DRM In HTML5 — Better Than the Alternative? 268
Underholdning writes "DRM is coming to HTML5. The W3C published a working draft yesterday of the framework that will support the use of DRM-protected media. Ars Technica's Peter Bright reports on it with an article claiming that DRM in HTML5 is a victory for the open web, not a defeat. Bright argues that if HTML5 does not support DRM, then content providers will move their content away from open standards and implement it with native apps — abandoning the web in the process. Quoting: 'Keeping it out of W3C might have been a moral victory, but its practical implications would sit between slim and none. It doesn't matter if browsers implement "W3C EME" or "non-W3C EME" if the technology and its capabilities are identical. ... Deprived of the ability to use browser plugins, protected content distributors are not, in general, switching to unprotected media. Instead, they're switching away from the Web entirely. Want to send DRM-protected video to an iPhone? "There's an app for that." Native applications on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 8 can all implement DRM, with some platforms, such as Android and Windows 8, even offering various APIs and features to assist this.'"
What's the difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither can be used on a free platform, so what's the difference? How are platform specific encryption modules any better than platform specific native apps?
Re:What's the difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I won't be able to see restricted media on my system anyway. Because DRM - digital restrictions management - don't work without locking you out. It doesn't matter if it's an "open standard" or not. And, as noted in the article, this HTML5 thingy doesn't even provide an open standard for DRM. It provides hooks. That's it. The DRM will still be closed, will still not be a standard, and will still probably not run on open systems (most desktop Linux).
And the W3C should have taken the pragmatic approach and said, "we don't want DRM to be associated with us, as it will tarnish our good name".
This "standard" won't make things any better, because there will still need to be a closed blob to decrypt the restricted media. Whether it's viewable via a web browser, or not, is irrelevant.
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Re:What's the difference? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's the difference? (Score:4, Insightful)
"And now they have paved the way for allowing only Microsoft and Google owned and patent encumbered DRM schemes. What progress???"
There. Fixed that for you.
For what it's worth, I agree. It has taken a while to shake out, but DRM, as a market concept, has been an almost complete failure. It simply doesn't stop people. If anything, it pisses people off and makes them more determined to break the DRM anyway.
Look at HDMI, and CSS (DVD encryption CSS, not the web page kind). They're totally broken. It took a while for the HDMI protection scheme to be broken, but a couple of years ago a guy showed how it could be done with off-the-shelf tools, in a couple of days. (And now that the technique is known, it can be done by a hobbyist in a few minutes.) CSS was broken in even less time with DeCSS by "DVD Jon".
Yet the industries are still using these broken technologies, and saddling consumers with the totally worthless cost.
This has no place in an "open standard". I say get rid of it, and stop coddling the clueless, protectionist, blindly greedy corporations.
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How will this be different with EME?
With EME now you have ActiveX build in the Web. And a web browser will not be standard compliant if it can't access ActiveX.
(replace ActiveX with the Content Decryption Module (CDM) of EME).
Because all what EME is doing is to standardize an API to access those CDMs (aka proprietary binary blobs, Microsoft-owned patent-encumbered blobs).
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Because ActiveX didn't have cross browser/cross platform hooks or ways of working that way. There was no way for an ActiveX control to work on a mac or unix.
ActiveX was an API, and while open(ish), you couldn't implement it without carrying forward a ton of proprietary stuff (COM).
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So I ask again, what is the difference with EME? Sounds like you describe EME in detail.
EME is an API, and while open(ish), you can not implement it without carrying forward a ton of proprietary stuff (CDM).
Don't believe me? Prove me wrong. https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted-media/encrypted-media.html [w3.org]
The EME proposal don't even make it mandatory to return the decrypted content back to the browser.
"CDM implementations may return decrypted frames or rendered them directly."
Meaning, the C
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The CDM isn't tied to a particular OS.
The CDM isn't necessarily proprietary.
CDM code can be cross platform (different OSes and different processors (Intel/ARM)).
Additionally, the media will play within the context of the web page and should follow standard markup (styles, width, height, z-index, etc).
