[sboselli]

Shame, shame, shame.

We're losing the internet day by day, if we haven't done so already.

I've seen people and posts here and there calling for attention on these issues, but imho it's all too subtle. We should start using harsher terminology for what's actually happening. This is flat out CORRUPTION, and I'm not seeing anyone express it as such.

It's probably too late already, and unfortunately, this is merely a reflection on what's happening in the world in the larger geo-political context. Corruption everywhere.

[ashark]

If someone launches a new HTML-based Web with crippled javascript (no network comm access, for one, including ability to trigger links or forms), some small, restricted subset of CSS, and much better built-in dynamic table and form elements, I'm there.

This Web's about to be eaten by DRM and WebAssembly anyway. Pretty soon it'll just be a way to deliver QT apps (or some other framework that runs in WebAssembly and renders to OpenGL or similar) and video. A web where the only thing you'll find when you follow a link is more documents (or a download) and pages can't try to make your computer do a bunch of stuff you don't want it to would be nice to have again, and it's clear now that the system itself has to ban the capabilities that enable all the garbage, or it'll take over.

[anonacct37]

> If someone launches a new HTML-based Web with crippled javascript (no network comm access, for one, including ability to trigger links or forms), some small, restricted subset of CSS, and much better built-in dynamic table and form elements, I'm there.

Me too. There will be dozens of us.

[leggomylibro]

I already use noscript, but most people won't like having to hit 'temporarily allow' and reloading the page 1-3 times before most sites will function. Also, sites that lean heavily on trendy frameworks like fucking React often just white-screen because of their extreme reliance on JS. I'm hugely against its adoption for that reason, but I understand that I'm in the minority there.

I dunno, it just seems like common sense at this point. Javascript is a powerful attack vector, like ads. And many people already use adblockers in some capacity, for that kind of reason.

It'll definitely suck as HTML5's various peripheral features become strong and widely-used attack vectors.

[jdmichal]

I mean, if a site legitimately needs a large amount of dynamic communication back to the server... Fine, whitewall me until I enable your JavaScript. I understand that server-side rendering is basically dead. But it's really frustrating when it's things that could be easily served statically, like blogs.

[dom0]

> I understand that server-side rendering is basically dead.

Server-side rendering is a mature technology, don't measure it's pervasiveness in how often you see articles in the news about it...

[jdmichal]

Hey, I love ASP.NET as much as the next guy. But there's no mistaking the large trend from what used to be entirely server-side rendering (LAMP days) to REST services with JavaScript front-ends.

[yosito]

Count me in. There will be at least three dozen.

[jameskegel]

We can always reclaim Gopherspace!

[mozumder]

getting a little optimistic there...

[glitcher]

Dozens compared to the many millions who wouldn't make such a switch doesn't feel all that optimistic.

[shallot_router]

I believe they were being sarcastic.

[kerkeslager]

Ultimately, I think the failure of the open web runs deeper than that. When I visit, for example, a cookbook website, when I view a recipe, the problem isn't just that the site can run arbitrary scripts on my computer. It's also that I have no control over how that recipe displays because so much of that display is in HTML. I can't pull it into a useful format and store it with all my other recipes because it's in HTML. And contrary to its goals, HTML isn't a semantic markup language. I can't automatically convert imperial into metric units, because they aren't represented as measurements at all. I can't configure the display of the recipes for my nearsighted grandmother because that configuration happens when the recipe is rendered from a recipe document into an HTML document. The failure of the open web is that we need JavaScript to reasonably render the various kinds of documents which are being stripped of their metadata so they can be shoehorned into a non-semantic document format.

Removing JavaScript prevents malware and adware vendors from running their programs on our machines, but it doesn't empower users. We can control or data but we still can't analyze data websites give us.

The way forward, I think, is to create more standardized document types and let people build renderers for them. If I go to a cookbook website, I should be able to download recipe documents. If I don't like how my cookbook program renders the recipe, I should be able to download another program can render it. This breaks the power that websites have as the sole entities with the capability to render their documents, and gives the power back to users.

