EFF Resigns From Web Consortium In Wake of EME DRM Standardization (eff.org) 221
New submitter Frobnicator writes: Four years ago, the W3C began standardizing Encrypted Media Extensions, or EME. Several organizations, including the EFF, have argued against DRM within web browsers. Earlier this year, after the W3C leadership officially recommended EME despite failing to reach consensus, the EFF filed the first-ever official appeal that the decision be formally polled for consensus. That appeal has been denied, and for the first time the W3C is endorsing a standard against the consensus of its members.
In response, the EFF published their resignation from the body: "The W3C is a body that ostensibly operates on consensus. Nevertheless, as the coalition in support of a DRM compromise grew and grew -- and the large corporate members continued to reject any meaningful compromise -- the W3C leadership persisted in treating EME as topic that could be decided by one side of the debate. [...] Today, the W3C bequeaths an legally unauditable attack-surface to browsers used by billions of people. Effective today, EFF is resigning from the W3C." Jeff Jaffe, CEO of W3C said: "I know from my conversations that many people are not satisfied with the result. EME proponents wanted a faster decision with less drama. EME critics want a protective covenant. And there is reason to respect those who want a better result. But my personal reflection is that we took the appropriate time to have a respectful debate about a complex set of issues and provide a result that will improve the web for its users. My main hope, though, is that whatever point-of-view people have on the EME covenant issue, that they recognize the value of the W3C community and process in arriving at a decision for an inherently contentious issue. We are in our best light when we are facilitating the debate on important issues that face the web."
In response, the EFF published their resignation from the body: "The W3C is a body that ostensibly operates on consensus. Nevertheless, as the coalition in support of a DRM compromise grew and grew -- and the large corporate members continued to reject any meaningful compromise -- the W3C leadership persisted in treating EME as topic that could be decided by one side of the debate. [...] Today, the W3C bequeaths an legally unauditable attack-surface to browsers used by billions of people. Effective today, EFF is resigning from the W3C." Jeff Jaffe, CEO of W3C said: "I know from my conversations that many people are not satisfied with the result. EME proponents wanted a faster decision with less drama. EME critics want a protective covenant. And there is reason to respect those who want a better result. But my personal reflection is that we took the appropriate time to have a respectful debate about a complex set of issues and provide a result that will improve the web for its users. My main hope, though, is that whatever point-of-view people have on the EME covenant issue, that they recognize the value of the W3C community and process in arriving at a decision for an inherently contentious issue. We are in our best light when we are facilitating the debate on important issues that face the web."
The day the music died.... (Score:5, Insightful)
W3C sells out, leaves its somewhat democratic origins, succumbs to the payola, jumps the shark. Carry on, EFF. Someone has to.
Re:The day the music died.... (Score:5, Informative)
Why not hop over to: https://supporters.eff.org/don... [eff.org]
and sing up to donate a couple bucks a month to the EFF?
I did a short while ago to give them my support in light of https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] and am very happy that I did.
They're fighting the good fight.
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Also worth noting that the EFF is a charity choice for smile.amazon.com. Every penny helps.
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"Fighting the good fight"... didn't they just take their toys and go home??
Yes. That's pretty much what I said when this story came up a couple of days ago, although other people have been paint this as a "straw that finally broke the camel's back" kind of issue. https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Re:The day the music died.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: The day the music died.... (Score:4, Informative)
No, copyright was devised as a way to pay authors but force them to increase common culture years later after profits have been made.
Unfortunately, copyright has been corrupted decades ago and DRM makes the problem worst.
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Copyright is a crime against sentient kind as it steals from common culture.
Copyright is a compromise to encourage creation that would not otherwise happen with the end goal being more material released to the public domain than would otherwise have occurred. It's copyright extensions and long copyright terms that are the crime against sentient kind.
Payola OK if disclosed (Score:2)
I read MoarSauce123's comment to imply that promotional perks from record labels cover the royalties payable to songwriters through BMI and the like. This can go as far as buying a 4-minute ad spot during "non-stop drive hour" to play a new single that the label wants to push. This is fine as long as the sponsorship is disclosed [cornell.edu]. The notice
Re: The day the music died.... (Score:2)
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But people think they have the right to any music any time for no cost. That's not how the word, or the Internet works.
Then what's actually keeping it from working that way?
