The W3C Sells Out Users Without Seeming To Get Anything In Return 348
An anonymous reader writes "Questioning the W3C's stance on DRM, Simon St. Laurent asks 'What do we get for that DRM?' and has a thing or two to say about TBL's cop-out: 'I had a hard time finding anything to like in Tim Berners-Lee's meager excuse for the W3C's new focus on digital rights management (DRM). However, the piece that keeps me shaking my head and wondering is a question he asks but doesn't answer: If we, the programmers who design and build Web systems, are going to consider something which could be very onerous in many ways, what can we ask in return? Yes. What should we ask in return? And what should we expect to get? The W3C appears to have surrendered (or given?) its imprimatur to this work without asking for, well, anything in return. "Considerations to be discussed later" is rarely a powerful diplomatic pose.'"
Anyone noticed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anyone noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
music, maybe. It's video that is a nightmare right now
Re:Anyone noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
And we won the music wars primarily because there was no DRM in the standard. Every attempt to impose a DRM-hobbled "standard" on the music industry came from a single company: RealAudio wasn't real, Apple's AAC fell to the wayside, Microsoft's SureWontPlay, etc. We forced content providers to choose: Roll your own DRM product and fail, or adopt a DRM-free standard, and make money.
By leaving DRM out of the standard for the Web, we could have forced content providers into that same choice: offer DRM-free video at a price, or starve.
I like Netflix. But I don't like Netflix more than I like the web.
Re:Anyone noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anyone noticed (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, except that that's totally wrong.
How many people pirated Nintendo 64 games? I mean, back before they had computers capable of running the ROMs.
Physical cartridges prevented piracy; GameCube DVDs spin the wrong way to be read and written by consumer equipment; and eventually, they will be able to prevent piracy on PCs, by destroying them.
Piracy is not an answer. Piracy is worse than not an answer, it helps the enemy. Every time someone pirates a song instead of using a free one, it cements the copyrighted song's market dominance and prevent free songs from becoming popular.
If you must use proprietary software, or songs backed by labels, or mass-market movies, it's better to pirate them. But the only way to support freedom is to support freedom.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anyone noticed (Score:5, Informative)
Apple's AAC fell to the wayside
AAC has nothing to do with DRM. And Apple still uses AAC for its DRM-free music as well.
Re: (Score:3)
FairPlay is what the parent was thinking of. It's the DRM that limits you to 5 device authorizations but with unlimited lossy "burns" and 10 playlists with unlimited "burns".
It actually wasn't that burdensome - some might say "fair" but the reality was/is that people are happy with lossy lower quality mp3s so the unlimited part was a loophole that voided the DRM in practice. Apple abandoned it ASAP and opted to simply make buying tracks easier than pirating them. Worked pretty well.
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C'mon man, you know what he meant. He's right in spirit if not technicality. However, I would point out that it was SJ who freed iPods from drm, not piracy.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
What forced DRM out of the music industry was Apple's market dominance of the MP3 player market with the iPod. The record companies were afraid that the Apple iTunes store was going to become such a dominant player in the digital music business that they would loose all their power. The only way to break iTunes was to allow another competitor (in this case Amazon) to offer a music store that was DRM free (as only Apple can produce DRM audio for the iPod). Once Amazon was up and running the studios offered A
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It could also help out with emerging platforms --- like say a video toaster.
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How does it achieve this? The DRM will be in the form of plugins, native to the OS, that render video and audio themselves, bypassing the browser. I don't see why it's more likely that Netflix would choose to write an HTML5 DRM plugin for Linux, or your toaster, than it was that they chose Silverlight over Flash.
The standard part of this DRM is the way it communicates with the browser. Its communication with the devices is still dependent on the particular OS. That's how I understand it to work anyway,
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I like Netflix. But I don't like Netflix more than I like the web.
It's a false dichotomy to assume that having DRM in the standard makes the web any more or less free. What you get it useless, easily bipassable security features that placates content providers for the time being. At some point, I think they're all going to give up DRM, and we'll regard it as silly as the pay walls nobody ever uses, that are built into the http.
DRM doesn't change anything meaningful.
You still have a choice as to whether or not you're going to use it on your site. If you don't like DRM, fin
Re: (Score:2)
Which would be fine, except that bypassing those features is almost certainly going to be illegal under laws like the DMCA. We can expect to see people sued and non-complying browsers declared illegal as circumvention tools.
