W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

https://boingboing.net/2017/09/18/antifeatures-for-all.html

by guelo • 9 years ago

2735 971 9 years ago

boingboing.net

donatj• 9 years ago

So this is how the open web dies.

Can we fork the W3C into a non-corporate puppet now?

JoshTriplett• 9 years ago

We should simply start doing new standards through other organizations. There's no fundamental reason to float new standards through W3C rather than some other organization.

Touche2• 9 years ago

I'm completely confused why the W3C is relevant at all. This already did happen, the browsers created the WHATWG. Since the browser vendors' opinions are the only ones that matter, why do we care what W3C thinks?

Analemma_2• 9 years ago

DRM was coming to browsers with or without the W3C’s blessing. In fact, it was already there via plugins and wasn’t going away. This has changed nothing except where the implementation is documented.

The hysteria over this is just ridiculous.

wyager4• 9 years ago

Just because some horrible thing currently happens to exist doesn't mean you need to (explicitly or implicitly) endorse it.

We should make implementing DRM as expensive and inconvenient as possible.

Accacin2• 9 years ago

DRM doesn't and will never work. It only serves to annoy people that pay for the movie/game/whatever legitimately. It's against everything the W3C stands for.

You dont' have to support something just because it's happening. You fight it, you don't give into it.

tannhaeuser3• 9 years ago

I think that W3C is what makes us believe we're sitting at the table when it comes to decide where the web is heading, when in reality we're not. So while I think W3C has good intentions and is acting in good faith (I'm somewhat undecided on DRM, please convince me of your opinion), I hope for a push to bring the lack of stewardship of the web to public attention, and another standards body (ISO/IEC, IETF, whatever), or W3C under a new statue to emerge and take the role of W3C-as-it-is.

(Re-posting this from the other thread [1] which didn't make it)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15277622

saimiam• 9 years ago

convince me

In case you haven't read this excellent piece against DRM - https://archive.org/details/InformationDoesntWantToBeFree

yahna2• 9 years ago

Will it matter? Any organization created to manage web standards is going to be dependent on browser vendors. Google/Microsoft/Apple want DRM so we get DRM.

dmoy• 9 years ago

I would posit that RIAA/MPAA/etc want DRM, and won't consent to Google/Microsoft/Apple opening up access to content without it, so we get DRM.

appleflaxen7• 9 years ago

sure, if you want to become the wwgnu foundation.

nobody cares about things they perceive as fringe ideological issues until it's too late.

they'll marginalize you by making fun of your personal habits while the open web dies.

only those of us who knew the web before it was closed will really know/care why it was special.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 9 years ago

Basically, unless you are writing a browser with decent marketshare, you defacto have no voice in making the standards. Basically, the only voices that matter are Mozilla (Firefox), Apple (Safari), Google(Chrome), and Microsoft (Edge/Explorer). Despite what any standard says, web developers are going to go by the behavior of the browsers do. The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to try to exclude DRM is Mozilla, and unfortunately, if they do that, the users will switch to the browser that makes watching Netflix easiest.

featherverse5• 9 years ago

I would suggest not underestimating Mozilla's market influence.

It would be possible to create a browser that displays DRM content and ignores DRM. The only thing that content publishers could do is ban that browser. And then it would adapt to disguise itself as other browsers.

DRM on the web can only happen if all of the major players (that is, browser publishers) agree to play along.

I am very excited about this news, this is probably the most important news in weeks, and could impact the Internet for years to come.

jandrese4• 9 years ago

Wouldn't publishers just refuse to distribute keys to said browser?

idbehold2• 9 years ago

So hopefully Firefox will simply display DRM content and ignore any restriction DRM imposes.

AnssiH3• 9 years ago

I don't believe this formal standardization will affect end-user web browser features.

All major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE, Edge, Safari) have already included HTML EME DRM support for years, so it is a de-facto standard already.

objclxt2• 9 years ago

I would suggest not underestimating Mozilla's market influence.

They have no market influence. They have maybe ~10% of the market globally (I've seen figures between 5-15%), and that's primarily desktop - which is decreasing daily. On mobile it's even worse (probably less than 1%).

Any influence they have solely extends to the desktop, and that's not the primary way people are interacting with the internet nowadays.

btown• 9 years ago

displays DRM content and ignores DRM

Nothing says "attempting to survive as a legitimate corporate entity" like "let's flagrantly violate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_and_Performance... ..."

admax88q2• 9 years ago

It would be possible to create a browser that displays DRM content and ignores DRM.

The DMCA makes this illegal. No browser vendor is going to take that risk. Maybe some anonymous developers will release a firefox fork or similar, but that's a big risk. Not to mention, most groups who pirate content tend to keep their methods secret and only release the content.

jandrese4• 9 years ago

This is really the issue. If we could convince media rightsholders that DRM is harmful and unnecessary then all of this heartache wouldn't be necessary.

I don't expect this to happen in my lifetime. Any slight glimmer of hope from Apple ditching DRM on iTunes has died as nobody else shows the slightest interest in following their lead.

tptacek8• 9 years ago

It seems self-evidently unharmful, in that we appear to be in a golden era of delivering content online so extraordinary that it threatens traditional television networks.

I understand that this is an extremely unpopular sentiment on HN, but here goes: at least with respect to video content, the industry seems to have largely proven DRM concerns unfounded.

Update: modulo the Hickson concerns below. Continuing:

DRM certainly has kept some (power) user-friendly features off the market. You can take this as a serious harm inflicted by DRM. But I don't think it's reasonable to take that harm in isolation; the alternative isn't simply a world with no such limitations, but also a world with less content made available online.

But I don't see a lot of evidence that those limitations, if genuinely important to users, can't be competed away. The restrictions might be dealbreakers for Paramount, but in 2017, Netflix can route around Paramount.

Touche2• 9 years ago

It's not harmful to them. I suggest reading this if you haven't already: https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2

malloreon• 9 years ago

"It is very difficult to make someone understand something if their livelihood is predicated on them not understanding it."

wildsatchmo• 9 years ago

There are some blockchain based systems in the works that may help with this mess. If a middleman can be removed, content creators could publish directly to p2p networks without losing the ability to earn money from their contributions. Instead of relying on some rights mgmt company to authorize content they could create a smart contract to programmatically allocate earnings to all parties involved. Time will tell but check out http://www.pepperlaw.com/publications/music-and-the-blockcha...

This also has the side effect of eliminating curation bias / censorship allowing for all sorts of new content to become available that might not otherwise be allowed on iTunes/Netflix etc.

wmf• 9 years ago

Or we could convince media rightsholders that they don't need to deliver their DRMed content through the Web.

giobox• 9 years ago

iTunes ditching DRM for purchased audio was never really a glimmer of hope for video, and lets face it this discussion is really about video more than anything else.

iTunes movies still have DRM. Arguably DRM free audio had extremely little bearing on the future of video, given the very different demands of each marketplace.

Remember also, that with a few exceptions (Sony rootkit anyone?), music had a long history of being DRM free before digital distribution came along (vinyl, tape, CD etc). Video distribution by contrast has a long tradition of many copy prevention "solutions" over the years on many different physical formats.

trowway21• 9 years ago

Make a browser extension that works across all browsers to sync user data. Then inform consumers. Consumers then easily switch to better independent browser builds, forcing media holders' hands. If consumers have no desire or ability to become aware, and can't muster the will to delay gratification for a few days it's hopeless. Consumer awareness must be the end goal; rather than establishing a smaller subset of aware representatives to tell the media holders the consumers care. The media distribution channels own the media right holders. They control the flow of $ completely. Six corporations have complete control. Same corporations choose which of the infinite security flaws to discuss on the news, and effectively dictate the browsers and consumption methods/endpoints people use. No solution will acomplish the result of total consumer awareness, for any period of time, without first achieving consumer awareness.

isostatic• 9 years ago

Didn't I used to be able to buy mp3s from amazon - no DRM? That was before spotify and other streaming solutions of course.

Do people want DRM-free media, or do they want ease of use?

jopsen2• 9 years ago

We have to forbid DRM by legal means...

Void copyright if DRM is employed, the same way you can have secret parents.

Legal protection shouldn't come without a price.

wiz21c4• 9 years ago

You'd have to convince them that DRM is against their best interest or provide them with something event better than DRM for their best interest. That's much tougher.

mtgx2• 9 years ago

If we could convince media rightsholders

Even that is not ultimately necessary. What we need to do is convince politicians that it's a bad thing, and in theory we should have a lot more influence over those. They can pass the necessary laws to say DRM is illegal and it would be much better plus potentially easier than crawling and begging to the media companies to throw us a bone.

In practice it's not so easy because the US has a broken and corrupt political system where the politicians are more dependent on rich donors than on the People who vote for them.

So once again we arrive to the same conclusion Larry Lessig did many years ago: if you want to fix the copyright issues, or the climate issues, or healthcare issues, or any other big issue, you need to fix money in politics first. Everyone on all sides, no matter what other conflicting issues they have with each other, should be working hard on that issue if they want any hope for their other issues.

coldtea• 9 years ago

The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to try to exclude DRM is Mozilla

Didn't Spotify just abandon Safari (OS X) because unlike Mozilla it doesn't support the DRM they need?

mccr8• 9 years ago

Safari supports DRM, it just uses FairPlay instead of Widevine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay

krupan• 9 years ago

Who watches Netflix with their browser?

grzm• 9 years ago

If I'm on my computer as opposed to a mobile or TV device, I use the browser. It's not as often, but I definitely have done so, even within the past week.

flukus6• 9 years ago

Due to DRM it's the only (legal) way I can watch it on my computer.

jedberg• 9 years ago

I'm guessing you don't have young kids? I say that because if I want to watch any R rated content (like Bojack Horseman for example, which I did last week), the only place I can safely do that is in my office with headphones on, since the toddler tends to creepily sneak up on us in the middle of the night after climbing out of bed.

driverdan3• 9 years ago

Who doesn't?

paulddraper• 9 years ago

Me. I'm on my computer 50% of my day. I have it handy the most often.

tempestn• 9 years ago

I do all the time, although I do it in a separate window with all the browser chrome hidden (and usually maximized to a side monitor anyway).

app4soft• 9 years ago

Pale Moon will be the last outpost in the world of suitable open-source browsers?

https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/Pale-Moon/issues/135...

cyphar• 9 years ago

GNU IceCat would be a better choice of "last outpost".

e40• 9 years ago

I 100% agree, and I wouldn't have agreed to it had I not been on a standardization committee in a before/after situation. The before was mainly implementers. At least they had a super majority. After was 5% implementers and it was a complete disaster. That 95% was like a kid in a candy store: no regard for implementation difficulty or what it would do to language consistency. Thankfully, the effort died quite quickly, so I never had to make much of the issue.

Iv3• 9 years ago

It took me a while to understand how politics are very different than the binary world of logic and strictly enforced rule of my CS universe.

In politics, very often, there are no strictly enforced rules, there are groups of pressures pushing in opposing directions. W3C has no way to prevent proprietary browsers for doing what they want, they just put some pressure on them. They know that going through W3C is the easiest way to agree on a standard and to provide interoperability for their users.

This is a small amount of pushing power.

EFF withdrawing is normal: that's the main item they were interested in. The question now is to see whether Mozilla will stay.

schoen• 9 years ago

As several people have pointed out elsewhere in these comments, Mozilla has already implemented EME. That makes it seem unlikely that it would quit over the adoption of this recommendation, even though Mozilla also stated that DRM is bad.

forapurpose2• 9 years ago

In politics, very often, there are no strictly enforced rules, there are groups of pressures pushing in opposing directions.

All power is ultimately politics, not rules. People can use politics to change the rules, which happens often through lobbyists, influence, or even force.

Powerful actors operate on the level of politics; they write the rules. The plebeians operate at the level of rules. If I'm unhappy with something a major corporation does, I can operate within the rules and complain to a regulator or take the company to court. If the corporation is unhappy then they get the rules changed, for example by having laws passed that prohibit my lawsuit, eliminate their liability, or hamstring the regulator. It also happens in smaller domains, such as among employees of a business: those skilled in politics get the internal decisions and rules made in their favor.

The exception is, broadly speaking, more common than the process described above: The issues most people deal with in their everyday lives aren't important enough to motivate political action.

mtgx2• 9 years ago

This is a small amount of pushing power.

Not true. See Google's NaCl and Mozilla and Microsoft's own alternatives to that. Neither went anywhere because each browser pushed in a different direction. It's only through W3C that they managed to build WebAssembly and all agree to use it.

I see this DRM thing the same way. Without W3C they may have built their own DRM solutions (and in fact, they have, years ago), but they wouldn't be compatible with each other, which means they wouldn't get too much adoption either.

tanilama• 9 years ago

Sadly that is the ugly Truth about politics. Not really about rules it is all about power, hard power.

feelin_googley• 9 years ago

"... web developers are going to go by the behavior of [what] the browsers do."