Lawsuits by copyright owners against infringers. Or are you asking what allows copyright owners to continue to have grounds to sue? In that case, copyright is part of the TRIPS agreement that applies to all WTO members, combined with the threat of punitive trade sanctions against countries that withdraw from the WTO.
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"Fighting the good fight"... didn't they just take their toys and go home??
Do you think that the businesses who left Trump's business and technology panels were just taking their toys and going home? When an organization refuses to respect the wishes of its members or works against the interests of the people it was supposed to support, then it ceases to be an organization that should have that support. If those organizations stayed, then they would be allowing their name to be used in support of something they are strongly against. You stay in the hopes of being able to have infl
Normalizing DRM was an early structural choice. (Score:4, Informative)
The W3C was doing what it was designed to do—membership is only available to those who pay, and that means its membership is almost entirely businesses. Calling this selling out misses the point of how the W3C's structure virtually guarantees predictable pro-DRM business outcomes such as this. As DefectiveByDesign.org pointed out [defectivebydesign.org] long ago, "Companies can impose DRM without the W3C; but we should make them do it on their own, so it is seen for what it is—a subversion of the Web's principles—rather than normalize it or give it endorsement.".
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Wouldn't be the first time they willfully ignore W3C standards.
This is one point where the EME thing isn't quite as bad as it appears -- supporting EME is officially optional. Browsers can refuse to implement it and still claim to be 100% compliant with the HTML5 standard.
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But everybody cares if the web returns to the days when sites had to have those "best when viewed with..." badges. And we're solidly on that road again -- I have to keep more than one browser installed because some sites only work well with certain browsers. This is something I haven't had to do in a decade or so.
Re:The day the music died.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sent a very loud message, didn't it? I won't stand with various organizations based on purely ideological grounds, either. It makes the W3C much less effective. It's a good stance to take. Perhaps it will bear some meaning.
Re:The day the music died.... (Score:5, Interesting)
looking forward to browsers advertising non compliance.
From TFS: (Score:5, Interesting)
[Jeff Jaffe, CEO of W3C] speaking for the W3C:
The the people in the W3C are not in any kind of a "best light" when the organization is obviously and outrageously fluffing corporate behemoths over the needs of everyone else, though.
The degree of pro-corporate spin in Jaffe's remarks is appalling.
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The degree of pro-corporate spin in Jaffe's remarks is appalling.
Agreed! That was some serious corporate-speak.
Why a foundation like the W3C even has a "CEO" itself boggles my mind.
Re: The day the music died.... (Score:3)
Re: The day the music died.... (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm still working on PNG-to-ASCIIart plug-in. Just give me another decade or two to finish it and then I'll work on my AAC-to-ASCIIwaveform plug-in.
Re: The day the music died.... (Score:4, Informative)
Pale Moon's (A Firefox fork) owner has said on many occasions that he will not include EME DRM in his browser.
Re: The day the music died.... (Score:4, Informative)
In Firefox you can disable it via about:config or via the normal preferences by unchecking "Play DRM content" and disabling Google Widevine extension if installed.
In Chrome you can't disable it any more, all you can do is go to "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\[Chrome Version]\WidevineCdm\" or wherever it is on your system and delete the files. You can create a dummy file with the name "WidevineCdm" and protect it from removal to stop future Chrome updates recreating it, but that might break the update installation.
Re: The day the music died.... (Score:2)
Whats to stop the piratebay using it to stream content illegally?
Will it stop dmca takedown notices of thepiratebay content, because the only way to detect infringment would be to breach the anti circumvention laws?
Think these are questions you need to think about before getting all upset. A good chance this standardisation is the final nail in the coffin for big media.
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Firefox supports EME, but you can disable it by unchecking "Play DRM-controlled content" in preferences.
For the masses, though, "Netflix doesn't work!" is not a compelling sales pitch.
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Firefox supports EME, but you can disable it by unchecking "Play DRM-controlled content" in preferences.
For now. Until two or three versions from now, when that feature is removed from Preferences and can only be toggled via about:config, or five or six versions of Firefox later when even that is removed...
Waterfox, IceCat, etc. (Score:2)
Until two or three versions from now, when [the "Enable DRM" checkbox] is removed from Preferences and can only be toggled via about:config, or five or six versions of Firefox later when even that is removed...
