Re: Cory Doctorow: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards, says it's OK for your browser to say "I can't let you do that, Dave" [via Restricted Media Community Group]

Bonjour Karl,



On 2013/10/04 16:38, Karl Dubost wrote:
> Let's try to reply. Making questions to hide affirmation is never a
> good way to have peaceful discussion ;)
> 
> Emmanuel Revah [2013-10-04T09:10]:
>> Why is that finding a better "thing" is considered as the only way to 
>> avoid W3C's recommendation of EME ?
> 
> So basically, content owners currently uses a business model that is
> working for them. I'm not judging if it's a good or a bad business
> model at that point. It's just a fact.


Actually, I would tend to think it's yes and no. Yes it works for them, 
up to now it's been working great. But no, it's probably not a good 
business model for the near future. (In short, they need to move the 
web, and fast, or risk extinction.)



> Content distributors (servers) and content players (clients) want to
> be able to make money in their own activities. So they follow the
> requirements set by the content owners. They want to minimize their
> costs and they create technologies which will answer these
> requirements. Social and business dynamics at play. The legal systems
> allow it (with some restrictions in some countries as we have already
> discuss it).
> 
> If some of we—I would very much like that everyone here thinks as we
> aka the community discussing about it—think that it is not a good idea
> to do EME and that we should not work at all on it, we decide as a
> group that the W3C platform is not the good place for this. It's a
> possible choice. The likely outcome is that some of the we will go
> outside of W3C and creates it in another fora (because it is
> authorized by law). But it can still be a choice of W3C. It didn't
> solve the larger issue which is about DRM on the Web, it just pushes
> it outside of W3C. It is basically a political/philosophical/etc.
> stance. Valid points.
> 
> OR we decide that we want to enable a environment which helps content
> owners, distributors, players and users to find a way to agree on a
> technological solution where a consensus is possible. So instead of
> creating a wall, we allow a space to find a solution. I'm still hoping
> for this, but myself I haven't been able to imagine a positive
> solution, nor I haven't seen technological propositions for it.
> 


The first solution is what's been around for a long long time (Flash, 
Silverlight and other things). I think the main reason for introducing 
EME into HTML standards is to make things easier/cheaper for content 
producers to "protect/restrict" their streams. Using audio/video tags is 
so much easier to use and maintain, the downside is that people can 
always "right click".

So in short, support for EME comes from companies that want to disable 
"right clicking" (I mean really really disable it).


>> Are retarded business models that want to be on the web more important 
>> than the web's users ? W3C says yes.
> 
> This can't be answered in a reasonable way. And it's borderline
> acceptable.


I maintain that, IMHO, the business models that require EME are 
retarded. What I mean is that they haven't caught up with the rest of 
the world. Business models that aren't retarded don't require that the 
world regress to satisfy their needs.

The world wild web is where things happened, every day new ideas and 
things and so on. EME marks the desire to slow that down, maybe to let 
retarded business models catch up with the rest of the web ?


> Think about "we" when discussing, if you do not, I don't
> think there's a reasonable "contrat social" (Rousseau) and then you
> should protest outside of this forum. We value our discussions because
> we respect each other even if we disagree. I myself think that DRM is
> not good at all for culture and its development and for the society.
> Business models are chosen by people who make a living of it. If you
> think this specific model is not moral, ethics, etc. then it's toward
> the society representative that you should voice your concerns. It
> will be more effective.


I'm not sure what you really mean by all this.


>> Of course the W3C is a community, but it has guidelines. From what 
>> I've understood, EME does not respect those guidelines. For example, 
>> there is no guideline that states "if you can't find a better solution 
>> then we should use this broken thing here".
> 
> 
> That's a nice articulation. It is so far an interpretation of W3C
> mission [1].


 From the page you linked to (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission):

--------------------
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.
--------------------

This. EME implies DRM, which implies specific hardware and/or software. 
It's not like 3d effects which may require a modern graphic board with 
hardware acceleration, this could imply specific hardware that only 
certain vendors may fabricate. There are already projects and stuff 
where the DRM/CDM would be directly integrated into hardware.

To me, this makes EME non-W3C compliant. The fact that EME is already 
this far in progress shows that these values are not real ones.


Another point is that EME will probably not be available to all people 
to protect their own published content.



On the same page:

--------------------
W3C's vision for the Web involves participation, sharing knowledge, and 
thereby building trust on a global scale.
--------------------

I don't trust EME/CDM, it's a one way system. Users must trust a bunch 
of 3rd parties to not mess with their system and for more tin foily 
folk, to not read our emails and film us while we sit in front of our 
computer/phone/table/refrigerator. Seriously, this does mean users lose 
control over their computing for the convenience of being able to 
watch/listen to "premium" content. (And don't even get me started on 
"premium content").


Trust must go both ways, if not, it's not trust it's fear. Fear of 
corporations messing with our systems or fear of users messing with 
corporate productions.




[...]
> The point raised by Cory will happened, because when a system is
> created, people are using it. It will overflow the perimeter of media.
> Definitely and *I* think it is very bad for the Web as we know it. My
> own unsolved question is what do *we* do about it?

("We" as you also say, those who don't want DRM).

- We can say what we really think, even on this mailing list.
- We DON'T have any obligation to think of other ways to 
"protect/restrict" content.

   Seriously, this point annoys me because it's always there, in every 
thread. "We" have ZERO obligation to find other solutions and one of the 
many possible reasons might be that "we" (or some of "we") do not see a 
problem that needs to be solved here. Every time someone who opposes DRM 
agrees that "we" could/should find a better way, I see a DRM proponent.


- We should not use browsers that support EME, this bug report is 
interesting
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=923590



Your links:
> [1]: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission
> [2]: http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/
> [3]: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-admin/2013Feb/0122
> [4]: 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-admin/2013Sep/0129.html



Anyway, enough blah blah.


Cheers,



-- 
Emmanuel Revah
http://manurevah.com

Received on Friday, 4 October 2013 19:02:18 UTC