I have pointed this out before.

It is an important point that I think perhaps is overlooked when users ponder how to change the web.

Want to change how the web is presented, fix annoyances, scratch an itch?

Try to achieve through web development? Good luck.

Try to achieve through browser development? Far more interesting. Alternative, open source, non-commercial browser. For example, implements limited set of features.

Web development follows browser development.

For example, a browser that does not automatically follow URLs so that ads and other crud can be loaded into pages.

Giving users access to a browser like this may be a far more effective means of influencing web development away from annoying "user experiences".

If such annoyances rely on a certain modern web browser feature, then use a browser that lacks the feature.

Non-commercial means developers do not care about "market share". They are not trying to "compete" with the major browsers on features. They care about creating a superior alternative to major browsers that shifts the focus from advertisers and media companies to users.

If the annoyances users have while using major browsers are bad enough, then they will try alternatives and the "market share" may shift. Or maybe not. But who cares? Because with an alternative browser "market share" is not the goal.

In another thread, a Chrome developer perhaps a former Firefox developer tells of how they dropped some feature because it was too "power-user" and that is not "what [they] were going for". Maybe you are within the market they "are going for". And maybe you are not. If you are not, then waiting for developers at a large corporation, whose customers are advertisers, to cater to your needs is futile.

antoinevg• 9 years ago

The original vision for hypertext absolutely had multiple "browsers/clients" and feature parity between them was not even remotely an issue.

The idea was that you tell the server what capabilities you have, it then tells you what it wants to offer you and a negotiation ensues.

I have no idea where this concept of a "standardized hypertext client" came from! ;-)

near• 9 years ago

The web has been engineered to a complexity level so grossly obscene that it is all but impossible for independent developers to produce fully independent web browsers anymore. You would need hundreds of millions of dollars in capital and strong leadership to produce a browser that would be successful in today's world.

I could dedicate the rest of my life working 100 hours a week on a browser, and I would die before I had something that could compete with browsers of 2017, let alone of the browsers far into the future at my demise. The standards grow in complexity faster than a small team of developers could possibly keep up with.

The best we have are attempts at forks of major browser engines, which will never gain any serious traction to have any power over the direction of web standards.

If people want to do something about it, they need to fork the web itself. HTTP, TLS, HTML, CSS, JS ... the entire stack needs to be scrapped and replaced with something sensible with a focus on simplicity. If a single highly talented developer working full-time can't implement a reasonable browser within a year, then the standard is too complex. This will of course never happen.

And so, on the subject of DRM, we've officially lost the war today. And combined with the impending loss of net neutrality, brace yourselves everyone: it's only going to get worse from here on out.

l0b02• 9 years ago

You wouldn't need to scrap all of it by a long shot. You could take a small subset of the stack and make something enormously simpler to implement. Start with supporting only one version of HTTP, TLS, (X)HTML, CSS and JS and fork them if necessary. Even drop CSS to start with and finally start relying on semantic markup and good browser defaults. Use existing open source libraries where available, such as for TLS and markup/media parsing. Pull out libraries for everything so the browser is easily composable and forkable. You don't want JS support at all? Compile without it.

thinkloop• 9 years ago

If people want to do something about it, they need to fork the web itself. HTTP, TLS, HTML, CSS, JS ... the entire stack needs to be scrapped and replaced with something sensible with a focus on simplicity.

That's flash.

tudorw5• 9 years ago

If we want to win that war, we should focus on content not technology, Mosaic got a lead in the game because, despite the 'techies' seeing no use for images, image support was added, with images came the transition of media, users were au fait with articles containing text and images and could now experience similar on line, this alone was not enough, content creators starting creating content that people wanted to consume, that's what drove people to 'get online', they were missing out.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a long shot, but if an organisation could build a raft of talent, get that talent to make content that was only available on an open and progressive platform, then you might get some traction. So what might that look like, well, say I had the funds to secure 100 of the worlds best financial journalists and only delivered that content on a novel protocol, do you think I might be able to persuade some people to run a novel application to access that content, oh hang on, did I just describe Bloomberg...

sexydefinesher• 9 years ago

Correction: its the loss of _American_ net neutrality, places such as the EU for example already has enforced net neutrality for all members.

enriquto• 9 years ago

We should all move back to gopher. Seriously.

amelius2• 9 years ago

Agree. Here's how to approach it, imho:

1. Assume we will eventually converge to a virtual machine target like WASM. Thus, eventually, browsers will only have to implement the low-level instructions of WASM, which will make building a browser much simpler. Note that as a side-effect, browsers may also become more secure.

2. Start with a working webbrowser, like Firefox or Chromium.

3. Step by step, move functionality from the browser into the browser's user-space. Eventually, JavaScript and the rendering of CSS and HTML will run in the browser's user-space.

dannyw• 9 years ago

Should a single developer working full time be able to implement an OS within a year?

The web is pretty much an operating system.

swiley• 9 years ago

ehhh HTML parsers/DOMs are trivially easy to write. after that you need to go get a JS lib (like ducktape) and write a css and json parser.

After that all you need is a layout engine, which GUI tookits like tk and gtk+ already have for text editing.

blitmap• 9 years ago

I am hoping feature-testing continues to be a good practice - I don't expect to have webgl, the webusb, or webaudio APIs available...

oneeyedpigeon• 9 years ago

I think you're right, but only for a narrow definition of "browser". Sure, something that looks and works exactly like Chrome, Safari, et. al. would be a gargantuan effort for a sole developer. But an 'HTTP client' can take many forms and still offer value, even advantages over the existing browsers which serve a very specific remit.

A basic text browser is the kind of thing that's buildable in a year. Moreover, once you start building that, maybe you have an idea for certain features that current browsers don't do well (bookmarking, navigation) or at all (change monitoring, api integration, editing).

I'm optimistic that there is a lot of unlocked potential in the HTTP/HTML platform.

lucaspottersky• 9 years ago

as the standard gets bloatted, new players could leverage this weakness and build something entirely new. yes, reinvent the wheel. =)

oceanswave• 9 years ago

Why stop with creating a browser from scratch? You'll need hundreds of millions of dollars in capital just to build your own compiler technology that would be successful enough and incorporates enough instruction set optimizations present in commercial CPUs that your custom browser can be built upon.

Maybe you'll need your own hardware as well...

shawnee_• 9 years ago

The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to try to exclude DRM is Mozilla, and unfortunately, if they do that, the users will switch to the browser that makes watching Netflix easiest.

This is simply not true. Netflix's entire business model is based around one thing: video content delivery. It started with DVDs in red envelopes, and has evolved to be app-based streaming now. Neither of these two things has any relevance to web browsers.

Netflix's wish to be able to provide its content on as many platforms as possible for the lowest cost? Yes, that would make a lot more sense for why they are pushing this. Not an enticing enough argument for destroying web browser-based DRMs imo.

bridge_ro• 9 years ago

I agree. I'm curious as to what percentage of Netflix users primarily stream through a web browser rather than an app. I know my personal experience amounts to basically nothing but I can't even remember the last time I watched something on Netflix through a browser. I just have a hard time imagining that a lack of Netflix would kill Firefox.

tinus_hn• 9 years ago

They could definitely hurt Netflix by making it a shitty, barely workable experience.

pornel2• 9 years ago

It has always been like this (see browser wars, WHATWG).

In this case W3C is involved just as a tool. Microsoft/Netflix didn't need W3C for anything other than the brand name lending legitimacy to the spec they've designed and implemented before presenting it to the W3C, and didn't materially change it after.

scriptkiddy4• 9 years ago

The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to try to exclude DRM is Mozilla, and unfortunately, if they do that, the users will switch to the browser that makes watching Netflix easiest.

This is the world we live in. People are willing to sacrifice privacy and security in favor of convenience. Sounds a hell of a lot like a book I read in high school.

People are so willing to make these sacrifices because they don't even understand what they're sacrificing. They don't understand what they're sacrificing because they couldn't be bothered. Apathy is the disease that will bring down the world. I'm calling it now.

skummetmaelk• 9 years ago

It is truly a tragedy of the commons. It makes sense for the individual to consume their content, they're not giving up much by themselves. The problem arises when everyone does it.

swayvil• 9 years ago

The wealthy win again!

ringaroundthetx• 9 years ago

Grassroots populist opinions of the people only prevail when the wealthy and corporate interests already coincidentally happened to be lobbying for it. And by coincidence, I mean overlap, so it isn't just a matter of convincing the wealthy interest groups either because they don't care.

This study was regarding laws passed and regulations changed, but it would apply to non-state consensus garnering organizations.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

Same study, in article form with graphs, responding to critics of the study

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/2...

MrMid2• 9 years ago

Doesn't Firefox block DRM content by default? If they continue to do so, and if Chrome does so, then this shouldn't have much effect. If most peoples browsers block it, apps shouldn't use it.

gue5t• 9 years ago

Chrome has been shipping DRM called "Widevine" for years.

josteink5• 9 years ago

In fact Chrome was the first browser to support HTML DRM. Google enabled this when nobody else did.

Google is absolutely not your friend.

icebraining8• 9 years ago

And that's their DRM, by the way. Google bought the company in 2010.

ilikepi2• 9 years ago

I just created a new Firefox profile (v55.0.3, current stable), and the "Play DRM content" setting is enabled by default.

You may be thinking of the Flash plugin, which I believe Firefox and Chrome both do block by default and have done so for a while now.

MrMid2• 9 years ago

No, I mean Play DRM content, not Flash plugin. I'm on developer edition though, and it's been a while since I installed it, so I might be wrong. Thanks for your info!

yahna2• 9 years ago

Google wants DRM.

bzbarsky4• 9 years ago

Google was one of the organizations that pushed the DRM standard through the W3C. Because Youtube.

hsivonen2• 9 years ago

The default in Firefox depends on which build, which operating system, which distributor. It's a boolean pref that you can flip the other way if you don't like the default you got.

revelation• 9 years ago

What's the point, if this is another one of those "industry groups" they could at least have the decency to make it a great corporate junket with a meeting in Las Vegas or something.

5_minutes3• 9 years ago

Who is this director exactly that forced this on one-sidedly?

I guess he got something out of this. What a disgrace.

andruby• 9 years ago

The Tim mentioned in the letter is Tim Berners-Lee. He's the overall Director of the W3C [0]

[0] https://www.w3.org/People/#timbl

favorited5• 9 years ago

Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the first web browser.

room271• 9 years ago

(And the web itself.)

idbehold2• 9 years ago

Ideally all content publishers start to really depend on this "feature" and then one or two of the major browser vendors a few years down the line suddenly stop enforcing any restriction the DRM had. Now the publishers have to spend a bunch of money to move back to the plugin style DRM.

cromulen• 9 years ago

I'm a bit uneducated when it comes to the cryptography involved, but I'm wondering why people here are so determined DRM can't ever work?

Is it because someone will somehow get a copy and upload to torrents/streaming sites which of course won't have DRM. Thus only potentially annoying legitimate (eg. Netflix) users? Or are there other concerns?

throwaway61383411• 9 years ago

My guess is they claim it can't work because they don't want it to work, and figure with enough agreement someone somewhere will be convinced. (Saying this independently of my own views on the matter.)

teeray• 9 years ago

The argument is essentially that in order for you to enjoy the content, the content must be present unencrypted at some point before it hits your eyes and ears. Because of this, it should always be theoretically possible to extract the unencrypted content at that point.

idle_zealot• 9 years ago

By its very nature DRM of media content makes no sense. How can audio and video be delivered to the user without also allowing the user to save and distribute that content later? At some point, the content must be available in unencrypted form, even if that point is when the content is sent to the display, it can just be captured there.

throwaway61383411• 9 years ago

It could be easy to view but hard to save and distribute. Why can't it? Or do you really think these people have no idea what they're taking about?

gizmo6862• 9 years ago

Cryptogtaphically speaking, what is DRM. We want to give an untrusted user access to content, so that they can see it, without giving them access to the content, so they cannot copy it. This is simply impossible in theory. In practice, we can make copying it difficult, possibly resorting to hardware support (so decryption happens in the monitor) and rely on the DMCA to make any attempts to break DRM illegal. Of course non of these solutions actually work in theory; and the farther down the arms race we go, the more annoying it gets to legitimate users.

throwaway61383411• 9 years ago

Cryptogtaphically speaking,

Honestly, this might be why people aren't on the same wavelength. They're not cryptographically speaking.

mo2k• 9 years ago

I know content creators. There is a large group that hate their content being copied. That's not going to change.