At that point, Firefox users can switch to a fork that omits support for proprietary CDMs, such as Waterfox [waterfoxproject.org]. If Mozilla makes support for proprietary CDMs mandatory, I'd bet money Debian will either revive the Iceweasel brand [debian.org] or package IceCat [gnu.org].
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Firefox supports EME, but you can disable it by unchecking "Play DRM-controlled content" in preferences.
For now. Until two or three versions from now, when that feature is removed
That's OK. It looks like I'll be off the Firefox train by then anyway.
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It makes the W3C much less effective.
How so? Who would notice that does not already care about these issues?
Re:The day the music died.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of us in the tech communities watch the W3C with both awe and respect, and yeah, sometimes shaking our heads over strange misdeeds, take the craziness behind HTML5 in general for an example.
But they violated their own rules, and fed the demons. They could have resisted, and let both the steep privacy issues and the banal big-data-suck get a needed knee-cap. They didn't. Now we know: even the W3C has their price.
Re:The day the music died.... (Score:5, Insightful)
this is not the same as when the corporate 'leaders' left trump's stupid panel thing, forcing it to dissolve itself. w3c isn't going anywhere.
On the contrary. The w3c is making itself irrelevant by forcing issues. Their own charter [w3.org] states:
Consensus is a core value of W3C
Well, guess what. They just threw their own core value away.
Re:The day the music died.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point is that their voice doesn't count.
If EFF cannot get its concerns reflected in the outcome of the debate, it in effect has no role in the debate other than to lend spurious credibility to the result.
Re:The day the music died.... (Score:5, Insightful)
and them bailing on the organization leaves the people with one less voice on it.
There's no point in having a voice when that voice is just going to be ignored. In fact, it can be harmful in the big picture if your presence serves to legitimize the organization.
Over the past few years the W3C has made its priority clear: it exists to further corporate goals. The EFF being part of that only serves to put a veneer over that that fact.
I applaud the EFF for doing as they've done.
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"Didn't do what EFF wanted" isn't the same as "ignored the EFF".
True, but I don't think that's what happened. I think that the EFF left because of long-term ongoing problems that have been getting worse over the years.
I think this is more of a "last straw" thing than being pissy because of a single issue.
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The article is about this particular issue. But if you've followed what's been happening with the W3C over the years, the larger picture is pretty clear.
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You applaud them for making themselves irrelevant?
Nope. You're deliberately misrepresenting what I said.
Do you think Big Media cares?
Nope, but what Big Media thinks isn't relevant.
Staying in and constantly opposing DRM, and publicly stating why would have been the responsible approach
You don't have to be part of the W3C to do that.
W3C will have one opposing voice less and the media industry pretty much liquidated the opposition.
That was the case anyway. The only thing staying in the W3C does is to give a little more credibility to the W3C.
Is this what you want?
Of course not, but EFF staying in the W3C will do nothing in terms of preventing that.
Re:The day the music died.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The RIAA/MPAA and other rights organizations infect a lot of good work. They're one of the reasons that TOR exists. Were they smarter, none of this would be necessary.... but feeding the draconian legal system in the USA is the usury we must apparently pay.
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That's the thing we do not need to give up open networks for video's, if nobody will buy DMR junk they will stop selling it.
respect is earned, not demanded. (Score:4, Insightful)
My main hope, though, is that whatever point-of-view people have on the EME covenant issue, that they recognize the value of the W3C community and process in arriving at a decision for an inherently contentious issue.
Sorry there bubs. Any respect I had for the "value of the W3C community and process in arriving at blah fucking blah" has now gone out the window.
Respect is earned, not demanded. This is going to be the undoing of the open internet, more than any other single thing in its history.
Re:respect is earned, not demanded. (Score:5, Informative)
This is going to be the undoing of the open internet, more than any other single thing in its history.
Well, let's not get too hyperbolic. This is a terrible thing, but it only affects the web, not the entire internet. There are bigger threats to the internet at large than this.
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And it doesn't even affect the Web all that much.
EME lets browsers play back DRM'ed video and audio. That's all.
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And it doesn't even affect the Web all that much.
EME lets browsers play back DRM'ed video and audio. That's all.
You miss understand, this is the npapi all over again. The buggy flash plugins that infect pc's. The java pugin that formats your hard drive. My personal opinion, for as useless as long term DRM is, that just having DRM isn't a problem for the web. The problem is custom plugins that sit outside chrome/IE/firefox's walled garden that do whatever the fuck. Now its in the standard that says "open season". And if you think that its "just for DRM video", I already see them trying to design some kind of os s
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Nah, TBL and the W3C deserve each other.