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Any given CDM is. Unless you expect a Windows binary to run on OS X or Linux.
Yes it is. Oh sure, you could make it open source but you'll never get the sources for one that does anything useful.
Much like how flash does now, where it's given a spot on the page but is otherwise independent of the browser.
Zero
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I see you quoted "CDM implementations may return decrypted frames or rendered them directly.", however, that did not come from the specification, so I'm not sure where you got it from.
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The point is that it's not any worse. Platform-specific decryption modules may not be any better than native apps if you want everything you use to be open-source, but they have the practical advantage that if you don't need Flash or Silverlight to decrypt it anymore, you can just use a web browser. The interface is consistent and cheaper to build than
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It's about choice. If the web does not have DRM then consumers can only use services like Netflix where Netflix deigns to create an app (plug-ins are on their way out). That will generally be the few dominant platforms.
If DRM is a standardized part of the web then anyone with a standards compliant browser can access those services. This isn't guaranteed - there are various ways that Netflix (etc.) could still stop that from happening, but their support of this standard suggests that they actually want m
Re:What's the difference? (Score:5, Informative)
But what is being proposed, is identical to that. Consumers will only be able to use services like Netflix where Netflix deigns to create an implementation of their proprietary EME plugin.
This is where the confusion lies. Nobody is suggesting making DRM itself a standardized part of the web; you're rooting for a side which isn't in the fight. They're talking about making a non-standard DRM component (something just as unportable as Flash and Silverlight, and subject to its ONE CREATOR'S whims) have standard API for the browser to use. This is a tiny little issue; Flash already used a defacto-standard API for the browser to inferface with. Such a defacto interface isn't maybe as good as a well-described one, so you could see this new API as a minor step forward, but it comes with the cost of legitimizing and endorsing something which is just completely ridiculous.
That is not being offered by this HTML5 compromise, and it won't get you closer to that. If Netflix, as the one and only party in the world who will have the closed trade secret to make the Netflix decrypter, should decide to ever see fit to allow the specific non-dominant platform that you're thinking of, to join the list of platforms they support by making a Netflix plugin for it, they're just as likely to decide to allow an app on that platform.
Allowing you to watch Netflix, is not something that is being standardized. That aspect would remain as closed as Flash's DRM. This is how all DRM must always be. The only way Netflix can ever be standardized such that you will be permitted to use it on a device of your choosing, is if they drop the DRM.
Or if they were to standardize the DRM itself, I suppose that would work. But they wouldn't want to do that, since the whole point of DRM is to keep people from implementing it! :-)
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How don't you have malicious plugin installation today? I have to make choices about browser based plugins and extensions all the time on safari / chrome / firefox...
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Re:What's the difference? (Score:4, Insightful)
It will be the same with this, because instead of having to compile their app for a platform they'll have to compile their EME module.
Unless they're on an unsupported platform.
I suspect you won't get Netflix on your Playbook unless Blackberry negotiates a licensing agreement with Netflix for their EME module.
And I sincerely doubt you will. This is about taking control, not granting you choice.
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If they all move to proprietary apps away from open standards, then what's the problem? It'll be like back when everything was quicktime and you had to upgrade weekly to get the right version necessary to play that week's videos. The result in that case was that smart people learned to just not watch the stupid videos. If youtube dies from not having DRM in HTML then that sounds like a very good thing to me.
Re:What's the difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Browser components, surprising how many applications require them. once this is in will it create other unforseen content controls?
Also I can't wait for the first client side security vulnerability.
the way I see the html5 drm thing right now is like this: some dudes who would gain something from it are pushing it after having a conversation that went like: "ah darn it, ain'nt anyone doing plugins anymore, 'dem plugins have soo bad reputation. We should design a platform for running closed source code inside browser! and make it html5! and with hooks!"
point being, I don't see it fixing anything in the current system. they could just implement plugins with the old plugin system for things they want to run closed..
