Reject DRM and You Risk Walling Off Parts of the Web, Says W3C Chief 433
An anonymous reader writes "Web technologies need to support DRM-protected media to reduce the risk of parts of the web being walled off, the chief executive of the web standards body W3C has told ZDNet. Dr Jeff Jaffe, CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium, says proposals to provide a hook for DRM-protected media within HTML, via Encrypted Media Extensions, are necessary to help prevent scenarios such as movie studios removing films from the web in a bid to protect them from piracy."
Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
How many of these measures to "Protect something from piracy" ever work? Name the most DRM'd copy-protected movie ever distributed. I'll be there's a copy on Pirate Bay. They seem to be under the impression that each individual pirate has to crack their weird schemes.
Once a single person does it and produces a clean file then it's game over - its in the wild - and SOMEONE always manages to do it.
Walling off (Score:5, Insightful)
Weasel words. Walling off content is effectively the same thing.
Remove movies from the web? So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Summed up better this way.
If you reject DRM, you "risk" walling off parts of the Web.
If you accept DRM, however, you GUARANTEE that parts of the Web will become walled off.
Re:DRM is here to stay (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is it cannot be unobtrusive and work with an OS I want to use.
Sure I can tolerate it on my ps3, but not on a real computer.
DRM on music is now dead, books are next, then movies.
their movies aren't walled off now? (Score:4, Insightful)
they're all behind drm now. so what's the deal? it's not like netflix has non drm content section. it's not like I can buy movies on physical media without some sort of drm on them. so what exactly would they be removing?
why do we need another plugin system, when we have one that works perfectly well for the drm? what's in it for w3c? cash? why would the studios be anymore interested in porting their drm schemes to exotic hardware if you provided them with a new plugin system.
that the organization has a CEO is a failure in the first place - fuck 'em.
oh we need them because ms discontinued silverlight and netflix needs a new plugin.. yeah, perfectly good reasoning, that we need this or netflix goes out of business out of spite. and one thing mr ceo these 3 companies.. haven't they ALREADY fucking implemented the thing? didn't I just read about it a few articles ago? what the fuck do we need the EME standard for if they already did it, they as companies are who is pushing for it and they as companies can do it regardless of what W3C does or doesn't do. only thing your stamp is buying you is couple of free lunches and some budget money while taking it up the ass.
why don't you make like an unicorn and finally tell us what HTML5 actually encompasses instead of latching on more every year so we could finally perhaps have html5 compatible browsers - not that it matters since it seems webkit and IE11(or whatever) are actually the defacto standard here.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm unclear on the Chief's point (Score:5, Insightful)
What he said is along similar lines of "If you don't use something other than Linux, you're probably not going to be able to watch Neflix." Or "If you don't let the TSA molest you, you won't be allowed on the flight."
The Chief here says basically that if you don't let them have their way, you won't be able to use their services. And I'm not sure I give a damn whether their services get used in the first place. That's time I could use to practice guitar instead, but honestly, I'm lazy enough and easily distracted enough that as long as things are easy to use, I'll still get home, sit online, and then wonder when I drag myself to bed, "where the hell did my evening go?"
So to those who would wall off portions of the internet, I say bring it. I need to finish learning the solo from Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" anyway.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. We risk "walling off" Sony, Disney and the rest...
Wow. A web the way I liked it, before big-media and commercial presence sought to replicate the AOL experience. :-)
In fact, that's a great way to describe this: If you accept DRM in HTML, you risk the AOLization of the web.
Rejecting DRM is good (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with W3C's argument is it fails to recognize the enormous market value in making sure content is accessible to most number of eyeballs possible.
If megamediacorp wants to distribute content anywhere to any device any browser then they can't use technology not widely deployed or implemented. For example requiring third party plugins could provide missing functionality but they take a hit in knowing their content is not universally reachable.