I'm glad we got another of these stories. (Score:2)
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Tim Berners-Lee had lost his way (Score:2, Interesting)
Tim Berners-Lee has lost his way. I remember when he came to Wellington NZ and he was doing public talks about appstores and how people were using apps more than the web. He sounded scared that they would make the web irrelevant. If I were to guess why he kept supporting DRM it was because of this.
Obviously over the years W3C has drifted between relevance, with HTML5 being done in the WhatWG and then copypasted to the W3C for no good reason (except for standards wonks trying to push specs to the ISO etc).
So
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"cramming XHTML down our throats"? XHTML is a part of HTML5. When you serve an HTML document as XML, we call it XHTML5.
(Which I highly suggest doing, by the way, it's far more secure and predictable.)
The time has come. (Score:5, Interesting)
Without a standards organization that can actually make portable standards (see lack of CDM documentation), it's time that we must construct a new standards body that isn't afraid to do what it claims it will do rather than what they must in order to appease their corporate masters.
The W3C has lost it's credibility. The time has come to form a new standards body for the web.
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You mean like Whatwg? [whatwg.org] I used to ignore it as it was kind of webkit and Google oriented back in the day but that was awhile back.
Re:The time has come. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea they lost their creditability by adding a feature that got voted in by a majority. You can't win all the time you need to get over it.
It was voted in by member with a financial incentive to do so. That specifically is called a conflict of interest.
we need to see why without the layers on cynicism DRM was voted in. Because it seems to help solve some problems that they needed to have solved.
Actually, I know what problem it solves, it solves the "I'm contractually required to use DRM" problem that various members have with Hollywood studios. There literally is no other problem that it solves, I've read the specification.
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You think that artists shouldn't be able to make money from digital media?
This is a large straw man.
If the only thing DRM was used for was enforcing copyright law (in its entirety), there would be a lot less opposition to it.
not understanding it all (Score:2)
what happens now? how does this actually manifest into something? do browser makers now have to have certain features to be W3C certified or something?
is this at all similar to Chrome's recent decisions to not allow credentials from certain places, etc? I may not be remembering this stuff correctly but it seems like just another entity's decisions to do something they feel 'right' about
do they have that much power to affect the web?
help me out, pls
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No browser "has" to implement it, but at least there is a 'standard' way of doing it so web developers will start asking whether/how they can be using it instead of using Flash/Silverlight.
There are plenty of standards the W3C has that aren't implemented across browsers (even simple things like input types) and there is another standards group WHATWG that has an entirely different implementation of HTML (which is what WebKit etc uses)
This was certainly going to be the outcome (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This was certainly going to be the outcome (Score:4, Funny)
You might think you're being a "pragmatist", but actually you're just a liberal cock sucker.
"This guy won't stop waving his cock in my face, so I may as well suck it" - You.
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"We can only see all topics as black and white choices because we're dumb Americans raised on a fucked-up political system." - Both of you.
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There was a time when a DRM-free purchase seemed like a great idea. But that was when we wanted to do things like download an entire movie and play on various devices. Now everything is streaming and you don't even notice the DRM.
Sorry, but it still seems like a good idea to be able to watch a movie somewhere where I don't necessarily have an active, reliable, high-speed internet connection, or would rather not pay for streaming bandwidth over and over again every time I watch it.
Re:This was certainly going to be the outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM schemes aren't going away and having standards around them seems like the best path forward.
No. Having them byzantine and hard to use is a much, much better option. Fragmentation will keep them from being used as much.
The only reason to favor this is if you want DRM.
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This seems to be the general hope that somehow DRM will fail and go away
No, it is the hope that it will remain as painful as possible.
I will also add that I think you personally are trash for advocating DRM.
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But that was when we wanted to do things like download an entire movie and play on various devices. Now everything is streaming and you don't even notice the DRM.
Speak for yourself. I don't do streaming, and probably never will, because it's a huge waste of money. If I want content, I buy it DRM-free so I can format and time shift and don't have to worry whether or not it will still be available the next time I want it.