Re:What's the difference? (Score:4, Informative)
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So you'll still need one plugin for Windows, one for OS X, one for iOS, one for Android, one for Windows RT, etc. (oh and none for Linux.) And then you'll have a multitude of others made by various and sundry companies of varying skill.
I expect that if this takes hold, malware will spread like never seen.
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Surely you mean one for Windows/x86 (oh, and maybe x64 if we're generous), and one for iOS/ARMv7 (oh, and maybe Android/ARMv7 if we're generous). OS X? WinRT? What's that? May be you'll even say (hah!) Linux?
You'll just have to hope they're not too OS specific, so may be x86 and ARMv7 will (mostly) cover it all and won't need much fucking around to make it work on all platforms. Maybe they'll even be exploit-compatible!
they will have to be os specific and tie into the graphical display system for them to be considered effective at all. basically it can not offer any advantage over silverlight/flash/quicktime type of scenario which we are in now. you'll have a closed plugin which displays the drm protected site.
and users WILL NOT install specific plugins for specific random sites and users will be told not to install them. because it's just common sense. in effect that would not be any different than installing specific ap
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nope. because part of html5 means, no NS-plugin-interface anymore, but each browser needs to implement it. But the real DRM module implementing the encryption cannot be opensource, so goodbye firefox, chromium, etc.
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We must all make sure this happens..
Re:What's the difference? (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty much everything in the picture is standardized and can be implemented by any browser, but the Content Decryption Module (CDM) can be anything, and is selected by keySystem from the DOM data. There is a single reference system that merely decrypts blocks of the stream. But you can pretty much just dump the decrypted blocks into a file. I'm sure all this will really accomplish is requiring people to download proprietary CDMs, or only allow browsers that ship with them like IE or Chrome to play content. This is a shit solution.
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The article was about implementing a DRM standard into HTML5. As far as I can tell, there was nothing about platform specific encryption modules.
either they're closed and the system that shows them is closed or it's not drm.
whippi doo.
Betteridge's law of headlines (Score:3, Interesting)
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And very well suited for this type of rhetoric question like in the article ... because the author doesn't provide any arguments, he is convinced of, so he puts a question in the title instead of a hypothesis (without questionmark)
Time to fork W3C (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be nice to have a grass roots standards body which impletments the good works of standards bodies but chooses not to implement shill standards. Then grass roots software development can choose to use these standards rather than give in to the corruption of the standards process.
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HTML5 was already formed as the result of a fork of the W3C called the WHATWG.
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The problem is that WHATWG wants to throw web standards out the window instead of coming up with a better alternative.
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Translation - the standards bodies should do what I want and listen to to one else. What I want is more more important than what anyone else wants.
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They seem intent on listening to a very, very tiny base when it comes to ramming EME through. Apparently what Hollywood wants is more important than what anyone else wants.
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No really, because having EME available and *you* as a developer not using them is exactly the same as EME not being standardised and *you* not using them.
The addition of EME to the spec in no way changes your position, whereas the lack of addition to the spec does affect another developers position. Not including EME negatively affects other developers who want to use it, while including EME doesn't affect other developers who don't want to use it.
If you cannot see the difference between those positions,
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Nope. I will undoubtedly be forced to use EME modules, not as a developer but as an end user. Of course, this is a redundant standard.
No it doesn't. It just means they have to use the existing plugin APIs. Or they have to do the w
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It would be nice to have a grass roots standards body which impletments the good works of standards bodies but chooses not to implement shill standards.
Now all you need is a product with mass market appeal and shelf space at Walmart which implements the geek's "grass roots" standards --- but can't play the Netflix, Amazon, Hulu or Google subscription video. Nothing Disney, Pixar or Marvel Comics.
No Downton Abbey, no Game of Thrones.
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Why would the people implementing web products listen to a standards body that didn't represent them? In any case w3c is fairly broad: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List [w3.org]
Oh the horror! (Score:5, Interesting)
There would be content on the internet that is not on the web? Oh the horror! </sarcasm>
Seriously, I want them to provide their own programs for DRM-protected stuff. That stuff just doesn't belong on the web. After all, even if it were made with HTML5+DRM and accessed through web browsers, it would still not really be part of the web, because I could not just fire up any web browser and watch it; I'd first have to install their proprietary DRM. So what is the big difference, if I have to install some proprietary code anyway? If it's a separate program, I'll at least know up front that it's not part of the web.