[jdmichal]

I'll repost a comment by mcphage on why this doesn't work, in general. TL;DR is that common ontologies sound great but don't work in reality, because it leaves no room for value-added services from individual providers. (Recipes would probably be OK, because there's just not a lot of value-add you can really provide. Or, alternatively, I'm just completely ignorant about how value could be added.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13214134

"""

I'm not sure this goal is very practical, even in the toy example you used (being able to swap data sources for weather forecasts).

If you can use a common vocabulary to access multiple APIs, that requires that all APIs implement the same feature set. Which means getting the API sources to agree on the features to implement, and how to describe them, and stop them from adding any features on that the others don't have. But of course, they'll all be motivated to add their own features, to distinguish themselves from their competition.

And once a API consumer is using a feature that other API producers don't support, then the consumer is locked into that producer, and the whole shared vocabulary is for naught. And of course the API consumers will be looking for additional features, because those translate into features that they can offer to their customers.

Basically, this requires API producers to work together to hobble their ability to meet their customers' needs, all to make it easier for their customers to drop them for a competing endpoint. So it looks like a net negative for everybody.

"""

[kelnos]

Eh, that's not entirely true.

To still allow for competition, you define a base feature set and representation, and then you allow vendor extensions. You need some sort of standards body that can promote vendor extensions to standardized, supported things. And clients can choose to support whatever (or no) vendor extensions that they want to.

However, I agree with you that it's not very practical, but for different reasons: 1) competitors don't necessarily like to cooperate to that level and 2) it will slow down progress a lot, which is a decently good reason for #1. And 3), which I think is the big one:

Companies doing this stuff really don't want standards if they're the first-mover, because standards necessarily enable competition. If I'm an anti-competitive producer (or even just a producer that doesn't mind competition, but wants to maintain a head start long enough to secure a market position), I don't want to start off with a standard: I want to do my own thing, and get people to adopt it, and then I can lock them in, at least temporarily. If someone comes along later and clones my format, that's fine, but they have to do work to figure it out, and I still own the format, so I'm naturally ahead.

[jdmichal]

> To still allow for competition, you define a base feature set and representation, and then you allow vendor extensions. You need some sort of standards body that can promote vendor extensions to standardized, supported things. And clients can choose to support whatever (or no) vendor extensions that they want to.

Right. The problem is in the first step. The moment a consumer likes a vendor extension and begins relying on it, they are locked in until the standards body gets around to standardizing it. So all this cooperation to pick a standard and maintain it, and consumers still end up locked in because they like certain extensions more than others. And software providers for consumers still have to write individualized support for all the providers to in order to manage all their extensions.

So all these cycles went to building a standard, and where's the actual win? We still have handlers customized to individual providers. We still have consumers choosing to rely on singular providers.

[kelnos]

That's just the tradeoff you make. The lock-in is only temporary until the new feature is standardized. If users like the non-standard feature enough to use it and want it in the standard, then it's a good thing. Otherwise you end up with stagnant crap and no innovation.

[kerkeslager]

You left out users when you said "everybody".

Yes, this model makes it so content creators actually have to create content or their customers will drop them for a better content creator. That sounds great for users.

I'm not sure why I should care that a few user-hostile rent-seeking entities won't have complete control of the internet anymore.

The API extensions causing vendor lock-in complaint is fairly bogus. Features would be driven by the content renderers, not the content creators. It's that very abdication of power that browsers have given to content creators that the system I'm proposing would avoid.

[jfrankamp]

An interesting choice of example because recipes are one of the best defined and used micro formats on schema.org and used practically by google (which encourages adoption). Writing a generic recipe reader is relatively easy, I've done it although not for your use case. Your point stands though, just not for recipes IMO.

[rotrux]

Oh but don't worry! As soon as someone breaks www.cookbooksRus.com's "Encrypted Media Extensions," you or someone totally benevolent will be able to help render ANYONE's www.cookbooksRus.com browser-experience! Server-protection isn't always a 0-sum game against client-protection, but in this case it totally is.

[otakucode]

Sure, and I'm sure the users will step up to fund your legal defense when you go down for violating the DMCA and CFAA and whatever else they can come up with.

[rotrux]

Phooey & patooh! Obv the internet population doesn't know what's good for them. Politicians are WAAAAAY smarter than normal people. Everyone knows this.