If instead you just give in and widely implement whatever blackbox content feels will protect their content today then media companies no longer feel any pressure not to DRM/encrypt EVERYTHING and before you know it all content is DRM'd.
As a practical matter I never understood the DRM issue as the simple truth is that if you can decrypt it to view it you can certainly copy it. The only way for DRM to actually work is a fully trusted environment where the user is denied full access to their devices and physical hardware is tamper proof. Even if this were achivable nothing stops out of band re-recording of media. Not only is DRM evil but it is pointless... a total waste of time and resources as were the DVD and Blueray copy protection schemes. It can't work unless everyone is denied the right to own a general purpose computer.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's DRM'd content that kills. And it doesn't kill a person, it destroys culture and human legacy. Because when a thing is published and yet not available except under specific conditions controlled by a party, when changes occur, bad things happen to that content.
It is a violation of the spirit of copyright law to have DRM. The spirit of copyright is that for a limited time, the work is exclusive to a party for licensing, publishing and distribution. But when that time is up, it SHALL fall into the public domain as a contribution to the collection of human works. The problem is the content will be lost forever before the content is released to the public domain and there is no financial incentive for publishers to publish DRM free content free of charge and certainly no such REQUIREMENT.
Publishers think they "own" the content and I don't think that is entirely the case. The content is allowed under government blessing like a child. A parent has rights and responsibilities over a child until the limited term of parenthood has expired. The law doesn't allow a parent to kill a child or otherwise to prevent him from entering society. Additionally, other forms of abuse of children are illegal and/or prohibited.
When a copyright holder engages exclusive rights, the second half is not being honored or guaranteed. That needs to change. Furthermore, the publishers need to be held to task and even sued over the loss of things which have already been lost.
Human culture and history is being lost and it is significant. And the losses are due to be increasingly larger as content of today is almost exclusively digital in storage format.
Re:two sides to this (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM cannot be open-source, for an obvious reason: If it were, you could just comment out the 'don't copy' line and recompile. The proposed HTML DRM scheme isn't a DRM scheme itsself, but an API by which a propritary DRM binary can be loaded and interface with the browser. So even if Firefox and Chrome supported the API, the DRM vendor (ie, Netflix) would also have to release a linux binary - and given the difficulty of ensuring the DRM is secure on an OS where everything from the kernel to the video driver is subject to user modification, there isn't any chance of that happening.
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
That works both ways.
The fact that we already have DRM on the web without that DRM being embedded in the web standards also means that they don't need to be embedded in the web standards.
Companies that are petulant about their content on the web can just continue to do what they've always been doing.
There's no reason to change anything to to subvert the notion of open standards.
In truth, this beaurocrat is irrelevant. Worst possible thing for one of them.
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's provide the bricks! (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, yeah.
This content is ALREADY walled off from the net.
The bricks of that wall are DRM!
They essentially set up a completely one-sided transaction here.
We pay them so they can tell us when and where and how many times we can view content we paid for.
And if we disagree? Fuck us! They have our money. We can just NOT have access to something we've paid for.
The whole piracy argument is maybe about 5% fact and 95% bullshit.
DRM is about increasing monetization of their content at the expense of open access. Piracy could drop to zero and they'd STILL claim losses to piracy.
Let these greedy money grubbers pull their content from the web!
All the smart content providers will stay, understanding that piracy and DRM is simply an expensive game of escalation where the only winners are the people selling their crappy DRM schemas. They'll continue to make money.
And all the rest of the jackasses who've pulled their content from the web can bitch about how their declining revenues are to be blamed on piracy, rather than their own stupid short-sightedness and greed.
In short, the old axiom proves true. If you don't want to lose control of something DON'T PUT IT ON THE WEB.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
DRM as wall. Walls aren't all bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, perhaps, if we reject DRM, the parts of the web we wall off are exactly the ones we should.
Music will be on our side of the wall; DRM is dead there. Seems to me that's a trend worth encouraging.
Reminds me of a quote... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you reject DRM, you "risk" walling off parts of the Web.
