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EFF Resigns From Web Consortium In Wake of EME DRM Standardization (eff.org)
New submitter Frobnicator writes: Four years ago, the W3C began standardizing Encrypted Media Extensions, or EME. Several organizations, including the EFF, have argued against DRM within web browsers. Earlier this year, after the W3C leadership officially recommended EME despite failing to reach consensus, the EFF filed the first-ever official appeal that the decision be formally polled for consensus. That appeal has been denied, and for the first time the W3C is endorsing a standard against the consensus of its members.
In response, the EFF published their resignation from the body: "The W3C is a body that ostensibly operates on consensus. Nevertheless, as the coalition in support of a DRM compromise grew and grew -- and the large corporate members continued to reject any meaningful compromise -- the W3C leadership persisted in treating EME as topic that could be decided by one side of the debate. [...] Today, the W3C bequeaths an legally unauditable attack-surface to browsers used by billions of people. Effective today, EFF is resigning from the W3C." Jeff Jaffe, CEO of W3C said: "I know from my conversations that many people are not satisfied with the result. EME proponents wanted a faster decision with less drama. EME critics want a protective covenant. And there is reason to respect those who want a better result. But my personal reflection is that we took the appropriate time to have a respectful debate about a complex set of issues and provide a result that will improve the web for its users. My main hope, though, is that whatever point-of-view people have on the EME covenant issue, that they recognize the value of the W3C community and process in arriving at a decision for an inherently contentious issue. We are in our best light when we are facilitating the debate on important issues that face the web."
In response, the EFF published their resignation from the body: "The W3C is a body that ostensibly operates on consensus. Nevertheless, as the coalition in support of a DRM compromise grew and grew -- and the large corporate members continued to reject any meaningful compromise -- the W3C leadership persisted in treating EME as topic that could be decided by one side of the debate. [...] Today, the W3C bequeaths an legally unauditable attack-surface to browsers used by billions of people. Effective today, EFF is resigning from the W3C." Jeff Jaffe, CEO of W3C said: "I know from my conversations that many people are not satisfied with the result. EME proponents wanted a faster decision with less drama. EME critics want a protective covenant. And there is reason to respect those who want a better result. But my personal reflection is that we took the appropriate time to have a respectful debate about a complex set of issues and provide a result that will improve the web for its users. My main hope, though, is that whatever point-of-view people have on the EME covenant issue, that they recognize the value of the W3C community and process in arriving at a decision for an inherently contentious issue. We are in our best light when we are facilitating the debate on important issues that face the web."
W3C sells out, leaves its somewhat democratic origins, succumbs to the payola, jumps the shark. Carry on, EFF. Someone has to.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
My main hope, though, is that whatever point-of-view people have on the EME covenant issue, that they recognize the value of the W3C community and process in arriving at a decision for an inherently contentious issue.
Sorry there bubs. Any respect I had for the "value of the W3C community and process in arriving at blah fucking blah" has now gone out the window.
Respect is earned, not demanded. This is going to be the undoing of the open internet, more than any other single thing in its history.
I might have been confused at the first mention of EFF resigning from W3C consortium because of the DRM standardization.
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
Tim Berners-Lee has lost his way. I remember when he came to Wellington NZ and he was doing public talks about appstores and how people were using apps more than the web. He sounded scared that they would make the web irrelevant. If I were to guess why he kept supporting DRM it was because of this.
Obviously over the years W3C has drifted between relevance, with HTML5 being done in the WhatWG and then copypasted to the W3C for no good reason (except for standards wonks trying to push specs to the ISO etc).
So from my perspective it's the W3C continuing irrelevance, and it's the browsers' choice that matters more. Firefox have a fairly good EME approach that at least sandboxes the DRM, but who knows how long they'll hold out with that approach if a major site adopts more intrusive DRM.
I suspect that appstores will fade in relevance sure to PWAs more than the web adopting DRM.
Now for the first time we have tacit acceptance of DRM and patents in W3C standards. Sure EME is just an API but it only exists to facilitate DRM all of which is patent encumbered, so practically it's no different in terms of limiting user rights and what browsers can do, and accessibility. Now to make a browser we need to accept Hollywoods terms. Before we had pressure that they would get more eyeballs in the web without DRM but no longer. Wait to see how youtube reacts... (No I don't mean the fine Bros)
Without a standards organization that can actually make portable standards (see lack of CDM documentation), it's time that we must construct a new standards body that isn't afraid to do what it claims it will do rather than what they must in order to appease their corporate masters.