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I too disagreed with Ed Tice's points, but you've rebutted him better and more thoroughly than I would have, and brought up points that I hadn't considered. It's too bad you posted AC - I'm out of mod points, but I feel your argument is important enough that I'm willing to burn the six or seven moderations I already made in this post, just to give it more visibility.
Why? Standards tend to end fracturization. It seems pretty clear that DRM is a clusterfuck that can't work. If anything, having multiple schemes slows down the rate at which DRM schemes are broke which would be better for the content makers. The flip side is if DRM actually manages to not be broken is we then have a situation where a lot of content will be locked up possibly indefinitely. That's hardly a good thing.
Good*.
And a pony. Don't forget the pony.
Good*.
Well, since you acknowledge it's a fair criticism...
Yes, we all have constant, unlimited streaming internet everywhere we go on every device we own and...oh wait, that's not true. Worse, everyone streaming everything is horrible inefficient and needlessly clogs up the internet when it could be used for better things--like having more space for lower latency phone, gaming, and actual content you're only going to watch once.
Uh, yea, no.
Ie Stallman was right, and you're proving exactly the point that there are people stupid enough to not give a fuck who are sending the rest of us downriver with their stupidity.
This is the part about "information wants to be free". Prices have dropped not because of all the DRM and the streaming. It's because prices have dropped so much that we have so much content we can now stream. The DRM is just general stupidity.
It's enough that stuff I "buy" is not mine. That I might "own" most of it for twenty years and then for it to just disappear because some company that changed hands ten times finally died? Yea, no biggy. That I lost several games and shows over those twenty years because the "right" to stream was lost? No biggy. Who cares so long as I can get the latest, most popular thing, right?
Yep, the EFF shouldn't involve itself with the W3C and web standards. More important issues than one of the chief mediums of information exchange on the internet should really be left to those with money^Wknow-how. Yep, it couldn't have anything to do with the EFF realizing they should spend their money elsewhere because the W3C has been bought.
* Seriously, your statement is just hyperbole. DRM schemes aren't necessary for streaming or rentals--you might not know this, but VHS tapes and PPV didn't use DRM (although the latter did often use a scrambler). It's also irrelevant because you already acknowledge that non-standard DRM schemes already exist, so there's no need for the W3C to give their blessing except to encourage their usage.
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Jeff, fence sitting only gets splinters in the ass (Score:2)
Your fallacy is Middle Ground, Jaffe. [yourlogicalfallacyis.com] Maybe after he's do
Devil's advocate (Score:4, Insightful)
Now the W3C could decided they hate DRM and not put it in their standard but then the web browsers are going to standardize it on their own outside of the W3C. This definitely weakens the W3C but it also goes against what W3C stands for. They are supposed to be the place for people to put web standards together. Just because the EFF doesn't agree with DRM, shouldn't allow them to stop the web browser makers from agreeing to the standard and making it a W3C standard.
Reality bites (Score:2)
Once upon a time, a family argued over what program they should watch on their TV. The father looked at the argumentative bunch and decided to weigh in with a bit of wisdom. "Let's resolve this democratically" he said. "Junior and Sissy should get one vote each for the show that they wish to watch, Mother should get two votes as her position allows for more power. As for me, I should get five votes as I'm the Pater Familias." At that point, the rich elitist bastard who lived in a mansion on a hill that had
Consensus not always possible (Score:2)
Consensus is not always possible for contentious issues. It's a nice ideal to strive for, but there are some issues where consensus cannot be practically reached. Compromise is likewise not always possible either. Those are the times when strong leadership is called for to make a decision, over the well-reasoned objections of some of the members of the body.
As this post [slashdot.org] nicely describes, DRM is already here, isn't going away, and this whole debate wasn't about whether or not we should have DRM at all.
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https://www.w3.org/2005/10/Pro... [w3.org]
See 3.3 Concensus. I imagine a Formal Objection was part of the process. https://www.eff.org/pages/drm/... [eff.org] would seem to be that objection. Also at https://dev.w3.org/html5/statu... [w3.org]
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Informative)
60% is a majority. It's hard to call it a consensus, especially when those opposed are VERY opposed. If you are disregarding the degree of that opposition- not looking at the general opinion, but the most common one- then it's a majority decision, not a consensus.
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Informative)
60% is a majority. It's hard to call it a consensus, especially when those opposed are VERY opposed. If you are disregarding the degree of that opposition- not looking at the general opinion, but the most common one- then it's a majority decision, not a consensus.