One must simply route their VPN traffic through Eritrea => Thailand => Russia => Cyprus => China => back to some AWS server in SF & rejoice.

Just make it more expensive to trace you than the value of what you took/broke/F'd-with! Lawyers' fees not necessary!

[kerkeslager]

When the files being passed around are self-contained documents, the central server becomes less and less even a necessary component of the system.

[TeMPOraL]

As it should be. I hope the DRM folks will ignore IPFS until it's too late.

[chrisweekly]

Respectfully, I see your complaint as conflating or combining several orthogonal issues. Addressing your sight-impaired grandmother's needs is a matter of accessibility; user-centric responsive design considerations relate more to CSS than JS.

Gotta push back against the "create more standardized doc types" bit (wat) -- it sounds like you want more APIs and more user-friendly tools for consuming them, which would be great and is more compatible with reality. SoA and recent shifts toward empowered-client approaches like GraphQL are steps in that direction.

I'm also glad you mentioned "documents" so often, because your ideas relate to a document-centric web. Which is not what we have. Rather it's evolved into an application delivery context.

[kerkeslager]

> Respectfully, I see your complaint as conflating or combining several orthogonal issues. Addressing your sight-impaired grandmother's needs is a matter of accessibility; user-centric responsive design considerations relate more to CSS than JS.

That's exactly what I'm saying. JavaScript isn't the only part of the problem: HTML and CSS are also components of the problem.

Your distinction between applications and documents is an insightful one. Perhaps one way to describe the problem is that HTML and CSS contain elements of "application" rather than "document". If we think of a document as being purely semantic and layout/style as being elements of an application's rendering, then it becomes clear that only a fraction of HTML is actually document-relevant. CSS and the rest of HTML is application.

[woodrowbarlow]

I think you're too quick to put DRM and WebAssembly in the same bucket. Yes, WebAssembly could lead to a future of closed-source proprietary technology on the web (and in that sense is similar to DRM), but the difference is that WebAssembly offers technical value. WebAssembly is a tradeoff for the public, whereas DRM exists strictly to restrict the public.

[baddox]

I don't really see any new threat from WebAssembly. Isn't the only threat that the same malicious code can run with better performance than JavaScript? As far as I can tell, WebAssembly doesn't provide any additional access to native system features like this DRM spec does.

[gsnedders]

WASM is strictly less powerful than JS.

[baddox]

Indeed, from what I'm reading it looks like most of the usual JS tasks (like DOM manipulation, listening to input, and network requests) still need to happen by your WebAssembly module calling out to normal JS.

[mabynogy]

> If someone launches a new HTML-based Web

Few alternatives already exist (like gopher, the protocol).

I found a new interesting one recently (ala markdown but tab-based and parseable with regexps):

https://contnet.org/

There is also a new browser that is being developped (not related to ContNet):

https://netrunner.cc/

[Iv]

I am bitter that XML/XSLT lost in favor of HTML/CSS. It promised a stricter separation of content and formating and would probably have required less javascript to do the crucial functions.

Unfortunately, among the crucial functions nowadays are the silly cosmetics, the parallax scrolling, the animated backgrounds, that allow marketers to pretend to have a website when all they have is formating for zero content. We failed to provide them with this fluff.

[pjmlp]

Me too, we have to thank HTML 5 for it.

Yet almost 10 years later, they are still playing catchup with native apps.

[tannhaeuser]

Upvoted you, so count me in.

Hard to believe in 2017, but as recently as five years ago Google (of all people) published the Caja compiler [1] for sandboxed/statically verified JavaScript subsets, and there was AdSafe aiming for safe JavaScript as well.

[1]: https://developers.google.com/caja/

[2]: http://www.adsafe.org

[abecedarius]

I don't know its current status with the committee, but https://github.com/tc39/proposal-frozen-realms proposes something equivalent to Caja for modern JS. It can be a lot simpler now because ES6+ is much closer to what's needed than JS was when Caja was made.

[qwepoiru]

adsafe, and all static lint of ads, was dead from the beginning. If companies serve whatever comes from the ad networks, specially dynamic URLS, there is absolutely no way to enforce anything. You can check, but you can't enforce.

the only sane solution on ads is SafeFrames [1]. Which does not do much, but at least it prevents ads from scrapping the page and stealing your cookies from the main domain you are visiting. That is already a win, considering the mess it is now without it.