The W3C has lost it's credibility. The time has come to form a new standards body for the web.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
https://www.w3.org/2005/10/Pro...
See 3.3 Concensus. I imagine a Formal Objection was part of the process. https://www.eff.org/pages/drm/... would seem to be that objection. Also at https://dev.w3.org/html5/statu...
60% is a majority. It's hard to call it a consensus, especially when those opposed are VERY opposed. If you are disregarding the degree of that opposition- not looking at the general opinion, but the most common one- then it's a majority decision, not a consensus.
[Jeff Jaffe, CEO of W3C] speaking for the W3C:
The the people in the W3C are not in any kind of a "best light" when the organization is obviously and outrageously fluffing corporate behemoths over the needs of everyone else, though.
The degree of pro-corporate spin in Jaffe's remarks is appalling.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So if almost 60% approve, isn't that about as much consensus as you ever get on a standard?
From what I understand, no. As far as I can tell W3C standards are reviewed, tweaked through an informal process until the director on behalf of the committee either thinks there's a consensus and approves it or no consensus can be reached and it's rejected so usually there is no vote at all. In this case it seems the W3C wanted to move it forward despite no consensus being reached, the EFF appealed that decision and called for a vote that the EFF lost. So the decision stands, but this breach with the W3C's consensus process made the EFF withdraw.
Though looking at wikipedia it says "As of 2016, the Encrypted Media Extensions interface has been implemented in the Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge browsers." which must be like 98% of the browsers out there. So I guess whether or not W3C made it a standard or not wouldn't matter, if not even Firefox is a hold-out it has already happened and the W3C would just be sticking their heads in the sand.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The JavaScript ship sailed long, long ago.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
honest questions...
what happens now? how does this actually manifest into something? do browser makers now have to have certain features to be W3C certified or something?
is this at all similar to Chrome's recent decisions to not allow credentials from certain places, etc? I may not be remembering this stuff correctly but it seems like just another entity's decisions to do something they feel 'right' about
do they have that much power to affect the web?
help me out, pls
DRM schemes aren't going away and having standards around them seems like the best path forward. Without DRM, you can't have content rental systems. It's been said many times that information wants to be free, but the content creators need to eat and the studio executives need to fuel a lavish lifestyle. Without some form of DRM you wouldn't be able to have subscription services like HBO Go or Amazon Prime. It's a fair criticism that when you "purchase" a movie or TV show using Amazon Prime or Apple TV or similar that it's really a long-term rental. There was a time when a DRM-free purchase seemed like a great idea. But that was when we wanted to do things like download an entire movie and play on various devices. Now everything is streaming and you don't even notice the DRM. New standards will make it even less intrusive. Yes part of Stallman's "Right to Read" is coming true in that you can't lend your DRM purchases very well and sharing your password isn't a great idea. But also the prices have come down so much that there's no *need* for this. Everybody can have their own access for a very affordable price so the doom and gloom predictions are not materializing. I'm glad EFF resigned because I'd like to see them focus their attention on more important issues.
> So if almost 60% approve, isn't that about as much consensus as you ever get on a standard?
I I may say so, no. Lack of consensus for standards bodies is very real problem, and discourages people from following _other_, more critical standards set by that same group. Consensus for a standards group is usually _much_ higher. There have been notable exceptions, such as the OOXML standards approved by the IEEE. The shameful abuse of the approval process for that standard has been well publicized. I suspect, from conversations with various DRM publishing companies, that this process was burdened by similar abuse.
Your fallacy is Middle Ground, Jaffe. Maybe after he's done driving web standards into the ground, he can go work for CNN.
"The Democratic candidate for governor wants to push old blind ladies down the stairs, while his Republican opponent wants to push them down the stairs and then set them on fire. Why can't they compromise somewhere in the middle?!?"
JavaScript is an open standard with multiple compatible implementations. What is your problem with it?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The W3C was doing what it was designed to do—membership is only available to those who pay, and that means its membership is almost entirely businesses. Calling this selling out misses the point of how the W3C's structure virtually guarantees predictable pro-DRM business outcomes such as this. As DefectiveByDesign.org pointed out long ago, "Companies can impose DRM without the W3C; but we should make them do it on their own, so it is seen for what it is—a subversion of the Web's principles—rather than normalize it or give it endorsement.".
