalition or agreement we sign onto voluntarily to see a movie, e.g.) is REALLY hit or miss in any libertarian or similar circle.
I'm anti-IP that isn't voluntray. E.g., to work at Disney, you might have to agree to abide by their copyright coalition. Hopefully, the terms are less onerous and - almost by definition - ought not or should not or could not contain criminal sanctions.
If the penalty for violating a contract is $1M, your first born, and 20 in the slammer, I would hope most all walk or run away.
Ron Paul is more old school and being a constitutionalist, is going to be pro IP. *shrug* It didnt stop me from voting for him.
Seriously, the guy has outlived his usefulness by this point, and now I think he's just talking to hear himself talk.
And what userland does Android java run in, and what has it been developed in? I doubt it is written in assembler with raw system calls.
DRM is required to get them fully on board.
Even assuming that were true, I'd rather have no content.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Bullshit. The player manufacturers long ago so the writing on that wall.
Pretty much all of them but sony are easy to defeat (by design).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Reread the GP. The comment about digital music having DRM is sarcastic.
So you never heard of Debian?
Wow I had no idea. It is like the whole of the internet hate of 'the right' on a nice one page summary.
He believes in freedom as defined by himself. Because he is 'smart'. A mistake many smart people make. That they are the only ones who 'get it'.
True freedom is letting others be morons and not stepping in when they do it. Freedom as defined by RMS seems to be about controlling people. GPL is a terrific example. It has nothing but controls in it, backed up by one of our more draconian laws of the land, copyright.
I Even mispelled his name on purpose .
By definition, before digital, yeah...
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
altar
Who is Galt, Anon?
Requiem for the American Dream
Good morning, it's your three-am wake-up call!
This thought-process seems to be almost universal in defining 'wrong', in my experience. More accurately, I'd probably suspect that people are merely playing at ethics in a thoughtless attempt to have their own way.
Requiem for the American Dream
However, DRM disappeared for these other content categories even though it was available. I expect that won't be any different for video and ebooks.
You do realize that the medium by which that content was distributed did not lend itself to near zero expense reproduction right? Analog to analog reproduction is inherently lossy. It costs as much (if not more) to photocopy a book and bind those pages into a new one as it does to just buy a legal distribution of the shelves. A product loses its inherent value the moment everyone that wants one can obtain a copy for near zero cost. For now this issue only troubles intellectual property. Soon it will affect tangible goods as well when what used to require a manufacturer can be had from a digital scan and a matter assembler.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
John Galt is a character from an Ayn Rand novel that presented the Robber Baron capitalists as innocent victims of evil communists and hero's of the working man. This is the same Ayn rand that is on record as admiring the pure efficiency of a serial killer of her time along with a long string of people she admired that would probably make your skin crawl.
Randian philosophy is the basis for people that call themselves libertarians, but in fact who have more fascist leanings than true libertarianism. The adherents are often at best frat boy capitalists with no concept what capitalism is, how markets work or any sense of empathy for other people. Many of them are from the "me" generation.
Only in the Apple and Microsoft worlds, and even there only in mobile. And that's DRM too, so it's not easing off but ramping it up.
DRM fetishists have a problem with license agreements that assert terms in favor of the end user. This does not surprise me.
Is slow and will always be slow while running from user land.
It has to be, it's part of the Linux kernel.
So let's say that I buy 2000$ worth of movies, music, ebooks from some BIG CONTENT provider, and then BIG CONTENT provider is bought by another one, and sells off the music business to some other content provider. Now when I visit their site or use their app I no longer have access to the music I already paid for.
THAT is the why DRM is bad and needs to go away.
So do you have any objection to DRM on rentals, then?
And those content producers can either write their own damn browser plugin, or app for mobile devices.
The major problem with this stance, which is why it bothered me when RMS voiced it, is that we are increasingly moving towards thin client front ends with cloud back-ends in order to reduce front end costs. You can call this "the mainframe model", if you want a computing analogy, or "the POTS" model, if you want a communications analogy. The evolution of HTML has been strongly vectored in this direction, and continues to be vectored in this direction. The idea that plugins or apps are even supportable on the thinner and thinner client front end is becoming less realistic.