[1] https://www.iab.com/guidelines/safeframe/

[Taek]

Count me in. And count my web server in as well, we'd make sure all pages are compatible.

Your computer belongs to you. I'm ready to escape the cycle of 'oh they own everything because they snuck human rights violations into their software and hardware and nobody stopped them'.

[EGreg]

Wait, what? Perhaps you are right, but how do you make the leap from "W3C standardizes DRM" and "the Web is about to be eaten by DRM?"

The Web is used for so many things these days. It is a publishing platform that allows anyone to host their own content to the entire internet, thanks to Web Browsers just loading it. I can see IPFS being an improvement over the Web but besides the web server being a single point of failure, why is a DRM standard specifically going to destroy the Web?

Wordpress is used to power 20% of new sites. My own company is developing an open source platform for communities to run their own social networks (https://qbix.com) so what is this "eating" you speak of?

EDIT: This has been one of my most downvoted comments ever. Can someone explain the rationale? (Is it super obvious that the Web will be killed by DRM that asking the question should be punished?)

[ashark]

DRM and webassembly. The end of openness in both cases—though at least WebAssembly means we eventually won't have to write Javascript anymore, which is nice as far as that goes.

Sure, Javascript uglifiers and frameworks mucking with HTML standards and the DOM had already made "view source" nigh-worthless, and there were DRM'd plugins of course, and browsers had supported some schemes for a while as a de facto standard, but this still feels like a last-straw kind of situation to me.

> My own company is developing an open source platform for communities to run their own social networks (https://qbix.com) so what is this "eating" you speak of?

Sure, it's already the world's premiere delivery mechanism for "apps", advertisements, and mass surveillance software. I know. That's exactly the kind of thing that I don't mind living somewhere, but I'd like it not to be all mixed up in my networked hypertext document reader.

This Web's over. Anyone hosting an After-Web? I could do with a little more Webbing.

[EDIT] Though actually your thing seems fine. I saw "social network" and glossed over the rest. Sorry.

[sp4ke]

Bookmarking this page in hope of having some alternatives. I'm even ready to throw some money/programming hours to any serious projects

[yosito]

It's not a technical problem. It's a political problem. Those with the means will seek to control the web, no matter what technical solutions are invented to keep it open. Preventing tyrannical control of the web is an endless struggle.

[rasz]

There was a time browser worked for you. Opera up to 12.xx offered a panel letting you configure what JS can/cant do. It even let you configure global/per domain storage quotas and forbid websites from dumping megabytes of garbage on harddrive (Im talking to you ad network trackers/wikipedia). You can check out all of the sweet customization Opera 12.xx provided:

http://help.opera.com/operaconfig/versions/Win32/11.50/en/in...

[hrjet]

We don't need a new web; just more browsers that respect the user's privacy. There are many ways to achieve this. At gngr[0], we are taking a "safe by default" approach. This is very similar to the NoScript / uMatrix approach, but with one difference: the browser itself is offering this and is hence more water tight. There are no behind-the-scenes requests that a plugin can't block.

[0]: https://gngr.info

[MikeGale]

I'm guessing the folk around here include some who can make a browser happen.

If it takes only well formed x/html/5 it's not that big a deal.

Ideally a lot of "hooks" so that the more determined can make it do their thing. Not the thing that somebody else wants to force on them.

I wonder who's game?

[GraulPaham]

> If someone launches a new HTML-based Web with crippled javascript (no network comm access, for one, including ability to trigger links or forms), some small, restricted subset of CSS, and much better built-in dynamic table and form elements, I'm there.

Why not just do this yourself? Fork chromium and start commenting stuff you don't want out. It would likely only take a weekend or two of hacking...

[jlarocco]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'll point out anyway that literally every single feature of the current internet is opt-in. Most of the time it's not even difficult to opt-out.

If you really want a separate internet without the "bad parts", you can still use Gopher. There are still sites around, and you won't even get images, which were the first thing to "ruin" the internet, and were the launching point down the slippery slope to DRM video.

