Re: I strongly urge all supporters to reconsider the EME proposal. It is not in your best interests!

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 8:27 AM, Matt Ivie <matt.ivie@gmail.com> wrote:

> "I am still not sure what advantage to users comes from having EME worked
> on outside W3C, or simply becoming a de facto standard, compared to a W3C
> recommendation."
>
> The point that is trying to be made here is that it is not benefiting
> users at all to have EME or DRM.
>

I understand this opinion. On the other hand, with EME/DRM users get access
to a certain class of content they might not otherwise have access to,
which is clearly a benefit. Whatever your opinion on that is, my question
still stands.


> It is benefiting the copyright holders' interests and nothing more.
>

So it is not in the users interest to have a solution which has gone
through an open privacy, security and accessibility review, which is
compatible across browsers and where some pressure has been brought to bear
to enable support in open source browsers ? None of those things benefit
users ?


> The W3C exists to make things accessible, available and open to everyone.
> EME is just a gate to making things closed to users.
>

No, it is *without* EME that certain content is closed to users (by choice
of the seller, yes, but nevertheless closed). For example, Linux systems do
not have EME/DRM today and those users are frequently pointing out that
they do not have access to the same set of content that users of other
operating systems do.


> The argument that this makes "premium" content more accessible to everyone
> is a farce. If you wanted it more accessible for everyone it would not be
> necessary to use Digital Restrictions Management. Putting a lock and a
> paywall in front of the content and then adding a nice new shiny super
> highway to get there only benefits the copyright holders because it gets
> more people funnelled to them. Once they're there, the only option they
> have is to play the game of dealing in non-free software and digital
> restrictions management.
>

The paywall is not going away. Nobody is going to start giving away content
that costs $100Ms to produce without payment. Whether there needs to be a
lock is a judgement for the seller, as I keep saying. This is the reality
and it is a commercial reality outside W3C control. Yes, you are right,
making it simpler and more convenient for users to legally view content
will bring more users (legally) to the content. I think this is something
which everyone agrees on. Typically, everyone also agrees that making
things simpler and more convenient for users is a good thing, but we have
an interesting situation here where there is opposition to improving the
user experience (presumably, either because it is not improving the user
experience enough, or because keeping the user experience bad furthers some
other goal).


>
>
> Users currently have the option of dealing with the non-free DRM content
> with plugins. It's not great because in order to view a film or a show they
> would have to use non-free software and agree to the Digital Restrictions
> Management. But it is not a standard and it is a big choice for small
> content providers to put DRM on the content.
>

It would remain a big choice, since there are many things needed on the
server side to enable DRM.


> If this is a standard it is going to encourage more people to
> unnecessarily put their content into DRM.
>

I agree that unnecessarily putting content into DRM should not be
encouraged. Let's think about whether EME actually does that for a moment.
The proposition is that a content provider presently not using DRM would
begin to do so because this is made easier by W3C-standardized EME. That
is, they haven't used DRM to date because the costs would be greater than
whatever they believe they are losing by not having DRM. So, either
W3C-standardized EME-based DRM needs to be substantially cheaper, or it
needs to work substantially better than previous DRMs at reducing those
losses.

It's unlikely to be substantially cheaper to deploy, first because most of
the costs are independent of any of the browser-side things addressed by
EME and second because something like EME is going to happen anyway.
Standardizing it will not make it much cheaper.

And, it's unlikely to work substantially better at reducing losses, except
in the one area of platform compatibility and user experience. But those
losses are small compared to the amount the existing users of DRM believe
they would lose to piracy without DRM. Our putative non-DRM-using content
provider already knows what the non-DRM world looks like and it presumably
isn't so bad for them (otherwise they would already be using DRM): the big
benefit existing DRM users believe they get probably doesn't apply to this
provider.


> This will make the web and media less open. As a whole big content
> companies are going to benefit but not the users.
>

Please explain why you think this is the case. I have explained in some
detail why I think in practice EME will benefit users compared to what
would happen if W3C did nothing. The extent to which media is protected by
DRM on the web will not change significantly as a result of accepting or
rejecting this proposal.

...Mark


>
>
> On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 9:01 AM, Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 1:50 AM, Nikos Roussos <
>> comzeradd@mozilla-community.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 2013-05-20 at 11:08 -0700, Mark Watson wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 10:53 AM, piranna@gmail.com
>>> > <piranna@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >         > Un-spin welcomed. Actually, we're talking about replacing
>>> >         one such system, plugins, with another with better properties.
>>> >         With EME, websites will have far less control over users
>>> >         browsers than we do today and the nature of the control will
>>> >         be mediated via browser vendors and thus more transparent to
>>> >         users.
>>> >         >
>>> >
>>> >         Ok, if that's the point, EME is welcome to me, we only ask
>>> >         please move it outside W3C, I think there shouldn't be any
>>> >         problem in this point, is it?
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Can you explain why you think there will be a better outcome for users
>>> > if EME is worked on outside W3C ?
>>>
>>> The best outcome for users would be if EME is not worked on at all. But
>>> given the fact that it actually lies on the interest of copyright
>>> holders and content providers (not users nor browsers), it certainty
>>> doesn't have any place inside W3C.
>>>
>>
>> I am still not sure what advantage to users comes from having EME worked
>> on outside W3C, or simply becoming a de facto standard, compared to a W3C
>> recommendation.
>>
>> Clearly, the W3C cares about things like interoperability, user security
>> and privacy and transparency which will get less attention outside. To
>> suggest that users will be better off in the short-term with a de facto
>> standard ignores this. Now, I am not sure if anyone is suggesting that.
>> Perhaps the suggestion is that users will be better of *long-term* after a
>> period of short-term user pain dealing with incompatible implementations
>> with poor security and privacy properties ? If so it would be good to be
>> clear about this.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> An "Open Web" organization is not a place where you would expect that
>>> should make technical recommendations that benefit copyright-holder over
>>> user rights.
>>>
>>
>> This view implies taking a position on legal and public policy issues
>> which are not settled in the public sphere. You are saying that users have
>> a right to purchase products on terms that the sellers presently don't
>> offer. Users could certainly be given that right by courts or governments,
>> but in the meantime sellers have a right to set the terms of their offer.
>> Noone is forced to buy a particular product.
>>
>> Now, the W3C could take a position on this. It could clearly state that
>> it believes the products we are discussing should be forbidden by law. And
>> it could argue that until that time the W3C will take no action to
>> facilitate the creation of such products, making them more inconvenient for
>> users in order to encourage public opinion towards the same position.
>>
>> Is that what you are proposing ? That position is not at all obviously
>> implied by the W3C goals.
>>
>> ...Mark
>>
>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Nikos Roussos
>>> http://www.roussos.cc
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> /* Free software is a matter of liberty not price.
>     Visit www.GNU.org * www.FSF.org * www.trisquel.info */
>