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> Almost none of this is true if the operating system allows you to provide a write-only layer – you'd be limited to the operations which the GPU can perform wi
by pyalot2 13y ago
> Almost none of this is true if the operating system allows you to provide a write-only layer – you'd be limited to the operations which the GPU can perform without the browser seeing the bits but that would address the needs of most sites at or better than the current plugin situation.
The EME language indicates that the aim is to provide raw frames to the browser. Regardless, Adobe (with flash) has moved on from the idea to draw everything on top and not interact with the browsers compositor a long time ago. It turned out to be just extremely unworkable for a lot of flash usecases. These days, flash provides a filled framebuffer for the browser, and the browser composits it with the page in software or hardware.
The step back to the model that the proprietary blob draws directly on screen will turn out to be non usable for most web properties (like netflix, youtube, amazon, bbc, vimeo etc.) because they all place custom branding, advertising, user annotations, closed captions, player controls and other navigational/informational elements on top of the content.
> Say we do draw a line and convince the W3C to drop EME — who benefits other than Adobe and Microsoft? Apple doesn't need EME because they're selling billions of dollars of movies through the iTunes store. Google will put EME or the equivalent into Chrome for anything they can't sell through their store.
Microsoft has been one of the staunchest and most feeverish proponents of DRM. Initially launched by Google and Netflix, to a mounting opposition from the EFF, Cory Doctorow, me and many, many other people, Microsoft stepped in and agressively stiffled dissent in the discussion on the standards body and held almost daily telephone conferences with netflix to push EME trough as fast as possible.
The reason Microsoft is all hot&bothered about EME is because for the first time, in a long time, they see a credible chance to lock the web back into only their own platform (and certain tollerated proprietary small-bit players).
The question isn't who is going to benefit if you oppose EME. The question is who is going to benefit even more if you don't oppose it (which is Microsoft).
So the argument "Oh Apple and Microsoft are just gonna profit off EME" is moot, they're gonna pull their vendor-lock in and non-standard web fraud anyway, but now they get to say "waaaat? we're not evil! see, it's a standard!!!"
> This places Firefox in a really unpleasant situation: Mozilla will either be forced to license something, hope something changes before the plugin vendors drop out, or lose market-share because users are more likely to switch to IE / Safari / Chrome if something doesn't work in Firefox rather than not pay for DRMed content.
As I've said before, Firefox is in more than an unpleasant situation, because either EME is totally crippled and unusable for everybody, or the CDM will only be available to proprietary browsers. Either way, Mozilla/Firefox loses. But allowing EME/CDM/DRM is the worse choice, because it attaches all the legal headaches of DRM with a standard bodies blessing.
- acdha 13y ago> The step back to the model that the proprietary blob draws directly on screen will turn out to be non usable for most web properties (like netflix, youtube, amazon, bbc, vimeo etc.) Again, the fact that this works with Silverlight and Flash disproves your argument. I don't like DRM, I wish people would refuse to give up control of their devices but it's time to stop pretending that most of the computer users on the planet haven't decided the deal is acceptable. > The reason Microsoft is all hot&bothered about EME is because for the first time, in a long time, they see a credible chance to lock the web back into only their own platform You need to back up that claim about Microsoft - the only thing they stand to gain is not spending the effort supporting the other parts of Silverlight. The companies which have most vocally supported EME (Netflix and Google) both have significantly more to gain because it makes them less beholden to Microsoft and reduces the amount of non-web development they do. In any case, how exactly is is worse if one of the 30 million Netflix subscribers watches video using EME rather than Silverlight? Either way, the content is restricted to a proprietary decoder. Either way, the user won't care unless it prevents them from watching a movie. Whether or not that has a standard interface won't change any part of that process any more than, say, the lack of a W3C standard for eBook encryption has prevented millions of sales of HTML5+CSS+JS inside a DRMed ePub 3 wrapper. The real question here isn't a contest of technical minutiae but how to convince the millions of reasonably satisfied customers to stop paying for DRMed content. The only thing which has shown any signs of that happening was when incompatible DRM tanked home AV sales because early HDTVs weren't compatible with BluRay players; at the iTunes/Netflix-level it's clear that most people don't care enough to stop paying for it. If you care about actually changing this the real question is figuring out how to change the market.
- pyalot2 13y ago> Again, the fact that this works with Silverlight and Flash disproves your argument. I don't like DRM, I wish people would refuse to give up control of their devices but it's time to stop pretending that most of the computer users on the planet haven't decided the deal is acceptable. It doesn't work with flash. Because Adobe has given up trying to do that, because it turned out to be unusable. Flash shares a framebuffer with the browser compositor, and that's why it's been used for everything under the sun, because it became usable enough by that simple measure of not drawing directly on screen bypassing the browsers compositor.