Re: Invalid acceptance of DRM requirement (was Re: walling of the web)

I think most of the points in your mail are answered in previous mails, but
two notes below:

On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 3:57 PM, cobaco <cobaco@freemen.be> wrote:

> On Wednesday, Wed, 2013/07/03, Mark Watson wrote:
> > I think we should let users decide what they want to watch and not make
> > judgements about their decisions.
>
> user reactions on various sites and blogs regarding EME in particular, DRM
> in general, and related legislation such as the DMCA and EUCD make general
> opposition to both DRM and the current EME shenenigans abundandly clear
>
> this a lot closer to fact then judgement, do you have any data disputing
> that? if not the point still stands
>

Even in tech-focussed fora the conversation is far from one-sided. For
example
http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1h8jwy/cancelnetflix_the_announcement_is_netflixs_latest/


>
> > The volume of data on the internet consisting of content from the
> > "traditional" producers dwarfs that from individuals and smaller
> producers
> > at least in the US.
>
> wrong:
> back in 2011 youtube uploads alone represented more content every 60 days
> then the 3 major us video television networks had produced in 60 years
> (see [1], and back in 2011 it was 35 hours of video uploaded every minute,
> youtube recently passed a 100 hours uploaded per minute [2], so its now
> every 20 days or so)
>

No, what I said was that what people *watch*, by volume of data, is mostly
from "traditional" producers (see
http://www.sandvine.com/news/global_broadband_trends.asp). I expect we are
both right. We are measuring different things.


>
> [1] http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-statistics/
> [2] https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/nl/statistics.html
>
> > That's not to say that any particular kind of content isn't important. As
> > I said, we shouldn't be making judgements here.
>
> agreed regarding what kind of content is important (or not)
>
> But that's kind of the point, there is already way more non-traditional
> content (produced mostly by individuals) then there is of traditional
> content.
>

But, still, people are mostly watching the "traditional" stuff.


> > > Piracy is a fact of life on the Internet, that content is available
> > > with or without their cooperation.
> >
> > It would be better, though, if the content could be available on the web
> > through routes that don't involve copyright infringement, surely.
>
> Yes, but that's gonna require Big Content changing their business model to
> fit the web age, no sign of that happening yet for traditional video
> products
>

Well, I would cite my own employer's service as a model that fits the web
age. Do you disagree ? What's not "web age" about it ?


>
> > > In point of fact a lot of content is _only_ available via piracy to
> > > much of the population (due to region locks on official big content
> > > sites, due to bad technical implemenations excluding alternative
> > > platforms, or due to complete non-availability of older/less popular
> > > content through official channels)
> > >
> > > Therefore the point that 'the open web must accomodate them' is quite
> > > obviously untrue: the open web is doing just fine without that
> > > accomodation, there's no reason I know of to believe that will
> > > magically change.
> > >
> > > Since the required accomodaton requires accepting DRM (and thus
> > > accepting gatekeeper control of clientside development), W3C should
> > > tell big content to go take a hike.
>
> this point still stands
>

Whilst piracy certainly exists, I would not say that the open web is doing
"just fine" with this model for providing access to content. The user
experience is often awful and arcane, decent discovery and recommendation
are completely missing and there is no economic model that supports
creation of new content. Plus, pirate sites ask their users to participate
in law-breaking in order to access the content (a much bigger ask than
installing a CDM, surely). Definitely not "just fine".


>
> > > 6) "A situation where premium content is relegated to applications
> > > inaccessible to the Open Web or completely locked down devices would be
> > > far worse for all."
> > >
> > > Given that the stated purpose of DRM is to lock down devices/software,
> > > how do you square that with your support for DRM?
> >
> > Well, the idea of EME at least is to minimize the component that needs to
> > be "locked down" so that it contains only the functionality necessary for
> > its specific purpose and the rest of the application functionality is
> > open. This is an improvement on the existing plugins, which contain a
> > lot of other functionality and certainly better than native apps or
> > custom devices where everything is closed.
>
> EME actually allows locking the browser out of accessing protected content
> completely (that's what CDM's that render content directly are all about),
> how is that in any way shape or form an improvement?
>

What are you comparing with ? You talk as if the browser would have access
to this protected content if only the CDM was not present. I'm comparing
with the status quo and saying EME is an improvement over that.


>
> in fact section 2.2 of the spec has the following
>
> Media data processed by a CDM may not be available through Javascript APIs
> in the usual way .....
>
> Where media rendering is not performed by the UA, for example in the case
> of
> a hardware protected media pipeline, then the full set of HTML rendering
> capabilities, for example CSS Transforms, may not be available. One likely
> restriction is ...
>
> => this is not an improvement, it in fact opens the door to a whole new
> vector for screen locks and display corruption
>

Compared to what we have today ? Really ?

...Mark


>
> --
> Cheers, Cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)
>
>