Re: EME FPWD CfC is closed

On 12/02/2013 11:49 , Andreas Kuckartz wrote:
> Sam Ruby:
>> The tone of both of these emails are inappropriate.  Please take this
>> elsewhere.
>
> I agree regarding the first of these mails, but can you please clarify
> what you find inappropriate in his second mail (below)?

Claiming that whoever you are speaking to is on the side of persecution, 
against liberty, and against users is hardly a great way to make a point 
in a technical discussion. It's a Freedom Fries argument, and I don't 
think that anyone has ever seen much good come from these.

If you take a step back from the heat of the discussion, you'll notice 
that no one involved actually really likes DRM. If you think that the 
problem being tackled here is for or again DRM, then you're missing the 
point.

The question that lies open before us is: given that DRM exists, should 
it be implemented through proprietary plugins or should it be possible 
to hook it somehow into the open web platform?

It's a difficult question in part because even if you have the clear 
goal that DRM should be eradicated — which you'll find is a view 
actually shared by many people who support EME (in this form or another) 
— there is no way to prove which path will most likely succeed in 
attaining that goal.

It may be that DRM/proprietary will cause it to die as the OWP renders 
proprietary platforms obsolete. But it may also be that by being the 
only solutions to a feature that for better or for worse is requested by 
large industry segments, proprietary platforms will be kept artificially 
alive. It certainly seems to be the case that platforms that probably 
should have died a while back (e.g. Flash, Silverlight) survive to this 
day because they support DRM.

Conversely, it may be that DRM/OWP will bring DRM's customers deeper 
into the OWP's fold and culture, progressively assimilating their 
current world view until DRM is digested into nothing. But it may be 
that it keeps DRM alive longer than its time by rendering it available 
on the dominant platform.

We can all make guesses, we can have intuitions, but if we're being 
honest there's no telling which strategy is most likely to succeed in 
either eliminating DRM or turning it into something that's user friendly.

If you see this as being the discussion we're having, the decision we're 
faced with, then it should be clear that grandstanding talk of liberty 
and persecution rings rather hollow.

We have to make a bet, and then we have to help it get where we'd like 
it to go. That's where the more concrete issues surface, notably the 
ability to support this feature in open source products. That's why I 
think that roc's input on issues he sees about supporting EME in Gecko 
has been particularly important and defines concrete hurdles that this 
group must overcome.

So to summarise, at this point in the discussion, I think our motto 
should be: More Open Source, Less Freedom Fries.


>> On 02/11/2013 06:44 PM, Fred Andrews wrote:
>>> The email that you link to, from the BBC, calls for a solution that has
>>> legal sanctions
>>> to protect it - that is people will lose their liberty and be persecuted
>>> over this matter.
>>>
>>> Sorry, my sympathies lie with the users and they have my support.  Your
>>> path is
>>> your choice, you live with it.
>>>
>>> cheers
>>> Fred


-- 
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon

Received on Tuesday, 12 February 2013 14:01:54 UTC