Raphmedia• 9 years ago

Even if everyone were to replace their hardware for DRM-friendly monitors, you can bet that in a week the market will be flooded by chinese made hardware dongles that allows you to bypass it.

squeaky-clean• 9 years ago

Mainly that. There's no way to show me a video in my own home wherein I can't simply videotape the screen. So even if it's perfectly locked down digitally, it has to be converted to analog at some point for human consumption, and you can always capture that.

But I also disagree that DRM should be baked into "the web" as a standard, especially when most users seem to disagree, the EFF disagrees, and almost half of the committee disagrees.

Fej2• 9 years ago

DRM doesn't work. Every form of DRM has historically been broken in one way or another. There are a couple of current systems that haven't been broken yet but it doesn't matter; content will be available from unauthorized sources the day they are released for streaming and no technical means is going to stop that.

Even Denuvo, the darling of the major games publishers, is broken on a regular basis. The company acknowledges that their software doesn't last forever (they tout '300 days' on their website as the longest any of their DRM schemes has held up, it usually is broken in a couple of weeks) and that the value is protecting the profits during that period.

CMay• 9 years ago

DRM does work. Whether Denuvo is successful depends on how it is implemented. Implementations of Denuvo have survived a year+ without being cracked. As you said, DRM often isn't intended to be secure forever, just for long enough that the major sales buzz is over anyway.

You can also think of DRM as branching into online services. DRM commonly required some form of interaction with an online service to validate a key or whatever else. As a result, some DRM is in fact built into the foundation of the software and this is the most successful. Think of World of Warcraft or Everquest. To essentially crack that DRM, you have to recreate the server backend which is a serious undertaking. This has been done, but it took a long time, only applies to older versions and doesn't connect you to the legitimate service.

Steam is an online service and games which use SteamWorks are coupling at least some of their features with the online service, but this is not as complicated as something like World of Warcraft so it is easily cracked. Denuvo attempts to fill that gap by more strongly coupling the software with Steam. As a result, Steam is technically the DRM while Denuvo is helping to enforce it and thus is not labeled as "3rd party DRM" on the Steam Store pages.

There is a balance between the popularity of your software and the difficulty of breaking the DRM. If your software isn't extremely popular, then a crack is not in high demand. If the software is easy to crack, then even if it isn't in high demand it may get drive-by cracked. If it's difficult enough, many people will decide that their time is better spent elsewhere even if it is possible to crack.

As we enter the age of encrypted processing where both the code and data are encrypted during execution on the processor, cracking will be time consuming enough and have enough prerequisites that it simply won't be able to keep up with even the most popular software. It will be a while before this can become mainstream, because unless governments start requiring it, there will always be devices without encrypted processing that companies can't ignore in order to maximize profit. It won't surprise me if we see both governments that require encrypted processing and governments that ban encrypted processing.

Obviously for static media like audio or video this is harder to deal with, but there have been a number of novel solutions to this that just haven't been widely adopted. There are also still a lot of consumers with older hardware that publishers want to target, because not targeting them is worse than the concern of piracy. These are more about mitigation rather than outright making it impossible for a time period.

ocdtrekkie2• 9 years ago

It's inherently ineffective because for content to be viewable, information about the DRM is widely spread. Consider Blu-ray. HDCP is a huge hassle for anyone trying to do anything with their video content, and it offers next to no security: Every Blu-ray player, TV, and disc producer has to hold the decryption keys, which means it's trivial for the keys to leak out to the public.

And consider the number of hands a piece of media goes through during the various stages of content production. Movies get stolen from anywhere from postproduction studios to the factories that produce the discs.

Adding a layer of DRM on top of the consumer-facing product does almost nothing to prevent the content from reaching pirate sites. And once they're there, the rest of the distribution problem is easy.

LeifCarrotson• 9 years ago

DRM can't work because the math doesn't distinguish between receiving and decrypting content for a legal purpose like viewing it, and doing the same for an illegal purpose like copying and distributing it. If nothing else, there's the analog hole of recording the screen (which could be done in software).

If it did work, that would be a legitimate reason to include these potentially dangerous, un-inspectable DRM features. But it fundamentally can't, so foisting this security risk on everyone seems misguided.

rocqua6• 9 years ago

A chain of hardware, all with private keys in a 'secure enclave' / 'TPM' can deliver DRM that is as unbreakable as the private keys are hidden and tampering detection is functioning. Really, the only hole that can't be patched is analogue recording. Realistically, tampering with the screen or cable is probably the easiest target. Though, compromising the TPM would have more widespread effects.

JPLeRouzic• 9 years ago

I think the most simple reasons to tell that DRM can't ever work, are that:

First DRM proponents have gone very far to protect their content. It costs them a lot of money and from a economical point of view it is difficult to see how DRM help them making more money.

Second: The guys who use pirated stuff would anyway not pay if DRM was working, so why the media industry would bother to struggle with them?

marcosdumay• 9 years ago

why people here are so determined DRM can't ever work

It is just that you can not have a video for watching it, and not having the video for distributing it. Computers don't work that way, you either have the video or don't.

That said, things are more insidious than what is on the above paragraph. It's computers that don't work that way, so the solution that many people thought about was making computers illegal, and replacing them with closed controlled machines that resemble them in many ways but aren't as powerful.

tptacek8• 9 years ago

In practical terms, DRM obviously can be made to work.

People ideologically opposed to DRM tend to have two blind spots about the DRM service model.

First, they assume that DRM users demand that DRM prevent any copies being made. But that's not true: obviously, any video you show a user in the privacy of their home can be cam-copied. It has even been the case (though it will be less and less the case moving forward) that you could obtain a high-fidelity digital copy. DRM users have always understood that to be the case; what's important is not that copies be impossible, but that they be difficult for ordinary users and, ideally, incur a quality hit. If copies are inconvenient and/or of lower-quality, most of the market will pay for legitimate copies.

Second, and more importantly, DRM opponents assume that the restriction DRM users are seeking is indefinite. But for the most part, content owners are much less concerned about long-term restrictions than they are about the new-release window when their content is most in demand. A DRM scheme only has to survive for a couple weeks to generate immense value for content owners.

From a security and cryptography perspective, a scheme that can be resilient against expert adversaries for a few weeks, or even a framework for minting such schemes on demand, is a commercially reasonable proposition.

gizmo6862• 9 years ago

or even a framework for minting such schemes on demand

This is what video DRM will need. For games, where each game has a somewhat customized version of DRM, taking a few weeks to break is good enough. For video, this will give you a few episodes; but once it is broken it is broken for everything until you roll out a new scheme. Overtime, I would expect the breakers to get more efficient and automated at breaking schemes, while the DRM makers get increasingly lazy and complacent.

ascagnel_3• 9 years ago

One other element: over the longer term, the scheme should be difficult enough to work around such that casual copying is discouraged.

yarrel3• 9 years ago

People who are not fooled by the ideology of DRM are fully aware that DRM is a legal strategy, not a technology.

That doesn't change the technological harm of DRM. Putting a DRM-shaped hole in web standards makes browsers less secure, less stable, and less maintainable.

iTunes copy protection used to be broken in a few hours, Blu Ray is long since cracked. DRM is neither secure nor cryptographically sound ( http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt ). The business models that work online keep on being built without DRM.

But DRM remains an irresistible fantasy for corporations who haven't worked out the economics of getting Apple, Amazon or Netflix to add locks to their content.

rocqua6• 9 years ago

I think the most untenable part of the DRM model is the trust required. All user hardware behind the visual part has to be secure. That is, the manufacturer has to correctly implement any protocols.

This goes (if I'm not mistaken) for the Screen, HDMI cable, GPU and OS. It's a hard balance between keeping consumer happy with their choice and only accepting compliant and capable producers.

The downfall of the DRM is either going to be stripping the legal protections, or competitors without DRM being able to offer a better experience. Sadly, whilst cutting DRM gives a massively better experience, it comes at the cost of control over the customer. I think Netflix really doesn't mind that I can't watch Netflix on Plex. Heck, they might even prefer that.

This is what really scares me about DRM, it enables the building of walled gardens for much more than just media content.

whipoodle2• 9 years ago

To me the more interesting question is why this particular issue is so important that W3C felt compelled to break consensus. I think the answer to that question is a lot more revealing than another "DRM is evil vs you're an unrealistic hippie" fight. Even if we take it for granted that DRM is good... why?

rocqua6• 9 years ago

Given that apparently, google (Chrome), Microsoft (IE and edge) and Apple (Safari) supported the proposal, one could defend the decision as necessary to prevent obsolescence. That is, if they did not pass this, they'd just be ignored by 3 out of the 4 most popular browser producers.

pdkl95• 9 years ago

DRM works! It's very effective at giving control of the playback environment to the copyright cartels.

Unfortunately, a lot of people mistakenly believe the purpose of DRM is to prevent copying. That is the justification, not the goal, which has always been about maintaining control over playback device.

yellowapple4• 9 years ago

If you're capable of actually consuming it (by seeing it with your eyes and/or hearing it with your ears), then it is possible to pirate it. Exactly zero DRM technologies today actually prevent piracy, and exactly zero DRM technologies ever will.

Meanwhile, user-hostile DRM can and will (and already does) push users to simply pirate the media in question instead of putting up with the DRM. Users lose, publishers lose, browser vendors lose, and pirates are entirely unaffected.

Furmark5• 9 years ago

Publishers win control over playback hardware market which probably outweighs the loss, or they would have stopped doing it.

bhhaskin5• 9 years ago

We are allowing large corporations to dictate and push the web toward a closed system. A future where there has to be an App for that, and if you don't keep your head down you will be censored and cutoff from the rest of the online world.

2trill2spill3• 9 years ago

Hogwash, there is more open source software now then ever before.

5ilv3r3• 9 years ago

We have a quality problem, even it there is ample quantity.

ethanwillis• 9 years ago

Developers are using open source. End users not so much, except open source bundled into their apps as libraries to actually power them.

Getting an app into users hands nowadays is becoming gatekeeped more and more. Either through fearmongering (buy those certs for your apps approved by Gatekeeper X) or literal gatekeeping on app stores.

You can argue that people don't have to use locked down app stores, but then you're just missing the point.

pdonis2• 9 years ago

What's important is not what software exists somewhere where somebody could theoretically download and use it, but what software actually gets used. Most users don't even know what open source software is, much less where to find any; they use what comes with either Windows or OS X or their smartphone.

Also, your software can be as open source as you like, but if it can't interoperate with the rest of the Internet, it's useless. Personally, I don't watch TV or movies on my computer so I don't particularly care whether my browser lets me do that or not. But I would care very much if, for example, my bank's website started requiring a DRM-capable browser. Open source doesn't address that problem.

davexunit• 9 years ago

Yet users are less free now than ever before. The open source methodology leads to free libraries for devs, free labor for companies, but proprietary applications for users.

syshum4• 9 years ago

Is there though?

There are more open source libraries, tools, frameworks, languages and other tools used to create software

But I am seeing a HUGE shift to Closed off, non open SaaS and property installed apps for end users.

Outside of dev tools I am not seeing a shift to open source.

GPL a licence that protects user freedom has fallen out of favor in place of MIT and BSD which protects developer freedom

So like EME, Open Source has become hostile users. Open Source is for dev's not users

tdy7215• 9 years ago

If you want the masses to care, the masses will have to lose first. They (not hackers) don't get it, and it's inconceivable that they ever will... Until they notice the closed system.

Is there even a war taking place? Battles are often forgotten.

Yes, we (the hackers) allowed this to happen. We need to think about it now. I feel like the YOU in your comment is slightly misaddressed. What can WE do about it?

jus' trolling the good guys...

bhhaskin5• 9 years ago

Once a system becomes closed it is very difficult to become open again. It's like personal liberty & freedoms, if you/we give them up they are almost impossible to get them back.

xvilka4• 9 years ago

Probably it will take a few centuries to realise this, and every single right restriction. People are always bad at protecting their rights.

fiatjaf• 9 years ago

We? talk about yourself. I didn't have the chance to choose any of these.

bhhaskin5• 9 years ago

Do you use any Google/Apple/Facebook products? You are choosing with your wallet or personal data if you are. They only have power because we give them power either by using their products or giving them more data points.

ljcrabs• 9 years ago

A future where there has to be an App for that

Standardising on this means the exact opposite, there will not need to be an app for everything, just the web.

Fej2• 9 years ago

On one hand, this is terrible for freedom in our software; on the other, this isn't the "death of the open Web" that some are proclaiming.

The media groups want DRM and they will get it. This doesn't mean that we are going to lose all freedom on the Web. It's a step in that direction, certainly, but we're sure as heck not there yet.

5ilv3r3• 9 years ago

It is already very difficult to distribute your own content without subjecting it to some other entity's distribution system, and soon it will be impossible. Chrome and friends will refuse to load unsigned content, and then the death of the free web will be complete.

ascagnel_3• 9 years ago

Chrome and friends will refuse to load unsigned content, and then the death of the free web will be complete.

