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> It's a place where the next Tim Berners-Lee or Mozilla, if they were building a new browser from scratch, couldn't just look up the details of all the "Web" t

by wdewind 13y ago

> It's a place where the next Tim Berners-Lee or Mozilla, if they were building a new browser from scratch, couldn't just look up the details of all the "Web" technologies. They'd have to negotiate and sign compliance agreements with a raft of DRM providers just to be fully standards-compliant and interoperable. I may be totally naive here, but I'm not really sure why this matters. That there is a WC3 standard does not imply that browsers have to adhere to it. If they didn't they simply wouldn't be able to access DRM protected content. From a UX perspective this seems no different from Netflix putting their content behind a login. Maybe I am being an idiot, if so please correct me, but this doesn't really seem like anything to worry about. The threats implied by EFF, that massive corporations will control content on the internet, seems only true for content published by those massive corporations (and thus are already happening now, with 3rd party DRM ie: Netflix's Silverlight player). It doesn't stop people from publishing non DRM protected content. I would agree this doesn't belong in the spec on technical level, but it seems to be inclusive not exclusive.

cyrus_ 13y ago
The W3C is the guardian of the world wide web, a system for disseminating information publicly and globally to all those who may benefit from it. By standardizing DRM for video, they are giving legitimacy to a technical kludge that is designed specifically to prevent the dissemination of information. There are legitimate reasons why someone may wish to save a video to their hard drive, just like they can save an image today. There is no reason the web should be built upon mechanisms designed specifically to privilege corporate interests over the interests of those falling under fair use exemptions to copyright laws.
- wdewind 13y ago
  If I had my way we wouldn't have copyright at all. It seems idiotic to me for the same reasons patents are. But we do, and so just as you say there are "legitimate reasons" why someone may wish to save a video, there are too "legitimate reasons" someone may want to share their work in a protected manner. It's a product. If you don't like it don't buy it. There is no part of this that forces the user to view only DRM protected websites. As far as I can tell this only increases the rights of copyright holders, which, again, I think is stupid, but seems completely legal and a reasonable thing to do under our existing legal framework. Edit: it also does not seem like it will fundamentally change the user experience of the web since the things that it allows are mostly already doable, just not with an HTML standard.
  - fafner 13y ago
    If some copyright holder wants his stuff DRMed then they are free to implement their own DRM plugin or App. But I don't see why we should support them. Especially when it makes our nice open web depend on proprietary closed source binary blobs. The idea was that HTML5 gets rid of Flash and similar plugins and not that HTML5 turns into a vehicle for "yet another Flash". Next thing we are adding a spy module feature because advertisers and the NSA demand it? Well at least the spy module could be free software unlike the proprietary closed source binary blobs needed for Digital Restrictions Management.
  - aaronbrethorst 13y ago
    If I had my way we wouldn't have copyright at all. It seems idiotic to me for the same reasons patents are. Excellent news! So it's ok if I copy the images, CSS and HTML on your landing page for your employer for my competitor, then? Edit: I'm obviously not serious.
    - angrow 13y ago
      I wouldn't recommend it: the name and logo are trademarked, and even if you replaced those, if anyone noticed the rest of the copying, you'd be the laughingstock of the internet. Who'd want to buy your product then?
      - perrupa 13y ago
        Zynga doesn't particularly seem to care about that kind of thing and they're doing pretty ok...
        tesseractive 13y ago
        They are?
        imdsm 13y ago
        The exec$ are doing ju$t fine I'm $ure
- unhammer 13y ago
  > The W3C is the guardian of the world wide web At least they were.
- danesparza 13y ago
  "The W3C is the guardian of the world wide web"... I completely disagree. You are the guardian. Every one of us is the guardian. "Guarding the web" isn't in the W3C's mission at all: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission.html http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission.html They design standards used internationally. That's it.
marcosdumay 13y ago
It matters because of two things: 1 - We'll lose the W3C. We'll have to either create another standards body, or go back to the 90's situation when nobody agreed on anything. 2 - There are a few places where actualy reading the data somebody sent to you is a crime. Despite the drawbacks on those kinds of law, some of those places are still very importantly economically, and we can't just ignore them, at least for now. If you create a code for "don't read this data" to be sent over the web, disobeying it will become a crime there.
