3 ms·

The W3C's Soul at Stake

14 points by jrepin 13y ago

Scaevolus 13y ago
Making this as a battle is silly. For contractual reasons, companies need to distribute content with DRM. They _want_ to use a more open method than Flash or Silverlight. The choice is between proprietary plugins with drm bundled, or a standard way of encrypting video streams. Not letting it into HTML5 won't make content owners give up on DRM-- those deciding whether their content must be protected are almost certainly ignorant of the technical implementations. Is it a battle if the other side doesn't even notice your action?
- pasbesoin 13y ago
  My concern is not (just) with respect to video streams. Introducing DRM in turn introduces an avenue for locking up content wholesale. And, akin to mandated security backdoors, once a feature is introduced, it tends to be used not just as planned or anticipated but in every fashion someone can conceive. For many concerned about the Web and the Internet, the malicious abuser in this case becomes private entities using such DRM channels to balkanize and privatize the Internet on a wholesale level. [Aside: In writing the previous sentence, I experienced an interesting typo: "wholescale". I didn't immediately notice it, in part because it at a term makes a certain amount of sense, itself.] Let's return to the video stream paradigm. Anecdotally, my streaming Netflix experience has, rather than becoming better with time and presumed advancement, instead become increasingly crap as content providers have declined to renew contracts in favor of their own separate distribution channels. As the consumer, I'm looking at 3,4, 5, and more separate accounts (each at at least circa $10/month, and sometimes significantly more) now in order to stream the same content. I fear that with "ubiquitous DRM", combined with other changes happening in surveillance, legal prosecution, et al., we may be looking at the privatization of the public communication that has, to this point, made the Web and the Internet what they are. TL;DR: I fear that integrated DRM gives entrenched parties too large of a stick to use in insisting: My way, or not at all.

14 points by jrepin 13y ago

Making this as a battle is silly. For contractual reasons, companies need to distribute content with DRM. They _want_ to use a more open method than Flash or Silverlight. The choice is between proprietary plugins with drm bundled, or a standard way of encrypting video streams. Not letting it into HTML5 won't make content owners give up on DRM-- those deciding whether their content must be protected are almost certainly ignorant of the technical implementations. Is it a battle if the other side doesn't even notice your action?

pasbesoin 13y ago
My concern is not (just) with respect to video streams. Introducing DRM in turn introduces an avenue for locking up content wholesale. And, akin to mandated security backdoors, once a feature is introduced, it tends to be used not just as planned or anticipated but in every fashion someone can conceive. For many concerned about the Web and the Internet, the malicious abuser in this case becomes private entities using such DRM channels to balkanize and privatize the Internet on a wholesale level. [Aside: In writing the previous sentence, I experienced an interesting typo: "wholescale". I didn't immediately notice it, in part because it at a term makes a certain amount of sense, itself.] Let's return to the video stream paradigm. Anecdotally, my streaming Netflix experience has, rather than becoming better with time and presumed advancement, instead become increasingly crap as content providers have declined to renew contracts in favor of their own separate distribution channels. As the consumer, I'm looking at 3,4, 5, and more separate accounts (each at at least circa $10/month, and sometimes significantly more) now in order to stream the same content. I fear that with "ubiquitous DRM", combined with other changes happening in surveillance, legal prosecution, et al., we may be looking at the privatization of the public communication that has, to this point, made the Web and the Internet what they are. TL;DR: I fear that integrated DRM gives entrenched parties too large of a stick to use in insisting: My way, or not at all.