I'm going to need some citations that this is even remotely in the plan (and requiring HTTPS isn't the same as refusing to load unsigned content, since that's on the transport level).

conductr• 9 years ago

I'm not knowledgeable enough to fully disagree. However, I do not feel it is the browsers job to ignore a potentially useful technology (albeit for some evil media companies) because you have a distribution/marketing problem with your own content.

I think they will instead include this tech and make it usable for those who want it and continue supporting non-DRM media for those who don't want it. They're not going to block your ability to share your content without DRM.

floatboth15• 9 years ago

Chrome and friends will refuse to load unsigned content

This statement is SO RIDICULOUS it just broke my brain. How?! Why?!

Even the evil movie companies don't want to prevent you from sharing your home video online.

saganus4• 9 years ago

But how long will it take for websites to be delivered with DRM so they can't be archived,scraped, saved to disk, screenshot, etc?

I agree that it's "only" a step in that direction, but this can snowball and get ugly pretty fast.

tdy7215• 9 years ago

I feel you've brought the Browsers (Software, layer 5+) to an ISP fight (Layer 1-4). One that the 99% lost a long time ago. This has been snowballing for a very long time, I feel that momentum is minimal. This snowball is being pushed by pure force.

Power! Unlimited Power! -Darth Sidious

appleflaxen7• 9 years ago

this is just the first step down a slippery slope.

and it _is_ a slippery slope.

are you really going to _not_ use gmail and google maps because you can't see the source code? of course you're not. but is it beneficial for google to lock their code up behind a DRM blob? of course it is.

so there is every incentive in the world for web pages to be made proprietary, and no incentive at all for users to put up a fight (which is why this first step is so important: because it's being made at the level of technologists, who supposably have the insight to know why it's important).

but after this, the progression will be slow, but relentless, toward a closed web. Even if a subset of ideological wackos decide to fight... they're just ideological wackos.

Stallman was right, and this is the exact same thing playing out again on a distributed medium.

floatboth15• 9 years ago

is it beneficial for google to lock their code up behind a DRM blob? of course it is.

No, it's not. Their code is locked behind… uh… A SERVER. You could never see the server side code, and it's always been that way.

They do not give a flying fuck about people looking at their JavaScript UI code! That code is really, really NOT where the value is. The value is in the service — the databases full of data, the user accounts.

sboselli• 9 years ago

Shame, shame, shame.

We're losing the internet day by day, if we haven't done so already.

I've seen people and posts here and there calling for attention on these issues, but imho it's all too subtle. We should start using harsher terminology for what's actually happening. This is flat out CORRUPTION, and I'm not seeing anyone express it as such.

It's probably too late already, and unfortunately, this is merely a reflection on what's happening in the world in the larger geo-political context. Corruption everywhere.

5_minutes3• 9 years ago

How come we don't know WHO sold us out for that beach house?

wavefunction• 9 years ago

Apparently one of them is Tim Berners-Lee?!?

He's the Director of W3C as far as I know.

craftyguy2• 9 years ago

Tim Berners-Lee, for one.

wolfgke20• 9 years ago

We're losing the internet day by day, if we haven't done so already.

Let's just "fork" the web from W3C (or 3WC as some people like to call them by now) instead.

ashleysmithgpu• 9 years ago

Is the EFF a big enough presence to "fork" the W3C standards? I hope so.

vkou2• 9 years ago

Great, I'm sure the enterprises on the W3C who voted for this will jump on board.

Oh, you mean I can't get Netflix on the forked internet? Welp, back to mainline.

emodendroket17• 9 years ago

And which browsers are going on this fork?

CJefferson• 9 years ago

No, the W3C is the web. You'd be forking to what?

This was basically wanted by Firefox, Apple, Microsoft and Google. They are the modern web. Trying to go against them is how we ended up with XHTML, a standard no-one really wanted, or implemented.

saalweachter• 9 years ago

All I ask is that you don't use W's in your acronyms. If you just fix ONE THING with your reboot--

emodendroket17• 9 years ago

What's going to happen without a standard? A bunch of proprietary plugins?

wolfgke20• 9 years ago

What's going to happen without a standard? A bunch of proprietary plugins?

What is supposed to be happen is a zero-tolerance and active fightback against anything DRM-related in the web - be it in the browser or be it a plugin.

syshum4• 9 years ago

Umm that is what is happening WITH the standard

I still can not believe the number of people that do not understand what EME is

EME enabled Properiertary Plugins, it gives control over the web to MS, Google, and Adobe. Full Stop.

They will control everything.

Widevine, Adobe CDM, and MS PlayReady. Those are your proprietary EME plugins that everyone must use now

Welcome to the non-open Web

Thanks Tim berners-lee, good job

benevol• 9 years ago

Capitalism at work - a handful of ultra-rich guys winning even more ground over common folks again.

luxuryballs• 9 years ago

the market allows the DRM because people keep buying the content even when DRM is included, standardizing it may just mean less clunky implementations of DRM

but if we were to ban DRM from the market would something else crop up to replace it? would content creators stop making content?

what about IP laws? if we got rid of them, there would probably be more content AND more DRM? or would it be more content and less DRM since it would only be a matter of time before someone legally reproduces your work so why bother with DRM?

andybak• 9 years ago

Who are the "common folk" in this?

(Complex issue but I'm not sure I see your point)

thephyber4• 9 years ago

Technically "capitalism" would also mention the small long-tail of web consumers that refuse to use browsers that enable these new W3C specs.

That said, most of actual market transactions involve some sort of subtle coercion or manipulation of emotions, which means they violate the core assumptions of economics. {Marketing, sales, religion/cults, magicians, A/B testing} all involve some sort of cognitive / psychological manipulation -- the core incentives of the modern economy incentivize companies to optimize for attention capture and behavior exploitation.

spdustin2• 9 years ago

In this case, the “common folk” you refer to don’t give a shit.

matchagaucho• 9 years ago

One day HackerNews is chastising W3C for not adding encryption to the Payment Request API.

The next day HN is lamenting about a standard encryption API being defined.

nebabyte6• 9 years ago

Frankly I'm far more interested in which developing or first-world locales, if any, exist where net freedoms like these are protected by the majority, rather than having to be fought for by the minority against a wave of complacency and apathy.

I'm pretty much done with trying to fight the american capitalist ideology which empowers these companies to steamroll over the average consumer happy to give up their own rights and freedoms then left to complain with the extortionist environments that leads to.

I don't think the world can continue on the way it's going without some serious ideological fragmentations in the near future, and the moment some country embraces its "Pirate Party" or creates an "Internet Bill of Rights" establishing the core tenets the EFF and others fight for as the basis of their internet-related litigation - is the moment I know where the sane people all probably went (or would go as time goes on).

is715151243• 9 years ago

the extortionist environments that leads to.

Media delivery in 2017 is hardly an extortionary environment. Practically speaking, Americans spend very little of their income on the Audible/Netflix/HBO Gos of the world. Netflix costs $120 a year? Against a median household income of $55,000, that is next to nothing.

If anything, it's the opposite: there's a glut of content available to consume, in nearly every possible genre, at very low price points. There is far, far more good television than any person could reasonably watch, all for a couple thousandths of the typical person's annual wages.

drak0n1c• 9 years ago

Perhaps there is potential in Seasteading.

throwaway34241• 9 years ago

Do you have any evidence or reason to believe there is actual corruption on the committee (aside from them making a decision you disagree with)?

I suspect I agree with you on DRM but this style of debate, where there is no attempt to argue or explain the issue, and the first line of argument is personal attacks or denigrating anyone with an opposing viewpoint, is depressing. Consider that accusing climate scientists of corruption has also been fairly effective.

For this particular issue, Netflix etc already requires DRM to play in a browser, and the browsers already provide DRM for Netflix etc to use. I would like to understand what the consequences of this decision are, if some of the way this works is standardized. Will this lead to more DRM? Is the only conceivable explanation that the MPAA is slipping the W3C members some bribes?

burkaman• 9 years ago

The parent comment is not the first line of argument, it's the continuation of a years-long argument. Even if you completely ignore the history, the first line of argument is found in the article, not the comments. If you would like to understand the fundamentals of this debate, this comment section is not the right place to start. It's very easy to find arguments and proposals from all sides of the issue elsewhere.

5_minutes3• 9 years ago

"In 2013, EFF was disappointed to learn that the W3C had taken on the project of standardizing “Encrypted Media Extensions,” an API whose sole function was to provide a first-class role for DRM within the Web browser ecosystem"

With so much money involved here, it's quite naive to believe the W3C members are virgins here and did this out love for the web and for the consumers.

And:

"It is clear that the W3C allowing DRM technologies to be developed at the W3C is just a naked ploy for the W3C to get more (paying) member companies to join"[0]

0 - https://blog.whatwg.org/drm-and-web-security

ori_b2• 9 years ago

No, it's probably not intentional corruption and malice. Just a belief that users are getting more of what they want as passive consumers paying large companies for services, rather than as creators in a peer to peer web. Realistically, they're likely to be right.

otakucode3• 9 years ago

I agree that this style of debate is not terribly useful, but I will grant that this issue does stir significant emotion in people who are seeing their baby suffocated to death. However, I am uncertain what you believe is meant by 'actual corruption'? How could abandoning consensus, the normal functioning of the body for decades, and refusing to continue discussion in order to reach a compromise, not be a de-facto corruption of the organization?

rnhmjoj• 9 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h94ZKGVg-B8&t=8m23s

If they are not corrupted they certainly acted in an extremely suspicious way.

I advise you to watch the whole video because it gets better and better, the press conference part in particular.

apatters• 9 years ago

I think it's time to start contemplating alternatives to the Web.

The interests of users are no longer front and center. The past several years of the Web platform's evolution have been characterized by privacy invasions, out of control Javascript, spammy push notifications, AMP... and now this.

This is not what many of us signed up for. I don't know if there even are alternatives to the Web at this time but when you can't trust even the standards bodies to act in your best interest, it's time to start talking about how we could walk away from the whole thing.

alexasmyths2• 9 years ago

"The interests of users are no longer front and center. "

Netflix is a 'user' of the internet, as any other.

The web is open - those who want to share their content freely can do that - those who want to DRM, they can do that.

The 'march of economics' is usually just the 'march of reality'. Game of Thrones is expensive to make - ultimately, people have to get paid for it somehow.

Most creative/entertainment projects are a dud. Only a few even make money.

ashark2• 9 years ago

If someone launches a new HTML-based Web with crippled javascript (no network comm access, for one, including ability to trigger links or forms), some small, restricted subset of CSS, and much better built-in dynamic table and form elements, I'm there.

This Web's about to be eaten by DRM and WebAssembly anyway. Pretty soon it'll just be a way to deliver QT apps (or some other framework that runs in WebAssembly and renders to OpenGL or similar) and video. A web where the only thing you'll find when you follow a link is more documents (or a download) and pages can't try to make your computer do a bunch of stuff you don't want it to would be nice to have again, and it's clear now that the system itself has to ban the capabilities that enable all the garbage, or it'll take over.

EGreg• 9 years ago

Wait, what? Perhaps you are right, but how do you make the leap from "W3C standardizes DRM" and "the Web is about to be eaten by DRM?"

The Web is used for so many things these days. It is a publishing platform that allows anyone to host their own content to the entire internet, thanks to Web Browsers just loading it. I can see IPFS being an improvement over the Web but besides the web server being a single point of failure, why is a DRM standard specifically going to destroy the Web?

Wordpress is used to power 20% of new sites. My own company is developing an open source platform for communities to run their own social networks (https://qbix.com) so what is this "eating" you speak of?

EDIT: This has been one of my most downvoted comments ever. Can someone explain the rationale? (Is it super obvious that the Web will be killed by DRM that asking the question should be punished?)

mabynogy2• 9 years ago

If someone launches a new HTML-based Web

Few alternatives already exist (like gopher, the protocol).

I found a new interesting one recently (ala markdown but tab-based and parseable with regexps):

https://contnet.org/

There is also a new browser that is being developped (not related to ContNet):

https://netrunner.cc/

anonacct37• 9 years ago

If someone launches a new HTML-based Web with crippled javascript (no network comm access, for one, including ability to trigger links or forms), some small, restricted subset of CSS, and much better built-in dynamic table and form elements, I'm there.

