Re: Cory Doctorow: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards, says it's OK for your browser to say "I can't let you do that, Dave" [via Restricted Media Community Group]

On 2013-10-08 13:26 Mark Watson wrote:
> > > > - Open Source is also imperative so that *anybody* can create
> > > > compatible players, not just a few big companies who own patented
> > > > software.

> > > If I can create a player, I can create a copier.  How do you avoid that?

> > The alternative is saying "only the blessed developpers are allowed to
> > make a player" .
> > 
> > That is not acceptable in an open standard, as this creates a powerfull
> > gatekeeper in the entity that decides who is blessed, and thus who gets to
> > compete (i.e. it's the antithesis of open standard)

> As for open standards, nothing in EME is incompatible with
> http://open-stand.org/principles/

Really? I'll point your attention to:
- point 3 in that definition, specifcally "provide global interoperability ... 
enable global competition"
- point 4 which says "Standards specifications are made accessible to all for 
implementation and deployment." 

black box CDM's, which *will* be a hard requirement for anything beyond demo-
use of EME are in direct opposition to both those points

> It's not EME that "creates" this situation. It's a pre-existing condition.
> The content owners dictate in their license terms that they will only allow
> players with certain properties (specifically, not also being a copier) to
> play their content. 

It's not a condition it's a mere demand, and one that's ignored by the pirates 
already

Furhtermore it's a demand that's flatout incompatible with accessibility on a 
general purpsose computer, and therefore irrealistic and doomed to failure 
(hence the constant flow of pirated content and broken DRM-schemes)

> They're entitled to set their own terms, or, at the very least, W3C is not 
the place to argue that they are not.

W3C is not the place to cater to such irrealistic demands either.

IMO Netflix and co should just say no: 
if hollywood insists on playing chicken they're gonna get their pockets picked 
by the pirates, hence they're really not negotiating from a position of 
strength on that point

(there's even precedent in Itunes vs the music industry, don't let yourself be 
blackmailed in helping to cripple general purpose computing)

> > Note: The W3C patent policy has language to prevent the "only blessed
> > developpers are allowed to make a player issue"-problem .

> I don't think business models for a/v content have ever really been based
> on scarcity. As we've discussed, the marginal cost of production of CDs and
> DVDs was never a significant factor in their availability. Media is not a
> commodity and it has never simply been supply and demand that sets the
> price.

media production has exploded the last decade, there's now 3 countries 
(nigeria, china and india) producing more professional movies then hollywood.

cameras better then those that filmed most of the classics, and cgi to match, 
are now accesible to hobbyists, and so is global distribution

There's more video produced yearly now then was produced in total last 
century, youtube alone is adding more then 100 hours of video uploaded per 
minute now (admittedly most of that of that is cat videos or similar banal 
stuff) [1]

If media is not a commodity yet, it's very rapidly approaching that point,
(attention is different matter, that truely is a scarce resource)

[1] http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

> Sunk costs is about the irrelevance of the cost of production to future
> rational economic decision making. The cost of production may or may not be
> a sunk cost - sunk costs are by definition unrecoverable and maybe selling
> the product is a way to recover those costs ? I am not an economist,
> though. But anyway, just because the money has already been spent doesn't
> imply that the future price should equal the cost of distribution. People
> are free to sell products on whatever (legal) basis the market accepts.

wether the industry likes it or not, they're competing with the pirates at a 
price of 0. 

Most people are willing to pay something out of motivation to remunerate the 
creators, or because of increased convenience. 
DRM is a negative factor with respect to both of those instances (they screw 
with me, I screw with them on the first; and the obvious security, privacy, and 
no-key-management advantages of no-DRM for the second)
-- 
Cheers

Received on Tuesday, 8 October 2013 22:04:21 UTC