- wdewind 13y ago
  1. I don't agree that this is true at all. The W3C is not created to destroy copyright, which seems to be the implication of your statement (ie: we will need a new standards body that does not provide a copyright-compliant standard). I don't agree with copyright law, but it is law. We currently have a web that provides the ability to companies to protect their data via implementation, this simply provides a spec to do it in a different way. It does not fundamentally change the user experience of the web. 2. Yes, like in the United States. Just like receiving stolen goods is a crime. No offense, but when you say things like "If you create a code for "don't read this data" to be sent over the web, disobeying it will become a crime there." I don't think you fully understand how DRM currently works and how it would work using this standard. It is simply a standard people can implement. Edit: as some of you have pointed out, the phrase "copyright-compliant" is somewhat meaningless. I should've chosen my words more carefully. I meant "copyright-enforcement-enabling."
  - saraid216 13y ago
    > The W3C is not created to destroy copyright, which seems to be the implication of your statement (ie: we will need a new standards body that does not provide a copyright-compliant standard). No, what he means is that, if we stop listening to the W3C because of this, the W3C will no longer matter. So either we won't have a standards body, or we will need a new one.
    - wdewind 13y ago
gavinlynch 13y ago
"> It's a place where the next Tim Berners-Lee or Mozilla, if they were building a new browser from scratch, couldn't just look up the details of all the "Web" technologies. They'd have to negotiate and sign compliance agreements with a raft of DRM providers just to be fully standards-compliant and interoperable." What the hell are they even talking about here? Since when has ANY browser been "Fully, 100% W3C Compliant"?? Answer: None. Ever. Seriously. There are rafts of non-compliant features, both legacy and newly introduced, in every single one of the most popular modern web browsers. (Even Opera!!) Certainly, with the last decade of popular support pushing Browser Vendors towards W3C compliance, the web has been more standards-based than ever before. But this is just a silly argument. I agree with the political aim of the EFF here. But let's not just invent things or misrepresent things. It makes them lose credibility in my eyes.
- dannyobrien 13y ago
  Sure, not everything is standards-compliant, nor fully interoperable. But part of the transformative effect of open Internet standards has been that anyone can implement them without permission from others (indeed, the IP policy of the W3C is pretty much engineered to make this the case). If you want to implement a DRM binary blob with EME, you're going to have to negotiate a compliance contract of some kind with the DRM vendor, probably connected to some hook IP. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_and_Robustness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_and_Robustness )
nailer 13y ago
Say you're a netflix customer. You login to watch a video. But Netflix hasn't updated to support your amazing new device that uses a different OS. Pretty much like Firefox and IE6 activeX sites, or iPhones / android and flash. DRM simply restricts playback devices.
JoshTriplett 13y ago
The problem isn't that browsers do or don't have to implement this "standard"; the problem is that the standard itself isn't enough to actually support the content it claims to support. It's the equivalent of standardizing the object or embed tags: it's a standard way of getting at non-standard functionality, and sites then depend on specific implementations of that non-standard functionality, the same way they depend on the Flash plugin today in ways that knowing how to implement the object tag doesn't help with. Standardizing a single fully-specified mechanism for DRM might actually be useful (debatably), but that would break the current model in which DRM is completely unsound and relies on security-through-obscurity. "Standardizing" a means of getting at the myriad non-standard DRM implementations and their non-standard APIs is worse than worthless: it's actively harmful, and it prolongs the death of those technologies. Right now, content providers have to choose whether to support the open web or DRM. They should continue to have to make that choice, with supporters of the open web reaching a larger audience, until eventually all the holdouts either switch or lose. This is a major step backward for that goal, and the W3C has no business claiming EME has anything to do with the open web.
Someone 13y ago
"From a UX perspective this seems no different from Netflix putting their content behind a login." That depends on where you think UX ends. That login will work fine from within an open source browser and/or OS you compiled (and possibly wrote or tweaked) yourself. I haven't read the article, but if that DRM works, it wouldn't run in your browser on your OS, as content providers would not trust them. Chances are that your Chrome, Firefox, or Safari extensions wouldn't even work with the DRM (at best, they would get disabled on protected (from you) pages.)

