Will Google Oppose DRM On HTML5 Video? 399
An anonymous reader let us know that "Mozilla has committed to not implement DRM in Firefox for WebM HTML5 video even though it is theoretically possible. Microsoft has asked Google and the WebM community several other questions that still have not been answered, but this one seems more important: will Google commit to keeping WebM in Chrome DRM-free? Does our community think that is important for the open web and free software?"
theoretically possible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny, I thought DRM was theoretically impossible. Something to do with Bob and Eve being the same person.
DRM is Necessary (Score:2, Insightful)
Flash will continue to persist on a large scale until such a time that HTML video is standardized and has acceptable DRM written into the standard. Until that happens, publishers simply aren't going to stop using Flash. Mozilla is shooting themselves in the foot, and Google will be doing so as well if they make the same decision.
DRM isn't evil, people. Publishers WANT you to be able to view their content, or they wouldn't be putting it online. They wouldn't implement some DRM scheme that would ruin your ability to watch it, or why even publish it? They are NOT, however, going to publish it without some sort of control mechanism. If Mozilla and Google don't realize this soon, then all the effort they've been putting into the HTML video standard is for nothing.
Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:H.264 (Score:3, Insightful)
Man, do you people think or do any research at all? Or do you just like trolling?
Mozilla Firefox (~30% of the browser market share) will never have support for H.264. Never.
Chrome (~11% of browser market share) no longer supports H.264.
H.264 cannot be the standard for HTML5 video because it is not royalty-free.
That's why WebM is a big deal.
More importantly: does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
I spent a long time opposed to DRM because of the lock in effect. Except that reality has pretty much rendered DRM as obsolete.
DRM does not and has not protected video game publishers.
DRM does not and has not prevented every significant song, movie, or other work from being easily, readily, and widely available on torrents.
DRM does not and has not generally resulted in an improved customer experience.
In a very real sense, it is frequently easier to use the pirate version of a game than the normal one. I love the GTA series on PC, and every single game I ever purchased I almost immediately installed the No-CD cracks. Yes, that's right. I bought all the games of GTA I ever played, and I cracked all of them just so I didn't have to dicker with the stupid DRM.
So, other than annoy the end users, what purpose does DRM serve?
If BBC iPayer can shed Flash it will be awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now the BBC serves H.264 streams via flash and it has pretty lousy performance (Flash) or pretty awesome performance (via the same stream in XBMC). If they want to shed Flash entirely and still serve a large proportion of the web then a limited amount of content protection is almost inevitable because the content producers (ie, not the BBC but the people who own some of the shows they broadcast) demand it.
Sure, ideally there would be no content protection at all (it really doesn't affect the free distribution of the content at all) but right now that is just not a reality.
I would love BBC iPlayer to be able to serve H.264 with HTML5 (it already does to iPhone user agent strings) since it would free me from the flash performance hog that makes HD streams stutter even on a powerful desktop machine. It won't happen if a sizeable portion of the browser market won't support it.
I'm only talking about iPlayer here, but it applies to many video services across the web - trying to force the DRM hand too early will just perpetuate Flash.
Re:DRM is Necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no way to have standardized DRM... The whole idea of DRM relies entirely on security through obscurity, and if you publish a standard then that obscurity is gone.
Even with an obscured scheme, if it's worth it to anyone (ie there aren't easier ways to get the same content) then someone will reverse engineer the format and work out how to extract the data from it in a usable way. This will _ALWAYS_ be possible, because the player itself has to get the data into a usable format itself in order to display it.
All DRM does is inconvenience legitimate users, pirates will just download media that is not drm encumbered and have a better user experience.
DRM doesn't work (Score:2, Insightful)
i keep having to point this out to people, time and time again: broadcasting and DRM are mutually exclusively incompatible. Free Software people recognise this, and anyone who fails to recognise it is just plain dumb. or is being paid to pretend to be dumb. let's do a simple maths demo. go get your calculator, and hit the following buttons: type in 1, then hit "-". then type 1000, then hit 1/x, then hit equals. then hit "power (x/y)" and then 1000 again. press equals, and you should have 0.36769 or thereabouts. now do the same, substituting 10,000, then 100,000, then 1,000,000 and keep doing that until you reach the limit of the digits of your calculator.
the number displayed on your screen is 1/e (2.7818281828) which should mean something to you.
now do this: instead of 0.999999 to the power of 1000000, try even something like 0.9999998 to the power of 1000000. you should notice something VERY quickly: it's almost zero. now try 0.9999991 to the power of 1000000 - you should notice something even more startling: it's almost 1.
this demonstrates something very very simple: that it doesn't MATTER how complex the DRM is (0.0000001 or 0.00000001 probability of one person breaking it) - sheer weight of numbers of people around the world WILL break it, period. that really is the end of the matter. the sooner that people recognise and accept this, the sooner we can get on with something more constructive to do with our time, such as watching the next episode of Stargate on the device of OUR choice.
Re:H.264 (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>H.264... is extremely unfriendly to open source.
So then - how do open source programs like WinAmp, MP Classic, Miro, and VLC Player get away with using it? If they can do it, Chrome and Firefox should be able to do it too. (And Opera - since they are not open source at all.)
More importantly, how do I get the WebM video I just downloaded to work in my iPod? Or my TV? They only do Apple and MPEG codecs.
DRM protects established publishers from indies (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM does not and has not protected video game publishers.