On a side note, it's interesting that so many HN readers are against this kind of DRM, but at the same time there's a large group here who are against ad-blockers. Ad-revenue is the main driver motivating companies to shoe-horn this crap into the web. It's not a coincidence that the biggest ad company in the world also makes one of the most popular web browsers and is a huge media distributor.

[baddox]

I'll point out that, unless you have data suggesting otherwise, for all we know those two groups of people on HN have no overlapping members.

[sogen]

C-HTML maybe? [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-HTML

[cobookman]

So amp?

[jstewartmobile]

I threw this out there a year or so ago in the hope of getting some feedback on it: https://eggplant.pro/blog/proposal-safeweb/

Really, I just need to find the time to do it.

[throwaway34241]

Do you have any evidence or reason to believe there is actual corruption on the committee (aside from them making a decision you disagree with)?

I suspect I agree with you on DRM but this style of debate, where there is no attempt to argue or explain the issue, and the first line of argument is personal attacks or denigrating anyone with an opposing viewpoint, is depressing. Consider that accusing climate scientists of corruption has also been fairly effective.

For this particular issue, Netflix etc already requires DRM to play in a browser, and the browsers already provide DRM for Netflix etc to use. I would like to understand what the consequences of this decision are, if some of the way this works is standardized. Will this lead to more DRM? Is the only conceivable explanation that the MPAA is slipping the W3C members some bribes?

[5_minutes]

"In 2013, EFF was disappointed to learn that the W3C had taken on the project of standardizing “Encrypted Media Extensions,” an API whose sole function was to provide a first-class role for DRM within the Web browser ecosystem"

With so much money involved here, it's quite naive to believe the W3C members are virgins here and did this out love for the web and for the consumers.

And:

"It is clear that the W3C allowing DRM technologies to be developed at the W3C is just a naked ploy for the W3C to get more (paying) member companies to join"[0]

0 - https://blog.whatwg.org/drm-and-web-security

[cbhl]

A lot of people think that the battle here is EME versus DRM-free content, but that's not the case. You can still have all the DRM-free content you want, whether that's YouTube videos or iTunes MP3s.

Really, the decision being made is between EME and Adobe Flash. Flash was the one cross-platform way to serve DRMed content before EME. And now that EME is ratified, Adobe, Microsoft, Google and Mozilla can all work together to get rid of Flash, and all the 0-days it has been responsible for, and improve security and battery life for everyone on the Internet. https://blog.chromium.org/2017/07/so-long-and-thanks-for-all...

Of course, we should also work to get rid of DRM -- it gets in the way of legitimate uses, and annoys legitimate users far more than it annoys pirates. But rather than vilifying Google and W3C and expecting them to be our saviors, instead we should be talking to Hollywood and Authors to adopt a DRM-free model just as many top musicians already have.

Disclaimer: I work at YouTube, and this is my personal opinion, not that of my employer.

[belorn]

You don't need to embrace DRM in order to stop using Adobe flash. The multiple browser currently in use for the last few years that don't have adobe flash installed is a rather strong proof of that. you would have an argument if EME came first and then flash had started to decline, but that is a false history. Flash started decline many years ago, and EME was forced onto the standard as an reaction to that.

W3C abandoning consensus (58.4%!) and open standards are biggest change in the organizations history. Its not just about DRM.

[ehsankia]

Netflix has never existed without DRM. Flash, Winevine or whatever other technology they use, they've always had something. Without it, they would never be allowed to exist by the people who own the content. It's naive to believe they would just stop using DRM magically.

They would find another more hacky, less secure and less user-friendly solution, and everyone would be worse for it.

[belorn]

The chain of events is not that EME has enabled Netflix to exist. Netflix and flash came first, and EME came afterward.

Lets be honest here. The argument being presented is that Netflix might create a new form of DRM without EME. We might get something worse then flash. There might even be a bad argument that Netflix and the content creator will abandon the market and millions in revenue if they can't get DRM.

A bunch of things that could happen, but not things that have happened. Flash have decline in used and Netflix was created in time before EME. To claim that EME was a requisite for those events is a logical impossibility.

[Veedrac]

> the decision being made is between EME and Adobe Flash

Flash is a mix of dying and dead, mostly the latter. Having to use Flash is a strong economic and practical motivation not to use DRM, and if that wasn't the case there wouldn't be so much pressure to implement something in the browser itself.