THe problem is whoever has enough money can buy their way hence have a voting right. This means Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft who all sell DRM creation tools and platform tie ins. This means newer codecs which means newer versions of Adobe products, more cpu/gpu power, and newer PC and Mac sales. Of course older phones and tablets won't support the newer codecs so this means users have to throw them away and repurchase again ... wahoo more money now for Google as well in addition to Apple!
Since now the purpose of W3C is to make money off of people for corporations what is the next step?
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Then there are loads of things on which there can never be a consensus, because the dissenter will always win - even if they are 1% of the body and the rest voted in favour.
Hence why "consensus" is a stupid concept in these things - put it to a vote.
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Then there are loads of things on which there can never be a consensus, because the dissenter will always win - even if they are 1% of the body and the rest voted in favour.
That is essentially the idea, although most systems do not require 100% agreement. The whole point of a web standard is that everyone can agree to it. If they can't develop consensus then it's not a good web standard.
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As another said, it's hardly stupid. There are soft (Wikipedia) and hard consensus (Jury). Most consensus are not unanimous, because what is or isn't a consensus could be different in a smaller or larger community. Whatever side you are on, climate change is a world-wide consensus, man-made climate change is one in scientific circles, but it is not one for the US public opinion, and some circles have a strong consensus against. A Jury is a strong consensus, unanimous even, since this is the total size of th
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So if almost 60% approve, isn't that about as much consensus as you ever get on a standard?
From what I understand, no. As far as I can tell W3C standards are reviewed, tweaked through an informal process until the director on behalf of the committee either thinks there's a consensus and approves it or no consensus can be reached and it's rejected so usually there is no vote at all. In this case it seems the W3C wanted to move it forward despite no consensus being reached, the EFF appealed that decision and called for a vote that the EFF lost. So the decision stands, but this breach with the W3C's
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I thought Mozilla had to use a binary blob that only works on Windows or some other nonsense since EME forbids opensource due to patents and licensing agreements?
Is my knowledge outdated?
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Informative)
Firefox downloads the required DRM module from a third-party server when you first try to use DRM'ed content.
The modules are closed source, but available on the major platforms, including Linux. I watched a DRM'ed show on Netflix in Firefox on Linux last night.
Although the modules are closed source, in Firefox they are sandboxed. They cannot do much more than decode audio and video. They can't access arbitrary files or call arbitrary platform APIs with the user's privilege. They have access to persistent storage, but only mediated by the browser, so the browser can corral or wipe that data on user request. Thus, in Firefox at least, there is no more privacy risk than other forms of Web client storage.
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No, EME is just an API. The codec could be "cat" (Score:2)
EME defines how a browser talks to a multimedia decoder. If the multimedia is Ogg / Theora / Vorbis / Flac / WebM, then obviously the decoder can be open source.
H.264 is patented, so you'd think that if the video is h.264 the decoder couldn't be open source, but it can be because Cisco has paid the patent license fees for OpenH264.
If the video is encrypted with a patented DRM, THEN you'd need a binary blob to decrypt it.
In other words, regarding open source vs proprietary it's just exactly the same as the e
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Then what's all this talk about HEVC? I know it takes alot more time to encode and isn't YMMV another standard for webcams. I assumed Apple invented it to sell more Macs. It is silly people are buing 16 core AMD Threadrippers and Xeons to encode 4K
Normally it wouldn't, but it can. Clear required (Score:2)
CDMs can do any of the following:
a) Decryption only, enabling playback using the normal media pipeline, for example via a element.
b) Decryption and *decoding*, passing video frames to the browser for rendering.
c) Decryption and decoding, rendering directly in the hardware (for example, the GPU).
Option B and C have the CDM decoding (as ogg does).
EME implementations are required to support one option, clear key - which breaks DRM. In other words, a browser MUST support EME that's not secure DRM, one can also
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since EME forbids opensource due to patents and licensing agreements?
The EME does not forbid open source. But the EME does not actually cover the DRM plugins themselves -- those are inevitably proprietary binary blobs that are platform dependent, but not because of anything in the EME requires them to be.
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> So if almost 60% approve, isn't that about as much consensus as you ever get on a standard?
