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Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Approve Work On DRM For HTML 5.1
An anonymous reader writes "Danny O'Brien from the EFF has a weblog post about how the Encrypted Media Extension (EME) proposal will continue to be part of HTML Work Group's bailiwick and may make it into a future HTML revision." From O'Brien's post: "A Web where you cannot cut and paste text; where your browser can't 'Save As...' an image; where the 'allowed' uses of saved files are monitored beyond the browser; where JavaScript is sealed away in opaque tombs; and maybe even where we can no longer effectively 'View Source' on some sites, is a very different Web from the one we have today. It's a Web where user agents—browsers—must navigate a nest of enforced duties every time they visit a page. It's a place where the next Tim Berners-Lee or Mozilla, if they were building a new browser from scratch, couldn't just look up the details of all the 'Web' technologies. They'd have to negotiate and sign compliance agreements with a raft of DRM providers just to be fully standards-compliant and interoperable."
So fucking sad
Why does this need to be made part of HTML, though? The existing plugin infrastructure works just fine. You can implement whatever the fuck you want in a plugin. Just use that and leave HTML alone. Things are complicated enough already without introducing new artificial complexity that is purposely designed to break things.
(All DRM is purposely designed to break content. It provides absolutely no benefit to the user)
Please tell me that Tim Berners-Lee is only declaring it as in-scope so that it doesn't get worked on by some other group, so it can be killed as it should be.
I don't really care whether they publish or not - if there is one thing the internet does not lack it is content.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
...content owners of the content you're willing to pay for will never publish on HTML5 unless they have some sort of DRM
Who cares? Fuck 'em. There are plenty of people who will publish without all that crap, and we can just stick with them. Besides, DRM is easy to crack, a snake oil sold by scammers. I have no sympathy for those stupid enough to buy it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I want an internet for me not them, If they dont like it here dont come. live by the open rules or stay home. I am happy with that. The net was here and was better before it became a giant for sale god damn sign.
If you allow web sites to require DRM, the web is no longer open. That's all there is to it. If you browsers must protect content, then browsers must be certified and signed before they can access the content. Had your desire to prevent the theft of your hard work guided the original protocols of the internet, it never would have become the important communications resource it is today.
This is the exact opposite of "getting rid of Flash".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No. Once their foot is in the door they will start demanding signed binary for browsers since anything else is useless to their wants.
Well, the security aspects are laughable. The potential legal follow ons are not. For instance, the next logical step is to insist on digitally signed browsers and declare non-complying browsers illegal as "circumvention tools" under the DMCA or somesuch. You might not be able to detect hack browsers, but you could sure as hell sue anyone distributing binaries or patches. You might have a hard time claiming non-infringing uses as well.
That would pretty much make any new browser impossible to distribute, and potentially puts enough regulatory red-tape on people like mozilla that they'd have difficulty continuing in their current open source form.
Then there's the possibility to pressure ISPs to only allow encrypted content (call it an anti-terrorism measure - that works for most things) and eventually to start chaging for access on a per web-page basis for all content.
From the point of view of some media and content cartels, that's a very desirable outcome. The genie would be back in the bottle.
On the other hand, if we don't have EME then the problems don't arise, so on balance I'd say better not to have it.
I don't see why that's a problem. There are DRM formats that work with PDFs so it's not as if your content dudes can't publish under DRM. They just can't try and make it apply to the whole web. Nothing of value is being lost here.
Mine the keys illegally I think you mean. Possibly with disproportionate penalties as used by the recording industry in their anti p2p lawsuits.
Let's just not go there. Less effort + less risk == Win
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Signed binaries running from a signed kernel, booted on UEFI Secure Boot hardware you can't legally compromise.
Alan Cox explained this 12 years ago.
That is the dream these people have.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Some of us simply believe that if someone is going to try to impose DRM on us that it should be an inconvenient onus on them and the consuming public to do so. A fragmented non-API solution would mean that content providers choosing to implement DRM would face greater costs and suppressed demand due to the extra hurdles imposed by DRM.
If both any given content provider AND their audience agreed it was worthwhile to install Flash or Silverlight in order to view the content, then that's what they would do.
On the flip side, any content providers that attempt to impose DRM on an audience unwilling to install Flash or Silverlight would find their subscriber base evaporating, forcing them to release the content without DRM and find a different way to earn money. Once it's standardized and part of the browser, any moron on the web will suddenly feel like they can and should protect their content and all users will be forced to comply or stay out of the web.
Bottom line: DRM as a hassle means the onus is on content providers to provide users with a suitable value proposition and it leaves greedy or misguided or trend-following content providers who cannot meet that standard out of the web (or else on the web, but free). DRM as an integrated seamless solution flips that around and leaves consumers who seek free content out of the web.
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car