Also, in my experience, native programs tend to have the better interfaces anyway.
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It's always the same bullshit. Make it easy for us by making your lives harder.
It's long past the point where everyone should be telling the content barons to eat shit and die.
The rest of the world generates masses of traffic, money and innovation - far more than the thugs in the content industry.
Yet all we ever hear about is how everyone else should dance to the entertainment industry's tune.
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You can put what you want on the web.
But why do you expect everyone else to pay the technical cost of it (the DRM infrastructure, lock in and lack of choice and innovation)?
If you want DRM... then you maintain your own infrastructure and the associated costs.
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Internet != Web.
The web is just a subset of the internet.
Why will it be done in the browser? Why must it? Why must browser vendors be subject to the demands of hostile media entities?
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More than 1/3 of current internet traffic is DRMd video streams. It's a core part of the internet. And it will be done in the browser, the question is will it be done to a standard. If you long for the glory days of IE6, by all means drag us back to a place where the big players just ignore the W3C again - that was just so much fun the last time.
yeah so 1/3 of current internet traffic is already pretty much delivered in the fashion this new proposal is about.
which makes it's redundant. I have never watched netflix outside the browser - even if I'm well aware that I'm watching it through a plugin and can not watch it on browser on just any device anywhere that has a web browser. this situation would not change with the new proposal one bit! not one bit!
if they would like to make a new standard for plugins that's better then the really, really old on
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I'm not sure where I stand on this But in the old days the web (really the internet since most of this was pre-web) was for the sharing of information and openness. DRM is fundamentally about selling information not sharing it. Its a bit late to talk about the days of the internet before business was on it. But I can see people wanting the open internet that existed say 20 years ago.
There were real gains and real loses.
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Without getting into philosophical arguments about the ethics of it, content-creators have a vested interest in wanting to preserve distribution rights for the product they are making. We can argue until we run out of breath about whether DRM is the right way for them to do it, about its technical limitations, etc., but the fact is that nobody has provided them with an alternative to DRM that they like, and we simply can't force them to adopt what we want them to do. To do so would be to run counter to the
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the web is the subset of strongly interlinked freely available content. DRM content can be provided as part of the internet, but does not belong to the web.
it should be standard (Score:2, Interesting)
There's an increasing amount of content that you can't view without DRM support, and people want to view this content. This should be enabled in the HTML standard, even if the plugins have to be platform specific.
It's only going more in this direction in the future. I have a cousin who works for a major news agency to remain unnamed here, and there is a movement afoot in the news world to investigate DRM for protecting online news content. There is a realization that they cannot keep giving it away forev
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Why?
Then things will only get worse.
So destroy web browsers and force them to betray their users and treat them as crimin
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It will continue to happen whether there is an open standard or not. Look what Apple did with XMPP and SIP, making FaceTime and iMessage by adding proprietary extensions. It's bad for everyone who isn't a major corporation, and certainly very bad for 'consumers'..
DRM should not be standardized (Score:3)
Maybe this will help:
1. Open and Standardized is good.
2. DRM is not Open. (This is simply its nature.)
3. DRM can be Standardized with HTML5 extensions.
The problem is confusing point one with the FOSS attitude of wanting systems that are open. Standardization is not advocated by any open source group or in any open license. Standardization is an artifact commonly associated with free/open systems, but it's presence doesn't mean the system is free or open.
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Re:DRM should not be standardized (Score:5, Insightful)
EME is not a standard of DRM. EME is a standard to access DRM via API. That is a very big difference.
_If_ EME would be a standard of DRM, then anyone could implement the DRM and see the videos.
But EME just make the API standard do access DRM to decrypt the content. DRM can not be standardized, it's the very nature of DRM.