Me too. There will be dozens of us.

woodrowbarlow• 9 years ago

I think you're too quick to put DRM and WebAssembly in the same bucket. Yes, WebAssembly could lead to a future of closed-source proprietary technology on the web (and in that sense is similar to DRM), but the difference is that WebAssembly offers technical value. WebAssembly is a tradeoff for the public, whereas DRM exists strictly to restrict the public.

kerkeslager4• 9 years ago

Ultimately, I think the failure of the open web runs deeper than that. When I visit, for example, a cookbook website, when I view a recipe, the problem isn't just that the site can run arbitrary scripts on my computer. It's also that I have no control over how that recipe displays because so much of that display is in HTML. I can't pull it into a useful format and store it with all my other recipes because it's in HTML. And contrary to its goals, HTML isn't a semantic markup language. I can't automatically convert imperial into metric units, because they aren't represented as measurements at all. I can't configure the display of the recipes for my nearsighted grandmother because that configuration happens when the recipe is rendered from a recipe document into an HTML document. The failure of the open web is that we need JavaScript to reasonably render the various kinds of documents which are being stripped of their metadata so they can be shoehorned into a non-semantic document format.

Removing JavaScript prevents malware and adware vendors from running their programs on our machines, but it doesn't empower users. We can control or data but we still can't analyze data websites give us.

The way forward, I think, is to create more standardized document types and let people build renderers for them. If I go to a cookbook website, I should be able to download recipe documents. If I don't like how my cookbook program renders the recipe, I should be able to download another program can render it. This breaks the power that websites have as the sole entities with the capability to render their documents, and gives the power back to users.

tannhaeuser3• 9 years ago

Upvoted you, so count me in.

Hard to believe in 2017, but as recently as five years ago Google (of all people) published the Caja compiler [1] for sandboxed/statically verified JavaScript subsets, and there was AdSafe aiming for safe JavaScript as well.

[1] https://developers.google.com/caja/

[2] http://www.adsafe.org

MikeGale• 9 years ago

I'm guessing the folk around here include some who can make a browser happen.

If it takes only well formed x/html/5 it's not that big a deal.

Ideally a lot of "hooks" so that the more determined can make it do their thing. Not the thing that somebody else wants to force on them.

I wonder who's game?

Taek• 9 years ago

Count me in. And count my web server in as well, we'd make sure all pages are compatible.

Your computer belongs to you. I'm ready to escape the cycle of 'oh they own everything because they snuck human rights violations into their software and hardware and nobody stopped them'.

yosito2• 9 years ago

It's not a technical problem. It's a political problem. Those with the means will seek to control the web, no matter what technical solutions are invented to keep it open. Preventing tyrannical control of the web is an endless struggle.

sogen2• 9 years ago

C-HTML maybe? [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-HTML

cobookman• 9 years ago

So amp?

jlarocco• 9 years ago

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'll point out anyway that literally every single feature of the current internet is opt-in. Most of the time it's not even difficult to opt-out.

If you really want a separate internet without the "bad parts", you can still use Gopher. There are still sites around, and you won't even get images, which were the first thing to "ruin" the internet, and were the launching point down the slippery slope to DRM video.

On a side note, it's interesting that so many HN readers are against this kind of DRM, but at the same time there's a large group here who are against ad-blockers. Ad-revenue is the main driver motivating companies to shoe-horn this crap into the web. It's not a coincidence that the biggest ad company in the world also makes one of the most popular web browsers and is a huge media distributor.

Iv3• 9 years ago

I am bitter that XML/XSLT lost in favor of HTML/CSS. It promised a stricter separation of content and formating and would probably have required less javascript to do the crucial functions.

Unfortunately, among the crucial functions nowadays are the silly cosmetics, the parallax scrolling, the animated backgrounds, that allow marketers to pretend to have a website when all they have is formating for zero content. We failed to provide them with this fluff.

jstewartmobile• 9 years ago

I threw this out there a year or so ago in the hope of getting some feedback on it: https://eggplant.pro/blog/proposal-safeweb/

Really, I just need to find the time to do it.

hrjet• 9 years ago

We don't need a new web; just more browsers that respect the user's privacy. There are many ways to achieve this. At gngr[0], we are taking a "safe by default" approach. This is very similar to the NoScript / uMatrix approach, but with one difference: the browser itself is offering this and is hence more water tight. There are no behind-the-scenes requests that a plugin can't block.

[0] https://gngr.info

GraulPaham• 9 years ago

If someone launches a new HTML-based Web with crippled javascript (no network comm access, for one, including ability to trigger links or forms), some small, restricted subset of CSS, and much better built-in dynamic table and form elements, I'm there.

Why not just do this yourself? Fork chromium and start commenting stuff you don't want out. It would likely only take a weekend or two of hacking...

rasz• 9 years ago

There was a time browser worked for you. Opera up to 12.xx offered a panel letting you configure what JS can/cant do. It even let you configure global/per domain storage quotas and forbid websites from dumping megabytes of garbage on harddrive (Im talking to you ad network trackers/wikipedia). You can check out all of the sweet customization Opera 12.xx provided:

http://help.opera.com/operaconfig/versions/Win32/11.50/en/in...

justonepost3• 9 years ago

It's digital serfdom, pure and simple. Rather than letting us own, they want us to pay rent. It's the electronic feudal lords looking out for one another. This lawyer explains it well: http://www.newsweek.com/silicon-valley-private-property-and-...

orblivion• 9 years ago

Whether or not there's actual corruption, it's inevitable (in my opinion) that this sort of thing would happen. It's the march of economics. The open web just doesn't allow suppliers to meet demand. One way or another they'll find a way to do it. DRM snuck in the door via Flash. We just about stamped it out, but wouldn't you know it somehow it came back in a more insidious (if innocuous looking) form. People on our side like to claim that DRM is a foolish business model, but I'm not convinced that they're not just deluding themselves.

Whatever the answer is, I don't think it's stopping DRM with brute force. I think it will need to involve either coming up with alternate business models that are anywhere near as viable, or a way to keep it in a box to use for the few applications that really benefit from it.

kelvin0• 9 years ago

BBS on HAM Radio? I've been toying with the idea for a while. The exact stack is not clear yet, but it has to 'liberate' me from the current web/internet insanity. It could be slow and imperfect, but dammit it would be ours again.

ebcode• 9 years ago

Yes! sign me up. :)

wildmusings• 9 years ago

This is flat out CORRUPTION

That's a hell of an accusation. And you should present evidence if you're going to level it. It is dishonorable to make baseless attacks on people's character and integrity.

sogen2• 9 years ago

This will only lead to an eternal Copyright Term Extension Act for online content...

xvilka4• 9 years ago

Not exactly a corruption, it is just world doesnt belong to national governments - only to corporations. That wont change any time soon and will only worsen.

Iv3• 9 years ago

We have lost it: P2P should have been the future of internet. Instead it devolved into the "connect to a server for everything" cloud system.

Internet should be like ZeroNet: a serverless system where content of interest is shared by its millions of viewers and where servers only use a small amount of bandwidth as backups and initial seeders.

That the wikipedia still needs servers and asks donations yearly to keep them online is a testament to how stalled progress in internet infrastructure is today.

mfukar4• 9 years ago

I don't think it's as subtle as it is incoherent. I've yet to see a single article putting together the harm of DRM in terms tangible to a layman.

olivermarks2• 9 years ago

where does this leave Brave and Opera, two browsers I use regularly?

Crespyl6• 9 years ago

I understand them both to be based on Chromium at this point. Chrome already has support, so if the Brave/Opera browsers want it it's pretty much just a flip of the switch (Opera may already have it, I think).

Basically if your browser lists any kind of Content Decryption Module (usually something called Widevine) among its plugins, you have EME support.

olivermarks2• 9 years ago

thanks

thejerz• 9 years ago

Brave and Opera both use the Blink rendering engine from Chromium/Google. Therefore, you may see this new DRM W3C standard in Brave and Opera.

Endy• 9 years ago

Looks like I'm sticking with the EFF only from now on.

phkahler• 9 years ago

Now is the time to make it possible for individuals to use DRM when they publish videos online. How often do media companies show peoples stuff on TV and such without permission? Of course youtube ToS allow that, but this should all be changed ASAP. When large amounts of content actually come from individuals, it's the individuals rights that need to be protected. When will we see DRM for the masses?

flyinghamster• 9 years ago

It won't be for the masses. For a physical-media model, look at SACD. You can't burn your own SACD recordings, even if you have a DSD-capable recorder; the players will only play signed discs, and the signing keys are only available to pressing plants.

rocqua6• 9 years ago

That seems about as viable as allowing anyone to be a certificate authority. This system relies on a list of trusted keys, that chain of trust needs to be anchored somewhere. Notably, easy implementations depend on controlling all trust anchors.

icebraining8• 9 years ago

Of course youtube ToS allow that

As far as I understand it, not really. You only grant them a license to use your video in the Service or for promoting it. Plus you cancel any rights by deleting the video.

Some cases fall under Fair Use, but it's my belief that unless they request permission from the video author(s), those media companies are infringing their copyright. But we all know these laws are just for the rich - who can afford to sue them anyway?

oconnor663• 9 years ago

Whenever compromise fails, both sides blame the other for refusing to give any ground. Obviously browser vendors have a lot more power than the EFF does, and don't necessarily need to compromise as much to get what they want. But I'm curious, for their part, did the EFF actually offer any compromises in defense of consensus?

Edit: You guys are totally right, I missed it in the original article. Shame on me.

Flimm• 9 years ago

The article talks about a compromise that the EFF proposed and saw rejected.

zopa• 9 years ago

The link at the top tells you all about the EFF's comprimise proposal.

dannyobrien4• 9 years ago

We offered to open a discussion about a covenant, modelled on the W3C's own patent covenant, that would mean that W3C members would agree to only prosecute those who had broken the DRM within a W3C standard, if they had another cause of action. That's to say, those companies could prosecute you if you broke the DRM and used it infringe copyright, but not if you only broke the DRM for lawful purposes -- such as security research, for accessibility, to protect privacy, and so on.

There was a sizeable component within the W3C (I am still unsure as to what degree I can reveal how much, given that the W3C holds members to a confidentiality agreement.) who felt this was an important step to take before making EME a standard. In the end, the W3C executive team overrode those objections, and decided to go ahead without any such covenant.

You can now for the first time be prosecuted for revealing a flaw in a W3C standard, overriding a browser "feature" on behalf of its user, or making a HTML video accessible without first asking permission of the DRM vendor who obfuscated it.

zerocrates• 9 years ago

The covenant would have been a nice step forward and it's unfortunate to see that it didn't happen, but I think you overstate the consequences here.

You can now for the first time be prosecuted for revealing a flaw in a W3C standard, overriding a browser "feature" on behalf of its user, or making a HTML video accessible without first asking permission of the DRM vendor who obfuscated it.

Presumably you're referring to the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions? Your second two examples are just as illegal now as they were yesterday: EME was already a browser "feature," already being used for HTML video. The only thing that's changed is the "W3C standard" part.

The vendors presumably would have been fine to take EME, already a de facto standard and just leave it as-is, or "standardize" it in another body. Forcing that would have been nice for W3C's purity and image in some circles, and maybe even a good move, but it doesn't seem that it would have made any practical difference.

favorited5• 9 years ago

For the record, the EFF only joined the W3C to fight EME in the first place. They're not resigning in protest, they're leaving the group because they didn't win the single battle they joined for the purpose of fighting.

wakamoleguy4• 9 years ago

Do you have a source for that? The latest article that references the W3C on their site already shows them as a member, and it appears that they were heavily involved in Do Not Track work before EME. Did they post something somewhere when they were joining?

edit: The reply below has the link. Thank you!

favorited5• 9 years ago

So last week, EFF increased its involvement in the W3C from being a regular participant and invited expert to a full member, to challenge DRM in the group's future work

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/eff-joins-w3c-fight-dr...

gsnedders12• 9 years ago

Do Not Track was a document produced by an IETF WG, and totally unrelated to the W3C.

mockindignant• 9 years ago

Source please?

wakamoleguy4• 9 years ago

In case you didn't see it, parent replied with a link on my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15280029

sev3• 9 years ago

DRM can't work in theory, but it is working in practice.

If someone writes a piece of software that allows downloading of DRM-ed content (without losing quality, and playable anytime) from the big names (Netflix, Amazon, etc), then this battle would be won.

jxcole• 9 years ago

Not by a long shot. Where would you put this solution once you found it? Github? Npm? Of course corporations will sue these organizations out of existence for hosting a DRM work around, so they won't be able to host it. So at the end unless you can find some cool Russian hosting (a la sci-hub) you are straight out of luck.

The real problem is not creating a solution, but finding somewhere to put it that people can actually get to.

umeshunni• 9 years ago

Where would you put this solution once you found it? Github? Npm?

