5 ms·

This truly is the death of the open web. I hope the appeal is successful. Freedom seems to be losing on all fronts these days.

evv 9y ago
Well this doesn't actually change much in practice. Web browsers have allowed black-box extensions for DRM'd content since the dawn of flash. Personally I am disgusted that this standard is being promoted by the W3C and Tim Berners-Fucking-Lee. The browser vendors are perfectly capable of building (and even standardizing) this tech by themselves. The open web is as available today as it ever was, and even more so with blockchain and "dark web" technologies like tor and i2p.
- mirimir 9y ago
  > Personally I am disgusted that this standard is being promoted by the W3C and Tim Berners-Fucking-Lee. Yes, that's the disgusting part. But so it goes. The flesh is weak. Overlay darknets are indeed the only hope for freedom.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  > Personally I am disgusted that this standard is being promoted by the W3C and Tim Berners-Fucking-Lee. The browser vendors are perfectly capable of building (and even standardizing) this tech by themselves. I don't understand these two sentences in conjunction, which is most of why I don't understand all the complaining about this issue. If, as almost everyone admits, the browser vendors are going to ship DRM-enabled playback one way or the other, what difference does it make whether it's in the official spec? The HTML5 spec is just a piece of paper that exists to make web developers' lives easier. I don't understand the need to assign attributes like "purity" to it, especially when (as you yourself said), whether or not the DRM is in the spec changes nothing on the ground.
  - evv 9y ago
    As I understand, EME is the only w3c recommendation that forces web browsers to run proprietary black-box code. I am a proponent of the open web, so I view this standard as a big step in the wrong direction.
    - metajack 9y ago
      Nothing forces web browsers to run any code except perhaps market pressures. Keeping EME out of the standard would have sent a political message, but since everyone is already shipping it, kind of a useless one. I am sad too. Perhaps there was a window of time when we could have gotten rid of NPAPI plugins and not added DRM to implementations and forced media companies to come along. That didn't happen though.
  - chii 9y ago
    > whether or not the DRM is in the spec changes nothing on the ground. no, having a sanctioned DRM mechanism in an open standard means DRM is being normalized (and by extension, acceptable). The fact that DRM already exists as plugins isn't the point - but making DRM part of the web standard gives free reign for the pro-DRM camp that it's acceptable, or even desirable! The only acceptable standard is one where the user benefits. I don't see how a user can benefit from DRM, except that this standard makes DRM less difficult to swallow for an end user (who, let's face it, don't give a shit about DRM). The added convenience of standardization means we can never get to a place where DRM-free content is the majority/norm.
tveita 9y ago
> This truly is the death of the open web About as much as music DRM was the death of music players. And as we all know the only way to play a music file today is to buy them in the Microsoft Zune store and squirt them over to your FairPlaysForSure(tm) certified KindlePod. It's not a good thing; it lets some very big actors hurt themselves and their paying customers by still pretending that people will eventually come around to paying more for inferior service if only they force feed enough "you wouldn't download a car" ads to their dwindling customer base, and it encumbers the browsers to support yet another legacy standard that will be used only by exploit writers in ten years time. But in the end this is never going to prevent you or anyone born after the sixties from accessing any significant piece of content. It is only going to stop you from going out of your way to pay for it. I guess if YouTube started putting DRM on everything, that would reach the level of 'annoying'. Is there any indication they would do that?
- zdkl 9y ago
  > Is there any indication they would do that? There won't be. Unless we actually make things happen to assure against "suddenly DRM", at some point the technology will be there that you cannot trivially bypass.
- izacus 9y ago
  Right now DRM is the death of you being able to preserve the TV shows you love (they'll just disappear from Netflix after some time and you're not allowed to download them even if you paid for them), the death of being able to watch things on planes and the death of being able to watch things if one of your increasingly unreliable ISPs drops a connection.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    What if it was legally bound that a securing tech (enforcing users not to abuse content) HAS to be opened in case of future demise of the author company ? If Apple and iTunes suddenly crash, they have to make a tiny effort into releasing a conversion/stripping tool and/or open source the system so that ex-customers can at least attempt to help themselves.