I I may say so, no. Lack of consensus for standards bodies is very real problem, and discourages people from following _other_, more critical standards set by that same group. Consensus for a standards group is usually _much_ higher. There have been notable exceptions, such as the OOXML standards approved by the IEEE. The shameful abuse of the approval process for that standard has been well publicized. I suspect
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ISO Directives Part 1, which many Standards Development Organizations model themselves on, state in case consensus is not clear and a vote is taken, you need a two-thirds majority of the votes cast to indicate consensus.
Most standards aren't as as devisive and hyped (Score:2)
Most W3C standards get a higher level of consensus, but they're just discussing the technical details of how to do something.
The EFF strongly argued that media decoders shouldn't be standardized at all. There is a big political / philosophical argument behind this one, as well as the normal technical discussions of how to do it.
Given the political / philosophical debate, I don't imagine they could have gotten much better than the 60% for, 30% opposed that they ended up with. In the end, all the main brows
Re:You can't win all the time. (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM isn't an extreme feature,
Strongly disagree, I almost stopped reading your comment at this point.
Now other than getting up an leaving in a huff because they didn't get their way, they should be asking themselves, what other alternatives to DRM is there that can address the concerns of the 58% who approved of it.
There is no alternative, because of how extreme and perverse DRM is. It's like looking for a compromise between a hippie and an ISIS terrorist. Nothing would come remotely close to satisfying both at the same time.
Since the EFF had no say in a forum that supposedly only makes consensus-based decisions, what's the point of them staying in the W3C other than to have their membership misconstrued as consent?
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Nothing would come remotely close to satisfying both at the same time.
Exactly. The issue is not about a vote, losing, or the majority; W3C works on consensus because a majority vote is not good for everything in life and that's why the W3C works on consensus, and the EFF is right in taking a stance. This is not a "we're at B and need to know if we move toward A or C", it's a "We're at 0 and should we chose 1 instead", it's not a vote, it's a binary choice. You can only be pro, against or neutral on that issue. It came down to 58% something pro, the rest against or neutral (no
Re: (Score:2)
DRM isn't an extreme feature
I disagree, but this point is a matter of opinion rather than fact.
Now other than getting up an leaving in a huff because they didn't get their way, they should be asking themselves, what other alternatives to DRM is there that can address the concerns of the 58% who approved of it.
The EFF did so, repeatedly, within the process. What they were pushing for wasn't even the elimination of the EME (they saw that the EME was happening no matter what), but the inclusion of things that would mitigate some of the worst dangers the EME presents -- such as allowing security researchers to be able to investigate it without fear of prosecution through the DMCA.
As the process went on, the EFF kept watering down their proposals unti
Re: (Score:2)
30% disagreed.
The proponents outnumbered the opponents by 2:1.
I agree that voting is an abuse of a consensus model (the IETF never votes on anything, for example). However, the standard was an API for doing encryption that was already implemented in the vast majority of Web browsers. The EFF was just apparently out of other, more appropriate venues that are actually about DRM.
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JavaScript is an open standard with multiple compatible implementations. What is your problem with it?
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What is your problem with it?
As a user, my problem with it is security. That's why I generally leave it disabled.
As a developer, my problem with it is that it's not a very good language.
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That's hardly unique to JavaScript. iOS apps are generally Objective-C or Swift. Android apps are Java or C/C++. Ads and stalking, including your GPS coordinates are the norm these days.
Because of all the evil examples out there, my advice that you should never run something written by a programmer on your own hardware.
Re:Commercial vs personal property rights? (Score:5, Informative)
EFF has a pretty good open letter explaining their reasoning. In short: DRM is a fool's errand. It doesn't work. Everything on Netflix, Spotify, Amazon or anywhere else can be pirated despite the DRM. At no point as any DRM ever resolved any of these copyright infringement issues, and it never will, because the person you're trying to guard the secret from is the person who you're trying to reveal the secret to. It's a mathematical non-starter. Meanwhile, it does succeed in closing off devices, and criminalizing tinkerers who wish to repurpose the devices they've purchased for reasons which have nothing at all to do with piracy.
Platform diversity. (Score:2)
{...} only webkit really matters when it comes to standards. Why don't we focus on that {... ?}
Because of Gecko / Servo powering Firefox on most non-iOS platforms including desktop and android (and a few less known, like the Mer-derived SailfishOS by Jolla, like the web engine replacing Microsoft Edge when running Wine, etc.)
Because of Microsoft Edge that the more clueless users still run on their Windows laptops ?