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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."
Well yeah... standards that no one follows are worthless. W3C learned this the hard way thanks to Internet Explorer.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I am sorry that the W3C had to approve DRM. However most of the arguments against it are rather lame. Most people just want to watch their movie. They don’t want to copy it or use it unfairly. But the thing with digital media is if it is too easy to copy and share. That is what will happen. Old anolgies with VCR do not apply because that is an Analog copy so every copy is degraded. While every copy of digital data is the same. And now with high speed networking it is rather efficient to share previously too much info. Even weak DRM is enough to stop most people and going to court it is easy to prove malicious intent.
Does it goes against Open Source Standards? Yes it does. However the world doesn’t rotate around open source standards.
If you want to get rid of it you will need to blacklist all the sites that use it. And properly boycott the DRM material. This doesn’t mean pirating the content. But going without it in terms of protest. Pirating the content will only show there is a demand for their product and double down on the DRM to fight piracy more.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I read Tim's blog post to try to open my mind to this. It said "people want to comment on Netflix". I'm a bit tired of the idea that we need to reshape the web to help Netflix. But in the comments there was a gem: if the vendors want this functionality, all they have to do is go back to Flash!
I was never a fan of Flash and I'm glad that HTML5 has taken its place. However, this suggestion does seem both appropriate and viable to me. If the vendors want this level of brokenness, they can work on Flash until it works. Technology that makes things break intentionally is not a useful part of a web standard. The only likely result is that people who have truly paid will still not get their content. Shocker. Use Shockwave Flash if you want to attempt to make a system like this.
You want to watch Netflix? You need our DRM, which excludes all that other stuff. Want to read your favorite news, tech, sports, entertainment, clickbait, or any other website? Same thing. The DRM plugin will force the full volume flash ads, malware-laden click-the-monkey crap served up by an ad network, and anything else the site wants down your throat.
There are already two WWWs, as far as I'm concerned. One is the one I can browse using Palemoon with noscript and ublock, and permitting only the things that the site actually needs to function (not including things which are there only to advertise to me and/or spy on me.) The other is the one that I have to dip into when I want to use some site that doesn't fit that description, where I just go ahead and use Chrome. Oddly, my bank is in the first (real) one. But so are all the sites I actually care about, like google and ebay and amazon and even netflix. They already have the option to not be part of that web, but they choose to stay on the side that doesn't alienate people like me who will just consume some other media. What makes you think that having another way to piss people off means they're all going to use it? I already don't give two shits about forbes or business insider.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"