evv 9y ago

Well this doesn't actually change much in practice. Web browsers have allowed black-box extensions for DRM'd content since the dawn of flash. Personally I am disgusted that this standard is being promoted by the W3C and Tim Berners-Fucking-Lee. The browser vendors are perfectly capable of building (and even standardizing) this tech by themselves. The open web is as available today as it ever was, and even more so with blockchain and "dark web" technologies like tor and i2p.

mirimir 9y ago
> Personally I am disgusted that this standard is being promoted by the W3C and Tim Berners-Fucking-Lee. Yes, that's the disgusting part. But so it goes. The flesh is weak. Overlay darknets are indeed the only hope for freedom.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Analemma_ 9y ago
> Personally I am disgusted that this standard is being promoted by the W3C and Tim Berners-Fucking-Lee. The browser vendors are perfectly capable of building (and even standardizing) this tech by themselves. I don't understand these two sentences in conjunction, which is most of why I don't understand all the complaining about this issue. If, as almost everyone admits, the browser vendors are going to ship DRM-enabled playback one way or the other, what difference does it make whether it's in the official spec? The HTML5 spec is just a piece of paper that exists to make web developers' lives easier. I don't understand the need to assign attributes like "purity" to it, especially when (as you yourself said), whether or not the DRM is in the spec changes nothing on the ground.
- evv 9y ago
  As I understand, EME is the only w3c recommendation that forces web browsers to run proprietary black-box code. I am a proponent of the open web, so I view this standard as a big step in the wrong direction.
  - metajack 9y ago
    Nothing forces web browsers to run any code except perhaps market pressures. Keeping EME out of the standard would have sent a political message, but since everyone is already shipping it, kind of a useless one. I am sad too. Perhaps there was a window of time when we could have gotten rid of NPAPI plugins and not added DRM to implementations and forced media companies to come along. That didn't happen though.
- chii 9y ago
  > whether or not the DRM is in the spec changes nothing on the ground. no, having a sanctioned DRM mechanism in an open standard means DRM is being normalized (and by extension, acceptable). The fact that DRM already exists as plugins isn't the point - but making DRM part of the web standard gives free reign for the pro-DRM camp that it's acceptable, or even desirable! The only acceptable standard is one where the user benefits. I don't see how a user can benefit from DRM, except that this standard makes DRM less difficult to swallow for an end user (who, let's face it, don't give a shit about DRM). The added convenience of standardization means we can never get to a place where DRM-free content is the majority/norm.

tveita 9y ago

> This truly is the death of the open web About as much as music DRM was the death of music players. And as we all know the only way to play a music file today is to buy them in the Microsoft Zune store and squirt them over to your FairPlaysForSure(tm) certified KindlePod. It's not a good thing; it lets some very big actors hurt themselves and their paying customers by still pretending that people will eventually come around to paying more for inferior service if only they force feed enough "you wouldn't download a car" ads to their dwindling customer base, and it encumbers the browsers to support yet another legacy standard that will be used only by exploit writers in ten years time. But in the end this is never going to prevent you or anyone born after the sixties from accessing any significant piece of content. It is only going to stop you from going out of your way to pay for it. I guess if YouTube started putting DRM on everything, that would reach the level of 'annoying'. Is there any indication they would do that?

zdkl 9y ago
> Is there any indication they would do that? There won't be. Unless we actually make things happen to assure against "suddenly DRM", at some point the technology will be there that you cannot trivially bypass.
izacus 9y ago
Right now DRM is the death of you being able to preserve the TV shows you love (they'll just disappear from Netflix after some time and you're not allowed to download them even if you paid for them), the death of being able to watch things on planes and the death of being able to watch things if one of your increasingly unreliable ISPs drops a connection.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  What if it was legally bound that a securing tech (enforcing users not to abuse content) HAS to be opened in case of future demise of the author company ? If Apple and iTunes suddenly crash, they have to make a tiny effort into releasing a conversion/stripping tool and/or open source the system so that ex-customers can at least attempt to help themselves.