So are you really advocating breaking the law as a valid response to an onerous standard?
And if one day the content corporations launch a series of prohibitive lawsuits, will you condemn those corporation for their poor
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
By leaving DRM out of the standard for the Web, we could have forced content providers into that same choice: offer DRM-free video at a price, or starve.
Not sure how this is "insightful". Netflix, Apple, VUDU, Amazon, Hulu, etc all have DRM and they are far from "starving". But they are all using a random mishmash of DRM solutions individually developed/licensed/etc. And they will continue to do that as long as there are no standards they all can adopt.
Standardizing DRM in HTML5 is not caving to anyone, I don't know what people keep thinking that. It's just consolidating the APIs so that these providers can create HTML5 web apps that run on more devices
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It's just consolidating the APIs so that these providers can create HTML5 web apps that run on more devices without modification
Consolidating the APIs isn't worth a thing when the APIs are just talking to some OS-specific (and possibly browser-specific) blob, which is what the W3C is actually proposing. Who cares if Netflix is using an open API, if instead of using MS Silverlight they're now using MS DRM Plugin?
Re:Anyone noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does that matter to me as a user or integrator? It still means that I am locked in to whatever vendor they choose for their DRM. If that vendor chooses not to support my platform, or decides that I am a competitor in some other business so refuses to give me distribution rights to their EME plugin, then I'm stuck.
This is the entire point of the original question in TFA. Netflix gets the ability to (slightly) more easily move between vendors for DRM. What do users get? Nothing. There is no requirement that OMA plugins be interoperable and there is no guarantee of a second source. If Netflix decides to use MS PlayReady, but MS decides that they don't want to support my device because it competes with the Surface or the XBox, then I'm in exactly the same situation as I was with Silverlight.
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Re:Anyone noticed (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple's DRM worked acceptably and looked great compared to the nightmarish DRM from other companies. The media companies realized that DRM was quickly giving Apple huge leverage over them and locking their customers into Apple-only --- and then Apple would tell them "you can only charge $0.99 cents for a song".
Then they realized The DRM was working great! Really great! For Apple. For the music companies? Not so much.
[Classic "Beware, you might get what you want!" Pie in the Face story.]
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There are some holdouts, but the Humble Bundle is selling DRMed games now so that really only leaves Good Old Games if you want so
Re: Anyone noticed (Score:2)
Video games are a drop in the bucket, many more people watch video than play games. When talking about browse based drm, I definitely think video
Re: Anyone noticed (Score:5, Informative)
Drop in the bucket? Really?!?
Video games grossed about $67B in 2012 worldwide. The movie box office was $35B and the home video market was about $30B. More people watch video, maybe, but games are often much higher priced per unit. And don't forget mobile games, that industry has EXPLODED.
The buckets are pretty close to equal these days...
Re: Anyone noticed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We won the downloadable music DRM wars, you mean. (And possibly the downloadable video one, as well; I'm not involved, so I don't know the state of that.)
The streaming video DRM war, however, is very much unwon. What should be as simple* as "provide authentication credentials, receive video stream" has been complicated to permit the provider to distinguish between viewing on set-top boxen, "normal" PCs, and mobile devices, so they can charge different amounts and/or have different content available.
*This is particularly true for subscription-based (watch any content number of times while your subscription is valid) or library-based (watch particular content any number of times as long as it's in your library) services -- any service letting you pay once to view once, and pay again if you want to view again, gets a little more complicated, to handle connection droppage, etc., but still doesn't need the DRM they actually use. Since all the real services I have any interest in are in the first two classes, this is an academic point to me, but I don't know if other streaming services may be literally pay-per-view.
(This just in, /.'s mobile interface sucks.)
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The content producers seem to hope they can out bandwidth and out price any 3rd party web 2.0 rental or shop with quality, cost and convenience.
Do the DRM from the content producer people understand the reality of HFC and optical cable networks?
They will have locked away broadcast content on their networks. Recall http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/14/f [delimiter.com.au]
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Then why are the bullets still in the air?
Benefit to the committee members (Score:3)
Cushy consulting gigs at the content producers/distributors.
confusion in the blog post (Score:3)
What are we users – and what is the W3C – getting from building the risk of programmers being jailed into the core infrastructure of the Web? I have no doubt that browser vendors eager to cut deals will incorporate DRM into their offerings.