Digital Citizen
60% is a majority. It's hard to call it a consensus, especially when those opposed are VERY opposed. If you are disregarding the degree of that opposition- not looking at the general opinion, but the most common one- then it's a majority decision, not a consensus.
THe problem is whoever has enough money can buy their way hence have a voting right. This means Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft who all sell DRM creation tools and platform tie ins. This means newer codecs which means newer versions of Adobe products, more cpu/gpu power, and newer PC and Mac sales. Of course older phones and tablets won't support the newer codecs so this means users have to throw them away and repurchase again ... wahoo more money now for Google as well in addition to Apple!
Since now the purpose of W3C is to make money off of people for corporations what is the next step?
http://saveie6.com/
I thought Mozilla had to use a binary blob that only works on Windows or some other nonsense since EME forbids opensource due to patents and licensing agreements?
Is my knowledge outdated?
http://saveie6.com/
EFF has a pretty good open letter explaining their reasoning. In short: DRM is a fool's errand. It doesn't work. Everything on Netflix, Spotify, Amazon or anywhere else can be pirated despite the DRM. At no point as any DRM ever resolved any of these copyright infringement issues, and it never will, because the person you're trying to guard the secret from is the person who you're trying to reveal the secret to. It's a mathematical non-starter. Meanwhile, it does succeed in closing off devices, and criminalizing tinkerers who wish to repurpose the devices they've purchased for reasons which have nothing at all to do with piracy.
DRM isn't an extreme feature,
Strongly disagree, I almost stopped reading your comment at this point.
Now other than getting up an leaving in a huff because they didn't get their way, they should be asking themselves, what other alternatives to DRM is there that can address the concerns of the 58% who approved of it.
There is no alternative, because of how extreme and perverse DRM is. It's like looking for a compromise between a hippie and an ISIS terrorist. Nothing would come remotely close to satisfying both at the same time.
Since the EFF had no say in a forum that supposedly only makes consensus-based decisions, what's the point of them staying in the W3C other than to have their membership misconstrued as consent?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Then there are loads of things on which there can never be a consensus, because the dissenter will always win - even if they are 1% of the body and the rest voted in favour.
Hence why "consensus" is a stupid concept in these things - put it to a vote.
This was not a fight about whether DRM was good or bad, it wasn't about whether it should be used or not either - It already exists and is being used. It wasn't even a debate about whether it should be standardized, you really can't stop a group of people from agreeing to agree on how to do things. The only possible debate was whether the DRM standard would be part of W3C.
Now the W3C could decided they hate DRM and not put it in their standard but then the web browsers are going to standardize it on their own outside of the W3C. This definitely weakens the W3C but it also goes against what W3C stands for. They are supposed to be the place for people to put web standards together. Just because the EFF doesn't agree with DRM, shouldn't allow them to stop the web browser makers from agreeing to the standard and making it a W3C standard.
Start fresh, throw them out, build new standards with DRM strictly forbidden in the charter.
Fuck the W3C, and their wallets now bursting with bribes. The greedy fucktards just sold us out.
Once upon a time, a family argued over what program they should watch on their TV. The father looked at the argumentative bunch and decided to weigh in with a bit of wisdom. "Let's resolve this democratically" he said. "Junior and Sissy should get one vote each for the show that they wish to watch, Mother should get two votes as her position allows for more power. As for me, I should get five votes as I'm the Pater Familias." At that point, the rich elitist bastard who lived in a mansion on a hill that had been in his rich elitist family for generations, used his master key and walked into the living room and declared: "You'll watch what I want you to watch. You don't get any votes. Fuck you!"
The family stopped their argument and sat down. "What do you want to watch, Uncle Fred?" They asked.
30% disagreed.
The proponents outnumbered the opponents by 2:1.
I agree that voting is an abuse of a consensus model (the IETF never votes on anything, for example). However, the standard was an API for doing encryption that was already implemented in the vast majority of Web browsers. The EFF was just apparently out of other, more appropriate venues that are actually about DRM.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
ISO Directives Part 1, which many Standards Development Organizations model themselves on, state in case consensus is not clear and a vote is taken, you need a two-thirds majority of the votes cast to indicate consensus.
