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Corporations Just Quietly Changed How the Web Works (theoutline.com)
Adrianne Jeffries, a reporter at The Outline, writes on W3C's announcement from earlier this week: The trouble with DRM is that it's sort of ineffective. It tends to make things inconvenient for people who legitimately bought a song or movie while failing to stop piracy. Some rights holders, like Ubisoft, have come around to the idea that DRM is counterproductive. Steve Jobs famously wrote about the inanity of DRM in 2007. But other rights holders, like Netflix, are doubling down. The prevailing winds at the consortium concluded that DRM is now a fact of life, and so it would be be better to at least make the experience a bit smoother for users. If the consortium didn't work with companies like Netflix, Berners-Lee wrote in a blog post, those companies would just stop delivering video over the web and force people into their own proprietary apps. The idea that the best stuff on the internet will be hidden behind walls in apps rather than accessible through any browser is the mortal fear for open web lovers; it's like replacing one library with many stores that each only carry books for one publisher. "It is important to support EME as providing a relatively safe online environment in which to watch a movie, as well as the most convenient," Berners-Lee wrote, "and one which makes it a part of the interconnected discourse of humanity." Mozilla, the nonprofit that makes the browser Firefox, similarly held its nose and cooperated on the EME standard. "It doesn't strike the correct balance between protecting individual people and protecting digital content," it said in a blog post. "The content providers require that a key part of the system be closed source, something that goes against Mozilla's fundamental approach. We very much want to see a different system. Unfortunately, Mozilla alone cannot change the industry on DRM at this point."
Basically, unless you are writing a browser with decent marketshare, you defacto have no voice in making the standards. Basically, the only voices that matter are Mozilla (Firefox), Apple (Safari), Google(Chrome), and Microsoft (Edge/Explorer). Despite what any standard says, web developers are going to go by the behavior of the browsers do. The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to try to exclude DRM is Mozilla, and unfortunately, if they do that, the users will switch to the browser that makes watching Netflix easiest. Also Mozilla sucks a bag of dicks these days anyway.
DRM is not open. You can't have an 'interoperable' DRM standard, because its entire purpose is to stop things from being interoperable.
It's better to force companies to make their own sub-par player (with all the bugs and security flaws that come with it) rather than trying to give them first class status in the browser.
"Did you exchange
a walk on part in the war
for a leading role in a cage?"
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Not everything needs to be accessed through a web browser. Seriously. I have trouble imagining why that was the solution in the first place. Let them make their own apps and when they fail to move eyeballs away from the web, let them come back and play nicely with the rest of us.
And if these apps don't fail and provide unique, worthwhile experiences that people are willing to pay for DRM or whatever scheme included, then that's the way it will be. We computer people are the minority here. Just because it may ruffle a few ideological and dogmatic feathers doesn't make the situation any worse than it already is.
But that's happening anyway. It's just that the "proprietary apps" are called EME modules or drivers or whatever.
They're also going to be awesome for spreading malware. Instead of "install this CODEC to watch this porn" it's "install this EME module to watch this porn" and it'll be a normal and "legit" thing for the user to do, 90% of the time. (Because every service needs its own.)
That other 10% is going to keep us all working full time. Job security for anyone who makes money on when users lose. We'll be like construction contractors in a full-year hurricane season. The more broken windows, the better.
Fuckwits. We all need to be running browsers such that everyone can see user agent strings where they know this DRM fiasco isn't implemented. The server logs themselves need to say "you're going to lose money on this customer if you require EME, because they're just going to switch to pirating in order to be able to view the content."
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
The idea that the best stuff on the internet will be hidden behind walls in apps rather than accessible through any browser is the mortal fear for open web lovers; it's like replacing one library with many stores that each only carry books for one publisher.
The "best stuff on the Internet" isn't movies and TV. Those can be gotten lots of different ways, or can be left, altogether. It's just stupid corporate entertainment crap, by and large.
The "best stuff on the Internet" in my opinion, is still there, and isn't going to be effected in any way by DRM.
I don't respond to AC's.
From TFS:
The idea that the best stuff on the internet will be hidden behind walls in apps rather than accessible through any browser is the mortal fear for open web lovers
This argument makes no sense. Essentially, the argument is that it's better to have the best stuff on the internet hidden behind walls in the browser rather than hidden behind walls in apps.
Either way, it's hidden behind walls -- so from my point of view, it's a distinction without a difference.
But I will confess, I don't think this idea that the browser should be a one-stop portal to everything on the internet is a good one. I think that it pretty much guarantees that the utility of the various services is reduced.
I think email and file servers are a good example of what I mean.
I am sorry that the W3C had to approve DRM.
I think your premise is wrong here -- they didn't have to approve the EME. They wanted to.
The DRM plugin will force the full volume flash ads, and malware-laden click-the-monkey crap served up by an ad network. Sites will become channels, with their DRM required to view the content; ads, videos, and all. You're non-EME browser will simply display a message that it's not compatible with the site.
file:
Because they are closing that hole with Windows PlayReady. Now the OS explicitly controls what content can and cannot be recorded.
Until Windows PlayReady can interface directly with the brain, bypassing a screen and speakers, the content can still be copied.
How good quality depends on the equipment used. By capturing a 1080p display with a 2160p camera and condensing it back to 1080, the quallity is indistinguishable from the real thing. Similar for sound - de-amping a speaker signal and feeding it to a mixer, you get a copy that you can't tell the original from a first-generation copy.
In other words, it stops the average home user, but does nothing to stop the real pirates.
And you You seem to be operating under the presumption that EME (and all DRM) is designed to stop piracy. It isn't.
Read Ian Hickson (author of html5 spec) on this:
https://plus.google.com/+IanHi...
"The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations.
The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices."
He makes a compelling point.