The users don't have anything to bargain with except their eyes, and the W3C is made up from browser vendors, so if he understands why browser vendors want to incorporate DRM, that answers the whole question.
We didn't need considerations... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We didn't need considerations... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course you don't need DRM. You don't produce content with value.
Producers of content with value want DRM.
I produce 'content with value'. I don't use DRM.
Nor do I care if 'content with value' isn't available because the producers don't get DRM. Let them go bust.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, producers of content want money (well, the ones pushing the DRM, anyway). Money that comes from people paying for the privilege of watching their content.
But DRM does not bring viewers and it does not bring money. At best, it might prevent people from viewing the content without paying for it. It's the content - and the audience - that brings in the big bucks.
The point is, if you draw a line in the sand and say "No DRM" (either because of technical, legislative, or moral reasons) then the content produc
Re:We didn't need considerations... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Of course you don't need DRM. You don't produce content with value.
Producers of content with value want DRM.
Bullshit. I make a living writing free software. We agree on a set a price for the work, I do the work, they pay me once, and I work more to make more money. Everyone gets the code since bits are in infinite supply and Economics 101 says they should have zero price regardless of cost to create. It's my ability to configure the bits that's scarce, I market that.
There's a new way to create content now. Bigger and bigger businesses are taking advantage of the free market research and funding systems in cr
TV 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many forces commercial and governmental both which want to rein in the internet. It's too dangerous in their view to have anyone able to communicate freely with anyone else without permission or monitoring.
Thus gradually step by step the once open nature of the internet will be closed down. The problem is that people look at each 1/1000th of the whole picture and say "that isn't so bad!". Secure boot. That isn't so bad, you can disable it! (for now). DRM in HTML5. That isn't so bad! Etc. But the overall trends is clear. The internet became what it was before the authoritarians really became aware of it. They won't make that mistake again, and they will act to put more and more controls on it both legal and technical, until what made it an incredible thing is gone.
Re: (Score:3)
Time to fork HTML?
Get In Return? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, obviously (Score:2)
"Considerations to be discussed later" is rarely a powerful diplomatic pose.'"
No shit. It means those considerations consist entirely, wholly, and purely, of bupkis.
--
BMO
Um, isn't it obvious? (Score:3)
Take it up with the Internet Society BoT (Score:5, Interesting)
The W3C used to be a member (i.e., company) driven organization, but in 2012 they took a large donation from the Internet Society [w3.org] and were basically brought under ISOCs umbrella (they were running out of money) :
This does not sound like "deep organizational change at W3C," or particularly open in nature. I think that interested parties should comment / complain to the ISOC Board of Trustees [internetsociety.org].
Google and Mozilla (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as Google and Mozilla simply fail to implement DRM, it will be DOA.
What's the fuss? (Score:5, Insightful)
Relax, it's W3C. It's not like any browser that ever existed did actually implement any of their standards correctly, what makes you think it's different with DRM?
time to fork W3C? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, does this mean it is time to fork W3C and have a more meaningful standards organization?
Re: (Score:2)
The exact opposite is the case. If the W3C didn't make a home for implementers who want to agree on a standard, the implementers would find somewhere else.
And what's the issue, anyways? They're not publishing DRM, and they can't tell Web browsers to protect content. Read the EME spec that's so controversial, there's no reason why you couldn't write your own EME implementation.
Out of the market (Score:4, Interesting)
Content owners that make their DRM not work for me (a Linux user) cannot consider me in their market. Therefore they would LOSE NOTHING if I crack the DRM and access their content privately.
Since No One Has Pointed It Out Yet (Score:5, Informative)
'What do we get for that DRM?'
Did "we" vote on this? Let's look at their members list [w3.org]: Apple, AT&T, Facebook, Csico, Comcast, Cox, Google, Huawei, HP, Intel, LG, Netflix, Verizon, Yahoo!, Zynga and ... The Walt Disney Company. Seriously, are we really so daft that we sit here scratching our heads wondering why a consortium of those players and THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY ended up including DRM? REALLY? There is a bill known as The Mickey Mouse Act in regards to excessive copyright that was passed into US law. And we're wondering how Disney might have influenced DRM as an option in a standard ... they're on the list, folks! Pull your heads out of your asses!