See this is WHY it's a problem. So let's say that I buy 2000$ worth of movies, music, ebooks from some BIG CONTENT provider, and then BIG CONTENT provider is bought by another one, and sells off the music business to some other content provider. Now when I visit their site or use their app I no longer have access to the music I already paid for.
THAT is the why DRM is bad and needs to go away.
This is not significantly different than when singles came out on 45RPM records, and you had to re-buy them on 33 1/3 RPM albums, and then re-buy them again on 8-Track tapes, and then re-buy them again on cassette tapes, and then re-buy them again on CDs.
What has changed with digital, and to be honest, for the music industry, it changed with the CD format, is that the medium on which the digital data is stored is fungible, which means the end of re-buying.
The music industry fought this in a number of ways, and we can easily see that: the DAT standard was perverted to ensure the recording frequency was at a beat frequency of the CD recording frequency to prevent non-buffered direct digital copying from CD to DAT being playable at the original recording frequency without artifacts, there was a Canadian DAT tax, and they were initially successful in causing DRM use on iTunes, but eventually unsuccessful, since CDN requirements meant that DRM had to be handled on equipment under the end-user's control.
The movie industry has been following this same trajectory, with the difference that they got into the game much later. Just as the music industry fought first the 8-Track, and later the cassette, the video industry fought consumer-recordable media in the form of VCRs. They are currently in the midst of attempting to go down the DRM path with Blu-Ray, which is having a difficult time, since forced firmware updates by new Blu-Ray DVDs coupled with running their code on your hardware to decode their content, which is how Blu-Ray DRM works, still has a lot of technical issues that are practically unfixable. On the network connected front, they are attempting to DRM the content streams, and, again, using client-side software under their control, decode the content only for playback.
Having a standard DRM mechanism in HTML5 dooms this effort to ultimate failure in the long term, even if you dislike the short term consequences. By disallowing the plug-in model, at some point, when (not if) the particular DRM is broken, it will be Game Over, just as it was for the music industry. And like the music industry, the movie industry will survive this event.
What is eventually dead, in this scenario, is the re-buy model that the music industry used to rely upon, and which the movie industry is still desperately trying to keep in place, even as the tent they are attempting to prop up turns to chewing gum around them.
If we take RMS' (and your) position, with proprietary plugins, this does two damaging things: (1) it litters the universe with incompatible plugins and transcoded content which is not portable, even should the DRM of a particular plugin be broken, and (2) it deflects the HTML vector from its eventual destination, good or bad (but without corresponding DRM required on the server side, there's no reason you couldn't run your own clo
Which is exactly what the standardized provision for DRM in HTML5 supports. It just allows it to be done in a way which segregates support for DRM plugins from any other plugin support. The main motivation is not to enable DRM (which is already possible, and widely implemented, using existing plugin mechanisms) but to standardize the plugin mechanism for this use case (which is one use case of plugins that browser vendors aren't aiming to replace with non-plugin web technologies.)
But they're pretty useless without a kernel, and that's where Linux kicks in.
I have to say, Android might have its place on cell phones since there's not much better alternative, but I'd take a full Linux distribution with all the GNU tools over it any day. I was hoping ARM-based netbook/tablet computers would have taken off with the "real deal" and use something like KDE's mobile environment, but that never happened. We're stuck with Android and Apple crap. And it probably won't either, because of UEFI's "Secure Boot" garbage (thanks, Microsoft--fucking dickheads).
Wrong.
Android is an OS in the sense that Kubuntu or Windows is an OS; its a particular OS with a specifically-defined feature set controlled by a particular distributor.
GNU/Linux is an OS in the almost the same way that "things in someway derived from the Android Open Source Project" are an OS -- in short, its not an OS at all.
You're right ... but it's still really frustrating. I made a rather mild comment really. And I lose my Excellent Karma status because of the self-righeous ...
... I guess I'll get it back tomorrow.
Sigh
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Ah, here we go again. The myth that technology and technological standards can be politically neutral. A convenient myth, since it we can then absolve ourselves from any responsibility for how that technology is used.
Just because you don't want something, doesn't mean other people don't.
When did I say otherwise? I just meant that if they're going to give me DRM-ridden garbage, I'd rather not have what they offer to begin with. I don't want DRM-ridden games, either.