BitTorrent?

literallycancer• 9 years ago

Host it on the blockchain :)

sev3• 9 years ago

Although many don't use it (yet, still, and maybe never will), the "place to put it" problem is already solved, isn't it? Worst case, put it in a "dark" corner of the web :)

alethiophile• 9 years ago

In practice, you'd have techies with the bit between their teeth passing magnet links around, and media companies playing whack-a-mole with anyone who hosts it too visibly. Meanwhile, anyone who makes a modest effort can get a DRM-free pirated copy without trouble, and the 95% of people who don't bother will continue paying for their Netflix subscription.

bubblethink3• 9 years ago

That piece of software already exists, and no it doesn't win any battles. It's not public of course, for the hole would be patched. There's nothing new about this cat and mouse game. It is becoming increasingly difficult though due to increasing involvement of hardware companies. Breaking processor based schemes is a lot harder if not impossible.

benchaney2• 9 years ago

What are you talking about? Every popular TV show or movie is hosted on a free platform (free meaning both no cost and allowing freedom). How is that "working in practice"?

sev3• 9 years ago

We are taking about DRM here. How do you know they are being stolen by breaking DRM? Maybe they copy DVD's or screeners or hacking a content provider. Not necessarily bypassing DRM. Some that do that I've seen are very low quality, hence my statement about lossless.

Chardok• 9 years ago

Can anyone explain what are the possible implications of this?

I am imagining a bunch of annoying add-ons to access news articles and what not, but is there a potential to carry over to smaller or niche spaces?

noja2• 9 years ago

Read the article.

floatboth15• 9 years ago

Read the spec.

It's directly tied to video, it's not possible to use for news articles. And, uh, it's been available for several years. It's only used by Netflix and the like.

twiddo• 9 years ago

I'm afraid of this becoming the status quo. Everything is going to be a binary blob that you either download and run or you don't. It's really shortsighted to say "if Hollywood doesn't get DRM, you won't get Netflix". The market is there, it just wouldn't have been as easy for Hollywood to do so.

Now we have made it easy (and even standardized it!).

nickysielicki• 9 years ago

So let me get this straight...

My graphics processor supports this encryption. My monitor supports this encryption. My kernel supports this encryption. And we're going to draw the line at EME-- the glue that sits between my web browser and all of this infrastructure? That's the line that we just can't afford to cross?

It's not the fault of the consumer for purchasing hardware that supports this stuff? It's not the fault of the OS developers for supporting it? It's squarely on the W3C and browser vendors for making it accessible?

Seems to me like the EFF is going full Stallman for no actual purpose, and to the detriment of their reputation and role in future W3C discussions.

Crontab3• 9 years ago

Tim Berners-Lee must be rolling in his grave.

Ajedi32• 9 years ago

Tim Berners-Lee isn't dead. And if you read the article, you'll see that he was actually the one who originally overrode the EFF's objections to publishing a DRM standard in the first place.

noja2• 9 years ago

I think you missed the sarcasm.

jancsika• 9 years ago

I read that as the poster being sarcastic-- the logic being that if the W3C made this decision, it must mean that the spirit in which Tim Berners-Lee created the web died some time ago.

So Tim Berners-Lee "must be rolling in his grave," quite aside from the fact that he is still physically alive and doing fine.

MattSteelblade• 9 years ago

He signed off on this...

Crontab3• 9 years ago

I know.

erikj• 9 years ago

No, he is rolling in dough.

bigfoot3• 9 years ago

The saddest part of this story is that Netflix/Amazon/younameit will continue to ignore and block Linux users as the niche market they are -- even if a future Firefox or Chrome version comes with the new standardized DRM everyone asked for. Lose/lose situation.

richard_mcp• 9 years ago

Why would they do that? Are you assuming these companies will want to block Linux users out of some random, malicious spite?

bigfoot3• 9 years ago

No. For simple economic reasons, such as too much testing effort vs. too little revenue.

bigfoot3• 9 years ago

But don't get me wrong, I'd love to see your optimism come true here.

AnssiH3• 9 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the new "standardized DRM" is just EME which all major browsers, including Firefox and Chrome, already implement, and which has been used by e.g. Netflix for several years now.

And Netflix works on Linux on Chrome and Firefox already, using those APIs.

The actual Content Decryption Modules are not part of the standard, though. Firefox and Chrome use Google Widevine.

cpeterso• 9 years ago

Netflix works with EME on Chrome and Firefox. Netflix doesn't block Linux users. They just don't provide customer support for troubleshooting on Linux.

flukus6• 9 years ago

Netflix doesn't block Linux users.

They don't block (anymore) they just offer a degraded experience, 720p resolution only. Piracy still offers a superior product.

guelo2• 9 years ago

For perspective here is W3C CEO's post about it https://www.w3.org/blog/2017/09/reflections-on-the-eme-debat...

And Tim Berners Lee's original decision https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017J...

dannyobrien4• 9 years ago

Here's the press release, with testimonials from the RIAA, MPAA, CableLabs, Netflix, Microsoft and Comcast.

https://www.w3.org/2017/09/pressrelease-eme-recommendation.h...

guelo2• 9 years ago

Ouch. W3C is just a trade association at this point.

nulagrithom• 9 years ago

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.

I think that pretty much sums it up. The only thing that could've gone better for the corporations is if everyone else just shut the fuck up.

I don't know why he bothered to post that. What a joke.

codelitt• 9 years ago

The reply by Harry Halpin is worth a read: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017J...

lewisinc• 9 years ago

What benefit is there in the EFF resigning? I'm not educated on the issue as well as those on the committee, but it feels like not having the EFF on the committee at all is going to do more harm than good.

whipoodle2• 9 years ago

Not everyone thinks in utilitarian terms. And, maybe the EFF thinks the W3C is now an organization focused on legitimizing whatever big tech companies say. If so, they'd probably not want to be considered a part of that process.

TeMPOraL4• 9 years ago

Oh, but maybe they do think in utilitarian terms (and it's not bad, either). Them staying would legitimize W3C's decision. As it is, many (myself included) look at EFF for early warnings, and them leaving W3C is an important signal (hell, that's why we have this thread in the first place), and made me personally seriously lose trust in W3C.

craftyguy2• 9 years ago

but it feels like not having the EFF on the committee at all is going to do more harm than good.

Well, having them on the committee did no good. I fully support the EFF's decision to jump out of that septic ship, and have shown my support by making a donation this afternoon to thank them.

discordance• 9 years ago

Why is this DRM standard a bad thing?

fghtr2• 9 years ago

https://www.defectivebydesign.org/

acidtrucks• 9 years ago

Maybe this is terrible. Maybe this is the beginning of something totally new. There is nothing about WWW that prevents us from using totally different technologies, other than being really pretty good.

wnevets• 9 years ago

The web has made it this far without DRM being part of the standard, why exactly do we need it now? The death of flash?

spdustin2• 9 years ago

Is my math off, or is 58.4% a majority?

zymhan2• 9 years ago

The first three words of the post are "W3C abandons consensus"

    con·sen·sus
    kənˈsensəs/
    noun
    general agreement.

No one said anything about a majority.

Rebelgecko• 9 years ago

58.4% is more than half, but the title says it can't really be considered a consensus. Lots of commitees try to avoid passing things by simple majority and instead refine and/or compromise ideas until they get more buy-in.

Osmium• 9 years ago

I am so mixed about this. In principle, this is a terrible idea, and I share many of the concerns in this thread -- I am not a fan of DRM. But as a consumer/end-user, I'd much prefer a standard DRM over Flash/Silverlight any day of the week.

The real question is how we get rid of DRM in the long term. Piracy isn't going away. Hopefully content owners will one day realize the economic cost of implementing DRM isn't worth its return, and only serves to alienate paying customers. I imagine it might take some years for them to realize this however.

TazeTSchnitzel• 9 years ago

Companies creating copyrighted works will always try to impose DRM.

The best that can be done is make circumventing it legal and easy.

DCKing7• 9 years ago

Can anybody explain to me what will change because of this decision? DRM has been very much part of the internet since 1995 when RealPlayer was released. DRM has been part of content delivery ever since then. It has not ever seem to have decreased in popularity, quite the opposite. The browsers that 99.9% of people use have already implemented this standard for years anyway. It's not obvious to me that this decision changes anything (it seems this is the status quo already) but maybe there's something I'm missing.

What's going to change from today to tomorrow because of this decision? Or is the meltdown here just people now realizing that the battle is lost, even though it was lost already a long time ago?

One thing I do understand is that this contended decision is a serious break from tradition and apparently a dick move (although I'd need to see some additional sources on that). But that doesn't seem to be the main topic of the discussion in these comments anyway.

zymhan2• 9 years ago

RealPlayer was not a Web Standard like EME is. This decision codifies DRM in Web rendering standards.

wakamoleguy4• 9 years ago

If DRM has already existed for years, and the majority of browsers have already accepted EME as a de facto standard by implementing it, wouldn't codifying that standard be positive?

xemdetia• 9 years ago

In recent times pretty much all the DRM vehicles have been canned as native code browser extensions have become 'bad' for malicious code. So the DRM delivery mechanisms like java plugins, flash and so on are being taken out of the web and this standard sticks it back in. I have mixed feelings about this until I really dig into how the interface is supposed to work.

So it was almost out as part of the modern web stuff, and it came back the very next day.

justonepost3• 9 years ago

It's just another chip in our ability to own things. It just another way tha makes us more beholden to our digital landlords. This lawyer explains it best: http://www.newsweek.com/silicon-valley-private-property-and-...

eof2• 9 years ago

As a follow up, isn't all this DRM for naught? If you send the video and the audio to my computer, I can record it after it's decrypted. What problem does this really solve? I already use netflix/amazon because it's more convenient than torrenting, unless it isn't. Seems the possibility is nil DRM-free versions of DRM content won't be available anyway.

gtirloni• 9 years ago

You're right, content will always be pirated. However, security and rights management is never about definitive solutions. DRM makes it hard for 99% of the people and that's enough for copyright holders. They can focus their resources on the other 1% (unfortunately including poeple with legitimate reasons).

I'm not agreeing with this but it's how it is and I don't see that changing. I agree with another commenter that it's been like this for virtually forever and this decision doesn't change much.

colde• 9 years ago

There will be absolutely no change. All major browsers already implement EME (this includes Edge, IE, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera and a bunch of minor ones).

I personally think it is a step forward, as it is much better than Silverlight. Now all the client behaviour is out in the open, and only the DRM piece is proprietary.

There is no way that removing EME will make things better, that would just require all streaming services to build native clients or browser plugins, which isn't exactly improving any transparency.

ehsankia4• 9 years ago

People were naively thinking/hoping that once Flash and plugins die, DRM would magically disappear and media companies would start putting all their content on the open web, for anyone to access.

I'm with you, I'd much rather have a clean, secure and well implemented option, rather than each company trying to hack together a solution that will be buggy, insecure and inefficient.

The option of there being no DRM was realistically never on the table, as much as people would've liked it to be.

_phaq• 9 years ago

The fear is that this makes it far too easy to use DRM for webpage owners. Previously, you had to pull in a slow-ass Flash-plugin or similar, which was very much known to bring all kinds of security issues.

Now you just say "DRM this" and it does it, and you have the security issues whether you use DRM or not.

As a result, webpage owners might start DRMing things that were previously just not worth DRMing. Like images, text.

If you want to cite a news article in the future, you might have to type it off by hand instead of copy-pasting the part.

Also, just like DRM has done before, it's going to make content inaccessible for those who want to view that content at a later point with different technology, except that this time around it's not just going to be Netflix, it's going to be a good portion of the web.

So, yes, DRM has been part of the web for a long time, but how big that part is, is going to dramatically change.

DCKing7• 9 years ago

The fear is that this makes it far too easy to use DRM for webpage owners. Previously, you had to pull in a slow-ass Flash-plugin or similar, which was very much known to bring all kinds of security issues.

"Previously" in this case would have been four years ago, would it not? Ever since then, EME has already been reality. If EME has been reality and commonplace since then, what does this W3C decision really change?

Now you just say "DRM this" and it does it, and you have the security issues whether you use DRM or not.
As a result, webpage owners might start DRMing things that were previously just not worth DRMing. Like images, text.
If you want to cite a news article in the future, you might have to type it off by hand instead of copy-pasting the part.

I would like to see some evidence for that. From a very brief read of what the EME spec defines, I don't believe this is technically possible in the spec. The spec only applies to 'protect' byte streams sent to audio and video codecs. If it were possible I think we would have seen implementations already since implementations have existed since 2013.

I hate DRM as much as the next guy, but we shouldn't need FUD to get that point across.

mcherm• 9 years ago

We could "solve" the entire ad-blocking "problem" by delivering DRM-protected web pages that cannot be modified by the end consumer, merely viewed. This would also "solve" the "problem" of scraping.

All that is needed now is a DRM format that delivers HTML/JavaScript and is implemented by Chrome, Safari, and maybe Edge.

pera• 9 years ago

One great thing about the personal computer revolution and the World Wide Web is that, thanks to its open specs nature, pretty much anything can be part of the Internet. That doesn't mean everything should be part of the standards: EME requires a piece of software called the Content Decryption Module, which is developed for Hollywood by software companies like Microsoft and Adobe, and can not be open source. So basically what the W3C is saying here is that every standard complaint browsers should include a binary blob from a private company. And that is, by the way, what will change from today to tomorrow.