Yes it does. The digital restrictions management on video game consoles protects established video game publishers from competition from smaller indie developers. Console makers have a history of not granting licenses to micro-ISVs, and "homebrew" software relies on fragile jailbreaks that the console maker can and does fix with an update to the console's firmware.
Re:DRM is Necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:DRM is Necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
DRM is, inevitably, simply cannot be done any other way, a class of methods and mechanisms whereby my computer is placed under a 3rd party's partial control in order to make it obey their interests, rather than mine. Even if I happen to agree with the particular rule being thus enforced(which is hardly assured, most DRM users go beyond the rights copyright law allows), it is the change in the ultimate controller of the system that is the inevitable and unacceptable consequence...
The fact that any system sufficiently robust to allow for effective DRM also allows for effective censorship is just icing on the cake...
Re:More Flash? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the point he's making is that if there's no standards-based mechanism for delivering DRM-protected video, content providers will simply keep using Flash to do it, reducing interoperability and leading to inferior user experience.
Which is a fair point.
Re:More Flash? (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is, there can't really be a standards-based mechanism for delivering DRM anything, at least not in the sense of open standards on the Web.
Right now, if I stick to HTML5 and stuff like WebM, there is the theoretical possibility of me taking nothing but existing open source stuff, or even starting from scratch, and writing software that can consume that media. Pretty much any DRM which allowed me to do that wouldn't really be doing its job as DRM.
The better route is to suck it up and leave the DRM behind.
Re:H.264 (Score:0, Insightful)
H.264 isn't proprietary. It's an open standard. There are patents, which is a separate matter.
It's just sad that people cannot understand this basic, simple fact -- all they care about is "oh, can my X play Y"?
What's so sad about that? There are no nefarious pitfalls in using H.264, so why should people care beyond whether their X can play Y?
If a device jumped the gun and limited itself to a proprietary technology, that was its mistake, one that Google and Mozilla are trying to correct and push out with WebM. Make devices natively and in hardware decode WebM instead of H.264.
How is using H.264 a mistake? It's highly advanced and wildly successful. As for Google and Mozilla trying to "correct" this, they are not going to be able to "correct" many hundreds of millions of devices, as well as standards used by different industries and markets. To expect all of this to change, in favor of an inferior codec? Really?
Google and Mozilla are effectively marginalizing themselves and propping up Flash. All for an ideological stance that is hindering web progress and promoting an incompatible and inferior technology.
DRM in the streaming age keeps honest users honest (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate DRM on purchased music/video downloads. But for streaming services it is absolutely necessary, and not to keep dedicated pirates from stealing content. For streaming services such as netflix it keeps honest users honest. Netflix allows 5 devices per account and you can only stream when you are paying the subscription fee. If there was no DRM, then there would be easily available programs that would let you download movies to your computer to be watched after canceling. And remove the 5 devices per account limit.
Honest users would do this, but with DRM they would not. It is in some ways similar to anti-shoplifing measures at retail stores. Sure a professional shoplifter can avoid this, but it provides enough security to keep the honest shoppers honest.
Re:H.264 (Score:4, Insightful)
H.264 cannot be the standard for HTML5 video because it is not royalty-free.
That is not a true statement.
Re:More Flash? (Score:3, Insightful)
no, DRM makes things not searchable... there's no way Google wants that. Most of what's on YouTube doesn't NEED DRM...
The whole point of HTML5 video is so that "everyman" can use video services... for family videos... i.e all the crap that's on YouTube, Flickr, picassa, etc. HTML5 video isn't about SELLING videos... it's something that should have been done ten years ago... why should every browser not support a modern video format, like they support gif, png, jpeg? That's what everybody misses in this discussion. Everybody has their own DRM versions... I don't really see those going away, there's no reason the big guys like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe will have their own anyway...
The whole thing is bogus anyway... the big guys aren't going to give up their private DRM schemes anyway... all they're doing is stalling the process to fuck over the little people. Once Open HTML5 video hits and Google and Mozilla start implementing it then Apple and Microsoft will come along. Hell, if Adobe was clever they'd tack Vorbis and WebM into the next Flash and all the enterprise businesses would be none the wiser and keep using IE6!
Re:DRM is Necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean if there's no way for movie studios to control everyone's computers? That's what it really is. We are much better off without such adoption.
Re:H.264 (Score:3, Insightful)
Correct. My definition of "inferior" refers to the actual quality of the codec itself. Your definition is meta. It has absolutely no bearing on whether the codec, as a codec, is better or not.
What matters is whether the loss in quality, among many other benefits of H.264, is worth the gain "freedom" offered by WebM. For well over 99% of the people out there, it's not.
Re:DRM is Necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody anywhere thinks "I want to initiate some 'dominoes' and make my DVD player be living room policeman". Nobody wants restrictions, nobody wants unskippable bullshit, nobody thinks what you're thinking that they do when they push play on the dvd player. You're totally confusing what people *want* versus what they *tolerate* because they have to. What they want it for it to play when the push play, skip when they push skip. That's it.
If you don't believe me try asking some other people "do you WANT your DVD player to refuse to skip FBI warnings or do you merely tolerate it because you have to?". I bet you not one single honest person tells you they WANT FBI warnings.
As for the page setup dialog being displayed, most of the time I do, as do most people. This concept of studying people to make software that does what they want intuitively is called "usability" (though I don't think it is practiced much anymore, sadly). And as you pointed out, a lot of software allows this to be customized, unlike DVD players in the US.
As for the annoying printer drivers, well good thing it isn't illegal to sell less annoying printers. We can't say the same for DVD players.