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Maybe this will help: 1. Open and Standardized is good. 2. DRM is not Open. (This is simply its nature.) 3. DRM can be Standardized with HTML5 extensions.
The problem is confusing point one with the FOSS attitude of wanting systems that are open. Standardization is not advocated by any open source group or in any open license. Standardization is an artifact commonly associated with free/open systems, but it's presence doesn't mean the system is free or open.
1. Open and Standardized is good.
2. DRM does not work. (I have to see or hear the output.)
3. DRM can not work on my OS that I compiled myself, because I control MY computer. Hardware DRM must be invoked by software, I control all the software. In a virtualized system, I also control the hardware through the software.
The problem is ignoring point two, and trying to ramrod inherently non features into an otherwise point one compliant system, in ignorance of point three. This means the whole effort is
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That depends how you define "open." There's no reason whatsoever that you couldn't have an open source DRM system, for example. And let's not forget that the entire point of this is to add an open standard for DRM.
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That depends how you define "open." There's no reason whatsoever that you couldn't have an open source DRM system, for example. And let's not forget that the entire point of this is to add an open standard for DRM.
well there is the tiny reason that if you can change the code to save the decoded data then the drm becomes just transport time cryptography...
If they want false comfort, let them have it (Score:2)
The central problem with DRM is that it stops only honest people. Anything that is located entirely on the user's computer in obfuscated form and plays from there can be cracked, and crackers will crack it, whereupon the cracked goods will quickly find themselves on BitTorrent and other sharing networks.
The thing is, competing with free isn't that hard. If you offer high-quality goods for a reasonable price, using an open format, at a convenient location, customers will buy from you. How did Tower Record
So what's wrong? (Score:3)
So what is wrong with this, exactly? If you want to distribute DRMed content, you are fully free to use your own means. Let the web stay DRM-free, as it should be.
Reality intrudes. (Score:3)
The reality is that every Internet enabled device in your home or car supports subscription services and protected media content. Each to some degree pushes the "open web" browser further into the background.
The Windows 8 Start Page makes that explicit.
If the app becomes your primary source for music, videos, books, newspapers, magazines and games, it isn't much of a stretch to imagine the app becoming your primary source for other content and services as well.
Are they switching away from the Web? (Score:2)
And I will switch away from them.
I'm not too bothered by DRM in HTML5 (Score:2)
I hate DRM like everyone here, but I would rather have the choice to purchase DRMed content than to be completely locked out just because I am not on the 'preferred platform'.
Hopefully DRM will die a natural death from people voting with their wallets when there are alternatives. In that case the act of having HTML5 DRM just gives DRM more rope to hang itself with.
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You'll still be locked out, because the proposal involves proprietary binary blobs that perform the actual decryption, which won't exist for your platform.
The only "standard" part is the browser hooks for those modules to plug into.
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Because they're lazy? They don't see the cost of implementing it being worth the return? Because the platform vendor failed to negotiate a deal with $service for royalties in exchange for access to their EME module? Because the platform doesn't implement top-to-bottom walled garden "the user is the enemy" security policies?
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For the same reason that there's no flash for powerpc linux, amd64 openbsd, arm plan9, etc...
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ROFL. I like your first question.
If they have used whips to punish the slaves, wouldn't it be better if they would use a standard whip instead of their custom made whip?
For your second question: No.
Adobe goal was to dominate the web with their Flash technology. After years and years of waiting Adope finally released a Linux version of Flash, only to be horrible broken (see for example [1], HAL is deprecated for years). Then Microsoft starts a direct competitor to Flash: Silverlight. You would think because
It won't work! (Score:2)
I'm an old fart who got his first computer in the seventies.
There were always content protection, copy protection and whatnot.
And they never worked.
This won't either.
No (Score:2)
Why I want it to NOT work on Linux (Score:2)
If protected content works on Linux, then I can't use the argument that the content providers do not care about the Linux market and its revenues. Then I won't have an excuse for stealing the content and saying that they aren't losing any money from my theft.
