4 ms·

I wonder if this proposal (which was inevitable eventually) is a direct result of a couple things. - Apple decides (wrong or right) to not support Flash on a w

by 51Cards 15y ago

I wonder if this proposal (which was inevitable eventually) is a direct result of a couple things. - Apple decides (wrong or right) to not support Flash on a wildly popular mobile platform - Flash begins its demise in general (again inevitable but IMO a little too soon) - Adobe cedes further development on Mobile Flash - secure video content deliverers are immediately faced with loosing the only existing "secure" video "standard" on the web and having to develop platform specific solutions - a proposal is put forward to put DRM into HTML5 video (which it is going to have to get eventually for ubiquitous adoption, like it or not) That's the chain I see.. which may have pushed this HTML5 DRM thing to the forefront before it has been properly hashed out. Not placing fault on any of the parties there, just a chain of events to me.

eli 15y ago
Don't forget the brief rise and fall of Silverlight
mindslight 15y ago
Don't forget the popularity of netflix/hulu/itunes and however else people are duped into supporting the content cartels. The 'web' was on its way to becoming a receive-only ghetto as soon as 'apps' started to replace static pages. The money to be made by giving the masses a hip new cable TV is a nasty accelerant.
- icebraining 15y ago
  The 'web' was on its way to becoming a receive-only ghetto as soon as 'apps' started to replace static pages. I disagree completely. It's now much easier to create and distribute your own content than it ever was, in great part exactly because of the new interactive websites. Youtube alone is a great example. Sure, it has plenty of old media content (and plenty of abusive takedowns), but how many hours of amateur stuff is being viewed every single day? Probably orders of magnitude more than there ever was on the web ten years ago. Then there's Flickr, Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger, deviantART (140k submission/day) and so many more. Sure, Netflix, Hulu, etc are major players, but I don't think user generated content is being replaced - TV is.
  - mindslight 15y ago
    Sure, the actual volume of publishing and types of content have increased, but the range of abilities has dwindled. Users are only able to interact with each other through opaque centrally controlled services where the middlemen choose how and what the services support and approve (sound familiar?). Having different executable code and a data silo for every implementation of the same idea puts the users at the mercy of the proprietary services (see: any time people whine about a website changing). Their only choice ends up being which company to resign themselves to.
    - notJim 15y ago
      > Users are only able to interact with each other through opaque centrally controlled services, where the middlemen choose how and what the services support and approve Previously, normal users were unable to interact with each other at all. Do you really think grandma/your uncle/etc would have learned to write HTML, found a place to get hosting, and put it online, if only Facebook hadn't come along? Oh, and by the way, it turns out you have even more options for putting your HTML content online now [Heroku, AWS, Linode, Wordpress, Jekyll, etc], thanks in large part to the financial and social capital influx that came to the Web during the "Web 2.0" boom.
      - mindslight 15y ago
        "Normal users" certainly used email clients, installed web browsers, and used local page-creation tools. That certain technologies have made these tasks easier does not mean that those specific technologies were the only way forward, or that those technologies are without drawbacks. Publishing Turing-complete blobs clearly gives the creator the most freedom and power, but at the expense of limiting the consumers' options to "experience content as intended" or "don't". My whole point is that this philosophy of server-knows-best is causing the 'web' to revert to the standard creator -> middleman -> passive consumer chain. Of course many different "ways" of publishing are flourishing - those are the middlemen!

by 51Cards 15y ago

eli 15y ago

Don't forget the brief rise and fall of Silverlight

mindslight 15y ago

Don't forget the popularity of netflix/hulu/itunes and however else people are duped into supporting the content cartels. The 'web' was on its way to becoming a receive-only ghetto as soon as 'apps' started to replace static pages. The money to be made by giving the masses a hip new cable TV is a nasty accelerant.

icebraining 15y ago
The 'web' was on its way to becoming a receive-only ghetto as soon as 'apps' started to replace static pages. I disagree completely. It's now much easier to create and distribute your own content than it ever was, in great part exactly because of the new interactive websites. Youtube alone is a great example. Sure, it has plenty of old media content (and plenty of abusive takedowns), but how many hours of amateur stuff is being viewed every single day? Probably orders of magnitude more than there ever was on the web ten years ago. Then there's Flickr, Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger, deviantART (140k submission/day) and so many more. Sure, Netflix, Hulu, etc are major players, but I don't think user generated content is being replaced - TV is.
- mindslight 15y ago
  Sure, the actual volume of publishing and types of content have increased, but the range of abilities has dwindled. Users are only able to interact with each other through opaque centrally controlled services where the middlemen choose how and what the services support and approve (sound familiar?). Having different executable code and a data silo for every implementation of the same idea puts the users at the mercy of the proprietary services (see: any time people whine about a website changing). Their only choice ends up being which company to resign themselves to.
  - notJim 15y ago
    > Users are only able to interact with each other through opaque centrally controlled services, where the middlemen choose how and what the services support and approve Previously, normal users were unable to interact with each other at all. Do you really think grandma/your uncle/etc would have learned to write HTML, found a place to get hosting, and put it online, if only Facebook hadn't come along? Oh, and by the way, it turns out you have even more options for putting your HTML content online now [Heroku, AWS, Linode, Wordpress, Jekyll, etc], thanks in large part to the financial and social capital influx that came to the Web during the "Web 2.0" boom.
    - mindslight 15y ago
      "Normal users" certainly used email clients, installed web browsers, and used local page-creation tools. That certain technologies have made these tasks easier does not mean that those specific technologies were the only way forward, or that those technologies are without drawbacks. Publishing Turing-complete blobs clearly gives the creator the most freedom and power, but at the expense of limiting the consumers' options to "experience content as intended" or "don't". My whole point is that this philosophy of server-knows-best is causing the 'web' to revert to the standard creator -> middleman -> passive consumer chain. Of course many different "ways" of publishing are flourishing - those are the middlemen!