Life isn't about principles, it's about results.
Maybe that's true if you're a machine; principles and feelings will most likely get in the way, otherwise.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Busybox may well be the most deployed Linux distribution.
But, in terms of actual person-hours of interactive use (as opposed to quiet background service provision), Android would curb-stomp Busybox as the most popular distribution.
Same would apply for most-popular on a brand recognition & loyalty basis. Everyone knows what Android is and it has a lot of actual fans (and fanboys); only a few software and hardware engineers have heard of Busybox.
just because you want content doesn't mean that I and everyone else should have to have spyware and crippleware on our systems.
DRM goes way beyond just playing some stupid videos - it's an integral plank in the war against general purpose computing.
WTF do you think Microsoft's Restricted Boot is for? it's certainly not for protection against viruses - its purpose is to control what you can install or run on your computer.
at the moment, it can be disabled on x86 computers and motherboards, but it CAN'T be disabled on ARM-based Win8 tablets. The Win8 tablets are a trial-run to get people used to the idea that they can't install other operating systems - or software bought outside of MS's app store - on the hardware they've bought.
same for iphones and ipads - you pay for them, but you don't get to really own them, or decide what you want to install or run on them. You can only run what Apple allows you to.
stock android devices are also full of spyware (for google, the manufacturers, and for telcos), but at least it's possible to install software for sources other than Google's app store (either by USB cable or from other app-stores like FDroid), and it's also possible to root them and replace the stock OS with cyanogenmod etc or even a non-Android Linux. not perfect, and they're still spy devices by default, but better than nothing.
and this is NOT just limited to phones and tablets - this is the future for PCs. Apple are already mutating OS X into an IOS style app-store only device, and microsoft is pushing for the same with Restricted Boot.
when you buy hardware with such restrictions you're voting for it with your wallet. you're saying "yes, fuck me over, take my money but retain ownership of what i've bought". people like you would buy a turd on a stick if you were told it was a better hot-dog or that you really needed it for the Full Flavour Experience<tm>
so, yes, life is about principles. partly because principles in themselves are important, but also because principles affect results.
DRM is a way of forcing ALL sales to be rentals.
except, no discount for being just a rental. you pay full price but still don't get to actually own what you bought.
Unfortunately, because RMS doesn't understand the importance of having even a slightly socially-acceptable physical presentation, people dismiss him because, well, that's how humans are.
The only people who pay attention to him are people who were partial to his viewpoints already. He's not a good spokesman because he deals in absolutes and doesn't not care for compromises (in general; his comments about Steam being acceptable so long as it's on a free OS being a notable exception). To most other techies, he's someone trapped in the 60s who eats shit from his foot.
I am thankful that RMS is a zealot devoted to fighting things like this. I know that I and others don't always agree with him, but other times I am profoundly grateful for his good arguments.
ZFS-on-Linux is not the userland FUSE version of ZFS. it's a kernel module port of ZFS and a portability layer ("spl" or solaris portability layer) by a team led by by Brian Behlendorf at LLNL (mostly because LLNL want to run Lustre on top of it).
http://zfsonlinux.org/
It's not slow at all. It's fast.
and it's almost 10 years ahead of btrfs in terms of features, development time, and real-world testing and use in production servers.
ZFS's license is CDDL - free software but incompatible with the GPL. This means that distros can't distribute linux+zfs as a combined work (or should at least be very wary of doing so), but there's no legal problem at all with distributing the linux kernel and a separate zfs-dkms package or similar that automates the compilation and installion of ZFS on the end-user's own system.
installing it is slightly more hassle than using ext4 or xfs or btrfs or some other in-mainline-kernel FS, but not significantly more difficult. no harder than, say, installing the non-free nvidia or fglrx kernel modules on most distros.
My own personal battle against DRM is driven by my anger over not being able to read ebooks visually. Instead, I translate ebooks to audio files using text-to-speech tools. The entire audio path I use, even the TTS engine, is FOSS software, and some of it (the speed-up code) I had to invent and write myself. You wont hear people like me complaining, "Why don't you guys work harder to make our lives better." I'll change the world to conform to my own needs, thank you very much, at least until DRM arrived. DRM destroys my ability to help myself, and I can't even begin to tell you how much that pisses me off.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
It may be that W3C's pronouncements have moral content. That still doesn't mean that they are binding on Netflix and Amazon.
