[Bug 27055] Surfacing license to the user

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=27055

--- Comment #3 from Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> ---
(In reply to Sergey Konstantinov from comment #2)
> As far as I understand, DRM systems have sophisticated license permissions,
> such as: allowing local caching; allowing replays; limited license duration;
> etc. It's quite possible that content providers will have different prices
> for different licenses.
> 
> So, we can imagine some malicious service which sells or re-sells content
> under limited license to end-user, pretending that license is more capacious
> than it really is; or some content provider which just "forgot" to mention
> some severe restrictions.

I see. Rather than a requirement for the UA to interpret the license directly,
I think your suggestion is that exposing the restrictions to be applied by the
CDM to the User Agent (and then to the user) would mitigate this form of fraud
?

I don't think reliable detection of fraud this way is practicable or even very
useful. The most this could provide would be earlier detection of the fraud
i.e. when the license is provided rather than when the user attempts to
exercise a right they have paid for and is denied. After that, the user has
only the usual remedies for fraud.

As to practicability, it is not at all obvious how one would distinguish fraud
from legitimate cases where the license restrictions differ from the product
restrictions. For example, in streaming services it is likely that a new
license is granted each time the content is streamed, so then there is no
connection between license restrictions and product restrictions.

For download cases, one could imagine that a new license is required for each
device on which the content is to be played, so then the 'single device'
license restriction legitimately differs from the 'multi device' product.
Whilst the product may contain a right to view the content in perpetuity, this
may still be conditioned on obtaining a new restricted-lifetime license every
so often.

Finally, sites may use complex combinations of licenses with differing
restrictions in order to deliver the end product to users. For example to show
previews, trailers or to speed the startup of playback. Exposing this
complexity to users is not unlikely to be useful.

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the QA Contact for the bug.

Received on Thursday, 16 October 2014 14:43:33 UTC