by wdewind 13y ago

cyrus_ 13y ago

The W3C is the guardian of the world wide web, a system for disseminating information publicly and globally to all those who may benefit from it. By standardizing DRM for video, they are giving legitimacy to a technical kludge that is designed specifically to prevent the dissemination of information. There are legitimate reasons why someone may wish to save a video to their hard drive, just like they can save an image today. There is no reason the web should be built upon mechanisms designed specifically to privilege corporate interests over the interests of those falling under fair use exemptions to copyright laws.

wdewind 13y ago
If I had my way we wouldn't have copyright at all. It seems idiotic to me for the same reasons patents are. But we do, and so just as you say there are "legitimate reasons" why someone may wish to save a video, there are too "legitimate reasons" someone may want to share their work in a protected manner. It's a product. If you don't like it don't buy it. There is no part of this that forces the user to view only DRM protected websites. As far as I can tell this only increases the rights of copyright holders, which, again, I think is stupid, but seems completely legal and a reasonable thing to do under our existing legal framework. Edit: it also does not seem like it will fundamentally change the user experience of the web since the things that it allows are mostly already doable, just not with an HTML standard.
- fafner 13y ago
  If some copyright holder wants his stuff DRMed then they are free to implement their own DRM plugin or App. But I don't see why we should support them. Especially when it makes our nice open web depend on proprietary closed source binary blobs. The idea was that HTML5 gets rid of Flash and similar plugins and not that HTML5 turns into a vehicle for "yet another Flash". Next thing we are adding a spy module feature because advertisers and the NSA demand it? Well at least the spy module could be free software unlike the proprietary closed source binary blobs needed for Digital Restrictions Management.
- aaronbrethorst 13y ago
  If I had my way we wouldn't have copyright at all. It seems idiotic to me for the same reasons patents are. Excellent news! So it's ok if I copy the images, CSS and HTML on your landing page for your employer for my competitor, then? Edit: I'm obviously not serious.
  - angrow 13y ago
    I wouldn't recommend it: the name and logo are trademarked, and even if you replaced those, if anyone noticed the rest of the copying, you'd be the laughingstock of the internet. Who'd want to buy your product then?
    - perrupa 13y ago
      Zynga doesn't particularly seem to care about that kind of thing and they're doing pretty ok...
      - tesseractive 13y ago
        They are?
        imdsm 13y ago
        The exec$ are doing ju$t fine I'm $ure
unhammer 13y ago
> The W3C is the guardian of the world wide web At least they were.
danesparza 13y ago
"The W3C is the guardian of the world wide web"... I completely disagree. You are the guardian. Every one of us is the guardian. "Guarding the web" isn't in the W3C's mission at all: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission.html http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission.html They design standards used internationally. That's it.

marcosdumay 13y ago

It matters because of two things: 1 - We'll lose the W3C. We'll have to either create another standards body, or go back to the 90's situation when nobody agreed on anything. 2 - There are a few places where actualy reading the data somebody sent to you is a crime. Despite the drawbacks on those kinds of law, some of those places are still very importantly economically, and we can't just ignore them, at least for now. If you create a code for "don't read this data" to be sent over the web, disobeying it will become a crime there.

