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

> "I am still not sure what advantage to users comes from having EME worked
> on outside W3C, or simply becoming a de facto standard, compared to a W3C
> recommendation."
>
> The point that is trying to be made here is that it is not benefiting
> users at all to have EME or DRM.
>

> I understand this opinion. On the other hand, with EME/DRM users get
access to a certain class of content they might not otherwise have >access
to, which is clearly a benefit. Whatever your opinion on that is, my
question still stands.


There is no technical limitation locking up this content and keeping it
from the users, it is quite the contrary. Allowing EME to become a W3C
standard sets a bad precedent. It opens the door for future Digital
Restrictions Management schemes. What goes in as a W3C standard should be a
benefit to the users and not large companies.


> It is benefiting the copyright holders' interests and nothing more.
>

>So it is not in the users interest to have a solution which has gone
through an open privacy, security and accessibility review, which is
>compatible across browsers and where some pressure has been brought to
bear to enable support in open source browsers ? None of those >things
benefit users ?

Those things are all fine and in the users interests up until you insert
Digital Restrictions Management into it. It seems though that HTML5 already
addresses all of the things that you're listing above.

The W3C exists to make things accessible, available and open to everyone.
> EME is just a gate to making things closed to users.
>

>No, it is *without* EME that certain content is closed to users (by choice
of the seller, yes, but nevertheless closed). For example, Linux systems
>do not have EME/DRM today and those users are frequently pointing out that
they do not have access to the same set of content that users of >other
operating systems do.

Those users are not asking for Digital Restrictions Management either,
they're asking for the content. Many of those users are more than happy to
pay for access to the content without Digital Restrictions Management. Some
of those users aren't going to know the difference and it is for those
people and the people who DO know that I'm speaking up for. Big content
providers are the ones keeping them from accessing that. It's not a
technical limitation. Besides, copyright already over-protects the content.

The argument that this makes "premium" content more accessible to everyone
> is a farce. If you wanted it more accessible for everyone it would not be
> necessary to use Digital Restrictions Management. Putting a lock and a
> paywall in front of the content and then adding a nice new shiny super
> highway to get there only benefits the copyright holders because it gets
> more people funnelled to them. Once they're there, the only option they
> have is to play the game of dealing in non-free software and digital
> restrictions management.
>

>The paywall is not going away. Nobody is going to start giving away
content that costs $100Ms to produce without payment. Whether there >needs
to be a lock is a judgement for the seller, as I keep saying. This is the
reality and it is a commercial reality outside W3C control. Yes, you >are
right, making it simpler and more convenient for users to legally view
content will bring more users (legally) to the content. I think this is
>something which everyone agrees on. Typically, everyone also agrees that
making things simpler and more convenient for users is a good >thing, but
we have an interesting situation here where there is opposition to
improving the user experience (presumably, either because it is not
>improving the user experience enough, or because keeping the user
experience bad furthers some other goal).

No one is arguing that the bills don't need paid. At what point is the
content paid for though? I'm pretty sure that movie studios are still in
business even though they claim that copyright infringement has cost them
money.  Industries change. Do you think people made a lot of money on horse
carriages after the automobile was made affordable?

Locking the content is up to the seller and should be up to the seller but
building a platform into a public standard just to give these content
providers a place to pedal their wares shouldn't be a priority for the W3C.
Let them(content providers) solve the problem and keep web standards free
of DRM. You can argue that this is going to be "open" but at some point it
gets locked and providing a hook for that lock in HTML is not in the users
interest. Again, copyright protects these works already. A user should be
able to view their movie or listen to their music in whatever software they
choose, on whatever device they choose. Once they've paid to view the
content, if they're following copyright law there should be no further
restrictions. Also, regardless of the privacy that's put into the standard,
we all know that content providers are going to track every play, pause and
fast forward of every single user if they're given the chance. What's to
stop them from injecting advertisements and other restrictions beyond what
is being discussed here?


>
> Users currently have the option of dealing with the non-free DRM content
> with plugins. It's not great because in order to view a film or a show they
> would have to use non-free software and agree to the Digital Restrictions
> Management. But it is not a standard and it is a big choice for small
> content providers to put DRM on the content.
>

>It would remain a big choice, since there are many things needed on the
server side to enable DRM.

I'm sure that with EME there are many non-free pieces that will have to be
jammed into a free system to make the DRM work as you would like. Again,
this is just putting the interests of big content providers ahead of users.
In the long run this is a scheme to keep profit margins high.

If this is a standard it is going to encourage more people to unnecessarily
> put their content into DRM.
>

>I agree that unnecessarily putting content into DRM should not be
encouraged. Let's think about whether EME actually does that for a moment.
>The proposition is that a content provider presently not using DRM would
begin to do so because this is made easier by W3C-standardized >EME. That
is, they haven't used DRM to date because the costs would be greater than
whatever they believe they are losing by not having DRM. >So, either
W3C-standardized EME-based DRM needs to be substantially cheaper, or it
needs to work substantially better than previous DRMs at >reducing those
losses.

>It's unlikely to be substantially cheaper to deploy, first because most of
the costs are independent of any of the browser-side things addressed by
>EME and second because something like EME is going to happen anyway.
Standardizing it will not make it much cheaper.

>And, it's unlikely to work substantially better at reducing losses, except
in the one area of platform compatibility and user experience. But those
>losses are small compared to the amount the existing users of DRM believe
they would lose to piracy without DRM. Our putative >non-DRM-using content
provider already knows what the non-DRM world looks like and it presumably
isn't so bad for them (otherwise they >would already be using DRM): the big
benefit existing DRM users believe they get probably doesn't apply to this
provider.

You are assuming that every person that violates copyright law in order to
view or listen to content would have actually bought a copy. This is
ridiculous. All DRM does is treat everyone like a criminal. One thing
you've illustrated here to me is that it IS all about the bottom line for
content providers and publishers. If they've weighed the costs then they've
made a calculated decision to go against user freedoms. In the grand scheme
of things this IS for the content providers and you've just made that
clear. I'd also like you to read the post by Mr. Corey Doctorow. He has
many good points that show why it's not a good idea to put Digital
Restrictions Management into the Web Standards.

This will make the web and media less open. As a whole big content
> companies are going to benefit but not the users.
>

>Please explain why you think this is the case. I have explained in some
detail why I think in practice EME will benefit users compared to what
>would happen if W3C did nothing. The extent to which media is protected by
DRM on the web will not change significantly as a result of >accepting or
rejecting this proposal.

How can you be so sure that the extent that media is restricted by DRM on
the web will not change? I'll bet you can produce more proof of how much
content providers profits will go up than you can of how much the use of
DRM is going to fluctuate because that is not in big content providers
interests.

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