Re: Netflix HTML5 player in IE 11 on Windows 8.1

On Jul 3, 2013, at 15:12 , Duncan Bayne <dhgbayne@fastmail.fm> wrote:

>> restricting a webservice by locality is an obvious artificial barrier, 
>> which (from the user's point of view) has no silver lining.
>> 
>> Yes, I realise that it's something forced on Netflix by Hollywood, 
>> BUT... that just illustrates the fundamental problem of Hollywood not 
>> getting the web (combined with massive hubris)
> 
> And it's a very good reason for the W3C to oppose DRM.  

I don't think anyone *likes* DRM.  For the user, as many have said, it introduces all sorts of problems -- it interferes with fair use, you don't get device portability, and so on.  For content owners, it's a total pain in the neck to build the encryption and key management systems.  For device makers, building tamper-resistant implementations is painful, and decryption users precious battery life for portable systems.  And so on.

Pointing out that DRM has problems is, in a sense, stating the obvious.  But for some kinds of content, the content owners currently have a hard time working out how to protect themselves from the kind of easy copying that the internet affords.

Copyright exists, and creative people deserve to be paid (and have the right to sell their work, and to say under what terms they will sell it).  We're not in a position to do away with intellectual property.  Nor can we roll back the clock to the days when you needed to be able to press an LP to make a copy of music.

For some kinds of content, indeed, the owners have found a way to live without DRM:

* printed books are cheaper than photo-copying or scanning them
* music is sufficiently cheap, per-song, and copies have uncertain quality, that most people prefer to be honest
* copying web-sites, and text and stories linked therein, especially dynamic ones, such as news sites, isn't worth the trouble, when a URL link works well

But for movies and TV shows -- some of them -- their value and copy-ability are both unfortunately high.  Some degree of 'garden fence' that people have to climb over -- and know they have climbed over and transgressed -- is felt to be needed.

Yes, it's true, if you want to catch people after the fact, forensic watermarking can be used.  But the rumor of it is a weak deterrent, and it's an expensive solution.


So, in a sense, don't tell us that the existing answer is bad.  We know that.  It reminds me of Tom Lehrer:

    We are the Folk Song Army.
      Everyone of us cares.
    We all hate poverty, war, and injustice,
      Unlike the rest of you squares.



Tell us a better answer.



David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Wednesday, 3 July 2013 22:28:16 UTC