Reality is, I don't care. The vast majority of commercial content is crap, anyway. It's not even worth stealing. I just like arguing against whiny CEOs who want everything to be done for them.
Standards are better (Score:2)
Nobody likes DRM. But we've got plenty of experience with DRM provided as part of proprietary software packages.
It reeks badly. You get root kits, various spy features, ads, you name it.
If I'm going to have DRM in order to get online delivery of media I sure as the dickens would rather have as part of an open source product that is subject to code review rather than the alternative.
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The the source it totally open, then it's not DRM. If I can rebuild it (because it's properly open sources), I can modify it and remove DRM-specific features.
Hollyweb (Score:2)
Fuck. You.
What I wish Tim Berners Lee^W^W^W W3C understood about DRM. [guardian.co.uk]
How long do you think we have until the back button and close window button are disabled for video ads online?
I Don't Have A Problem with DRM in HTML 5 Standard (Score:2)
I don't have a problem with DRM in HTML 5 Standards, as long as there is also a way to effectively and automatically set one's browser to ignore and not display any DRM content or mechanisms seeking payment for seeing that content. If people want to encrypt their data and not let me see it that's fine with me as long as they don't force me to spend any time what so ever otherwise using the remaining HTML 5 content or navigating around intrusive DRM content.
DRM content, out of sight, out of mind. Otherwise
No binary blobs in HTML5 (Score:3)
* The Content Decryption Module (CDM) required to interpret/implement the DRM
open == open? (Score:2)
I mean, anyone should be able to use it for their own content, it being a part of this open framework and all.
EXACLTY! (Score:2)
They don't need our help; whole businesses have been formed around the lack of DRM from day 1. We can continue just fine without DRM just as we have for decades. Needing Apps or crippled apps in the form of browser plug-ins has been the norm for decades. It creates a hurdle for anybody implementing DRM; which promotes an open web.
This is the same BS we hear all the time... there would be no film, no plays, no music, no culture if we didn't have copyright - there would be no technology without patents... as
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Shame about any master key(s)/source code getting released after widespread adoption.;)
DRM=bad, standardized DRM=not quite as bad (Score:2)
I think an HTML5 DRM standard actually would be a good thing. It would create much more competition for streaming video and reduce vendor lock-in.
Eventually, competition might push Apple to allow streaming iTunes content to other platforms, and to allow Google Movies on iPad.
A victory for whom? (Score:2)
I see this as a victory for content providers (since they have one more distribution channel, and more profit), not for users (who'll slowly get DRM shoved down their throats even more).
I currently use NOTHING with any form of DRM. Will I have to blacklist firefox in future as well? How's that a victory for me?
Betteridge's Law proven untrue? (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines [wikipedia.org]
Re:This is retarded. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have they not learned that DRM only hurts the honest people? The pirates will get their crappy content anyways.
This is a false dichotomy. Whilst there are people that only ever use legally acquired stuff at one end of the scale, and people that always pirate non-free stuff at the other end, the vast majority lie in the middle of those extremes, pirating if it's easy and the result is good enough for them, buying when that's easier, or has the quality they require and is within their budget.
DRM doesn't come free for the industry. It would be cheaper to ship without DRM than with. The areas where DRM doesn't help the media industry's bottom line, such as songs, has already been abandoned. Areas where they keep investing in DRM, they do so because it works well enough to raise their bottom line vs not doing it.
If it didn't work, they wouldn't put money into it.
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If it didn't work, they wouldn't put money into it.
If only this were true. I point you, for the most recent and egregious example, to Windows 8.
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A disappointing OS UI has nothing to do with the economics of applying DRM.
And yet, it's still fundamentally true with the economics of Windows. Microsoft wouldn't continue producing Windows versions if Windows didn't make them money. They've got a miss with this particular version, but they've had misses before and still made money on both that version itself and on subsequent versions.
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It must be wonderful to have such dominance in the market that no matter how bad you fuck up, you won't truly be punished for it.
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What does Windows 8 have to do with DRM? Windows was lightly protected before it is lightly protected now.