Is that it is simply replacing one set of binary blobs (Flash, Silverlight and a host of dedicated non-web apps on mobile devices, smart TVs, games console etc) with another set of binary blobs (the content decryption plugins).
It does nothing to make the content work on more browsers (the content decryption plugins still have to be ported to a given OS/browser combination). In fact, if those who create content decryption plugins do browser sniffing to block browsers they dont like (or browsers that contain bugs, vulnerabilities or features that could allow access to the decrypted content) it may reduce the number of choices to view specific content.
It will likely increase the number of DRM solutions out there as different content providers will want their own DRM solutions. (e.g. what Netflix uses may be different to what Google or Microsoft or Hulu or Amazon uses).
Why is this labeled troll when its true? RMS jerked off for years and years and never could get Hurd to work and when Linux took off he tried to jump in and take credit, same as he says he "blessed" the forks of eMacs and GCC when IRL the forks were to get away from him because he was holding them back. The simple fact of the matter is you could remove 100% of the GNU stuff from Linux and it will run just fine, remove all the Linux from the GNU stuff and its worthless.
And BTW why does everyone listen to this guy at all anymore after this video came out? Just because the guy had ONE good idea in the GPL does NOT make him a gift to all things FOSS and that video should have ended any thoughts of taking him seriously, after his bragging about being a squatter at MIT (his words) or his "surfing" by using a daemon to fetch pages and ship them to his email on his netbook...which in and of itself is a joke as he has gotten so damned militant that even the OLPC given to him by the foundation wasn't free enough, the ONLY system on the entire planet that met his definition of "free" is a cheapo Chinese craptop from Loongson running MIPS.
But for those that haven't figured it out the reason the press keep sticking a mike in RMS' direction is no different than how they find the fat girl in rollers and a bathrobe to talk about a disaster, they know RMS is batshit and will give them some nice flaming bullshit that will make for good clickbait, but the guy gets more and more batshit and frankly makes the whole FOSS movement look like militant freaks. if there HAS to be a figurehead for FOSS why not Eric Raymond or Torvalds himself? at least they always come up with intelligent arguments and aren't eating toe funk on stage.
As far as RMS goes "I won't be glad he's dead but I'll be glad he's gone" as he is a GNUsense and is the most divisive person I've ever had the misfortune to hear.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
as in National Rifle Association. It's not about gun safety/open internet standards...it's about corporate $$$
The W3C is the general 'tech industry' representative in this fight. I know that technically of course W3C is a non-profit, but their statements and general position on DRM and HTML5 (which **W3C opposed, remember?) show they are practically working for teleco's and 'content providers'
If it wasn't for WHATWG as an alternative working group HTML5 would not exist. And CSS3 would still be in trial fucking beta.
Ditch the W3C. They are trolls in this discussion.
Ditch the DRM notions while you're at it.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Where's Tim's outrage at the wholesale corporatization of his creation???
The fact that Tim Berhners-Lee isn't setting his hair on fire over this is telling. He should at least speak out against it in an Op/Ed or on a blog post. Fuck a tweet...anything.
IMHO, TBL did not 'create the internet' and does not speak for those interested in an open internet with cross-platform standards.
Thank you Dave Raggett
He was simply using the phrase commonly used in Atlas Shrugged. It's a little funny. easyTree has probably read the book.
However, Ron Paul and friends would have Ayn Rand rolling over in her grave. While she would support eliminating all social programs, like Social Security, Medicare, and public education, much like Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand would be appalled at Paul Ryan's chumminess with big corporate lobbies, like AT&T, who line Paul Ryan's election coffers and in return get Internet regulations favoring AT&T at your and my expense. She would hate Paul's never ending support for corporate welfare. I suspect she might even think that while all taxes are evil, if they have to be paid, the rich should pay their fair share.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
From looking at the spec, all it appears to be doing is creating a protocol for the negotiation of third party platform specific DRM plugins. So basically, platform specific third party browser plugins, but now in the standard for some reason. Why is this necessary? It doesn't make it so that the plugins are platform agnostic or open, it just makes it so that the protocol to load and activate platform SPECIFIC, purpose SPECIFIC, binary plugins are part of the standard now... for some reason. This just makes it more complicated and doesn't actually have any upside! These closed, binary DRM plugins will still need to be installed, just like flash or silverlight is, and they'll still only be on the platforms that the movie industry considers trustworthy, nothing will have changed except now we have a more complicated spec to follow in order to make a "compliant" browser.
