Re: Netflix HTML5 player in IE 11 on Windows 8.1

On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 3:12 PM, Duncan Bayne <dhgbayne@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> > restricting a webservice by locality is an obvious artificial barrier,
> > which (from the user's point of view) has no silver lining.
> >
> > Yes, I realise that it's something forced on Netflix by Hollywood,
> > BUT... that just illustrates the fundamental problem of Hollywood not
> > getting the web (combined with massive hubris)
>
> And it's a very good reason for the W3C to oppose DRM.  From the W3C
> mission (my emphasis):
>
> "One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all
> people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure,
> native language, culture, *geographical location*, or physical or mental
> ability."
>
> It would be appropriate for the W3C to reject the EME proposal for this
> reason alone: it will be used to prevent the benefits of the web from
> being available to anyone regardless of geographical location.
>

On this point, specifically, there's a lot more involved in offering a paid
subscription video service in a new geography than getting the content
licenses. The cost and logistics of marketing, payment systems and serving
infrastructure alone make each new market a separate proposition.

Regarding content licenses, yes, studios slice and dice these by geography.
The sum cost of these individual per country licenses is indeed greater
that the cost of a global license would be. Nevertheless, purchasing a
global license would be a ridiculous expense if you only have the
logistical ability to offer service in a few countries.

Per country licensing makes it *possible* to grow a service
country-by-country and for smaller single-country services to exist. If it
were an all-or-nothing proposition there would be no company on earth that
could afford to do it.

Note that I'm talking about subscription services here - since that is what
I am concerned with. The considerations are different for download or
pay-per-view streaming.

Furthermore, we don't expect EME to provide anything in the way of
geographical restrictions. The W3Cs privacy group is one of the groups
reviewing the specification. I expect them to say something about
personally identifiable information being passed from the CDM to the
service, for example geographic information. At the very least, users need
to know what is happening in that respect, but since it isn't a requirement
to pass geographic information perhaps there is more we can do ? On the
other side, browser implementors that integrate with CDMs should know what
those things do - ideally they should have seen the source code - and so
again this provides a vector to constrain the CDM functionality to only
what is necessary to meet the requirements.

...Mark


>
> --
> Duncan Bayne
> ph: +61 420817082 | web: http://duncan-bayne.github.com/ | skype:
> duncan_bayne
>
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>
>