Because increasingly we have a problem where more and more of those "rights" are being taken away from the general public through technological advances (DRM) while simultaneously providing no extra value to the public. In fact it actually has many downsides, the most egregious one being that they only affect those obeying the wishes of the copyright holders. Those who break the law anyway (pirates) don't feel any consequence of their actions. So it's a perverse incentive to actually buy into the copyright holder's demands.
Another is the fact that as it gives more and more control over the device to the copyright holders. Their views and desires increasingly become enforced outside of the rule of law, overruling the needs and desires of the device owner, while the copyright holders simultaneously disavow all forms of liability for the control that they exert. They then go even further in claiming that all forms of infringement are worthy of the same punishments as murderers, torturers, and rapists. While simultaneously demanding that people be judged based solely on suspicion and not hard evidence.
The IP holders also demand that our progress as a species should be held back because of their desire to profit indefinitely. That cultural works are not permitted to be reused or incorporated into new works, despite that exact same process being the source of their revenue stream. That ideas cannot be incorporated into new products, forcing everyone into isolated bubbles where NIH syndrome is the SOP, and wasting resources by trying to avoid litigation for something that's been in widespread use for years, standardized everywhere, and is now a barrier to entry.
Finally they have the gall to demand that despite all of this, (particularly the lack of liability and control issue I've already mentioned), that the security of others must take a back seat to their profits. That we cannot question them because their profits are so much more important than preventing identity theft, the spread of malware, loss of privacy, loss of life, or any other issue arising from a device answering to another master. While simultaneously engaging in behavior that can only be described as "facilitating".
These people are despised for a reason. They increasingly have made themselves more and more of a hindrance to society than a benefit. All the while claiming everyone else is to blame, laughing all the way to the bank. Of course there are people and groups like the EFF who oppose them at every turn. They have lost all sense of social responsibility and care only for themselves. We have a word for describing these kinds of people, and that word is sociopaths. Letting sociopaths run society is not in society's best interests.
Firefox downloads the required DRM module from a third-party server when you first try to use DRM'ed content.
The modules are closed source, but available on the major platforms, including Linux. I watched a DRM'ed show on Netflix in Firefox on Linux last night.
Although the modules are closed source, in Firefox they are sandboxed. They cannot do much more than decode audio and video. They can't access arbitrary files or call arbitrary platform APIs with the user's privilege. They have access to persistent storage, but only mediated by the browser, so the browser can corral or wipe that data on user request. Thus, in Firefox at least, there is no more privacy risk than other forms of Web client storage.
Consensus is not always possible for contentious issues. It's a nice ideal to strive for, but there are some issues where consensus cannot be practically reached. Compromise is likewise not always possible either. Those are the times when strong leadership is called for to make a decision, over the well-reasoned objections of some of the members of the body.
As this post nicely describes, DRM is already here, isn't going away, and this whole debate wasn't about whether or not we should have DRM at all. It was about whether or not to standardize something on the web, which is even more of a primary goal of the W3C than reaching consensus.
That's hardly unique to JavaScript. iOS apps are generally Objective-C or Swift. Android apps are Java or C/C++. Ads and stalking, including your GPS coordinates are the norm these days.
Because of all the evil examples out there, my advice that you should never run something written by a programmer on your own hardware.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It is time to replace the W3C. Clearly DRM is not in the interest of users, so there must be corruption in the standardisation process that is representing financial interests over those of users. Hopefully browser developers will reject implementation of any technology forged under these circumstances, and some corrective action can be taken to either replace or re-structure the W3C.
EME defines how a browser talks to a multimedia decoder. If the multimedia is Ogg / Theora / Vorbis / Flac / WebM, then obviously the decoder can be open source.
H.264 is patented, so you'd think that if the video is h.264 the decoder couldn't be open source, but it can be because Cisco has paid the patent license fees for OpenH264.
If the video is encrypted with a patented DRM, THEN you'd need a binary blob to decrypt it.
In other words, regarding open source vs proprietary it's just exactly the same as the existing situation, in which DRM content requires a proprietary browser plug-in such as Flash.
Most W3C standards get a higher level of consensus, but they're just discussing the technical details of how to do something.
The EFF strongly argued that media decoders shouldn't be standardized at all. There is a big political / philosophical argument behind this one, as well as the normal technical discussions of how to do it.