wdewind 13y ago
1. I don't agree that this is true at all. The W3C is not created to destroy copyright, which seems to be the implication of your statement (ie: we will need a new standards body that does not provide a copyright-compliant standard). I don't agree with copyright law, but it is law. We currently have a web that provides the ability to companies to protect their data via implementation, this simply provides a spec to do it in a different way. It does not fundamentally change the user experience of the web. 2. Yes, like in the United States. Just like receiving stolen goods is a crime. No offense, but when you say things like "If you create a code for "don't read this data" to be sent over the web, disobeying it will become a crime there." I don't think you fully understand how DRM currently works and how it would work using this standard. It is simply a standard people can implement. Edit: as some of you have pointed out, the phrase "copyright-compliant" is somewhat meaningless. I should've chosen my words more carefully. I meant "copyright-enforcement-enabling."
- saraid216 13y ago
  > The W3C is not created to destroy copyright, which seems to be the implication of your statement (ie: we will need a new standards body that does not provide a copyright-compliant standard). No, what he means is that, if we stop listening to the W3C because of this, the W3C will no longer matter. So either we won't have a standards body, or we will need a new one.
  - wdewind 13y ago

gavinlynch 13y ago

"> It's a place where the next Tim Berners-Lee or Mozilla, if they were building a new browser from scratch, couldn't just look up the details of all the "Web" technologies. They'd have to negotiate and sign compliance agreements with a raft of DRM providers just to be fully standards-compliant and interoperable." What the hell are they even talking about here? Since when has ANY browser been "Fully, 100% W3C Compliant"?? Answer: None. Ever. Seriously. There are rafts of non-compliant features, both legacy and newly introduced, in every single one of the most popular modern web browsers. (Even Opera!!) Certainly, with the last decade of popular support pushing Browser Vendors towards W3C compliance, the web has been more standards-based than ever before. But this is just a silly argument. I agree with the political aim of the EFF here. But let's not just invent things or misrepresent things. It makes them lose credibility in my eyes.

dannyobrien 13y ago
Sure, not everything is standards-compliant, nor fully interoperable. But part of the transformative effect of open Internet standards has been that anyone can implement them without permission from others (indeed, the IP policy of the W3C is pretty much engineered to make this the case). If you want to implement a DRM binary blob with EME, you're going to have to negotiate a compliance contract of some kind with the DRM vendor, probably connected to some hook IP. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_and_Robustness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_and_Robustness )

nailer 13y ago

Say you're a netflix customer. You login to watch a video. But Netflix hasn't updated to support your amazing new device that uses a different OS. Pretty much like Firefox and IE6 activeX sites, or iPhones / android and flash. DRM simply restricts playback devices.

JoshTriplett 13y ago

The problem isn't that browsers do or don't have to implement this "standard"; the problem is that the standard itself isn't enough to actually support the content it claims to support. It's the equivalent of standardizing the object or embed tags: it's a standard way of getting at non-standard functionality, and sites then depend on specific implementations of that non-standard functionality, the same way they depend on the Flash plugin today in ways that knowing how to implement the object tag doesn't help with. Standardizing a single fully-specified mechanism for DRM might actually be useful (debatably), but that would break the current model in which DRM is completely unsound and relies on security-through-obscurity. "Standardizing" a means of getting at the myriad non-standard DRM implementations and their non-standard APIs is worse than worthless: it's actively harmful, and it prolongs the death of those technologies. Right now, content providers have to choose whether to support the open web or DRM. They should continue to have to make that choice, with supporters of the open web reaching a larger audience, until eventually all the holdouts either switch or lose. This is a major step backward for that goal, and the W3C has no business claiming EME has anything to do with the open web.

Someone 13y ago

"From a UX perspective this seems no different from Netflix putting their content behind a login." That depends on where you think UX ends. That login will work fine from within an open source browser and/or OS you compiled (and possibly wrote or tweaked) yourself. I haven't read the article, but if that DRM works, it wouldn't run in your browser on your OS, as content providers would not trust them. Chances are that your Chrome, Firefox, or Safari extensions wouldn't even work with the DRM (at best, they would get disabled on protected (from you) pages.)