This goes completely against the nature of the Internet, and it's also useless (as it will not stop "piracy"). I can't believe the W3C is doing this, it's extremely sad and marks a dangerous precedent.

pdimitar4• 9 years ago

It's time to abandon the major web standards and start devising our own infrastructure. Better stateless protocol, end-to-end encryption on every connection -- no exceptions! -- decentralized encrypted vaults of cached assets (where every user donates a few or few hundred gigabytes of disk space to participiate -- effectively becoming a node in a decentralized CDN).

We've left the corporations run wild for far too long. They've been stupid, slow and it took them A LONG TIME to catch up. And eventually they did. All the while all of us did absolutely nothing. At least myself.

^ All of that is an idealistic revolutionist talk, I am aware. Had I had the free time and reserve capital however, I'd be dead-serious about starting such an effort.

nebabyte6• 9 years ago

The time for that was long past.

pdimitar4• 9 years ago

There are many of us that are still warm to the idea and will help. I personally can donate 500GB of HDD space.

Unless the governments outlaw encrypted communications and/or homemade wireless equipment, it's never too late.

psyc• 9 years ago

ZeroNet.io is one of the neatest proofs of concept I've seen in a while. A P2P decentralized web, accessible via standard browser, Tor network optional. It's small and there isn't much content, but as a demo it seems to work great.

rimliu6• 9 years ago

This will solve zero problems for actual web users.

pdimitar4• 9 years ago

Having dynamic user-hosted CDNs in almost real-time a la IPFS (which are sadly far from real-time) has been proven to work. However, the latency is too big so yeah, so far we've got practically nothing.

imtringued4• 9 years ago

Unfortunately there are only three ways to implement decentralised webapps. Either you have trustless consensus by giving users power proportional to their physical resources where every user only has a small fraction of power. This is called blockchain with proof of work. It's extremely inefficient and therefore many usecases are not possible but it doesn't require trusting in any individual, only in the entire network. It should used for DNS, usernames or other readable identifiers that require global consensus.

The second is federation like email. Everyone has the option to become a provider or trust an existing provider. Of course the problem is that you need to trust your provider and the providers have to trust other providers. Spammers can just set up their own provider to attack other providers, so providers need the ability to block providers they disagree with. Providers don't live forever or they can become untrustworthy, there needs to be a way to export the data and import it into a new provider. You will need digitally sign all your data to prove that it came from you. There also needs to be a mechanism to confirm that user10@oldprovider is the same user as user5@newprovider and redirect from the old identifier to the new one.

The third is the least likely. A full P2P architecture where every peer is equal. Every peer will be forced to store the entire database of the application and run all computation locally. Spam will be an even bigger problem than with federation because you will have to store the spam for eternity too. The dataset will eventually become large enough that a single computer cannot store it.

I'm betting on federation. It's the middle ground between full centralisation and full decentralisation.

pdimitar4• 9 years ago

Agreed with everything. I'd bet on scenario #3 though (namely IPFS and IPNS for now). You're sadly correct about the spam though. Still, a solution must exist.

I for one am sick of trusting corps only because they can implement software that protects their own servers. We can't be held hostages by spam forever.

(I would even wager spam is partially funded by corps so as to scare the users back to their walled gardens but that's uncertain and not especially likely.)

Furmark5• 9 years ago

It could be combination of #1 and #2, use blockchain for names and federation for actual content, then it will be easy to switch providers, just add new name to blockchain and remove old one.

ultim8k• 9 years ago

Instead of creating the right tools for making web apps a lot more native, feature rich and consistent, they just make the favours of a couple media companies like Spotify, Netflix and Google. I hope the W3C dissolves after that._

sigzero• 9 years ago

"Since when did the W3C abandon reason for madness?" -- Gandalf

hellbanner2• 9 years ago

"This specification does not define a content protection or Digital Rights Management system. Rather, it defines a common API that may be used to discover, select and interact with such systems as well as with simpler content encryption systems. Implementation of Digital Rights Management is not required for compliance with this specification: only the Clear Key system is required to be implemented as a common baseline."

Does not define DRM .. I am seeing a conflict with the title

AndrewCHM2• 9 years ago

Does not define a specific method of DRM, only an interface to those methods of DRM

pslam• 9 years ago

"This device is not part of A Bomb. Rather, it implements a common wiring and chemical mixture function that may be used to ignite, and rapidly interact with the surrounding environment. Implementation of A Bomb is not required for use of this device: only the Joke Bang Sign is required to be implemented as a common baseline."

eh78ssxv2f• 9 years ago

Can somebody explain what exactly is happening here? What were the pros/cons of the move? e.g., it is possible that browsers are in a tight spot: If they fail to provide certain functionality, then content providers just move to native apps. Was that the tradeoff here?

frivoal4• 9 years ago

W3C decided to publish a final version of the EME specification. W3C is the place where member companies come to write and negotiate the specification for how many web technologies should work. EME is an API for talking to a audio/video DRM module. EME (and the corresponding DRM modules) have been shipping in all browsers for years.

A large minority of W3C members, led by EFF, were trying to tie the publication of this specification with a legal contract (called a covenant) between members preventing them to sue people (under laws like the DMCA) if they did nothing more than break the DRM. This would leave copyright infringers liable to law suits, but not security researchers, developers of accessibility add-ons, and so on.

This proposal gather a large minority, but a minority nonetheless.

The W3C process doesn't let the majority win automatically. Normally, it goes by consensus, and keeps negotiations going until all find something they can agree on. If that fails to happen, and someone objects to the decision being proposed, the director of the W3C (who is incidentally the person who invented the web), gets to call the shot.

If a majority of members thinks he called the shot wrong, he can be overturned in appeal.

This decision to publish the final version of the EME specification without a covenant was appealed, and the appeal failed.

kibwen5• 9 years ago

Remember the corporate sponsors of the original EME proposal in 2012: Google, Microsoft, and Netflix https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/

mickronome• 9 years ago

It's weird to see Netflix there, as their service might be one of the premier reasons lots of people can't be bothered to copy movies as much as used to be the case.

The only reasons I can see is that studios/rights owners are either requiring DRM for newest titles, or that they offer rebates on DRM'd material. They rights owners also probably prefer other people to run their errand, as some of them aren't too popular, and others have simply made themselves to a laughing stock in at least some parts of the internet.

floatboth15• 9 years ago

Weird? Netflix is one of the only users of EME. Movie rights owners require DRM, Netflix distributes their content, Netflix wants a more standardized way than Silverlight.

ngcazz• 9 years ago

The attack on consumer rights continues...

AndyKelley2• 9 years ago

I predict that companies will start using EME to deploy all their app code to keep their front-end more closed source.

CharlesW• 9 years ago

I thought EME only worked with audio and video. Is what you're suggesting possible?

AndyKelley2• 9 years ago

Audio and video is most of what a given app does.

frivoal4• 9 years ago

1) EME doesn't work like that 2) EME has been shipping in all browsers for a while. This hasn't happened.

bad_user• 9 years ago

The EFF is right for resigning. There's no reason for EFF to be part of a supposed standardization group that is ignoring complaints, especially for a recommendation for a technology that puts freedoms at risk.

And to put salt on injury, the W3C is claiming that they couldn't reach consensus on a covenant regarding anti-circumvention regulations, however they are now making this recommendation without consensus, which seems to me to be disingenuous.

The W3C is clearly and has always been a charade.

And people won't forget that easily, just like we haven't forgotten the days when they were holding the web back. So if they were worried about becoming irrelevant by not adopting DRM, well, they just became irrelevant regardless. Might as well admit that the standards are made by two or three companies which control the market and stop this circus.

sigi452• 9 years ago

I think i don't get it.

A company called Microsoft builds a software which is able to render html. This company makes money and talks to another company called google which also is making money by selling movies and stuff and which builds a software which is able to render html. And those two companies are talking to a third huge company, who makes a shit ton of money and also makes a software which is able to render html.

All those _companies_ decided together, that they still are using some form of drm and want to standardize it, to make it easier for there consumers.

Now a few people, who are using the software from those companies thought this code is written for free and without strings attached?

I mean i do understand the risk but still i'm surfing around and use my software, written by companies, to surf primarily on company sites and not for surfing on other private pages.

Even linux and other free software is written, primarly by people who get there money from companies right?

I don't think that DRM would be gone if no EME exists.

zanny• 9 years ago

to make it easier for there consumers.

No, never. DRM Is never easier for consumers.

What happened was that Apple banned alternative browsers and plugins like Flash on iOS which meant there was a sizable platform of - importantly - semi-rich people that did not have a usable DRM solution outside being told to install an app.

The user dropoff from demanding you install an app is huge.

They were losing money, plain and simple, on people who didn't A. download a plugin or B. install an app to push DRM on them.

This battle was over years ago. Safari adopted EME, all the corporate powers that be that wanted to have their cake and eat it too on the buffet of consumer ignorance to how dicked over they are when companies shovel proprietary code down their throats. No major browser wanted to even try fighting this. New browsers that turn up will never gain traction if they don't "support Netflix".

Those of us who care about ethics go on using Firefox without the DRM bullshit plugin / Chromium / etc and the rest keep being ignorant as they always have been.

Really, DRM isn't even helping anyone. It is a lawyer requirement for legal contracts between media producers and distributors. "We require you fuck over your customers to give our old rich men investors who have no clue what technology is a false idea that nobody can copy our floppy". Pirates will continue to circumvent and distribute better quality versions of everything than any company is willing to stream you anyway, and people who were using the streaming services in the first place weren't pirating to begin with.

What this does mean is what should be straightforward user experiences for online video are going to start becoming a clusterfuck of broken, insecure proprietary blob DRM drivers every video site "automagically" downloads and runs on users computers that either don't work cross platform or breaks all the time. Web video will have peaked in 2016, when ubiquitous mp4 support meant almost any site can just host videos and have them work, and 2018 and on will be the era of everyone trying to use shitty DRM plugins that will fail and break everywhere just like Flash and Silverlight did years ago. But having the option available is going to inspire companies like newspapers that have no business trying to DRM lock their newscasts to try to use DRM anyway because fuck ethics.

sigi452• 9 years ago

Those companies made it easier for the consumers because those companies would have never accepted non DRM Video (period).

You still can watch h264 on all modern webbrowser.

And still it is there choice how they wanna offer there content.

Don't get me wrong, i don't like DRM but it is still there choice and they are big enough to do it and the just did because it is and was there standard for there internet to reach there consumers.

GhotiFish• 9 years ago

of course it wouldn't be gone. It would just be where it belongs.

somewhere else.

unfortunately.

that won't be happening.

appleflaxen7• 9 years ago

drm is intrinsically bad for consumers.

any consumer should have the option of using it, if they want.

the problem here is the codification as a standard, and the implicit endorsement that the W3C creates in providing the standard.

DRM is expensive to your freedom, and it should be as expensive as possible for media companies to implement. by making it opt-in rathen than can't-even-opt-out-if-you-want-to, the W3C are really giving the public interest the middle finger.

dottrap• 9 years ago

Did Apple actually support this proposal? Seems like their own self-interest would want them to reject this. The lack of a standardized web DRM would push developers to native apps which benefits Apple. And web DRM doesn't benefit the iTunes eco-system.

LeoPanthera2• 9 years ago

Safari has supported for DRM for quite a while. It was the first browser to support Netflix without a plugin.

gsnedders12• 9 years ago

Notably Safari on iOS was the largest browser to not support Netflix prior to this.

floatboth15• 9 years ago

Well, it's still not standardized web DRM. It's an API to access DRM. Chrome/Firefox can use Widevine, but Safari will only use Apple FairPlay.

mabynogy2• 9 years ago

Someone should fork w3c.

Paul-ish• 9 years ago

My fear is that DRM for video content will quickly become DRM for text content. Say goodbye to adblocking and tracker blocking.

flukus6• 9 years ago

This is what canvas+webASM is designed to do. Legit content and tracking scripts will be delivered to your browser as a single binary blob.

anilgulecha• 9 years ago

That will only be slightly more difficult than blocking today, technically.

What would be worse is that there's a plausible text-DRM coming up next, which would make altering contents of webpage illegal, hence making ad-blocking unlawful.

floatboth15• 9 years ago

WebAssembly is a performance optimization, it doesn't bring anything new that wasn't possible in JavaScript.

