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W3C Erects DRM As Web Standard (theregister.co.uk)
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has formally put forward highly controversial digital rights management as a new web standard. "Dubbed Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), this anti-piracy mechanism was crafted by engineers from Google, Microsoft, and Netflix, and has been in development for some time," reports The Register. "The DRM is supposed to thwart copyright infringement by stopping people from ripping video and other content from encrypted high-quality streams." From the report: The latest draft was published last week and formally put forward as a proposed standard soon after. Under W3C rules, a decision over whether to officially adopt EME will depend on a poll of its members. That survey was sent out yesterday and member organizations, who pay an annual fee that varies from $2,250 for the smallest non-profits to $77,000 for larger corporations, will have until April 19 to register their opinions. If EME gets the consortium's rubber stamp of approval, it will lock down the standard for web browsers and video streamers to implement and roll out. The proposed standard is expected to succeed, especially after web founder and W3C director Sir Tim Berners-Lee personally endorsed the measure, arguing that the standard simply reflects modern realities and would allow for greater interoperability and improve online privacy. But EME still faces considerable opposition. One of its most persistent vocal opponents, Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argues that EME "would give corporations the new right to sue people who engaged in legal activity." He is referring to the most recent controversy where the W3C has tried to strike a balance between legitimate security researchers investigating vulnerabilities in digital rights management software, and hackers trying to circumvent content protection. The W3C notes that the EME specification includes sections on security and privacy, but concedes "the lack of consensus to protect security researchers remains an issue." Its proposed solution remains "establishing best practices for responsible vulnerability disclosure." It also notes that issues of accessibility were ruled to be outside the scope of the EME, although there is an entire webpage dedicated to those issues and finding solutions to them.
Digital rights is an ugly theft of words implying the rights of people, rather than the rights of greed ie digital wrongs. Where is the right to privacy, absent. Where it the right to the truth, absent. Where is the right to freedom from censorship, absent. All that is covered is the digital right to greed and the ability to print money and censor and silence the public, think those digital wrongs tools wont be extended out to mass censorship, how wrong you are.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Are there vendors, browsers or developers who have committed to not adopt this standard?
As with almost all technology, it depends on context.
DRM can be abused to lock up content far in excess of normal copyright protections.
DRM also makes new and useful business models practical, giving us modern replacements for old school rental stores from the likes of Netflix and Spotify, which obvious work out for a lot of people.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
member organizations, who pay an annual fee that varies from $2,250 for the smallest non-profits to $77,000 for larger corporations
Clearly, the W3C created the EME standard to please its "member organizations".
Actually, these days DRM encourages piracy because it gets in the way of legally purchased media.
In this case, because of the method of application, this DRM is bad.
It hijacks YOUR computer because THEY want to control what you do with "their" data. The context that could make DRM fine is if it were in control of the two people on either end of the conversation (so that Alice and Bob can stop Charlie from listening in), but this one has Alice cutting Bob out too because they're "afraid" that Bob might record the conversation.
That just does not work.
But the context of in the HTML standard, when the "DRM" bit isn't actually part of the standard? Fuck no. A train wreck of an idea.
As with almost all technology, it depends on context.
The context of EME is the worlds Internet users.
DRM can be abused to lock up content far in excess of normal copyright protections.
DRM also makes new and useful business models practical, giving us modern replacements for old school rental stores from the likes of Netflix and Spotify, which obvious work out for a lot of people.
There is no mystery or question surrounding the result.
Content providers are somewhat limited to means of access and distribution to what people actually have unless willing or able to go out of their way. When you lower the barrier for making DRM viable the practical result is more DRM. This WILL happen.
This means more browsers downloading and executing black boxes from companies like Adobe. An outstanding trustworthy organization with an absolutely out of this world stellar security record.
For those who think restricting access and encouraging proliferation of closed proprietary bullshit is bad widespread EME in browsers does exactly this.
Protocol/standards designers have very little actual power to dictate terms to anyone yet they are hardly powerless. While capacity for mitigating unchecked commercial interests is often severely constrained the capacity to cause damage by letting them run rampant is not so limited.
When organizations like W3C allow themselves to be corrupted ICANN style it's time for those who care to divest themselves and support a competing structure. W3C is VOTING for the legitimacy to go ahead with this knowing full well there is nothing approaching broad consensus on the subject. The procedures they are using to achieve the desired result (DRM) is explicitly against their own stated principals.
If I create some original digital content should I not have the right to set the terms of use and distribution?
Nope. You should not.
In the grand scheme of things, what you should have the right to, is to be paid for the act of creation of the content.
(you should get remuneration for your work. not be entitled to use it as a rent)
But for historical reasons, the point at which money got collected was traditionally at the distribution, because back at the time when copyright laws were emerging, duplicating and distributing content was hard (if not the hardest part of the pipeline). And thus it was a happy chance that it could also help finance upstream creation.
But nowadays, once we're out of the dark ages and into the information age, with everything going digital, duplication and distribution is boringly trivial and can't be justified any more. Artists still need to get paid to create (They need to eat, after all), but the point at which the money is collected doesn't make a fucking sense anymore in the modern setting.
(Also note that a few small indie artists are moving out of this business model, and going back to older concepts of patronage. See platforms like Patreon, Tipee, etc.)
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