And those are just the companies I recognize that have a serious amount of money to be made on DRM (hello, Netflix?!). If I examine closer, there are much smaller players like, say, Fotosearch Stock Photography and Footage that sound like they would gladly vote for DRM in order to "protect" their products/satiate content owners.
What to get? Copy protection only. (Score:2)
What the W3C should demand in exchange for doing this is that all it does is prevent copying. Content can't "phone home". Content can't keep you from skipping the commercials. All this mechanism should do is restrict a container of content to one or more specified devices. It should not be used as a technical means to give content powers beyond those established by copyright law.
Shackles (Score:2)
The real issue is to understand why people like to be locked in, shackled and then anally fist fucked by DRM. It's because they like it and, realistically as long as it's shiney, they don't care being bitches. Of course, what is critical is not to use any of the core features of DRM to quickly so that they actually start to wonder why people who know about DRM, don't like it and are forced to educate the targets about why it's bad. Generally people will respond with "I quite like being fist fucked - whats y
Sad (Score:3)
The abuse of DRM by corporations, governments and people more interested in restricting information, far out weighs any benefit given to the average consumer. I, for one, am totally in disbelief that the W3C caved in on this.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
The user, (Score:3)
There are thirty million Netflix subscribers in the states or about ten percent of the adult population.
The web user is middle class --- someone with the disposable income needed to support the purchase of broadband and mobile data services, computers, smartphones, tablets, video game consoles and so on.
Protected content, retail sales and subscription services are not a burden to him --- quite the contrary --- if they are not available through the browser he will go elsewhere and he won't be looking back. The success of the "walled gardens" of Apple and iTunes, the Kindle and Amazon Prime makes that perfectly clear.
W3C doesn't exist to pacify the geek.
It exists to insure the continued relevance of the general purpose web browser,
Re:Tone down your rhetoric (Score:5, Informative)
It's pretty obvious the content owners (not makers, authors, or creators, by in large) will insist on DRM for all their content, when it benefits just about nobody except them. The DRM battle was nearly won, and now W3C is actively undermining this societal progress.
It's not about "your website", it's about your access to culture that is increasingly consolidated among a few large corporate players due to the chicanery of copyright law. DRM is about controlling the playback, locking out certain uses and users.
I'd say that this will just push even more traffic to the torrents, but the NSA will probably divulging the correlated info for torrents soon enough.
Re:Tone down your rhetoric (Score:4, Interesting)
It's pretty obvious the content owners (not makers, authors, or creators, by in large) will insist on DRM for all their content, when it benefits just about nobody except them. The DRM battle was nearly won, and now W3C is actively undermining this societal progress.
It's not about "your website", it's about your access to culture that is increasingly consolidated among a few large corporate players due to the chicanery of copyright law.
You make it sound as if I have a right to the content other people produce. I don't and never did. I don't consider it to be "culture" either.
DRM is about controlling the playback, locking out certain uses and users.
I'd say that this will just push even more traffic to the torrents, but the NSA will probably divulging the correlated info for torrents soon enough.
If the content producer hasn't given you permission to consume their content, then you have no right to seek it elsewhere. If I cannot watch a movie through legal channels then I don't watch the movie. Same thing with TV shows and music. I don't consider respecting other peoples' rights to be very onerous, and I don't think I'm missing out on much.
Re:Tone down your rhetoric (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll respect copyright law once copyright law respects me back.
You don't understand why we have copyright (Score:2, Insightful)
It was handed out to promote the arts. You are not entitled to a never-ending copyright at the expense of consumer's rights. Unfortunately that's what happened and that's what your promoting. If you don't want me to access it don't publish it. Your DRM solutions are just going to ensure I don't pay for it. I have ever right to access content because my rights were violated the day copyright was extended beyond a reasonable length of time. 7 years was already probably excessive. Way more than what was needed
Re:Tone down your rhetoric (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you ever sing happy birthday to your kids? In a McDonalds maybe? Well what you did was create a public performance of a copyrighted song. How dare you. The original owner of the song didn't give you permission to do that. What about singing this most famous song in a movie? Well that will cost you $10000 [wikipedia.org]
How about a band taking a 10 second snip of a symphonic rendition of a rock song and using it as a riff in their own song? Sorry 100% of all income and royalties [wikipedia.org] now go to the original creator of the song, not even the people who originally performed the symphonic piece.
