3 ms·

"protected content distributors are not, in general, switching to unprotected media. Instead, they're switching away from the Web entirely." Good. This is what

by bcoates 13y ago

"protected content distributors are not, in general, switching to unprotected media. Instead, they're switching away from the Web entirely." Good. This is what we want. This is what victory looks like. They are perfectly entitled to homebrew whatever weird little network they want, which is about as likely to compete with the web as Blockbuster's braindead internet video rental system was. Eventually they'll decide they're tired of not making money and come around. Until then, they'll continue to get robbed by the professional pirate crew at YouTube, etc. Not my problem. The only way the open Web can lose now is if it makes the deal with the snakeoil DRM devil, which works¹ just well enough to be dangerous but excludes large swaths of users, opens up gaping security holes in everything and generally makes everyone's life difficult. ¹ works=plays, not that the content protection stuff works.

revelation 13y ago
It's not only on their own platforms. Every time someone downloads a movie from iTunes and has it not work because, surprise, you can't do HDCP over VGA to your projector, is a success.
- spankalee 13y ago
  No. For normal consumers it means they either give up on internet distributed media, or upgrade their hardware to support end-to-end encryption.
rimantas 13y ago
I am afraid you are confusing web and internet. Most of the customers won't care what technology delivers their content from "the cloud". And I still don't get what war is "open" (whatever that means) web fighting, against what is it fighting and why should anything win or lose. > "Why are you obsessed with fighting, stick to fishing > from now on."
- dman 13y ago
  That means youre not on an OS where youre waiting hopelessly for netflix / flash to work reasonably.
  - Shorel 13y ago
    Flash is just one approach from many possible. It could be some proprietary VLC-like software that runs only in Win8 and Win9. The point of having this in HTML5 is to avoid this proprietary mess.
    - stdgy 13y ago
      Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it will actually avoid any of the proprietary mess. The encryption/decryption framework is still based on proprietary blobs that will have to be distributed. And they can be distributed with prejudice. That is, just because you're on a browser that supports this exchange standard doesn't mean that you'll have access to the blob that actually does the decrypting. The major distributors will just continue their current strategy of platform/device lock-in. I had gone into this thinking it would be a cool way to easily allow protected/authenticated cross-platform playback. But it does nothing of the sort. Content providers will still discriminate, and we'll be powerless to stop them. This just provides a common API for their discrimination. So... I guess that's something?
- H3g3m0n 13y ago
  As far as I'm concerned It's a good thing that there are too many DRM'd technologies. They are all stamping on each other, engaging in corporate infighting, patenting the underlying DRM technology and so on. Apple want their walled garden, Google their one and nothing from one store plays on another's device. And content providers keep demanding all their resellers implement the stuff dispite anyone being able to grab anything off the PirateBay. As a result the clear path is to avoid DRM and go with formats that play anywhere. Or people will just pirate everything. Having one DRM standard that does play everywhere could provide a kind of unity amongst DRM. This is dangerous, we don't want that crap getting stronger. It could lead to a point where consumers are fine with DRM and are not pissed of because they can't play their iPod music on their new Android phone. People becoming accepting of DRM doesn't seem like a good outcome at all. Fortunately that isn't what we are likely to get. The standard doesn't specify any actual DRM mechanism so they will keep having their walled gardens and competing technology, they will just be able to put them in a HTML5 UI instead. So in the end adding this to HTML5 seems to be totally pointless. Vendors could already implement their own extensions to HTML5 this is nothing more than a 'put drm here' hint. It's unlikely that vendors would implement anything that would allow competitors content to plan on their platform.

by bcoates 13y ago

revelation 13y ago

It's not only on their own platforms. Every time someone downloads a movie from iTunes and has it not work because, surprise, you can't do HDCP over VGA to your projector, is a success.

spankalee 13y ago
No. For normal consumers it means they either give up on internet distributed media, or upgrade their hardware to support end-to-end encryption.

rimantas 13y ago

I am afraid you are confusing web and internet. Most of the customers won't care what technology delivers their content from "the cloud". And I still don't get what war is "open" (whatever that means) web fighting, against what is it fighting and why should anything win or lose. > "Why are you obsessed with fighting, stick to fishing > from now on."

dman 13y ago
That means youre not on an OS where youre waiting hopelessly for netflix / flash to work reasonably.
- Shorel 13y ago
  Flash is just one approach from many possible. It could be some proprietary VLC-like software that runs only in Win8 and Win9. The point of having this in HTML5 is to avoid this proprietary mess.
  - stdgy 13y ago
    Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it will actually avoid any of the proprietary mess. The encryption/decryption framework is still based on proprietary blobs that will have to be distributed. And they can be distributed with prejudice. That is, just because you're on a browser that supports this exchange standard doesn't mean that you'll have access to the blob that actually does the decrypting. The major distributors will just continue their current strategy of platform/device lock-in. I had gone into this thinking it would be a cool way to easily allow protected/authenticated cross-platform playback. But it does nothing of the sort. Content providers will still discriminate, and we'll be powerless to stop them. This just provides a common API for their discrimination. So... I guess that's something?
H3g3m0n 13y ago
As far as I'm concerned It's a good thing that there are too many DRM'd technologies. They are all stamping on each other, engaging in corporate infighting, patenting the underlying DRM technology and so on. Apple want their walled garden, Google their one and nothing from one store plays on another's device. And content providers keep demanding all their resellers implement the stuff dispite anyone being able to grab anything off the PirateBay. As a result the clear path is to avoid DRM and go with formats that play anywhere. Or people will just pirate everything. Having one DRM standard that does play everywhere could provide a kind of unity amongst DRM. This is dangerous, we don't want that crap getting stronger. It could lead to a point where consumers are fine with DRM and are not pissed of because they can't play their iPod music on their new Android phone. People becoming accepting of DRM doesn't seem like a good outcome at all. Fortunately that isn't what we are likely to get. The standard doesn't specify any actual DRM mechanism so they will keep having their walled gardens and competing technology, they will just be able to put them in a HTML5 UI instead. So in the end adding this to HTML5 seems to be totally pointless. Vendors could already implement their own extensions to HTML5 this is nothing more than a 'put drm here' hint. It's unlikely that vendors would implement anything that would allow competitors content to plan on their platform.