RE: CfC: Create Media Task Force

Hi Kornel - 

You make a well-reasoned argument for why businesses who rely on content protection for web delivery of video are wasting their time. Similar arguments have been made many times before, year after year. Commercial video businesses hear these arguments, find them lacking, and continue to use content protection technologies for managed multimedia distribution.
 
The businesses I am talking about are not "Hollywood". It is not the theatrical film industry alone who uses content protection technology. It is the television industry, the multichannel video programming distributors (cable, satellite and telco), online educational institutions, and more. It is any business involved in the managed distribution of multimedia content over the web. And this industry is growing rapidly - as a result of "broadband-broadcast convergence".

To my way of thinking, the issue before us is not whether those businesses are correct in using these technologies. That is a decision they and the end-users of these video services have already made, and what we do or don't do in W3C will have no impact on either of their decisions. 

The issue is whether end users who consume commercial multimedia content are better served by interoperability, and whether that interoperability should be defined in the W3C.

I believe the answer is yes and yes.

John

John C. Simmons | Media Platform Architect | Microsoft Corporation | direct 425-707-2911  | mobile 425-269-5759


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kornel Lesiński [mailto:kornel@geekhood.net]
> Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2012 12:21 PM
> To: public-html@w3.org
> Subject: Re: CfC: Create Media Task Force
> 
> On Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:55:35 +0100, John Foliot <john@foliot.ca> wrote:
> 
> > "Hollywood", as a legitimate content creator on and for the web, has
> > issues around protecting their financial base, and the W3C has a
> > legitimate need to hear out and address their concerns to the best of
> > its technical ability to do so.
> 
> I agree that Hollywood is a legitimate and quite important content
> producer, and has right to protect their financial interest.
> 
> However, between this statement, and choice to develop DRM for the web
> there is a giant leap in logic that requires several assumptions:
> 
> - that Hollywood is significantly hurt financially by piracy. Hollwood
> is known to exaggerate losses[1] and make dubious claims about
> piracy[2].
> 
> - that piracy is a problem best solved with user-restraining technology,
> rather than other ways[3].
> 
> - that technologies that aid creation of regional restrictions, delayed
> distribution, unskippable segments, exclusion of non-approved devices
> are needed to prevent losses, rather than being the cause of lost
> sales[4].
> 
> - that technology can stop piracy[5].
> 
> - if only stopping "casual piracy" is needed, that existing methods of
> obfuscation and access control are not sufficient to stop non-technical
> users (why a casual Netflix user would go through hoops to copy streams
> he has legal access to? Why would user put effort to steal content from
> a streaming service, when it's easier to get it from torrent sites?)
> 
> - that making copying of web content impossible is going to have any
> effect on piracy overall. Same content can usually be copied from other
> sources with no or weak DRM (HDTV, DVD)[6]
> 
> - that content protection needs to be developed by the W3C. Closed, non-
> royalty-free solutions that bypass browser media stack and have blessing
> of Hollywood are available already (Silverlight). From the discussion so
> far it seems that CDMs used by Hollywood will remain closed, won't have
> full RF specs, and will not expose frames to browsers' media stack, so I
> have doubts whether changing one plugin to another similar one is worth
> the effort.
> 
> - that making content protection for Hollywood is in best interest of
> web users and the W3C. The most successful and interoperable parts of
> the web stack are completely open and royalty-free. The parts of the
> stack that have most serious interoperability problems hurting users of
> both FOSS and closed platforms (like iOS) are encumbered by non-RF
> licensing (video
> codecs) or use extension points that became dependent on binary
> proprietary plugins (ActiveX, Flash, Silverlight).
> 
> 
> So I don't think we can easily draw line between "Hollywood wants to
> publish on the web" and "W3C needs to develop Encrypted Media". That
> would need all assumptions listed above to be true.
> 
> --
> regards, Kornel Lesiński
> 
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

> [2] http://blog.ted.com/2012/03/20/the-numbers-behind-the-copyright-

> math/
> [3]
> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-

> Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem
> [4] http://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg

> [5] http://misterborg.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/drm-as-cryptography.html

> [6] http://thepiratebay.se/search/hdtv/0/99/0

>

Received on Saturday, 14 April 2012 20:13:52 UTC