If you accept DRM, however, you GUARANTEE that parts of the Web will become walled off.
"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."
Re:DRM as wall. Walls aren't all bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM as wall. Walls aren't all bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
as it is now, EME is going to become a de-facto standard with the majority of browsers (by market share) supporting it regardless of whether the W3C publish any specification or not. Convincing the W3C not to standardize it will have no effect in the end, it'll just become a de-facto internet standard instead of a de-jure one.
This is the most important point in this thread.
A standard is precisely what the majority of vendors (by market share) do in the field. The W3C just writes a document that hopes to describe the standard, but standards are the result of vendors, not the result of standards committees.
Re:DRM as wall. Walls aren't all bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
And oddly, the movie business is doing better since they started exploiting the net. I mean the Theater Business. Its still growing, in spite of the trash the shovel out these days.
It has actually increased, last year up by 6%, the year before up by 12%. [mpaa.org]
If movies on line were priced lower than they are their receipts would be up even more. The average CURRENT movie prices in Google Play Movies runs around $5-7 bucks for HD quality for one play. To own it, costs usually around $12 to $18.
Both the per-view and the Buy to Own are enough to keep me from buying or renting most of the drivel they shovel out these days. I might buy a view at $2.00, I might buy to own at $6.00.
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
This comment pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with the way the DRM crowd thinks.
"Remove potential profits and you remove the strongest incentive for those making new movies or developing new technologies."
There is always potential profits. Movies were profitable before the web existed, they're still profitable today and they'll still be profitable in the future whether DRM is implemented in the web standards or not.
In fact, having a standard implementation is worse for these companies because it will be a lot harder to replace once its broken and only a fool would assume that it won't be broken almost immediately.
Trouble is, no matter how much a movie (or anything else) profits, the suits always think they can squeeze a bit more out of it, especially if they can pass the footwork of doing so off to a third party. Typically the government (in the form of new laws) but in this case a standards body.
"One compromise might be trying to apply the same rules that the drug companies operate under. They are given a chance to recoup the substantial R&D costs and turn a profit but after a certain number of years they lose their exclusive rights and others can create generics."
If only! The drug companies are given a certain number of years (currently 20 if I'm reading Wikipedia right.) The copyright cartels are given practically indefinite protection (currently 95 years for corporate works and almost certainly to be extended again when our good friend Mickey next risks hitting the public domain.) Both numbers are the US terms. Other jurisdictions may differ of course but we're talking about US firms at the moment so best to use US numbers.
The copyright industry has a far far better (for them) deal than the drug companies do, legally speaking. What they lack is enforcement abilities -- any kid anywhere in the world with enough brain cells clicking the right way can break a DRM scheme and distribute a movie to anyone else in the world and be nearly untraceable.
On the other hand, it takes large factories and the ability to purchase and handle often-dangerous chemicals in order to create, pack and distribute prescription drugs at scale in any sort of safe manner, whether or not you hold the patent on them. And if you do that outside of the US (where the patent may not apply) then you face import restrictions trying if you want to get your knockoff into the US market, so you're no further ahead by going international either.
Re:Idiots (Score:2, Insightful)
DRM does require some obscurity. How would you implement an open source DRM client, for example, where the user is free to compile it themselves?
Either the binary code has to be signed or the user can add their own hooks to extract the data. I guess you consider that protected rather than obscure, but they're related.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
SSH is solving a different problem. It is protecting the information from middle parties, not the SSH client software itself. How would you write an open source ssh client that could display the results of an ls to your terminal, but the user couldn't change the code to write those results to a file as well? That's the DRM problem.
Providing a binary blob is security by obscurity, because it's difficult but you can debug and trace the assembly ... unless you have trusted pathways where your hardware and OS are working against you. Granted, the latter might be less obscurity and more deliberately inaccessible.
The best security is the kind I can hand you the source code and you STILL can't break it.
Agreed.