6 ms·

HTML5 and DRM

12 points by Keverw 15y ago

Thomaschaaf 15y ago
Website is down. No Google Cache.
- quink 15y ago
  I don't know if this will work, didn't last time, but here goes: [Bing Cache](http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=691260178405&w=1e1573b4,3d02e81f http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=691260178405&w=1e1573b4...)
- Keverw 15y ago
  Yeah... This is the first time my site has ever crashed. Guess it got popular... Trying to figure out what to do next. If I just wait it out or restart the box...
- Keverw 15y ago
  Just restarted the server and it's up again. I'm using "Quick Cache" as a plugin to cache. Guess it's not doing a good job?
geuis 15y ago
Getting an error like this from CloudFlare seriously casts doubt on their ability to operate. One of the big things they claim is being a solution to exactly this problem.
Thomaschaaf 15y ago
So your startup will basically do what videojs.com (http://videojs.com/ http://videojs.com/) does + DRM? I guess it could work but maybe very easy to duplicate. At least from how I understand your approach. P.S.: Bing Cache works
- Keverw 15y ago
  No. It's a video on demand service. Also planning on doing live channels and some other stuff. Right now our plan is to serve content in HTML5 but it doesn't really have DRM. So I think that will limit the content we can get from studios.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - dmethvin 15y ago
    Absolutely it will limit what studios allow--as in the major studios will allow nothing. HTML5 video only supports standard HTTP download of a single unencrypted stream, and I'm not clear on how a token scheme will provide any real security for that unencrypted stream. There are the bandwidth-divining problems since you'll want a higher quality stream on a fast connection than a slow one and HTML5 video has no built-in way to do that. On iOS you can use HTTP Live Streaming via Safari, but if you depend on that you're locked into a single platform. What is driving your startup to use HTML5 video? Are you trying to avoid licensing fees for DRM technologies? A lot of these problems can be overcome if you build an app, perhaps it's possible to use a hybrid approach in PhoneGap so you can maintain a HTML UI but play video via a proprietary video library that supports DRM.
pmjordan 15y ago
Interestingly, Webkit on iOS devices CAN play back DRMd content via the HTML5 video tag. As far as I can tell, the web server can request a special Apple-signed client SSL certificate. With this, either the whole video can be streamed via SSL, or you can gate access to the keys used to encrypt the video (via Apple's HTTP live streaming encryption). The latter is of course nonstandard, but cooperative browser vendors could easily implement the pure SSL authentication. I can't imagine Flash or Silverlight video is any more secure than that. There's of course no way a truly open source browser would be trusted in this way; the certificate would have to be hard to extract. (This comment might make me sound pro-DRM. I'm not, just making some technical observations)
shmerl 15y ago
DRM shouldn't be promoted, period.
- Keverw 15y ago
  I agree. I'm not trying to promote it.
- gurkendoktor 15y ago
  I'd usually agree, but for one-time video watching, I don't see the harm. There is nothing that might break for legal customers in the future because there is no future, unlike with a purchased item. I never watch series episodes twice, and I'd rather pay small money to see them once than to buy DRM-free video files. Statistically, I must be the minority because Apple stopped offering series rentals. :(
  - Keverw 15y ago
    Yeah. I don't have a problem with it for one time viewing but still don't want to force flash. Maybe give the studio a option... But still don't care for flash myself.
rachelbythebay 15y ago
Apparently I need to turn on Javascript on my Mobile Safari to view this page... even though I'm running Firefox on an actual computer. How odd. (And kicking the two divs which hold that warning out of the way with Firefox 10's web inspector and a "display: none" gives a perfectly reasonable page. Why not just show that all the time?)
Chris_Newton 15y ago
A few observations, from someone whose business is making decisions about this stuff right now: 1. It's easy for a consumer to say DRM is evil or to claim that it doesn't work anyway. It's a lot harder to literally bank on those things by irrevocably giving away the content your start-up has spent much time and money building. 2. It's easy to assume that any protection will be cracked eventually, and for mass market content like Hollywood movies and pop music it probably will. But many smaller companies are both producing niche content for smaller audiences, making them rather less likely to be cracked, and aiming for rather more modest profits, meaning that if someone rips their stuff and puts it somewhere Google can find there is a real danger of catastrophic actual losses. 3. It's easy to say that HTML5 video is the future and Flash needs to die. Apple and Google would be more credible when making such claims if their own browsers weren't riddled with bugs and limitations in this area and if they gave straight answers about exactly which video formats they support. 4. Open Source software that doesn't support locked up content or formats will give an inferior user experience for the foreseeable future. Whether that loss is acceptable to the users and developers of such software is something only they can decide. Just to be clear: I am not a fan of excessive copyright protections, certainly not a fan of DRM, generally in favour of openness, and sincerely hoping that we can find a viable model for our business that fits with those beliefs. I should also add that I'm not writing on behalf of anyone but myself in a personal capacity here. But from a realistic point of view as a businessman, those arguing for unrestricted HTML5 video vs. DRM/Flash need a far stronger case than they typically make today before their arguments are going to be as convincing as they would like.
- etherael 15y ago
  Why would you not bank on the fact that DRM doesn't work? Putting aside all questions of whether it's evil or not, isn't that a foregone conclusion and an answer to the question that is demonstrated writ large for anyone who cares to make the vaguest attempt at tracking down pirated content? What's the point of pretending it's other than it is?
  - Chris_Newton 15y ago
    It's not a foregone conclusion at all. From a commercial point of view, DRM "works" if it ultimately prevents more lost sales than it causes. In a small niche market, where plenty of users are quite capable of right-click-saving a video but relatively few would know how to break more serious DRM, it is entirely plausible that such DRM would prevent a lot of casual copying. As I said, I don't personally like this idea (and in fact our test programme isn't using DRM right now) but there have been lively discussions about this issue and the truth is that no-one really knows what would happen either way. I'm more interested in empirical evidence than thought experiments, assumptions/generalisations that small media will work the same as Big Media, or the wishful thinking of people reading on-line forums who have the luxury of risking nothing when they downvote a situation they don't like. Edit: The other thing to keep in mind is which of these decisions are one-way. If we decide to launch with DRM and it turns out not to be effective for us, it costs us relatively little if we decide to back it out and serve everything unlocked later. On the other hand, if DRM is effective in our market but we serve everything unlocked initially and people take advantage, Pandora's box is open.
pornel 15y ago
Since open DRM is a logical impossibility, adding DRM to HTML5 video would mean going back to square one: playback would require some kind of closed-source binary blob developed in secrecy by a single vendor. Adoption of such DRM would be at mercy of PHBs from big media, so they wouldn't choose a vendor that values openness and end-user freedoms. In that case just use Flash or Silverlight, as "HTML5 DRM" won't be any better: you won't see it in FOSS browsers (due to licensing/goals), Apple devices (Apple has their own DRM already and market power to keep it that way) or niche platforms that aren't "commercially-viable".