I work on my Jeep with Craftsman tools.... it aint a "Craftsman/Jeep"...
Stallman is just a jerk who runs around touting "freedom" while actually opposing it. He offers up "free" code for all to use, but then demands that one of the uses of that code carry a name HE wants. Does everybody who builds a product with GNU stuff have to name their product "GNU/(product name)" ????
So why are you buying DRM-crippled Intel and ARM hardware and Microsoft software?
Rand never claimed that all taxes are evil. She didn't like social programs, but she did support the existence of the state, to defend against foreign aggression, and to enforce contracts and intellectual property claims in courts (yes, she was very much pro-patent and pro-copyright, which is actually obvious from "Atlas Shrugged").
First, I think Ron Paul is a flake... so I'm not jumping in to defend him, or his fanboys, here BUT....
Since when is the enforcement of copyright an infringement of natural rights??????
Copyright IS a natural right, and the VIOLATION of that right is NOT a natural right. If I create a thing, it's MY thing and only I have the ownership of it and the right to make copies of it.... these rights belong to me because I MADE IT (no matter what Obama and his dirtbag acolytes think). That's what "copyright" (as in "copy right" or "right to make copies") means. NOBODY has a natural right to come along and steal the original or make copies of it for his/her gain without compensating me for my efforts in creating it. As the only person with the right to make copies (the "copyright" holder) I have the freedom to choose to let others make copies (by waiving that right) or to authorize others to make copies (by licensing) etc. If somebody else has a "natural right" to the results of my work, then I have no real rights at all (and neither does he, because others then have the "natural right" to his work). The idea that one man has a "natural right" to the work product of another man is an unjust, economically unworkable, fantasy right out of Karl Marx and is one of the fallacies underpinning the Obamacare trainwreck. (where non-medical people think they have a "natural right" to the work product of medical people... but they did not have the guts to re-instate slavery (this time using medical workers instead of blacks), so they do it with a blend of taxes on some people and "cost controls" on the medical people)
GNU is an operating system that is missing a kernel. Linux is a kernel program. Linux by itself doesn't do much until it used in conjunction with an OS. GNU+Linux together form a complete OS.
The reason is that there are free kernels in existence. The GNU project exists as a way to escape from proprietary software. The focus for the GNU project is to write free analogs to proprietary software. The GNU kernel is not a priority project because of the existing free kernel programs. Linux is one example of a free kernel program.
i'm not.
but in the not-too-distant future, there won't be any alternative.
motherboards that allow me to run whatever software I want just won't be available.
there'll still be neat educational and hobbyist toys like raspberry pi, but they're not a substitute for a desktop or server machine.
DRM is the thing that will enable the destruction of the market for open/unrestricted computers.
Blahblahblahblah...
Or then it's just as simple as people don't give a fuck about these delusional "freedoms" (do you even know what real freedom is?), they just want their goddamned netflix to work on their computers, watch a flick and go back to their real life and families. Horrific, isn't it?
Fuck man, Eric, Linus and Richard may as well be The Three Stooges when it comes to free/open-source software representatives. Eric's a right-wing gun nut who hates Muslims and believes in 9/11 conspiracies (among other things), Linus is perhaps the most reasonable of the bunch but is far too aggressive against those he believes has wronged the Linux community (whether that be a naive Kernel developer or a company like NVIDIA), and RMS is... well, so out there that virtually no-one pays attention to him anymore, even if some of his points seem reasonable.
No-one in the Linux community (who's contributed something of note) seems to fit the bill as someone who's articulate, presentable and can engage with people and companies on a reasonable level. Even Shuttleworth's become a bit of a dickhead, believing he knows best and disregarding any criticism as being from idiots and "hipsters".
The only one I like is Nixie Pixel, and that's only cos of her physical appearance.