If someone actually wanted to do this, it would've been done a long time ago, with a single JavaScript blob.

bfu• 9 years ago

Then use canvas.toDataURL() to convert canvas to PNG image and you can watch it everywhere

hbk• 9 years ago

I wish we could fork W3C.

shmerl3• 9 years ago

W3C is morally dead. Quite a sad development.

favorited5• 9 years ago

W3C is not an organization focused on morals. It is an organization which exists to advocate for and codify open web standards (note, not an open web, but open standards).

shmerl3• 9 years ago

They sold out those standards to DRM proponents, so that ends the trust of them working for the common good.

sysdyne• 9 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h94ZKGVg-B8 W3C doesn't care about freedom. It's good to know the real face of W3C.

justonepost3• 9 years ago

Yay digital serfdom! Long live the feudal lords! http://www.newsweek.com/silicon-valley-private-property-and-...

alexnewman• 9 years ago

I wish I could talk about how bad widevine is but I can't because NDA. Y'all fucked

andrewflnr• 9 years ago

What actual power does the W3C have to harm (or protect, for that matter) security researchers?

unlmtd1• 9 years ago

Good! Let them do that, and let us keep working on things like ipfs, blockchain naming systems, matrix and host identity protocols. The more they try to corrupt the web, the more energy goes into fixing the broken architectures. Then one day, nobody will use the broken DRM net. Politics is a programmer's most wasteful use of his time. Code them out of business.

olegkikin• 9 years ago

Unfortunately network effect is HUGE when it comes to the internet. Just because you can code a superior internet, doesn't mean people will move to it en masse.

spiralganglion• 9 years ago

All networks have a lifespan. Some of those lifespans are longer than ours. But there will come a day when another user-facing network supersedes the internet.

Many "superior internets" will have lived and died before then, so your statement holds. But progress depends on someone who doesn't resign themselves to failure.

quickthrower22• 9 years ago

This is the next century

Where the universal's free

You can find it anywhere

Yes, the future has been sold

(Blur 1995)

projectileboy• 9 years ago

It's utterly heartbreaking to live in an age where you watch the best things come to life, and then die.

pvdebbe• 9 years ago

Yep, take me back to 1989's internet, please.

otakucode3• 9 years ago

Time to start cracking.

jmull• 9 years ago

Well, the W3C only matters to the extent they have credibility.

Not that one thing will break that. But there will be future efforts where a positive outcome hinges on the credibility of the W3C's process. Those may not go as well.

eridius3• 9 years ago

58.4% of the group voted to go on with publication, and the W3C did so today, an unprecedented move in a body that has always operated on consensus and compromise.

What exactly is the EFF saying should have happened? More than 50% voted to go ahead with it. The majority voted for it. I don't see how the W3C going with the majority vote is a dick move. Consensus and compromise is obviously very important, but when one side is strictly anti-DRM, it's pretty hard to compromise. This just seems like the EFF being bitter that they lost and trying to disparage the W3C.

ctrl-j3• 9 years ago

Consensus and compromise is obviously very important, but when one side is strictly anti-DRM, it's pretty hard to compromise.

When it's the first time they've broken with consensus, and the decision is very much not in the best interests of the common user - it's kind of a big deal.

DRM may be a necessity for corporations to feel they can make money safely - it's not consumer friendly, and it certainly doesn't need to be a part of the open standard.

eridius3• 9 years ago

But it is in the interests of the common user. It's absolutely beneficial for browsers to have a standardized API for this stuff instead of non-standard plugin hell. People like you seem to think that if the W3C rejected DRM then sites would stop using it (and hence this being for the benefit of the user). But that belief is hopelessly naive. Sites like Netflix are never going to stop using DRM. They're contractually obligated to use it. Without EME, Netflix has to rely on plugins like Silverlight. With EME, Netflix can ship an HTML5 experience that works everywhere. That's good for users.

Crespyl6• 9 years ago

Part of the EFFs frustration is that the anti-DRM side were willing to compromise, by passing the standard with the addition of agreements to, for example, not sue security researchers who might try to fuzz a CDM or figure out how it worked.

It was the pro-DRM side that were unwilling to make even such a minimal good-faith compromise.

eridius3• 9 years ago

How many people of the anti-DRM side were willing to pass it anyway? Because judging by all of the HN commentary I've seen in the past there are plenty of people who are hard-line no DRM under any circumstances.

bzbarsky4• 9 years ago

If you think one side is "strictly anti-DRM", you haven't read the article.

l3m0ndr0p• 9 years ago

Maybe now's the time to abandon the W3C - Maybe we can encourage the EFF to create a "Free Web Consortium." Sort of like "let's encrypt." I think this would better server a free and open web for the 21st Century and beyond. It appears, based on this information from the EFF & their exit from W3c, the W3C has become corrupted at some level.

AnthonyMouse14• 9 years ago

Case in point why everyone should do this:

https://supporters.eff.org/donate

MozillaUser• 9 years ago

https://medium.com/@joe_brewer/the-mental-disease-of-late-st...

enough said

ianamartin• 9 years ago

I sort of hate the way things are turning out and also am not surprised. When I was 10 years old in the late 80s, everything was open to you if you wanted it.

My next door neighbor has a 10 year old son who wants to learn programming. I gave him an older laptop of mine and offered to do some coaching with him about learning to program on the condition that he always has to do his homework first before we do any programming work. And if he hasn't got his homework done or is having problems with it, I'll help with the homework first.

I had a pretty cool person in my life that did that for me when I was a kid. So I want to pay it back.

But when I think about things, man . . . it was wild as a kid. You could do anything on the internet in the 80s and 90s. It was the wild west.

Now days, I'm in the back yard teaching this next door neighbor's kid, and I'm like, "Yeah, maybe don't do that. That could get you in trouble."

When I was a kid, it was always, "Do it! Can't hurt that much!"

It's different now, I think. People are less free to explore for its own sake.

I could be wrong, but I think there was a golden moment of freedom on the internet that is past. And I'm glad I got to live in that.

dejawu• 9 years ago

In their public statements about the standard, the W3C executive repeatedly said that they didn't think the DRM advocates would be willing to compromise, and in the absence of such willingness, the exec have given them everything they demanded.

This sentence in particular fills me with rage. These are people and groups who have refused to innovate in the face of the web and have used their clout and momentum to ensure that they never have to again.

So much for the democratization of media the web was supposed to bring. Money still speaks louder than anything else.

thuuuomas• 9 years ago

Netflix is money, but the real DRM atrocities will surface in the ed-tech long tail.

floatboth15• 9 years ago

That would suck, but EME has existed for several years (and Silverlight/Flash DRM before that) and I don't think the educational course providers ever embraced DRM??

Manozco• 9 years ago

What will we answer in twenty years when our children will ask: "Daddy, where were you when they made the web a such shitty place? "

shaan72• 9 years ago

I've feared the same and the only sane solution I've come up with is not to have any.

HashThis• 9 years ago

Our democracy has a problem. Crony capitalists will sell out to corporations. They will reject the democratic process in order to sell out to corporations to have power to monetize those citizens. They don't care about protecting citizens.

DRM in standards == force == freedom removed

makecheck• 9 years ago

Battery life and data minimization should take precedence over extras. It is time to standardize on precisely the bare minimum necessary to render content, and that certainly excludes DRM and auto-play video ads and other endless cruft.

Simply put, I don't want my battery burning through unnecessary restrictions-addition software (both downloading and running).

d--b2• 9 years ago

What people don't get is that EME sets a strange precedent in the history of HTML.

Web browsers have always been very hackable. HTTP meant you could always look at the traffic being exchanged. And because there was little point in obscuring anything, web browsers allowed you to look into and modify everything:

- view/modify document source

- view/modify DOM

- debug script

- and so on

This is how CSS was defined too. It was supposed to be a compromise between how the user liked things styled, and how the vendor suggested styling the content.

EME brings something new to the table: locked LOGIC. This not a bad thing per se but takes html in a completely different direction than what it used to be.

The main concern is not DRM. The main concern is that this is a step in a direction where web browsers become unscrutable virtual machines running code that cannot be looked into. It's basically a step turning HTML into silverlight. This may happen for instance if the gaming industry decides that they need EME for in-browser games.

And most importantly this is done for all the wrong reasons: EME cannot stop anyone from copying the rendered content. And it certainly doesn't prevent anyone from downloading copied content.

So EME is just a stupid thing that technology-dumb media dudes are imposing on web developers for no reason and that may have far reaching consequences on the future of html... That's what's worth talking about.

jopsen2• 9 years ago

HTML have always had plugins too... this ends that.

Think of EME as a slightly better sandboxed plugin with a single very small purposes... As oppose to the security horrors from Flash

eponeponepon• 9 years ago

If there aren't already enterprise software firms investigating how to offer their SuperWidgetron 10000 HR system through EME in the browser, I will eat my hat.

The single very small purpose will soon enough be worked around, messed with and extended to do more than it was ever "supposed" to - just look at JavaScript.

DarkCrusader2• 9 years ago

I do not understand DRM/silverlight properly. Does this means that I won't be able to see what code is running in my browser for eg. JS collecting data in the background or use things like adblocker, greasemonkey etc.

d--b2• 9 years ago

No. The changes that are happening only affect DRM. So it means that when you watch a video/audio in the browser, there will be some encryption applied deep within the browser.

But it is a paradigm shift in the sense that it is the first time that a change is introduced in HTML that restricts the user from accessing the actual content that is being displayed.

Effectively, similar changes to the standard could be introduced to prevent users from tinkering with ads, or to prevent users from opting out of data collection.

In that sense, it opens the way to your browser being more like your phone.

Again, it's not _bad_ in itself, but it is a paradigm shift.

pornel2• 9 years ago

I won't be able to see what code is running in my browser

Yes, but it's not JS. It's a plug-in the EME spec calls "CDM", and it is allowed to be anything, including kernel modules and hardware.

Websites that sign contracts with CDM plug-in vendors can use these unrestricted plug-ins, but you aren't allowed to check what they're doing because of DMCA.

rurban• 9 years ago

There's only one solution. The director needs to resign immediately

aneutron• 9 years ago

I have a question, What can we do now ?

Myrmornis• 9 years ago

Would someone mind helping me understand the debate? I don't watch TV or even movies very often (when I do I use Amazon prime). I never watch movies more than once. I do listen to music multiple times. But AFAIK all the MP3s for sale on major sites are DRM-free nowadays. What are the main specific scenarios involving DRM that people are talking about here?

craigsmansion• 9 years ago

The likely fallout of this decision is that web pages will cease to exist and will be replaced by tiny DRM protected proprietary binaries for which the web is simply the delivery mechanism.

It's not just about movies or music, but also about text pages.

Big content has now managed to co-opt the open web. It is no longer a network of peers (some bigger, some smaller) but introduces two tiers, owners and users, and all the power disparity that comes with that.

bytesandbots• 9 years ago

Have you tried watching Amazon Prime on Opera browser? Most premium content will not play on any browser other than Chrome, Edge and Firefox. If they play, it will be only SD version. This is not because Opera has not implemented some web standards. It is because the major three browsers have all implemented a proprietary system of content protection.

There is another side of this story. Let's say you have to publish content on your website. You do not have any way to publish it as securely as "Amazon Prime" without signing an agreement with Google and Microsoft.

Thirdly, there comes DRM protection rules thanks to team MPAA. In most countries, you can not try to reverse-engineer the proprietary decryption module that comes with browsers without breaking laws.

Because of the above restriction, security professionals cannot break into the proprietary module to detect security vulnerabilities.

Edit: I was wrong about Opera. Opera is in on the DRM bandwagaon for a long time. https://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2015/07/opera-developer-32-0...

JepZ2• 9 years ago

The DMCA is one of the greatest threats to modern democracy, as it is used to remove specific content from the primary global communications medium (Internet), which makes it a very handy tool for censoring.

And the W3C just standardized a tool to support the DCMA...

avodonosov• 9 years ago

Why is it bad?

thriftwy• 9 years ago

This means I now have an excuse to avoid paying for content eve further.

You didn't want to play nice, so never will I, I will continue to torrent stuff from majors while continuing to participate in crowdfunding and supporting indies.

You wanted that, not me!

VarFarYonder• 9 years ago

James Mickens gave an interesting talk on what we could do to build a better browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uflg7LDmzI

I'm hoping that WebAssembly might be a route towards allowing something like this to happen. If an alternative to HTML/CSS/JS could be developed in WebAssembly, then we could have a situation where HTML has competition, rather than being the only way to build a website. And browsers can become simpler as the rendering duties are moved out of the browser and to the website itself.

whoisthemachine• 9 years ago

I understand the point the EFF is making, but I'm not sure if leaving the body that influences web standards is the right way to get your voice heard on web standards.

jasonmaydie• 9 years ago

Why is the EFF part of the W3C though? It's a standards organization not a political one.

Sylos2• 9 years ago

Standards are largely politics...

camgunz• 9 years ago

The web gentrified. Geeks don't live there anymore, they only go there for their jobs. Time to build something newer and cooler.

W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

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