HTML5 and DRM

12 points by Keverw 15y ago

Thomaschaaf 15y ago

Website is down. No Google Cache.

quink 15y ago
I don't know if this will work, didn't last time, but here goes: [Bing Cache](http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=691260178405&w=1e1573b4,3d02e81f http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=691260178405&w=1e1573b4...)
Keverw 15y ago
Yeah... This is the first time my site has ever crashed. Guess it got popular... Trying to figure out what to do next. If I just wait it out or restart the box...
Keverw 15y ago
Just restarted the server and it's up again. I'm using "Quick Cache" as a plugin to cache. Guess it's not doing a good job?

geuis 15y ago

Getting an error like this from CloudFlare seriously casts doubt on their ability to operate. One of the big things they claim is being a solution to exactly this problem.

Thomaschaaf 15y ago

So your startup will basically do what videojs.com (http://videojs.com/ http://videojs.com/) does + DRM? I guess it could work but maybe very easy to duplicate. At least from how I understand your approach. P.S.: Bing Cache works

Keverw 15y ago
No. It's a video on demand service. Also planning on doing live channels and some other stuff. Right now our plan is to serve content in HTML5 but it doesn't really have DRM. So I think that will limit the content we can get from studios.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- dmethvin 15y ago
  Absolutely it will limit what studios allow--as in the major studios will allow nothing. HTML5 video only supports standard HTTP download of a single unencrypted stream, and I'm not clear on how a token scheme will provide any real security for that unencrypted stream. There are the bandwidth-divining problems since you'll want a higher quality stream on a fast connection than a slow one and HTML5 video has no built-in way to do that. On iOS you can use HTTP Live Streaming via Safari, but if you depend on that you're locked into a single platform. What is driving your startup to use HTML5 video? Are you trying to avoid licensing fees for DRM technologies? A lot of these problems can be overcome if you build an app, perhaps it's possible to use a hybrid approach in PhoneGap so you can maintain a HTML UI but play video via a proprietary video library that supports DRM.

pmjordan 15y ago

Interestingly, Webkit on iOS devices CAN play back DRMd content via the HTML5 video tag. As far as I can tell, the web server can request a special Apple-signed client SSL certificate. With this, either the whole video can be streamed via SSL, or you can gate access to the keys used to encrypt the video (via Apple's HTTP live streaming encryption). The latter is of course nonstandard, but cooperative browser vendors could easily implement the pure SSL authentication. I can't imagine Flash or Silverlight video is any more secure than that. There's of course no way a truly open source browser would be trusted in this way; the certificate would have to be hard to extract. (This comment might make me sound pro-DRM. I'm not, just making some technical observations)

shmerl 15y ago

DRM shouldn't be promoted, period.