This is the sad reality of copyright law today. I don't have the rights to other's content, but they sure as heck shouldn't have the rights they do either. Don't argue that this doesn't affect culture either.
Copyright isn't an absolute right (Score:3)
"If the content producer hasn't given you permission to consume their content, then you have no right to seek it elsewhere. If I cannot watch a movie through legal channels then I don't watch the movie. Same thing with TV shows and music. I don't consider respecting other peoples' rights to be very onerous, and I don't think I'm missing out on much."
Copyright is a fairly recent concept in the history of human culture. It's not like concepts of liberty, free speech or the right to life which people more anci
Re: (Score:3)
You make it sound as if I have a right to the content other people produce.
I have the right to control what my computer does. I have the right to do math. I have the right to copy memory locations to disk. I have the right to communicate.
No, I don't have the right to what other people produce. But if you tell me something, I have the right to write that down. And I have the right to tell that information to other people.
If the content producer hasn't given you permission to consume their content, then
Tone up your rhetoric (Score:5, Insightful)
"Nobody is forcing you to use DRM on your website."
They are forcing it into his browser by declaring it a standard, and the websites can use it without his explicit permission. So he's entitled to be pissed at them. Really it should carry a mandatory 'turn off' flag. Also what makes you think you get the choice even with 'your' website. You use adverts, you use third party software, you'll get stuck with this.
Think of it this way, one of the first uses for this will be the NSA injecting a surveillance packet, so it can track us without us being able to delete their tracker. Is that OK with you? What about GCHQ injecting its packet into American browsers, ok still? What about China injecting its drm packet? Ok? Google, OK? Microsoft? Still OK? Facebook? Still happy?
Re: (Score:2)
They are forcing it into his browser by declaring it a standard, and the websites can use it without his explicit permission.
To the extent that they "standardize" the DRM functionality; the browser could implement just enough of the DRM to decrypt and playback the content, and allow the user to save the decrypted version.
What does it really mean to say you have software-based use restrictions in freely patchable freely-extensible open source browser software?
Re: (Score:2)
Because none of what you said is correct. EME is a secondary plug-in API that focuses on video DRM black boxes. The browsers won't be decrypting anything. Even an open source browser could implement the interfaces, only problem is the DCE modules probably won't be available on any true Linux systems - only on shit blessed by Google or some other DRM-happy company.
Re:Tone up your rhetoric (Score:5, Informative)
You don't need to visit facebook to get facebook trackers. Just sayin'.
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Re: (Score:2)
Like an old TV comedy sketch:
"Oh see my search engine is clumsy Colonel, and when it gets unprofitable it down ranks things. Like say, it don't feel your sites paying fair, it may start delisting sites....
Delistings happen, Colonel
Sites vanish.
My brother and I have got a little DRM for y
Rhetoric is well-justified if far too accepting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Losing the freedom to read is never a wise choice to make and certainly something to be politically active about. The world doesn't have to end for significant bad things to occur which demand our active principled disagreement and action. This issue isn't just about what one chooses to use on their site, it's about what users under the digital restrictions have to live with to make their computers behave in the way they want to. Saying one doesn't have to use digital restrictions management on their site is taking the weapon-user's point of view instead of the reader's point of view. Your attempt to marginalize the reader by comparing the objection to the world ending is reduction by hyperbole.
Asking what we're getting in exchange for the acceptance of DRM means one's priorities are misplaced—this question is entirely misplaced because nothing should restrict the reader. Trying to bargain for better terms after accepting a deal signals profound ignorance of how to get what readers need: the right to read [gnu.org].
Re:Tone down your rhetoric (Score:5, Informative)
Adding something to an open standard is "selling out"? WTF? Calm down and get a sense of perspective before posting these stories,
The W3C's stated purpose is:
"Standardizing the Web
W3C is working to make the Web accessible to all users (despite differences in culture, education, ability, resources, and physical limitations)"
http://www.w3schools.com/w3c/w3c_intro.asp [w3schools.com]
DRM's purpose is to limit web content to those users who have the money (resources) to pay for it.
Their endorsement of DRM is antithetical to W3C's own clearly stated values, and shows that they are no longer a fit group to determine web standards. If anything, the "rhetoric" should be scaled up until they retract their approval of a restrictive internet.
