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]

On 2013-10-10 12:38 Mark Watson wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 11:56 AM, cobaco <cobaco@freemen.be> wrote:
> > DRM *requires* the hijacking of the the customer's computer, it's only by
> > taking control of your customers computer that you can prevent him/her
> > from
> > using it for wat it was designed (manipulating bits, which includes the
> > *possibillity* of copying).
> 
> It's not "hijacking" if there is user consent. And clearly the DRM
> components which the user has bought/installed were designed to do exactly
> what they do.

 meaningfull consent requires an understanding of what's being consented to 
(IANAL, but my understanding is that there has to be a meeting of minds for a 
contract to be valid)
Which percentage of regular users do you suppose have that?

> If I choose to, I can ask my computer to behave like a media player with
> certain properties and I can prove to the content provider that this is what
> I have asked my computer to do. I don't have to do that if I don't want to.
> If I think these terms are unreasonable, I'll just pass on the deal they're
> offering.

With black-box software you cannot truely know if what it's designed to do is 
what you agreed to when you installed it. 

That's even more true now that whistleblowers have shown that collusion 
between a lot of the big software companies and the US/UK intelligence-
community is not only happening but common (and what's known is in all 
likelyhood still just the tip of the iceberg)

so yes, hijacking
 
> So, again, it depends on your definition of open standard. I'm looking at
> open-stand.org. I see no reason why a traditional standards organization
> couldn't fully define a DRM system under those principles. I think you're
> working with a stronger definition of "open".

nope, I used your definition, the one you linked to earlier and refer to here 
(link is http://open-stand.org/principles/ for those not wanting to go dig for 
it)

which says:
- in point 4: "are made accessible to all for implementation and deployment."
- and in point 3: "provide global interoperability"

EME+CDM violates both, *by* *design*

> > In other words stop pretending the industry is interested in an open
> > standard.
> > For that to be the case you would need
> > 1) full documentation of the DRM system *including* the CDM's, and
> > 2) support for full interoperability of of the DRM system with 3th party
> > implementations
> > 
> > It's abundandly obvious the industry is not willing to do either let along
> > both. Consequently EME is not an open standard, which means it has no
> > place in
> > W3C.
> 
> EME is just an API. An API can be standardized without standardizing the
> rest - like <object> - and there is value in that.

we already have an API for black boxes, you just named it,
we don't need a 2nd one

> I'm not saying EME isn't for DRM - obviously it is - just that is it
> possible and sometimes useful to standardize part of a system and leave
> another part unspecified.

> Particularly in this case where standardizing the actual DRM in W3C would
> not be possible (and this last is not just a willful refusal on the part of
> the industry, it's just not possible, as far as I can see, not least
> because of the IPR situation).

right so you've just admitted that:
a) EME is DRM
b) you can't standarize the actual DRM in W3C

So why exactly are you and the rest of the industry arguing for EME as a W3C 
standard?

A standard that leaves the actual DRM (i.e. the CDM's) unspecified does not 
gain the webcommunity anything at all compared to the black box approach of 
flash or silverlight, it essentially just provides an alternate sort of black 
box. Flash at least has the virtue of being widely supported by now.

Yes, yes, flash is to heavy for mobile. There's nothing stopping the industry 
from cooperatively designing and all using a new kind of black box specific for 
DRM-video through the <object> tag

> So, again, it still isn't clear to me why this proposal causes such a
> reaction, except because of the sense that W3C might be giving some kind of
> political or moral endorsement to a technology approach that some people
> think it should not endorse. The proposal itself is just an alternative to
> <object> to access some unspecified capabilities, but with a more
> constrained scope that could lead to improved user experience compared to
> <object>.

The reaction is because it endorses an approach that is in direct oposition to 
the very idea and nature of general purpose computers connected through an 
open web, 
You know where any piece of software that has bothered to implement a spec can 
fully interoperate with any other piece of software complying with the spec, 
no matter who controls either end. Black box DRM subverts that by design thus 
subverting the very thing W3C is supposed to champion

It does so without any gain at all for the open web, and while pretending 
that's a good thing.

In other words it's a wolf in sheeps clothing, and those of us seeing through 
the disguise are profoundly unhappy, uncomfortable and ANGRY at having it 
here.
-- 
Cheers

Received on Thursday, 10 October 2013 20:47:57 UTC