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EFF Officially Appeals Tim Berners-Lee Decision On DRM In HTML (techdirt.com)

Posted by msmash on from the doing-the-right-thing dept.

Last week, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) decided to officially recommend the use of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) for protecting copyrighted video on the internet. This will enable web surfers to watch media in a browser that requires Digital Rights Management copy protection without the need for browser-based plugins. "It moves the responsibility for interaction from plugins to the browser," the consortium states at the time. "As such, EME offers a better user experience, bringing greater interoperability, privacy, security, and accessibility to viewing encrypted video on the web." TechDirt shares an update: It's been a foregone conclusion that EME was going to get approved, but there was a smaller fight about whether or not W3C would back a covenant not to sue security and privacy researchers who would be investigating (and sometimes breaking) that encryption. Due to massive pushback from the likes of the MPAA and (unfortunately) Netflix, Tim Berners-Lee rejected this covenant proposal. In response, W3C member EFF has now filed a notice of appeal on the decision. The crux of the appeal is the claimed benefits of EME that Berners-Lee put forth won't actually be benefits without the freedom of security researchers to audit the technology -- and that the wider W3C membership should have been able to vote on the issue. This appeals process has never been used before at the W3C, even though it's officially part of its charter -- so no one's entirely sure what happens next.

27 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me. by michaelcole · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good for the EFF. Donated $50 because of this very issue. https://www.eff.org/issues/drm

    1. Re:Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me. by gl4ss · · Score: 2, Informative

      it makes open source browsers impossible.

      without a eme plugin i suppose.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    2. Re:Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me. by pak9rabid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Way to totally miss the point. The point here is whether or not the W3C will allow outside researchers to fully audit (see: break) the EME encryption without punishment from rights holders. Tim Berners-Lee bowed down to the pressure of the MPAA and other entities to not allow that, which is a shitty thing to do considering this is being presented as an Internet standard.

    3. Re:Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me. by mysidia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      EFF may find it offensive the rest of us just want shit to work, when I browse Netflix or whatever other streaming site I choose I don't want a fucking plugin and all the incompatibilities

      Right.... Plugins are history. And DRM should Not be grafted into an open standard such as HTML. If Netflix insists on DRM-encoded content, only option should be to use their own custom protocol with an external viewer: Not the web browser, because they are not implementing a "Web site", at that point, they are implementing an encrypted binary blob that can only be viewed using proprietary software.

    4. Re:Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me. by peppepz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      With EME, not only you can be forced to install a specific plugin to browse the open web, but it's much more likely that you'll be forced to actually install a specific browser or even a specific operating system - most probably of the kind oriented to "media consumption", with spyware built-in and not fully controllable and observable by its owner.

    5. Re:Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me. by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

      Hopefully the plugin mechanism used for EME will still allow me to plug in NoScript or it's analog.

    6. Re:Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me. by ATMAvatar · · Score: 2

      It will finally murder Flash, but we will still have plugins and DRM, so it is only a minuscule victory.

      And it may not be a net victory at all. For all anyone knows, these plugins will end up being worse than Flash was.

      --
      "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    7. Re:Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me. by peppepz · · Score: 2

      Not exactly, the point of EME is that the plugin won't have to manage content presentation, in the way that Adobe flash does today, but will only have to manage access conditioning. In fact, Firefox already ships with an optional DRM plugin today. But, it's up to the content provider whether to allow an application plugin to protect their content or to require user surveillance at the operating system level.

    8. Re:Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me. by Desler · · Score: 2

      Why do you presume they won't just keep using EME? They were already doing so long before EME was even approved.

  2. Riiight.... by argStyopa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "EME offers a better user experience"

    Is this like one of those "up is down" or "black is white" postmodern things?

    Because as far as I can tell, EME seems more like a scheme to lock DRM into browsers ?

    Or am I misunderstanding?

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:Riiight.... by freeze128 · · Score: 2

      It's a better *USER* experience, not a better *PIRATE* experience. Arrr....

    2. Re:Riiight.... by Mouldy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If the alternative is relying on flash or silverlight or some arbitrary other player to watch video - then yes, EMEA does offer a better user experience.

      This isn't a question of whether DRM is good or bad - it's a question of, we're already stuck with DRM so can we make it a bit less painful by providing native browser support.

    3. Re:Riiight.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not a bettr user experience, it's the same user experience. Hell, it'll be worse, since each EME black box would have to be written specifically for each OS and browser since it will have to interact with both at higher levels of authority than either flash or silverlight did. That means not only MORE plugins to fuck about with, but ones that more completely hose your entire system when hacked.

      Tell me how it's a better experience?

      If you want a better fucking experience, download a specific app to display the content. E.g. iPlayer or Netflix et al. At least then you'll only need one for each streaming store, rather than one for each version of DRM that each distribution company decides for each film company they operate with. And it won't be limited to a view or operation paradigm that fits in a browser.

    4. Re:Riiight.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You mean like when USER Bob can't get his key to verify because Reasons while PIRATE Johnny has no problems?

      Yeah

    5. Re:Riiight.... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Tell me how it's a better experience?

      Flash. Silverlight. What do these have in common? They're whole programming environments shoehorned into a browser which has already had a whole programming environment stuffed in there. These days there's no reason for any of that crap to be in the browser, and the way to get rid of it is to provide a way for them to put the part they really care about (the DRM) into the browser without all that other garbage.

      I agree that DRM is undesirable, I would like it to go away, but not making it easy to put DRM into the browser won't do that. We'll get DRM in the browser anyway, and we'll get a lot of other crap along with it which is what we have now.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re:Riiight.... by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Informative

      Other way around: pirates will continue to do what pirates do because EME will add nothing that Flash et al don't already do.