Re:Tone down your rhetoric (Score:5, Interesting)
And you know what? People are migrating away from the "open web"!
Ever complain that "everything is an app" and "why don't do they do a web site?".
Especially on iOS, which has supported web apps since it was iPhone OS 1.0. And it still does. Yet everyone wants apps.
You know what the result is? Try using iTunes Preview - it basically gives you a quick summary and wants you to do everything from within an app. Or take a look at Steam - SteamPowered.com is a bit more functional, but a lot of it is tied to an app as well. About the only one that isn't is Google Play - where you can do everything from the website.
Heck, try browsing the web on a mobile device, and half the time they ask you to install their app.
The "open web" is now more about hawking apps than providing content - the content is still there, but you use an app.
Eventually we'll just have stuff like iTunes Preview locking things up off the web, and if you're on any platform other than Windows, OS X, iOS or Android, that's all you get for web content.
This proposal is more about keeping the web relevant to content providers. We've already seen what happened when content provider's interests weren't taken care of - see HD-DVD which only had AACS to protect it. But content providers got angry because lack of region coding meant you could go to amazon.com and buy a HD-DVD of a movie that hasn't even come out yet. Or the Sony PSP where custom firmware was basically the reason why systems outsold games nearly 2-to-1.
The future of the web is already happening - on mobile devices.
Re:DRM makes more free media likely, not less (Score:4, Insightful)
And just like today, DRM will be a bastard and suck down CPU cycles that on a limited system will make said content unusable. Worse, and the real reason to be against DRM, is that it introduces a layer of "trust us, download this" as a part of said "free content". That is the very hallmark of a lot of the current malware epidemic. That the W3C is greenlighting any of this is going to make already said limited systems even worse off if it catches on.
So, just like today, people will be better off just bypassing all of the above and pirating the content post DRM-removal.
Jolly, everyone else is doing a shitty job and pushing on DRM people. The W3C should too! Because making it a standard somehow makes it better.
Re: (Score:2)
It's crap like this that makes me wonder why anyone still reads this site.
Because, years ago, it used to be a great resource to learn about various diverse tech topics and some of us hope that it might, one day, return to that (all the while knowing those days are gone, gone, gone...).
Re:Tone down your rhetoric (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM is the opposite of an open standard. Duh! DRM means that your browser (and possibly the computer it runs on) will have to be certified to behave just the way the DRM masters tell it to. How is that in any way compatible with a so-called open standard.
b/c we can always just use the *other* internet (Score:2)
absolutely they are...they tried with HTML4.x and were stymied by the WHATWG and HTML5
do you know what the WHATWG is?
everything about their existence and the standardization of HTML5 in the face of W3C's obstruction proves your statement wrong...
start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG [wikipedia.org]
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Interesting)
So if they won't do this for a core economic interest (salary, working conditions) then how realistic is this idea that there would be some kind of coherent constituency agititating for something "in return" for DRM? Because as it turns out, quite a few programmers benefit from being employed by companies with a stake in DRM. And that is, on some level, almost every for-profit company on the internet which makes it business selling proprietary information (content, programs, web services). Which is just about everyone, besides the relatively small proportion of economic activity at companies relying on open-source business models.
This is not about programmers at all. If anyone is going to complain, it's "consumers." There are a lot more of them, and the population of potential complainers is much larger. Whether or not that means diddly squat in a major capitalist system where all the for-profit internet-connected companies really, truly ARE a significantly incentivized interest group that pretty much like the perceived benefits of DRM... well, color me skeptical about that.
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, you could say the same thing about voter opinion. In both cases, most of those things are rarely true.
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, as both a consumer and programmer I will NOT have any encrypted code or codex coursing through my system. The bullshit DRM'ed content and corresponding proprietary code is not worth the risk of losing control of the system that I do my banking on.
If the browser makers bow and include such features the must NOT be installed by default and be optional plugins that are installed after installation. If not, then I will simply remove from the sources any DRM that finds its way into any of the open source browsers I use. I will then compile and make available the binaries and sources without said defective by design non-features (providing a stampede of GNUs doesn't beat me to it).
Even if "mainstream" consumers do not flock at first to the more open non-proprietary systems, this DRM will still fracture the web along a line dividing the herd from those who would be heard decrying this move as invasive. It's not uncommon for an upstart to take the lead in the browser wars. In a post Snowden world, built in DRM'd browsers don't stand a chance. The mud will be slung, because it's fun to do so. How can you prove that the DRM module doesn't have a backdoor? If it's open source, then it will be subverted in seconds.
