DRM allows you to volontarily give up whatever control of your machine you're talking about.
As painful as it is, one part of living in a capitalist society is to exercise your right/power as a consumer. Don't like it? Don't use it.
To me, DRM is not something that infringes on your freedom, though I'm very glad we have the EFF when they spend their time combatting things like surveillance, that are not opt-in.
> As painful as it is, one part of living in a capitalist
> society is to exercise your right/power as a consumer.
> Don't like it? Don't use it.
I agree, but there's more to it than that. From the W3C site:
"The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web."
... and ...
"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."
Therefore it's perfectly reasonable, in the context of a capitalist society, to lobby the W3C to refuse the addition of EME. It is inimical to their own stated goals (there are other conflicts too; see http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission.html for details).
To be clear, I'm not arguing for the initiation of force. Companies should be free to build their own DRM systems, and others to use or not use them as they choose.
But the W3C should have no part of that, and the HTML5 standard should not be crippled by the inclusion of DRM.
Another angle to consider is our cultural heritage. More and more of that is moving to the Web; if we tie it up with DRM, bitrot will mean that in a generation or two most of it will be inaccessible.
I don't see how DRM is incompatible with their goals. Of course one might argue that DRM might be platform specific. However, I very much doubt this standard will make DRM more platform specific than it already is.
> Of course one might argue that DRM might be platform specific. However, I very much doubt this standard will make DRM more platform specific than it already is.
It is in fact quite possible that it will. DRM, right now, is mainly Flash. For all its faults, Flash runs on all browsers and OSes. However, EME CDM modules may only work in Chrome and Internet Explorer - the two browser vendors pushing the EME spec, and that have their own DRM solutions that they are building as CDMs.
Why would Google or Microsoft create CDMs that work in browsers or OSes that they do not own? If not them, then who would create a CDM that works on all browsers and OSes? Possibly no one.
> However, I very much doubt this standard will make DRM more platform specific than it already is.
Of course not! In fact, due to the nature of the web, it will make DRM in general less platform-specific! The problem is that HTML will become more platform-specific.
> Of course not! In fact, due to the nature of the web, it
> will make DRM in general less platform-specific!
Why do you think the inclusion of an EME standard in HTML5 will induce CDM producers to support operating systems that they wouldn't have supported without EME?
I suspect most DRM today exists for Windows only. Thanks to Android, there are now a ton of consumer devices powered by Linux that can browse the web. If publishers started using EME, they would probably be encouraged to compile Windows and Linux blobs for this reason.
There's already a Linux-based HTML5 EME decryption module that's used for Netflix on Chromebooks. In practice, it's actually less useful to Linux users than the current, nominally Windows-only options. It's locked to Google-approved hardware that is locked down to prevent you running your own software; if you enable developer mode it won't run. Meanwhile the traditional Netflix DRM can apparently run under Wine.
I disagree. The CEO of the W3C thinks this unlikely, and there's already the example of Netflix. They are one of the primary agitators behind EME, and they refuse to make their system available on Linux.
> So you want to demand that Netflix provide at their expense a solution for every possible OS out there?
>
> Don't like it, don't partake. I can't understand this mentality...
What mentality? Perhaps you should read my other posts. To summarise, my position is:
- if Netflix wants to build their own DRM system, fine
- if they don't want to include my chosen operating system, that's their perogative, they just lose out on my money
- what is _not_ okay is for Netflix to lobby the W3C to include DRM in HTML5
The point I'm trying to make is that having a DRM standard in HTML5 does not mean that Netflix will suddenly start to support Linux. Several posters have expressed this idea, and it's just plain incorrect.
>So you want to demand that Netflix provide at their expense a solution for every possible OS out there?
Who says it has to be made by Netflix or at their expense? I'm sure there are open source developers (e.g. Mozilla) who would be happy to create a multiplatform open source Netflix client. Netflix are the ones who make that impossible, and having done that their remaining alternatives are a) provide the client themselves, or b) incur the wrath of angry users. They've decided to go with (b), so here we are.
>DRM allows you to volontarily give up whatever control of your machine you're talking about.
DRM doesn't allow you to do anything. It only restricts. Your argument is really that DRM would "allow" you to enter into arrangements you wouldn't otherwise be able to because Hollywood wouldn't be willing to take your money without it, which you have not proven. And you could say the same thing about a shock collar. If someone suggested it would be a good idea to fit everyone with a shock collar that would shock you if you did anything Hollywood didn't like, and (at first) you could opt out of the shock, but not the collar, and only by opting out of popular culture (or breaking the law), I hope you can imagine why the idea might not see a particularly warm reception regardless of how many movies Hollywood alleges they'll provide in exchange.
> I don't see how DRM is incompatible with their goals.
From my post on their blog (I'd link there, but their anchors are broken):
DRM is software that is designed to restrict a user from playing content on certain devices, in certain ways, and in certain locations. I think that is the very definition of a walled garden. I genuinely do not understand how you believe that supporting DRM will elminate walled gardens.
In the best case we will have moved from an ad-hoc collection of walled gardens, to an ad-hoc collection of walled gardens with the support and moral endorsement of the W3C.
If your concern is genuinely to eliminate the need for apps, and the enclosue of content in walled gardens, why not use your considerable influence in opposition of DRM altogether?