      Users will, after initially losing Flash, go back to Flash-like plugins except with the added overhead that the video rendering will be done via an HTML5 layer. Flash may have been horrible, but it was at least efficient. Here's a breakdown for the inevitable idiot who doesn't read the entire comment and thinks EME is a DRM scheme rather than a plug-in platform:

      Efficient? Flash: Yes. HTML5+EME: OMG.
      Secure? Flash: No. HTML5+EME: No.
      Platform independent? Flash: Bad. HTML5+EME: OMG, it actually makes Flash look platform independent.

      (EME requires one plugin to be written for every single browser+operating system combination. Flash at least existed at a time when most browsers, IE excepted, implemented NSAPI for whatever operating system they ran on.)

      HTML5 was one step forward. EME is two steps back.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  3. I don't get the controversy by i_ate_god · · Score: 4, Insightful

    W3C has created a standard set of Javascript APIs, and DRM providers provide a similar set of standard APIs that can talk to the JS APIs.

    The web isn't suddenly locked down and all browsers must be closed source now. If you don't want to use DRM, then don't go to DRM enabled services like Netflix. You are not entitled to anything Netflix, Hulu, etc has to offer.

    I feel there is a lot of FUD here, and in many cases, there is a conflation between allowing Netflix to send you content, and the erosion of net neutrality which is a separate, unrelated, and in my opinion, far more worrying problem.

    --
    I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
    1. Re:I don't get the controversy by Vairon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If there's a vulnerability in this closed source module that can't be examined and someone browses any website on the web that exploits this module then a user is at risk without ever visiting Netflix.

    2. Re:I don't get the controversy by John.Banister · · Score: 2

      I think it's that the EFF doesn't want DRM to be convenient - like how the FBI doesn't want smartphone encryption to be convenient. They figure if something they consider evil is convenient, then we'll end up in an Eminiar-Vendikar sort of situation where we tolerate evil rather than stamp it out. This argument is sort of like the one people have about acceptable beach wear, someone's not going to be happy with the outcome, regardless of what it is.

    3. Re:I don't get the controversy by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The web isn't suddenly locked down and all browsers must be closed source now. If you don't want to use DRM, then don't go to DRM enabled services like Netflix. You are not entitled to anything Netflix, Hulu, etc has to offer.

      That's not even half the problem. The W3C's own mission statement states that:

      The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.

      I run Linux on PowerPC and can see everything that complies to standards on the net just fine. Who is going to port their DRM to Linux let alone PowerPC?! I can't watch Flash stuff but it's also not an open standard. However, with the EME I cannot watch several platforms despite complying with every standard.

      I have zero problem with those companies withholding their services from me but I object to mere suggestion that they should be able to claim that they are complying with open standards. There is no standard interface or format for CDMs which is a problem because the EME is specifically designed for them.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    4. Re:I don't get the controversy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not only as the other poster said xhmaster, youtube and many ones could switch to DRM video (I wouldn't care that much if they allow 480p DRM-free, require DRM on 720p or 1080p)

      But a far greater danger is if H265 stills with DRM are used all over the place to replace images, text or even whole websites.
      Will some famous person in a position of power tweet a one-picture DRM "video"? Does that track or de-anonymize users? If your hardware is obsolete or the "wrong" kind (VGA monitor, or even HDCP 1.x eventually, or MIPS CPU, etc.) are you left out?

      Will blind people be confronted with pictures of text (already a problem)?
      And, even politics are carried out in web video nowadays (as freedom of press is going backwards in my country, and clowns and talking heads are infesting TV even on public service)

  4. Stripped in 3, 2, 1... by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You want to win the browser war and become the dominant browser? Then better be the browser where this junk can easily be removed so people can watch their content the way they want to.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Stripped in 3, 2, 1... by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The vast majority of people want to get what they expect. What do they expect? Well, basically what they're used to. What are they used to? TV and video. So what do they expect? Basically, a VCR experience. Including the option to fast forward, rewind, skip what they don't give a shit about, pause where they want to and watch it as often as they like for buying once.

      Offer that and they won't bother to ask their geek friend how to get what they want. I somehow doubt that they'll get all that out of the box, though. So it will be the same that we already had back when their DVD and BluRay players started to "misbehave": Geek, fix that for me!

      And gladly we will be of service again.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Stripped in 3, 2, 1... by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 2

      You want to win the browser war and become the dominant browser? Then better be the browser where this junk can easily be removed so people can watch their content the way they want to.

      Right. Because if you remove all this "junk", people will be able to watch Netflix and Hulu exactly how they want, instead of the awful player that has drm built in. Cause, you know, they'll make their players fall back to non-drm if they can't use the drm system. Right?

      Are you really that stupid?

      --
      Do you have ESP?
    3. Re:Stripped in 3, 2, 1... by Motherfucking+Shit · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What exactly does pause, fast forward and rewind have to do with EME? You can freely do all those things with EME.

      You could "freely do" all those things with a DVD, too. Then the FBI warning started being un-skippable. Then the preview ads started being un-skippable, which is really great when you pop in an old movie and have to sit through trailers for "upcoming" features that bombed at the box office 5 years ago. What the technology itself allows, and how the media cartels will allow the technology to be used by consumers, are two entirely different things. And they wonder why people pirate.

      --
      "BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
  5. "a better user experience" by thomn8r · · Score: 2

    translation: Bend Over Here It Comes Again

  6. Re:Are people the enemy? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

    Are people the enemy?

    No, DRM peddling corporations are the enemy.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.