Keverw 15y ago
I agree. I'm not trying to promote it.
gurkendoktor 15y ago
I'd usually agree, but for one-time video watching, I don't see the harm. There is nothing that might break for legal customers in the future because there is no future, unlike with a purchased item. I never watch series episodes twice, and I'd rather pay small money to see them once than to buy DRM-free video files. Statistically, I must be the minority because Apple stopped offering series rentals. :(
- Keverw 15y ago
  Yeah. I don't have a problem with it for one time viewing but still don't want to force flash. Maybe give the studio a option... But still don't care for flash myself.

rachelbythebay 15y ago

Apparently I need to turn on Javascript on my Mobile Safari to view this page... even though I'm running Firefox on an actual computer. How odd. (And kicking the two divs which hold that warning out of the way with Firefox 10's web inspector and a "display: none" gives a perfectly reasonable page. Why not just show that all the time?)

Chris_Newton 15y ago

A few observations, from someone whose business is making decisions about this stuff right now: 1. It's easy for a consumer to say DRM is evil or to claim that it doesn't work anyway. It's a lot harder to literally bank on those things by irrevocably giving away the content your start-up has spent much time and money building. 2. It's easy to assume that any protection will be cracked eventually, and for mass market content like Hollywood movies and pop music it probably will. But many smaller companies are both producing niche content for smaller audiences, making them rather less likely to be cracked, and aiming for rather more modest profits, meaning that if someone rips their stuff and puts it somewhere Google can find there is a real danger of catastrophic actual losses. 3. It's easy to say that HTML5 video is the future and Flash needs to die. Apple and Google would be more credible when making such claims if their own browsers weren't riddled with bugs and limitations in this area and if they gave straight answers about exactly which video formats they support. 4. Open Source software that doesn't support locked up content or formats will give an inferior user experience for the foreseeable future. Whether that loss is acceptable to the users and developers of such software is something only they can decide. Just to be clear: I am not a fan of excessive copyright protections, certainly not a fan of DRM, generally in favour of openness, and sincerely hoping that we can find a viable model for our business that fits with those beliefs. I should also add that I'm not writing on behalf of anyone but myself in a personal capacity here. But from a realistic point of view as a businessman, those arguing for unrestricted HTML5 video vs. DRM/Flash need a far stronger case than they typically make today before their arguments are going to be as convincing as they would like.

etherael 15y ago
Why would you not bank on the fact that DRM doesn't work? Putting aside all questions of whether it's evil or not, isn't that a foregone conclusion and an answer to the question that is demonstrated writ large for anyone who cares to make the vaguest attempt at tracking down pirated content? What's the point of pretending it's other than it is?
- Chris_Newton 15y ago
  It's not a foregone conclusion at all. From a commercial point of view, DRM "works" if it ultimately prevents more lost sales than it causes. In a small niche market, where plenty of users are quite capable of right-click-saving a video but relatively few would know how to break more serious DRM, it is entirely plausible that such DRM would prevent a lot of casual copying. As I said, I don't personally like this idea (and in fact our test programme isn't using DRM right now) but there have been lively discussions about this issue and the truth is that no-one really knows what would happen either way. I'm more interested in empirical evidence than thought experiments, assumptions/generalisations that small media will work the same as Big Media, or the wishful thinking of people reading on-line forums who have the luxury of risking nothing when they downvote a situation they don't like. Edit: The other thing to keep in mind is which of these decisions are one-way. If we decide to launch with DRM and it turns out not to be effective for us, it costs us relatively little if we decide to back it out and serve everything unlocked later. On the other hand, if DRM is effective in our market but we serve everything unlocked initially and people take advantage, Pandora's box is open.

pornel 15y ago

Since open DRM is a logical impossibility, adding DRM to HTML5 video would mean going back to square one: playback would require some kind of closed-source binary blob developed in secrecy by a single vendor. Adoption of such DRM would be at mercy of PHBs from big media, so they wouldn't choose a vendor that values openness and end-user freedoms. In that case just use Flash or Silverlight, as "HTML5 DRM" won't be any better: you won't see it in FOSS browsers (due to licensing/goals), Apple devices (Apple has their own DRM already and market power to keep it that way) or niche platforms that aren't "commercially-viable".