Re: I strongly urge all supporters to reconsider the EME proposal. It is not in your best interests!

>> I think you have mis-understood the point of the EME proposal. We are
not here deciding whether DRM will be used on the web. DRM is used on the
web and will continue to be used on the web for as long as it is a
requirement of the licenses for content that web users want to watch. If
you are opposed to DRM, it's that last part you need to change: either the
licenses or what people want to watch.

I don't believe I have misunderstood the point of the EME proposal
(although I will be further scrutinising it over the coming weekend). It
could be true that this would reduce the amount of "non-standard
proprietary technology" required to implement DRM, but I personally don't
believe it, I think this will probably end up as a big mess of "This site
is best viewed on Windows 8" and "Sorry, this site cannot be viewed in your
browser". In any case, I'm sure this will be great for DRM, it'll do
wonders for DRM. But DRM is not a person, it does not have feelings and
does not have a voice, and it is not nearly as important as the web's user
base. What this proposal will damage is W3C's credibility as a standards
organisation and the web in general. Browsers are big enough already. You
should implement *your* DRM pipeline in *your* apps instead, because it is
not welcome in *my* browser and has absolutely no place in *our* web
standards. You may argue that I can choose not to watch DRM content or
install third party DRM components, but this is actually the choice I have
today. Tomorrow my choice might be between accessing the DRM-centric web,
awash with a wide variety of untrusted installable components, and
accessing only Wikipedia and torrent sites. In other words, the web is only
now starting to recover from the damage products like Adobe Flash have done
to the standardisation process, with popular sites like youtube finally
starting to wean off the platform. Standardising the system of
de-standardisation further than a simple embed tag, thereby lowering the
barrier to entry for developers of non-standard components, will have many
unforeseen consequences, not just on users but also on distributors,
maintainers and content developers.

>> Avoiding a loss of quality - of one form or another - is actually much
harder than you suggest. There are barriers - understanding and buying an
HDPC ripper, re-encoding, a/v sync, redistribution, adaptive streaming etc.
that make things far less convenient than sharing a URL to an unencrypted
file (or the URL + key for an encrypted file)

Far less convenient, sure. Impossible, no, not in theory or in practice. If
this proposal does go through, then I'll prove it myself. No matter how
convoluted the pipeline is, and how many proprietary components it passes
through before exiting my PC through the HDMI port, the data at the end is
still the same data. It is true that it's extremely difficult to record and
encode it again and get a reasonable file size without losing any quality,
but the slight loss in quality won't be anything new for pirate consumers,
and is certainly avoidable in theory.

>> Since when is pay-per-use or subscription-based instant on-demand access
to content streamed over the Internet a "20th century business model" ?

It's just a slight progression from cinema, popularised in the early 20th
century (yes, there are cinemas that let you choose what to watch from an
available media library). The basic difference between cinemas and modern
pay-per-view streaming (apart from not being in a physical cinema) is that
there is no longer any technical reason that the customer should not be
able to watch that movie again, with the same quality, in their own time,
without paying more. There is no need for the huge rolls of film and
expensive equipment that made the pay-per-view model so successful last
century.

>> The lone business model advocated by many opponents of DRM is a
download-to-own one, in which the only thing which can be sold is full
ownership rights in a copy of the content. This business model dates back
to the invention the printing press, when copies or creative works could
first be economically produced. Not that it's a bad model, it just isn't
new.

I didn't say pay-to-own was any newer, but since you disagree: pay-per-view
dates back to the early days of prostitution and stripping. The earliest
evidence of this dates to the 18th century BC, long before Shakespeare was
charging per act. I'd argue that both models date back to very early human
history in various forms. I'd also argue that pay-per-view is 100%
unambiguously bad for consumers. You might say it drives the creation of
better content, but this is like saying that cheap third world labour
drives prices down for consumers, in that it depends entirely on the
companies doing it, and that those companies will simply do whatever they
believe is most profitable to them.

>> DRM-protection of content on the Internet is and will continue to be
widely implemented for as long as the licenses require it and the content
is popular. You're in the wrong place if you want to change those two
things. EME is about how the web fits into that reality and ultimately
boils down to a rather narrow choice between arbitrary, bloated plugins and
browser-controlled CDMs with consistent functionality and APIs (and, yes,
before someone comments, CDMs share some properties with plugins, but the
we think the differences are sufficient to be worthwhile).

Correct, DRM is already widespread (enough) online. I'm concerned about
users not understanding that DRM technology is in place, not understanding
what DRM is. I'm concerned about the prospect of "rendered them directly"
mentioned in the proposal (presumably a typo for "rendering"), particularly
about how cross-platform this will be and also how direct - for example,
will "CDMs" be permitted greater access to my graphics card or operating
system than a regular Javascript app, potentially exposing driver or
hardware bugs to them which could be misused to gain control of my system?
Will these "CDMs" be able to adapt to circumstances where hardware
acceleration is not available or is not as effective (e.g. virtualised
systems), if they render directly?
I can see that this could theoretically be more efficient, and perhaps even
theoretically simpler and easier to manage, compared to current generation
plugins implementing the DRM, but while you believe the differences are
"sufficient to be worthwhile", I (and presumably a heck of a lot of other
people) believe that there will be no *technical* difference in practice.
This will simply be an official W3C endorsement of proprietary,
non-standard, anti-consumer technology. For the average web user, this
might not mean much - until this gains widespread use among a minority who
are happy to pay-per-view, and (being a standard and all) begins to find
it's way into things that aren't intended to be pay-per-view, for example
sites that have some commercial content and some free content may begin
using the same codecs and encryption across the board in order to ease
maintenance, thereby limiting user access to free content.
In summary, I'm concerned that officially standardising this technology
would lead to this technology becoming widespread in circumstances where it
would not normally be considered at all. I do not have any opposition to
the pay-per-view model itself (I won't buy it, but it's just another
product), but I do oppose this model being encouraged as standard practice.


