RE: Netflix HTML5 player in IE 11 on Windows 8.1

cobaco wrote:
> 
> On Sunday, Sun, 2013/07/07, David Singer wrote:
> > nor will high-value content be accessible through the web
> 
> What makes you believe it's still high value?
> The world has changed, technology has moved on...

It is high value, based upon demand. This has not changed since the dawn of
time.

> 
> Making copies of information,

And right there is where you fail to understand the problem. 

Hollywood movies are not "information", they are entertainment. Further it
is entertainment that many people want to see, ergo the high demand, thus
the high value. It has nothing to do with the cost of production per-se, as
expensive movies flop and lose money, and budget movies strike a chord and
attract a large viewership. None-the-less, the value is in the demand, and
the monetization is in the distribution of that creative work.


> and sharing that copy with somebody (or a
> umpteen somebodies) on the other side of the world is now -literally-
> childsplay

Correct, if and when you have the authorization to do so. 

Like it or not, entertainment produced by large companies have copyrights
attached to them, and with those rights comes a need to enforce and protect
those copyrights.  If your battle is with copyright, then you are arguing in
the wrong place: the last I heard the W3C respects the laws of all
countries, whether or not they believe they are right or wrong.


> This is a digitally connected world. We all read, write, watch,
> photograph,
> film, share, and copy all day long.
> 
> The unavoidable economic consequence of that is that we all realise
> just how
> cheap one more copy distributed worldwide is, and consequently how low
> the
> value of that one extra copy is.

The value is not in the copy, it is in the content. The financial gain is in
the controlled distribution of the content. Failing to understand what is
being discussed here is simply further marginalizing your contributions.
(And for what it's worth, all of these insights you are sharing, have been
belabored upon already numerous times - you are not stating anything new or
germane to the discussion.)

> 
> The view that a digital copy of something is a high-value good is
> simply
> outdated (as economy 101 tought all of us that passed it: the cost of a
> good
> tends towards it marginal costs)

Sure, except we are not talking about goods here, we are talking about
intellectual property, the creative effort funded by companies whose
business model is to invest in these types of projects with the hope that
they will see a return on their investment. That is a far cry from
left-handed widgets that will, as Economics 101 taught us, always race to
the bottom with regard to price.


> 
> In terms of movies produced Hollywood is no longer the centre of the
> world:
> China, India and Nigeria all have thriving movie industries that now
> produce
> more content then Hollywood does.

What does this have to do with anything? 

Seriously, this is a list and discussion about EME and encrypted media. The
source of that media is inconsequential, outside of the fact that I am sure
that Bollywood is also interested in protecting their commercial output from
piracy and theft.

Further, if you want to spend your free time watching non-protected Nigerian
movies on your laptop, please go do so. That has nothing - NOTHING - to do
with this discussion.


> 
> None have production costs that are anywhere near those of Hollywood.
> And while it's true that living costs in America are higher...
> 
> According to wikipedia [1] the average nigerian movie is shot in a
> week,
> costs 17-23k to produce and routinely sells 150-200k copies at 2-3$ a
> dvd.

Since the W3C does not spec out DVD standards, nor are they an economic
think-tank, you are simply spinning out gobbled-gook to try and make a point
that has nothing to do with the standards work at the W3C. Have you run out
of real points to make?

<snipping facts useless to this discussion>

> 
> Obviously there's plenty of economic opportunity for profitable movie
> productions at prices significantly lower then today ... even in
> America.

You are cordially encouraged to go make such a movie. I wish you well.



> When hollywood tries to protect prices of a movie copy at 15$, that's
> just
> not realistic anymore. Welcome to the 21st century (and it's only gonna
> get
> worse)

It is not the business of the W3C to tell other businesses how to conduct
their business. Why do you think that the W3C should be dictating business
models to content producers? What exactly do you believe the role of the W3C
is?

If you believe you have the royal insight into how to revolutionize the
North American film industry, why are you wasting your and our time here?
Go, go do it. Contact Louis CK and make that $2.00 dollar movie. Strike the
deal with Industrial Light & Magic to provide those flashy special effects
for $1,000 dollars, and please be sure to invite all of us to the Premier
Screening. I'll give you 2 bucks for that.


> 
> You want to stop piracy?
> You don't need DRM.
> What you need is a site that allows us to:
> - purchase a movie

These movies have NEVER been for sale. You purchase a license to view, and
sometimes you purchase raw materials used as a delivery mechanism: you own
the DVD, but not the content on it. You don't like that deal? Don't purchase
the dang DVD. If you still insist on purchasing the DVD? You've just defined
high-value content.


> - at a reasonable price (and 15$ is nowhere near it)

I guess you only attended half of those Economics 101 classes huh? The
"reasonable price" is what people are prepared to pay. Carbon is the fourth
most plentiful element on the earth. Compress it, shape it, put it into am
artisan crafted setting, and you have a diamond worth millions of dollars.
Compressed carbon rocks should not be worth millions of dollars, but they
are. Reasonable is between buyer and seller - Economics 101.


> - without jumping through needless DRM-hoops that limit the device or
> software we can play the movie with, that stops us from time or format
> shifting, from making backups, etc.

The goal of EME is to eliminate the multiple "hoops" and an attempt to
streamline the process. You want to reduce those hoops, but you don't want
the engineers to work on how to do that? I'm confused.

Since the license you enter into does not allow for format alterations or
unauthorized copies, those are the terms of the contract. Read the EULA -
when it comes to the law, ignorance is not an excuse. Don't like those
terms? Don't enter into the contract. Want to still see the movie? The terms
of that high-value content are clearly spelled out by the owner.

What you are asking for, is the elimination of owner rights when it comes to
intellectual property. That will never happen at the W3C, so if that is your
fight, please take it to the appropriate place. Write your senator or
elected official: none of this has anything to do with specifying a
technical standard at the W3C.

> 
> > do you really think there are no consequences?  that other principles
> > won't suffer if you only look at this one?
> 
> Let's turn that around, let's think about the long-term consequenses of
> DRM
> schemes
> 
> There's lots of content hidden in propriatary file formats that's now
> lost
> forever, as no-one can access them any more, the companies that made
> those
> file formats and their documentation is gone, the programs that wrote
> them no
> longer run.

Old argument retreaded ad-nauseum. Next.

> 
> DRM is the same thing, in 10 years time whatever DRM scheme a CDM
> implements
> is gonna be unsupported,and  any content locked up in it is going to
> inaccesible.


Old argument retreaded ad-nauseum. Next.


> 
> That's our cultural heritage that we risk loosing (yes the big
> successes
> will be released in new formats, the less succesfull stuff will simply
> be
> lost)


Old argument retreaded ad-nauseum. Next.

> 
> Why should W3C sacrificy true interoperability (it's quite clear CDM's
> are
> bound to specific hard and/or software configurations) for the current
> outlier
> of hollywood mega-profits?

Hey cool, you have the definitive crystal ball. Where'd you get that? I want
one too. Imagine all the money I could make predicting the outcomes of
sporting events, the stock market, and anything to do with the future. I
could even leave a note for Marty McFly (because, you know, I already
Watched that DRM protect movie and my life is still ok)

I can't be bothered answering any more of your comments. You clearly have a
fight you wish to fight; whether or not this is the appropriate place I am
now quite unsure (Movies, Nigeria, DVDs... none of that has anything to do
with the topic at hand, nor the subject line of this thread, but why let the
facts get in the way of a good rant?)

Fight on brother, fight on.

JF

Received on Tuesday, 9 July 2013 04:54:59 UTC