4 ms·

But the web is the one in the position of power here. Media wants badly to be on the web--it's not the web that badly wants media. Imagine if, back in the 90s

by acabal 9y ago

But the web is the one in the position of power here. Media wants badly to be on the web--it's not the web that badly wants media. Imagine if, back in the 90s, bigcorp still-image licensors like Getty or Bridgeman were able to magically foresee how big the internet was going to be. They campaign hard to include a DRM standard into the 90s web, so that nobody could right click and "save as" images from the web. After all, their bread-and-butter is licensing images. They succeed, and now it's the 90s, the web is in its infancy, and nobody can share or save images. How would have the web evolved differently, if that was the case? I think most of us would agree that this would have put a terrible stranglehold on the evolution of the web as a technology and the web as a cultural force. We're in a similar position today. Video is fairly new to the web, and bigcorp see how important a deal the web is. Instead of us making a stand and demanding the same freedom we got with images (freedom we largely received because of a combination of ignorance and benign neglect), we've caved and allowed videos to be locked away. Now we'll never see how the web could have evolved if anyone could have right click "saved as" a video.

metajack 9y ago
I feel like that case was true back when this fight actually mattered. These days people use native-ish apps on iPads and smart TVs and not just laptops. So I think there is less market power on the web's side than there used to be. Google and Microsoft both sell the CDMs (content decryption modules, ie, the actual DRM components used in EME), and it was certainly a benefit they touted for consumers before Firefox had an implementation as well. Now anyone who wants to make a web browser must pay to play, and the people you pay are your competitors. Even if you could write your own CDM and get it ceritifed/trusted or whatever, you'd still have to convince every DRM-using video provider to also use it in addition to the others, which is going to be a very tough sell. And of course, it may be that no one wants to license a CDM to you to start with, and now part of the web is closed off to your users.
icebraining 9y ago
There's no "web" vs "bigcorp". There's only bigcorp vs a motley bunch of weirdos like us, Mozilla, FSF and so. And they control 80%+ of the browser share.

by acabal 9y ago

metajack 9y ago

I feel like that case was true back when this fight actually mattered. These days people use native-ish apps on iPads and smart TVs and not just laptops. So I think there is less market power on the web's side than there used to be. Google and Microsoft both sell the CDMs (content decryption modules, ie, the actual DRM components used in EME), and it was certainly a benefit they touted for consumers before Firefox had an implementation as well. Now anyone who wants to make a web browser must pay to play, and the people you pay are your competitors. Even if you could write your own CDM and get it ceritifed/trusted or whatever, you'd still have to convince every DRM-using video provider to also use it in addition to the others, which is going to be a very tough sell. And of course, it may be that no one wants to license a CDM to you to start with, and now part of the web is closed off to your users.

icebraining 9y ago

There's no "web" vs "bigcorp". There's only bigcorp vs a motley bunch of weirdos like us, Mozilla, FSF and so. And they control 80%+ of the browser share.