The W3C missed the memo: DRM is dead.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Insightful)
you're talking about a piece of black box code that is designed to talk directly to the hardware, and designed so it can override the OS
snowden's whistelblowing made it general knowledge that collusion between all of the big software companies and the US and UK intelligence/spy-communities is common.
does that really seem like good idea to you?
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so easy. I hate DRM but I'm pretty sure that if this gets passed some customers of mine sooner or later will approach me and ask me funny things like "listen, I know there is a new thing in the web called DRM and I can use it so nobody can look at my HTML code, right? How much does it cost?" And what happens if I tell them they should not use DRM? Simple: somebody else will get the job. Once the genie is out of the bottle it's extremely difficult to put it back in there and all sort of nasty things will happen. Saying goodbye to view source won't be the worst one.
I wonder what *W3C committee members* got in return for that and if we can start a "STOP DRM" campaign and kill this madness.
Re: (Score:3)
"And what happens if I tell them they should not use DRM? "
As a European, I get many messages a day with 'sorry, this video excerpt is not available in your country' which forces me to torrent the whole episode and thereby sharing it with thousands of people.
Sounds not very useful to me.
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Re:Some questions (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I prefer the term "Human Rights Management" since the free and open communication of ideas is a human right. This right extends to the public domain and to fair use. But it is much easier to swallow if we "manage" those rights, rather than just violate them outright.
The problem with virtually every DRM scheme I have seen pushed by industry is that they make no provision for fair use or for the limited terms of copyright. DRM is seen as a way to protect from the vagaries and limitations of copyright by silently removing "copying" as an option.
Here's an option: if you want to use DRM, you no longer get copyright protection. It becomes a trade secret.
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Interesting)
How long before W3C's reputation is ruined?
The W3C's says themselves that their reason for existence is to standardize the Web to be "accessible to all users (despite differences in culture, education, ability, resources, and physical limitations)" http://www.w3schools.com/w3c/w3c_intro.asp [w3schools.com]
The reason for DRM's existence is to limit web content to those users who have the money (resources) to pay for it.
W3C's endorsement of DRM is antithetical to W3C's own clearly stated values, and shows that they are no longer a fit group to determine web standards. So yes, as you say by doing this, they have ruined their reputation.
Has W3C jumped the shark?
"Jumping the shark" is an idiom that describes the moment when a brand, design, or creative effort's evolution loses the essential qualities that initially defined its success and begins its decline into irrelevance.
So yes, since W3C has lost the "essential qualities that initially defined its success" as a result of their decision to endorse an internet segregated by wealth, they have clearly met the criteria to be shark jumpers.
a happy internet programmer (Score:2)
just dropped in to say 'hell yeah' to your comments...and express my joy that the W3C is being rightly criticized in this manner
as an internet programmer (ok 'web developer' if you must) I don't trust the W3C's policies and approach to standards...
as to when the W3C 'jumped the shark'...IMHO it was the HTML4 fiasco resulting in WHATWG breaking off and forming HTML5 [wikipedia.org]
when Google, Firefox, M$, etc went to HTML5 it was over, in my estimation...
HTML needed to improve and the W3C *couldn't do it*...
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Informative)
I basically agree with most of your post, but wanted to point out one mistake -- which is common enough, no offense. W3schools, which you cited, is in no way associated with W3C.
In fact, the information available from their site is often incomplete, inaccurate and sometimes plain wrong. It has been getting better, apparently, thanks in no small part due to these guys [w3fools.com].
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Insightful)
W3schools, which you cited, is in no way associated with W3C.
Thanks for the clarification, much appreciated.
Though it's even more saddening to read W3C's vision on their own site:
Vision
W3C's vision for the Web involves participation, sharing knowledge, and thereby building trust on a global scale. The Web was invented as a communications tool intended to allow anyone, anywhere to share information.
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission#principles [w3.org]
I guess they'll need to amend it to "Trust anyone who has the cash, share with anyone who has enough money."
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Thanks for the clarification, much appreciated.
You are very welcome, they had me fooled for a good while too :-)
I guess they'll need to amend it to "Trust anyone who has the cash, share with anyone who has enough money."