Given the political / philosophical debate, I don't imagine they could have gotten much better than the 60% for, 30% opposed that they ended up with. In the end, all the main browsers had already implemented EME anyway, so the decision before W3C was whether or not to write down exactly what the browsers were already doing, in order to aid compatibility.
EME doesn't talk to ogg, it talks to a decryptor and then passes the information to that decryptor which then produces a bitstream to be passed on to another module to enact it. Nominally a video codec, but there's nothing that limits it to that.
And guess what? If you have a decryptor that is open source, you can take that decryptor and use it to pass that bitstream out to disk so you can use it externally. And guess what that breaks? That's right, DRM.
Because copyright is a necessary evil - a limited-time, limited-scope burden on society and of natural rights with the intention of benefitting the people.
At this point, copyright is a farce and being abused grossly. "Time limited" at this point means that things will go out of copyright perhaps when your grandchildren are elderly assuming the term isn't extended another 20 years when Steamboat Willy looks like he might go out of copyright control. Copyright is being used to force people to get expensive tractor parts from specific manufacturers. They've tried to use it to prevent resale of cars. Microsoft is already using it as an excuse to start censoring web sites. It retards innovation and even access to basic scientific research paid for by the US government. And the companies aren't done yet, they're just getting started with things like this sort of thing, as well as crushing Fair Use in the courts despite its greater economic contribution than standard copyright itself.
Under these conditions, copyright is not only more trouble than its worth, but more dangerous than it's worth. It no longer serves the people at large, it's being used as a cudgel to force compliance with unreasonable terms and to allow those with a great deal of money to form empires over information that shouldn't be theirs in the first place, and to encroach every-further towards controlling the Internet and the devices you use. How long will it be before the industry pushes legislation to force them to be able to audit your computer remotely? We're already heading there. Sony made its intentions clear with rootkits on their CDs. Forced updates mean that the companies can run whatever software they want on your machines. It's just going an inch at a time, teeny tiny steps.
If you told someone in 1997 the kind of copyright crap that's been pulled and the kind of control that these companies are pushing you'd have been looked at as crazy by most people. They'd think it's insane how you'd need to keep equipment connected and subject to manufacturer control at any point, specifically a manufacturer that can do whatever they want whenever they want (ask the people who bought Nest home automation hubs how well their investment worked out for them). Now it's here. It just hasn't smacked you in the face hard enough for you to realize it, unless you've got a financial motive in this.
Privacy on the other hand is a personal right totally divorced from any real concept of intellectual property. IP laws are not used to protect privacy in general. The main way they cross is the use of copyright to prevent you from, say, disabling software that wants to violate your privacy because it would be against the EULA you have to "agree to" so you can use the software you may well need for things like work and critical functions.
Trying to confuse the two issues is ridiculous and disingenuous, and smells more of troll than an attempt at actual debate.
You have a browser - whose first job is just to work. S is for STANDARD and standards work across diverse multiple platforms with backwards compatibility where security patches do not break things - but hey, they interpreted consensus has he who has the gold.
Throw in DRM
Runs hardware inspection in superman mode before playing
Paywall pop-ups- subscribe or no deal
Wont play to Republican supporters (Fake news, or Trump hated reporter)
Won't show the news (in China)
Won't play in Australia (GOT saga)
Not available for any price (Georestrictions)
Secret telemetry or rummage of client device
No secret vaulting of keys nor remote key accesses
So a reasonable trade off must be
1) Runs in a sandbox
2) unconditionally plays if there is a key/certificate in a set location
3) No unconstitutional searches / fishing expeditions on host
3.5) No conditional filters / timeouts. streaming ads inserted
4) Nothing else
My bet is it compiles down to download binary blob and run it in superman mode, and it might work depending on (anything else but a simple key)
Well, if everyone tom have a binary blob for each phone and operating system, 32 or 64 bit, XP to Win13, depreciated hardware like old iPhones - then it is NO standard.
Now a compromise might be all binary blobs must be open source, and use a published key system , If not there is no interoperability.
Conclusion: They sold their soul for money.
Then there are loads of things on which there can never be a consensus, because the dissenter will always win - even if they are 1% of the body and the rest voted in favour.