What are you smoking? Standards, like any English dictionary, are descriptive not proscriptive. They do not endorse. They do not prohibit. And there's nothing more useless than an ignored standard - just ask anyone writing web code during the IE6 years how cool that was.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Every political movement needs a well-reasoned extremist. His job is not to convince the heretics to convert, his job is to preach to the choir. It also helps that other open source advocates can appear both reasonable and sanity by comparison!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Ah, but in your post you made a grave error - you said "other open source advocates". RMS is not an open source advocate, he is a free software advocate. The difference is purely politics but RMS would cut you down where you stand (if he could) if you addressed him as an open source advocate.
Are you really lumping Ron Paul and Paul Ryan in the same category? And claiming Ron Paul supports corporate welfare?
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
What a moron is this stallman. Having DRM baked in 'HTML5' is exactly what it needs to get even more aproval and usage, otherwise plugins like flash and silverlight will still be needed.. The advantage of having it standarized in 'HTML5' is that plugins aren't needed anymore so every platform can use it. It's not like you HAVE to use DRM as a webdeveloper.. Otherwise you can also say that stuff like webworkers and videotags should also be excluded from the 'HTML5' standard.
DRM is sadly needed because tons of people are too lame to just pay for content they 'enjoy', in the end all you get it 'america funniest homevideo' like content if nobody pays or you'll end up with 2 hour long commercials..
What real reason would there be for not including a possibility for using DRM, as other unnecessary JUNK has already been approved for the 'HTML5' standard.. As I said, no webdeveloper who doesn't want to use DRM will have any problem with it, and webdevelopers who do need to use DRM (for whatever reason) can use it without the pain of having to resort to external plugins which are not available on a lot of platforms these days (flash for instance isn't available on android anymore (unless you already installed it, but even then a browser like chrome doesn't support it)).
Point of order: there are proscriptive standards, backed up by laws of various kinds, but not so much in the area of online information systems. An example of a set of proscriptive standards is the definition of weights and measures; while many goods can be sold in any quantity, the vendor has to at least correctly describe the amount that is being sold.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
DRM is a way of forcing ALL sales to be rentals.
except, no discount for being just a rental. you pay full price but still don't get to actually own what you bought.
Well, that's utterly dodging the question. iTunes has two prices for most of its movies - £1-5 for a "rental" you must watch in a 30 period, or £8-15 to "buy" and you can keep until Apple go out of business. I kinda agree that the "buy" option is a long-term rental in disguise, and I wasn't arguing against you wanting to remove DRM from it. But the explicit "rental" option does have a considerable price discount, and makes it clear what you are getting (and what you are not getting) for your money. Are you saying that iTunes "rental" option should send a non-DRM movie file, and just ask you nicely not to keep it?
What about something like Netflix? You pay one month at a time, for one month's access to their library. It's explicitly a rental arrangement, and if they go out of business you don't lose anything you'd paid for in the past. Do you think their movies should be without DRM too? How do you stop someone from buying a subscription, downloading enough movies to occupy themselves for a year, and then cancelling the subscription after one month? Or is that not something that should be stopped, and Netflix would have to "just alter their business model" to cope with people doing it?
I'd love to see someone do a project of taking just the Linux kernel, and then putting on top of it all non-GNU userland. Nothing GPL, except Linux itself. Maybe then this idiocy about calling the OS GNU/Linux will end
The W3C says on page http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission:
The purpose of DRM is to make it difficult to share knowledge (for the use-cases where such sharing is considered piracy by the content-owner). The sharing of content is only encouraged in a narrow subset of people, hardware, software, network infrastructure, ... that signifies "registered paying customer using a computer trusted by us, the content-owner".
To allow the W3C to set standards using DRM is a bit like an association of voluntary fire-fighters, where one stands up to address the crowd and says "Hey! I have a great idea! Why don't we start some fires; that way we get some practice, and besides it's very cool!".
Extinguishing fires is the task of the association of fire-fighters; starting fires is the task of the pyromaniac! If the association of fire-fighters is starting fires, you can conclude there's something very wrong with it ("regulatory capture").
Except in the case of the W3C, as you say, they do not determine what happens on the internet; they do not have a regulatory rôle, only an advisory rôle.