On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 1:36 AM, Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> wrote:

> Zak, Piranna,
>
> I think you have mis-understood the point of the EME proposal. We are not
> here deciding whether DRM will be used on the web. DRM is used on the web
> and will continue to be used on the web for as long as it is a requirement
> of the licenses for content that web users want to watch. If you are
> opposed to DRM, it's that last part you need to change: either the licenses
> or what people want to watch.
>
> The above is just the way things are. If there is popular content on the
> web that is supported in one browser, the other browsers will want to
> support it too and they will do wo with or without the W3C.
>
> What we are trying to do with EME is to *reduce* the amount of
> non-standard proprietary technology needed to do this. I would reduce it to
> zero if I could, I just don't know how to do that.
>
> See also
> http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/05/drm-in-html5-is-a-victory-for-the-open-web-not-a-defeat/
>
> A couple more comments below.
>
> On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 7:43 AM, piranna@gmail.com <piranna@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> +1, you've exposed very clearly your arguments and I totally agree with
>> them.
>> El 15/05/2013 16:37, "Zak Fenton" <zak.fenton@gmail.com> escribió:
>>
>> DRM simply does not belong on the web, it is contrary to freedom of
>>> speech and it is of zero benefit to the consumers who fuel the web economy.
>>> It will only make browsers and servers more complicated and more error
>>> prone, restrict the ability of people to use the web, and waste CPU cycles
>>> encrypting what is probably already widely available to pirates.. As any
>>> technologically competent person is aware, unless you can stream the media
>>> direct to the viewer's brain, there will ALWAYS be ways to circumvent these
>>> methods: A paying subscriber to a channel or buyer of a movie can simply
>>> record their screen and audio output (without any quality loss if they're
>>> smart), freely sharing the result with others.
>>>
>>
> Avoiding a loss of quality - of one form or another - is actually much
> harder than you suggest. There are barriers - understanding and buying an
> HDPC ripper, re-encoding, a/v sync, redistribution, adaptive streaming etc.
> that make things far less convenient than sharing a URL to an unencrypted
> file (or the URL + key for an encrypted file)
>
>
>>  You cannot beat piracy with technology. Suffice to say pirates have
>>> access to better technology, because they get it free! The only thing that
>>> will slow the continual increase in piracy is better content, content which
>>> is actually worth paying for, and better content developers, content
>>> developers who people actually want to pay.
>>>
>>
> Yes, and we are finding in market after market that people are very
> willing to pay a modest monthly sum for access to range of content that is
> available only with 'DRM-required' licences.
>
>
>>  This proposal will not help anybody, it will only make web standards
>>> more complicated, harder to correctly implement, and less reliable as a
>>> result. I'm really beginning to lose my faith in standards bodies like this
>>> to develop standards which are actually of benefit to humanity, rather than
>>> standards which have been set by investors desperately trying to squeeze
>>> profit from a 20th century business model. This simply does not make any
>>> sense.
>>>
>>
> Since when is pay-per-use or subscription-based instant on-demand access
> to content streamed over the Internet a "20th century business model" ? I
> spent just under half of my adult life (so far) in the 20th century and I
> didn't notice any paid-for internet video streaming.
>
> The lone business model advocated by many opponents of DRM is a
> download-to-own one, in which the only thing which can be sold is full
> ownership rights in a copy of the content. This business model dates back
> to the invention the printing press, when copies or creative works could
> first be economically produced. Not that it's a bad model, it just isn't
> new.
>
>
>>  Older generations developed the technology, but it was my generation
>>> that made the internet and the web a popular success. Without the freedoms
>>> we had, future generations will simply move towards underground protocols
>>> and networks that protect their freedom, creating a new safe haven for real
>>> criminals. If this proposal is accepted and widely implemented, it will
>>> perhaps mark the beginning of the end for the relevance of web standards,
>>> but certainly not for freedom online.
>>>
>>
> DRM-protection of content on the Internet is and will continue to be
> widely implemented for as long as the licenses require it and the content
> is popular. You're in the wrong place if you want to change those two
> things. EME is about how the web fits into that reality and ultimately
> boils down to a rather narrow choice between arbitrary, bloated plugins and
> browser-controlled CDMs with consistent functionality and APIs (and, yes,
> before someone comments, CDMs share some properties with plugins, but the
> we think the differences are sufficient to be worthwhile).
>
> ...Mark
>
>
>
>>
>>> Again, I strongly urge all involved parties to reconsider their support
>>> for this proposal.
>>> Yours sincerely,
>>> Zak Fenton.
>>>
>>
>