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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
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.
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.
HTML already has the object tag, which allows one to put any binary proprietary code one wants to use into a web page. So as I understand it all this EME tag does is standardize what was already available for DRM.. I don't like it but they already had the power with the object tag.
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.
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.
There's a lot wrong with the headline.
The alternative to EME isn't no DRM; it's Adobe Flash. Which we've had, and suffered with, for a very long time. EME standardizes, so some degree, DRM so that we can dump Flash.
Of the EME-producers, it's Apple that's the evil one... regardless of using Flash or using a non-Apple EME... such as Widevine in Chrome... you cannot detect HDCP; Apple does not document that and yet uses it in their Fairplay CDM. So neither Flash or Widevine in Chrome can enforce HDMI per the OPL, and yet the Safari Fairplay EME CDM can, meaning you need to go full Apple to see HD on an external monitor unless a toughened custom viewer is used.
EME doesn't really freeze out other browsers either. Firefox has supported Widevine for years. Mostly what this does is allow us to dump the enormous vulnerability surface of Flash.
But of course "evil corporations are corrupting the internet" does SOUND better than "EME helps you migrate from Flash."