Including a form of DRM in the standard does not make it's use compulsory. People can still use HTML 5 to publish without rights restrictions.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
By not having a standard scheme, we end up with "Oh, I'm sorry, but you can't watch $CONTENT on $BROWSER because it doesn't support $PROPRIETARY_SHIT_DRM_SCHEME or $GARBAGE_ANCIENT_PLUGIN_FRAMEWORK. Please install an operating environment you'd rather not use (or even overtly hate) and try again."
Because that's clearly worse than having an optional form of DRM in the HTML5 standard, and there has never been any outcry by the Linux community about not having a version of software for their platform that allows them to participate in services equally.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
GNU is not important enough to the average Ubuntu user that the operating system should be called GNU/Linux.
I'm not saying that it should be called GNU/Linux. I'm simply stating that it IS GNU/Linux.
GNU/Linux is a set of operating systems that run a Linux kernel with a large number of GNU userland utilities on top (like glibc, bash, etc).
Based upon that definition Ubuntu fits into that category. I could care less whether they want to advertise that or whatever. If you want to quibble over the definition, quibble away. When I use the term "GNU/Linux" that is what it means. Feel free to use it differently if you wish.
Just sell it through Amazon: They don't care.
A couple years ago I purchased Disney's "The Little Mermaid" from amazon.com to replace a friend's stolen copy. As soon as the intended recipient saw it they said, "That's not from Disney!" The DVD had a poorly printed cover and DVD art, and significant problems playing.
I reported it to Amazon - not only the problems with the purchase but also the fact that it was obviously a copy and not an original. I've never heard back.
Not including it does not forbit it either. Why spend your effort on it? Those who need it will do what they can by themselves, no need to help them to fuck everyone.
Ooops.... that's a mistake. It's Paul Ryan I was talking about, the Ayn Rand fan, while parent posts talk about Ron Paul. Ron Paul remains my favorite member of the House, in that he votes against almost all bills with funding. When you have the checkbook, and you're spending other people's money, there is a tendency to get a bit carried away, and Ron Paul acts as a tiny counter weight to that. I suspect Ayn Rand would have little negative to say about Ron Paul.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
GNU/Linux is just a made up word. We could just as well call the combination of GNU and Linux as Fred, that doesn't mean that we have to call everything that combines GNU and Linux as Fred. It's just something that someone made up.
Oh, if I ever meet him I'll be sure to ask him about open source and thank him for his contributions to VI (and if he's still able to speak, ask why he didn't contribute to Linux since he likes that open source stuff).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well, OK, that's an important point but worth remembering that NIST doesn't write laws (it's a "non-regulatory agency"). Totally separate from NIST, some laws say "if you sell something measured in inches, you have to mean NIST inches", or in England "if you sell something measured in inches, we will throw you in jail".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Which other 'free' kernel is there? By 'free', I mean one that is under GPLv3?
GNU/Linux is just a made up word. We could just as well call the combination of GNU and Linux as Fred, that doesn't mean that we have to call everything that combines GNU and Linux as Fred. It's just something that someone made up.
I never said you had to call GNU/Linux GNU/Linux. I just said that Ubuntu is GNU/Linux, er, Fred.
Stallman makes more sense than people give him credit for. Web standards should be open and not subjected to any form of proprietary control just to appease content providers.
they will never stop the pirates, DRM on netflix be it silverlight, flash or a web standard is only going to cause headaches / browser crashes blah blah. If you want something for free... well erm just head over to a torrent site, if and when they all get shutdown something new will just replace it. I sub to netflix but hell id admit ive pirated the odd tv show to see what its like. In some cases its made me go out and want to buy the box set so they carry on making it and dont cancel the series. Make good quality entertainment and people will pay for it. As the article points out the only way to make it work is to lock it down at an OS and hardware level which in turn just forces linux/open src OS users to miss out or pirate content/crack DRM.
Cool, as long as they don't harm me in the process.
No. Common guys, this is not gonna work. Do we need to register thewebsitebay.com so soon? If all people where smoking marijuana and living in peace, sure DRM would be wonderful. Unfortunately some a greedy, they just want your worthless money, ya. DRM would only cause another type of software piracy. I am a web developer, and i think we will come out with other type of "convenient" ways to protect our software. but thanks.