That is essentially the idea, although most systems do not require 100% agreement. The whole point of a web standard is that everyone can agree to it. If they can't develop consensus then it's not a good web standard.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
{...} only webkit really matters when it comes to standards. Why don't we focus on that {... ?}
Because of Gecko / Servo powering Firefox on most non-iOS platforms including desktop and android (and a few less known, like the Mer-derived SailfishOS by Jolla, like the web engine replacing Microsoft Edge when running Wine, etc.)
Because of Microsoft Edge that the more clueless users still run on their Windows laptops ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The problem is exactly what you described, the browser downloads a closed source component automatically with no interaction or probably knowledge of the user. The EFF's point was this introduces a whole new attack surface to try to implement an underlying idea which is widely regarded as impossible by people who understand the technology (DRM). And this auto-downloading is on by default, so it can be abused by anyone who figures out how to leverage it. Meanwhile the vast majority of users have no idea what it is or how to turn it off. I think you can see why the EFF opposed it.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Nothing would come remotely close to satisfying both at the same time.
Exactly. The issue is not about a vote, losing, or the majority; W3C works on consensus because a majority vote is not good for everything in life and that's why the W3C works on consensus, and the EFF is right in taking a stance. This is not a "we're at B and need to know if we move toward A or C", it's a "We're at 0 and should we chose 1 instead", it's not a vote, it's a binary choice. You can only be pro, against or neutral on that issue. It came down to 58% something pro, the rest against or neutral (not sure if any were).
This reminds me a quote a saw that I find pertinent: "The far right is fascist, the far left is anti-fascist, so the middle ground is to be moderately fascist" or some such. That just does not make sense (I believe both sides would agree), at some point it becomes a stance, and DRM is such an issue - the process could not come to a compromise ("moderate DRM" is not a thing, they found no possible middle ground), so the W3C said fuck it, let's ditch our values and process, and implement it anyway. It's a real step back, and they are losing my trust. Whether it's to please big corps or hippies, the process was eschewed, period.
Imagine if Wikipedia did not work on consensus at all and it was simply a majority vote. Whether you like the current state of Wikipedia or not, it's easy to see what this would lead to - the "strongest" community wins, opposing viewpoints are suppressed. Exactly what happened at the W3C. Some processes simply are not compatible with a democratic process, but are critical to a democratic society (e.g. a jury)
As another said, it's hardly stupid. There are soft (Wikipedia) and hard consensus (Jury). Most consensus are not unanimous, because what is or isn't a consensus could be different in a smaller or larger community. Whatever side you are on, climate change is a world-wide consensus, man-made climate change is one in scientific circles, but it is not one for the US public opinion, and some circles have a strong consensus against. A Jury is a strong consensus, unanimous even, since this is the total size of the relevant community, anything outside of the Jury means nothing.
If the EFF had been alone and it came down to it VS the rest, I would still see that as a consensus and I do not believe the EFF would have left in that situation. This was hardly the case.
Someone should create an online petition requesting Jeff Jaffe to step down as CEO of W3C for not following his own documented core values, which specifically states they would follow the consensus of their members.
Then what's all this talk about HEVC? I know it takes alot more time to encode and isn't YMMV another standard for webcams. I assumed Apple invented it to sell more Macs. It is silly people are buing 16 core AMD Threadrippers and Xeons to encode 4K
http://saveie6.com/
What is your problem with it?
As a user, my problem with it is security. That's why I generally leave it disabled.
As a developer, my problem with it is that it's not a very good language.
DRM isn't an extreme feature
I disagree, but this point is a matter of opinion rather than fact.
Now other than getting up an leaving in a huff because they didn't get their way, they should be asking themselves, what other alternatives to DRM is there that can address the concerns of the 58% who approved of it.
The EFF did so, repeatedly, within the process. What they were pushing for wasn't even the elimination of the EME (they saw that the EME was happening no matter what), but the inclusion of things that would mitigate some of the worst dangers the EME presents -- such as allowing security researchers to be able to investigate it without fear of prosecution through the DMCA.
As the process went on, the EFF kept watering down their proposals until the final one was really very weak and would not have prevented any of the things that the major corporations said they wanted to accomplish.
So to say that the EFF was being too hardnosed, wasn't proposing compromises, or that their leaving was just petulance is simple, objectively, incorrect.
