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

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.

Comments

Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me.

[michaelcole]

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

Re:Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me.

[pak9rabid]

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.

Re:Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me.

[mysidia]

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.

Re:Seems like drm should be a PLUGIN to me.

[peppepz]

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.

Riiight....

[argStyopa]

"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?

Re:Riiight....

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Yeah

Re:Riiight....

[squiggleslash]

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.

I don't get the controversy

[i_ate_god]

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.

Re:I don't get the controversy

[Vairon]

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.

Re:I don't get the controversy

[Gravis Zero]

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.

Re:Stripped in 3, 2, 1...

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Stripped in 3, 2, 1...

[Motherfucking Shit]

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.