Amen.
Re: (Score:2)
I always though of "jumped the shark" to mean trying too hard to the point where it becomes obvious to everybody that you're trying too hard.
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I always though of "jumped the shark" to mean trying too hard to the point where it becomes obvious to everybody that you're trying too hard.
Same here, but then I am not a native English speaker. According to this [wikipedia.org] article though, GP is correct. It's more about the losing relevance part then about the trying too hard part, as I read it. Apparently it was originally about TV shows.
Question their right to exist (was:Some questions) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Insightful)
By paying the correct toll at the correct tollbooth, and tacitly agreeing that culture is something you "buy" and not "participate in".
> Tim Berners-Lee: DRMed HTML least of all evils
No, Tim, DRMed HTML is a pretty big evil, in that it sabotages an open, readable format by saddling it to an unnecessary rights management monkey.
Let stakeholders in DRM do their own dirty work and see if the public embraces it. The fact that they are going to do so doesn't make it incumbent on web developers and standards bodies to make it more easy for them to do so in a more universal manner.
Check your mandate, Tim.
Re:Without DRM... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is with DRM is that nobody will use it. Having DRM is not about being free or not, is the companies controlling how, when and where people could use the content they bought. Is about renting, not selling, and probably in the process getting ownership of the client hardware, own data, and competition content (and is not something hypotetic, Sony already used DRM to install a rootkit in the past [wikipedia.org]). This always was about punishing and abusing your customers, the ones that actually pay, not the ones trying to get a free ride.
And doing this, in this very moment that the intelligence agencies try to make cracks to get their backdoors inserted in every computer, is not just stupid, is criminal. Internet is getting physically broken into pieces thanks to US intervention, and will be in logical pieces thanks to this DRMd shoot in the foot.
Re:Without DRM... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine by me. I can survive without their content. Can they survive without my money?
A company that does not sell its products goes under. I don't quite get why everyone thinks it would be different for content providers. Why does everyone think they got the longer breath, it's not like we're dying without the latest Hollywood crapfest.
Re:Without DRM... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with those industries is te old saying: "there's one born every minute*". A never ending flux of uninformed idiots supports stupid businesses.
* it's more like 4 per second, now, so either that saying is incredibly outdated or it was coined by one of them.
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As we see with ideas around 4k http://www.red.com/products/redray [red.com] users can have quality and content producers are happy.
Broadband bandwidth is the only part missing.
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This is all the more reason NOT to add a DRM standard for HTML 5.
Flash, for example, can do what they want already. From the average user perspective, what's the difference? It also allows them to continue their split of set-top content vs PC content (though that's really stupid). It's not much more difficult to work with from the developer side either... in many ways, it's easier (ex. browser compatibility and fallbacks).
The majority of the content producers could/should care less. By that, I mean the majo
Re:I know the answer: (Score:5, Insightful)
We get a standards-based way to deliver copyrighted media
You're an idiot. The DRM is NOT standard, only the hooks to it are. So no, you don't get that. You will get a ton of platform-specific, closed, binary blobs doing who knows what to your system.
If someone doesn't provide the blob for your minority platform, well, tough luck. That's VERY different from the web originally, where anyone- you, me, anyone - could read the spec and write our own web browser. Here, it's locked down hard.
You're either an idiot or a shill. Or possibly both.
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Microsoft tried to DRM-ize the web (Windows 98). It was called MSN. It didn't work. AOL tried the same. CompuServe tried. History is rife with companies that tried re-implementing the web according to their own standards (Microsoft), DRM-ing it (Macromedia/Adobe) and many companies attempted locking up their content in containers (Flash, ActiveX, Shockwave). It has failed every single time. Programmers can't program against a broken non-standard and users can't keep up with the increased hassle to get to wh
Re: (Score:3)
That also means no more view source in browsers if the page owner wishes so. curl, wget and telnet 80 won't help.
Re: (Score:3)
You're missing the point. DRM is not bad for independent site authors (of course they can ignore it). It's bad for users because it restricts the set of browsers / operating systems they are allowed to use. That is not the point of the Web -- the point of the Web is that anybody can implement a free web browser using open tools and information. If this goes through, then I will have to use Hollywood-approved browsers to access the web. I won't have any "problems" as long as I use browsers Hollywood trusts w