I read MoarSauce123's comment to imply that promotional perks from record labels cover the royalties payable to songwriters through BMI and the like. This can go as far as buying a 4-minute ad spot during "non-stop drive hour" to play a new single that the label wants to push. This is fine as long as the sponsorship is disclosed. The notice
since EME forbids opensource due to patents and licensing agreements?
The EME does not forbid open source. But the EME does not actually cover the DRM plugins themselves -- those are inevitably proprietary binary blobs that are platform dependent, but not because of anything in the EME requires them to be.
Until two or three versions from now, when [the "Enable DRM" checkbox] is removed from Preferences and can only be toggled via about:config, or five or six versions of Firefox later when even that is removed...
At that point, Firefox users can switch to a fork that omits support for proprietary CDMs, such as Waterfox. If Mozilla makes support for proprietary CDMs mandatory, I'd bet money Debian will either revive the Iceweasel brand or package IceCat.
You people just don't get it. It not about coping some stupid movie for free. They are crap propaganda anyway. The real issue is giving them the ability censor content at will. DRM will make China's Great Firewall look like a bastion of free speech.
CDMs can do any of the following:
a) Decryption only, enabling playback using the normal media pipeline, for example via a element.
b) Decryption and *decoding*, passing video frames to the browser for rendering.
c) Decryption and decoding, rendering directly in the hardware (for example, the GPU).
Option B and C have the CDM decoding (as ogg does).
EME implementations are required to support one option, clear key - which breaks DRM. In other words, a browser MUST support EME that's not secure DRM, one can also install DRM modules for it to talk to. EME doesn't specify anything about what the modules DO, just that the browser can send data to an external module, and the external module can send data back.
Why does the EFF feel that personal property rights of users (privacy) are more important than the persona property rights of people participating in the commercial sphere (copyright holders)?
That's easy to answer: they don't.
THe problem is whoever has enough money can buy their way hence have a voting right.
Well no, that's not the problem, not in the least. W3C, in their foundational documents and mission statements, does not run on votes. It runs on consensus. That is, you talk it out as long as it takes until you arrive at a place that everyone around the table is comfortable with.
The problem is that they decided that adopting a DRM standard was critically important, so much so that they didn't need to work towards consensus on the idea. And it's not like they could work towards consensus on it anyway, as a minority was absolutely, fundamentally opposed to it, while the corps absolutely insisted on it. Like someone noted above, you can't sit a 70s hippy down with a member of ISIS and ask them to come to consensus on how to organize a society. If the WC3 had kept its soul, the proposal would have died in committee because there was no consensus on it. Instead it was adopted.
Why was this so critical to adopt? If we knew the answer to your last question, we'd have that answer.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
We'd be better off if there were a bunch of costly competing standards for DRM. So that support for DRM was spotty and expensive to maintain.
If every server can reliably handle DRM that means it's accessible to many more businesses than before and can be applied to a broader range of materials.
In the end we'll likely see widespread us of DRM cut off millions from most of the Internet as only browsers signed by an authority can serve up the content. Poor Open Source folks and people on obscure platforms will be totally out of luck like they have been with Netflix for the last several years, except now it might be more like 50% of the Internet (by traffic) they are missing out on.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Firefox does notify the user and give them an opportunity to opt out. Please check your facts instead of just making them up.
3.3 Concensus includes
In some cases, even after careful consideration of all points of view, a group might find itself unable to reach consensus. The Chair may record a decision where there is dissent (i.e., there is at least one Formal Objection) so that the group may make progress (for example, to produce a deliverable in a timely manner). Dissenters cannot stop a group's work simply by saying that they cannot live with a decision. When the Chair believes that the Group has duly considered the legitimate concerns of dissenters as far as is possible and reasonable, the group should move on.
I assume this was considered to be the case. That there was dissent, not on technical grounds but on the fundamental basis that the DRM standard shouldn't exist at all. Which means that there wasn't going to be unanimous (or even close to unanimous) consensus.
I as well as the majority of the world are located in countries not covered by DMCA regulations.
From the list of companies voting in favor of the standard, mostly all companies are American. (Microsoft, Google, Apple, ... )
- I would assume researchers from countries not covered by DMCA are can thus legally keep researching DRM content for malware and so on?
- Could it be even Google, Apple, Microsoft, and so on, can simply ignore DMCA by paying workers abroad not covered by DMCA to do the research they need?
- Does this regulation somewhat impact me and everyone else not covered by DMCA regulations anyway?