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FTFY. DRM has not actually been proven to work in any situation. There is only supposition and failures like PlaysForSure and pains in the ass like HDCP.
I suspect the TV/Movie groups are still pissing themselves just like they did back when the VCR, that industry destroying invention, first appeared and ruined them. Oh wait...
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If it didn't work, they wouldn't put money into it.
Faulty assumption.
It doesn't have to work. They just need to believe it works. These are not the same things.
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And what? Some poster on Slashdot knows better? When they are the ones what have all the data. They're not blind here. They're not guessing. People here are.
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What's to say that Netflix wont choose an encryption scheme that has a Microsoft Windows only CDM?
Because they wouldn't want to lose their existing Mac users. If their existing solution was based on Silverlight, that would explain why access was limited to just Windows and Mac. Microsoft's limitation, not Netflix's.
Given an open solution such as this, Netflix gets a better choice as to what platforms they support. And if they judge they'll get enough business from Linux users to make it worth their while, then they'll surely support it.
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The W3C is giving Netflix the opportunity to choose a cross-platform CDM where before they could only support platforms that Microsoft had "blessed" with Silverlight. Why would they did pick a Windows-only scheme if there's no advantage to that over Silverlight? Worst case, things stay the same. Big whoop.
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So it'll be cross platform, but only to platforms Netflix approves of.
I expect things to stay the same. Only now we'll have more CDMs than plugins, and more attack vectors to be concerned about.
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is it even possible?
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Be careful what you wish for. Here's some typical 90s style web sites.
http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/ [dokimos.org]
http://www.partytentcity.com/ [partytentcity.com]
http://www.dpgraph.com/ [dpgraph.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Here's another:
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/index.html [catb.org]
It's a thing with a huge amount of content, in a pleasant, elegant, and readable form. Yes, it's mostly just plaintext. So?
The modern equivalent I think is reddit, which is similarly barebones -- just a bunch of text, and people writing text in response to text -- but it clearly works.
Re: (Score:2)
It's less bad, but it's still bad. It defines no width for the text, allowing a single column to go right across the monitor for a maximized window. 30 words per line on my 13" laptop!
Sure, I COULD resize my window to suit. But the fact that I have to is a big flaw of the website.
Then there's the issue that it's ugly and has nothing to draw people in.
Then, the "Site Map" link is broken. And the domain itself has no index, dumping you at an Apache file browser.
It's a piece of shit, made to seem only slightly
Re:Native apps are better anyways (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd put it this way: regardless of what the W3C does, the user experience in the browser will be the same. You'll go to a Netflix web page, click, and watch a DRMd video stream. That's 1/3 of internet traffic today, and Netflix has no choice about the DRM part.
The only question is: will that 1/3 of internet traffic be following the HTML5 standard, or not be following the HTML5 standard? The question "should streaming video have DRM" is completely irrelevant to the standard: hate it or accept it, you can't eliminate DRM through a standard.
Do we love the days of IE6, where a big chunk of internet traffic ignored the W3C? Wasn't that fun?
Re: (Score:2)
a standard won't mean any benefit to you. The DRM module is still closed source, missing important updates and not available for every os, maybe not even for every browser.
Re: (Score:3)
Not quite correct. People want to see movies. That these movies and other content has DRM is usually irrelevant except to that small percentage who aren't on the supported platforms. For the most part people don't even know it is there.
A stance of "DRM has no place in HTML5" (a marketing term, like "HTML 2.0") would help educate the blissfully ignorant of how the web works and that it is the *content providers* who are trying to dictate how you consume.
Re: (Score:2)
Netflix wants to switch not because they're looking for DRM. They want to switch because they're looking for a better platform that also supports adequate DRM. Sure, no matter what they come up with, somebody's going to find a way to circumvent it. But the majority of people aren't going to put that amount of effort into it.
Besides, from all signs, not even Microsoft takes Silverlight seriously anymore. ( http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/microsoft-shuns-its-own-silverlight-while-embracing-flash [infoworld.com]