"Frankly, I don't understand the question about insisting that compliant implementation respect geographic location. As a general rule, we don't provide conformance testing and have no way of insisting what people implement."
That was my point :). The W3Cs mission states that:
"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."
Breaking down that list, we see that DRM is inimical to several goals:
* hardware: DRM implementations are known for being hardware-locked; Netflix is the most prominent recent example, re. the ARM-based Chromebook
* software: existing DRM implementations are tied to specific browsers and operating systems
* geographical location: many (most?) DRM implementations implement geographical segregation (a.k.a. region encoding)
That is, by lending support to DRM, the W3C is helping to ensure that at least some web content is restricted by hardware, software, and geopgraphical location. This is in direct opposition to several of your stated goals.
...and also feel free to complain about it. ...which is what he is doing.
I have never understood responses such as yours. No part of being able to vote with your money means that you should only vote with your money. Capitalism does not mean that people shouldn't complain.
Just saying that DRM doesn't concern me. I don't feel it infringes on my rights, so no need to complain.
It's an (my) opinion, feel free to complain as much as you prefer.
Of course I also feel that businesses need a legitimate means of getting paid, and I prefer them using DRM over convincing congress to let them spy on us.
> I don't feel it infringes on my rights, so no need to complain.
That's a pretty narrow criterion for complaint.
How about the fact that the purpose of the W3C is to oppose everything that DRM enables?
How about the fact that blind, deaf or otherwise-handicapped people have real trouble accessing DRM-crippled content?
What of the fact that DRM bit-rot causes massive cultural content loss?
Are you concerned by the fact that DRM remains the single biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of FOSS operating systems?
Part of rational self-interest is maintaining a benevolent society in which to live. By only considering rights violations, and in particular only violations of _your_ rights, you're failing to do that.
I strongly agree with you in general. However, can you provide a pointer to more information about the accessibility problem? One might argue that integrating DRM with HTML5 media playback would actually improve accessibility, since it would separate the DRM from the generally inaccessible Flash-based UIs of current players.
There is no difference between the proposal and existing closed-source, proprietary blobs like Flash.
All the W3C is talking about here is standardising the interface between Javascript and those blobs. There is no way in which the presence of EME support in a browser will improve accessibility.
Consider an example. Before EME, content is rendered in an accessibility-invisible Flash plugin. After EME, the exact same thing is true, only there is now a standard way for the browser to control the plugin.
> DRM allows you to voluntarily give up whatever control of your machine you're talking about.
Of course, and I think it is also fair for consumers to voluntarily protest DRM before it is placed on our devices by expressing our concerns, as opposed to afterward when we have to do so by voting with our wallets. I don't think its "my right" to have DRM-less devices, but I think all the criticisms about freedom and security are valid as long as they are meant to appeal to the producers by signaling our desires as consumers (this as opposed to for example suggesting there should be a law against DRM which I would be against). In theory the ideal would be for everyone to be on the same page before these decisions get made.
>> DRM allows you to volontarily give up whatever control of your machine you're talking about.
Sometimes excluding an option creates better outcomes.
Example: you cannot become someone's lifelong slave in America, even if you voluntarily agree to it; The agreement is not legal. Not allowing you this option also protects you: if you could do it voluntarily, you could be coerced into volunteering ("well, I see you can't pay your bank loan...").
Here's a possible scenario with DRM: If media companies can easily DRM video on the web, they will. Soon nearly all video on the web will have it. Goodbye, video options.
Also, new browsers who can't make the business agreements to use the DRM will effectively not support video on the web. Which means nobody will use them. Goodbye, browser options.
Cutting off the DRM option preserves video and browser options. I say we voluntarily give up the possibility of DRM to preserve other possibilities.
>> Don't like it? Don't use it.
Exactly the message I'd give to media companies concerning the open web.
Why aren't all videos on the Internet already protected by it? Why is a standardized API worse than the existing proprietary ones?
Here's an alternative scenario: widespread protection of content rights leads to a shift of entertainment programming to the web and a revitalization of the market. Hundreds of small produces, previously unable to deliver content because of crippling piracy are able to monetize production beyond hoping enough people click on ads. Any production company will be able to produce a cheap or free pilot and be able to sell the next season for $5, delivered safely worldwide. Greater safety of IP leads to greater investment.
A "long tail effect" of TV programming, much like Kindle, means large amounts of old esoteric become available on the Internet. Someone scouring Pirate Bay for some obscure old movie or TV show will now be able to easily get it from the rightful content owner.
> Why is a standardized API worse than the existing proprietary ones?
Because, as I've explained elsewhere on this thread, DRM is inimical to the stated goals of the W3C. They shouldn't be in the business of standardising DRM interfaces, they should be actively opposing DRM.
> widespread protection of content rights
Why do you suppose that the EME proposal will lead to that? Web DRM is already widespread. Are you suggesting that EME will lead to DRM plugins becoming available for non-mainstream OSs like Linux? There's no evidence to back you up there, and quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.
> Greater safety of IP leads to greater investment.
As painful as it is, one part of living in a capitalist society is to exercise your right/power as a consumer. Don't like it? Don't use it.
To me, DRM is not something that infringes on your freedom, though I'm very glad we have the EFF when they spend their time combatting things like surveillance, that are not opt-in.