Re: WebVR and DRM

Just for reference of what I'm talking about. Google got hit with a record
$1.1b fine for an infarction. That's about 0.1% of their market cap, 1.2%
of their annual revenue and 11% of their profit.

Extending the time of violation by the content industry by 500%, the region
of impact by 1000% and projecting onto an estimated $300 billion or so
revenue, that means fines in the region of $200b or so would not be
disproportionate.

On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 9:06 PM, Florian Bösch <pyalot@gmail.com> wrote:

> Oh and I forgot to add 360° video for instance. Which youtube (and others)
> implement with WebGL of course. It's never a terribly good idea to put a a
> byzantine consortium making technical decisions in the way of those who
> want to create good and innovative things. The inevitable effect is that
> good and innovative things don't happen. Eventually the law will catch up
> to the fact that DRM is just used to stifle innovation, erect barriers to
> entry and exclude the competition. And when it does, all those who signed
> those contracts will be as much on the hook as the content industry who
> pushed DRM on everybody in the first place. I would be pretty uneasy if
> there was a possibility my company could be found liable for an antitrust
> violation of epic proportions, even if only a tiny fraction of that
> liability would stick to any one defendant.
>
> On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 8:54 PM, Florian Bösch <pyalot@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 8:22 PM, Kieran Farr <kieran.farr@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>    - The concept of a restricted Video Layer that supports existing
>>>    web-based video DRM schemes would be a reasonable solution for most legacy
>>>    publishers looking to get their "feet wet" with VR. I think this is a great
>>>    idea and would kickstart many WebVR enabled sites -- especially if it can
>>>    piggyback nicely off of the HTML5 video element's existing "goodness".
>>>    Those that wish to make use of more advanced WebVR / 3D pipeline features
>>>    would need to weigh that against their contractual rights for content
>>>    access.
>>>
>>> I think that's pretty useless, for the same reasons that Facebook/Oculus
>> felt it was pretty useless, and a few reasons on top of that.
>>
>>    - No mipmapping (hurts viewing fidelity overall, but also disables
>>    ambient light effects)
>>    - No anisotropy (hurts viewing fidelity)
>>    - No syncing of video content and WebVR content
>>    - No audio integration with anything attempting to do spatial audio
>>    - No way to handle subtitles and the like in a VR friendly fashion
>>    (at a proper place maybe outside the video frame, with a proper VR oriented
>>    text rendering solution)
>>    - No shading/integration with the rendering pipeline. That also means
>>    no effects on the video surface used for UI or aesthetic reasons
>>
>> For anybody unfamiliar with the need to read out textures for rendering,
>> please see this WebGL experiment: http://alteredqual
>> ia.com/three/examples/webgl_deferred_arealights_texture.html
>>
>> Ultimately, if you want good applications, those applications need to be
>> able to work with the data they're supposed to operate with. If you can't,
>> what you get is crap. This is a recurring trend throughout all DRM. It
>> degrades user-experience for legitimate uses, while it does nothing to
>> prevent illegitimate uses. The race to "ultimate DRM" is a race to quality
>> rock bottom.
>>
>
>