[kelnos]

That's pretty unlikely. If Flash (and Silverlight) died and browsers didn't have anything built-in, the studios/distributors would just get together and form a company to build a new plugin that does the job. Or worse, we'd have several competing implementations.

Regardless of which of these occurs, you can bet that they wouldn't bother to sandbox the implementations, and we'd end up with the same security issues we had with Flash.

If browser vendors don't want to play ball (NPAPI is dying/dead, PPAPI and NativeClient are Chrome-only, etc.), then forget about in-browser video: they'd just build native apps instead. And maybe that's not a bad outcome for people who want the web to remain pure, but as a practical matter and a person who runs Linux, I like being able to run Netflix on my laptop.

I'm completely flabbergasted that people seem to believe that DRM would somehow magically disappear if the W3C hadn't been willing to discuss EME.

[Veedrac]

You're looking at this as black and white, when reality doesn't work that way. It being infeasible to completely remove DRM from everything doesn't mean there isn't value in discouraging its use. And that's exactly what economic and practical incentives would do if including DRM meant they lost users.

[freshhawk]

So, the argument is ... either cede control of your browser to us in a form where it is illegal to examine what we do with it OR we will continue to use a piece of crappy technology that exposes you to security problems.

That sounds less like a technical problem and more like a threat to me. Because neither of those are actually technically necessary, except to support a business model that depends on some form of DRM.

[kelnos]

> Because neither of those are actually technically necessary, except to support a business model that depends on some form of DRM.

Well, yes, that's absolutely true. But they have the leverage here (at least for now), whether we like it or not.

[appleflaxen]

but the converse is also true: if they don't implement EME, then you are welcome to install any third-party attack surface on your PC that you wish.

so why should _I_ have to install the un-auditable attack vector on _my_ machine?

you are well-positioned to understand this issue, so I'm baffled about how you can conclude this should be part of the default software suite in a browser.

[AnthonyMouse]

> A lot of people think that the battle here is EME versus DRM-free content, but that's not the case.

Yes it is.

Suppose that in order to play DRMed content, the user was required to be staked to the ground and covered in angry fire ants. Nobody would be willing to do that, so people who use DRM would have no customers, so everyone would stop using DRM.

EME is in the opposite direction from this, so it will cause more DRM and less DRM-free content.

Adobe Flash has been slowly dying for years, which is not a problem.

[matthewmacleod]

That's just wishful thinking, I fear.

In reality, all that will happen is that users will continue to be forced into using native applications where DRM can be enforced arbitrarily by whatever service they are trying to use.

[AnthonyMouse]

And then DRMed content will be properly separated off into its miserable DRM slum that everyone hates, the cost of using it will be higher, users will complain more, companies who don't use DRM will capture more of the market, etc.

That's the entire point.

[Oxxide]

The fun thing about DRM, is that people love to defeat it.

They (the general public AND 3DM, to TorrentFreak, bunch of whiners IMO) said Denuvo was the death of cracking and piracy. 3DM: No games crackable in 2 years time, said the headline.

now the cracking scene, which was mostly dying, has seen some revival.

It has adapted, but it's a slow moving ship.

Now a new generation (or the older generation, who knows, I'm just relaying my own observations)) are taking everything being thrown at them: encryption, virtualization, obfuscation, changing keys each patch, etc and making it look like light work to crack properly.

They make short, short work of it for the amount of complexity involved. So I hope they continue to throw new things at them with Denuvo, to keep them interested.

One group cracks the base game, sometimes someone else grabs all the updates and rolls them into a cracked patch, etc.

It's nice to see some life return to something that was basically dead, made automated.

[superflyguy]

"No games crackable in 2 years time, said the headline...now the cracking scene, which was mostly dying, has seen some revival"

Do you have a citation for this? Every game, dvd, stream, book etc ever has been cracked. Software protection has a 0% success rate.

[gabriel34]

Excerpt from wikipedia's article on Denuvo

In January 2016, 3DM reportedly nearly gave up attempting to crack Just Cause 3, which is protected with Denuvo, due to the difficulties associated with the process.[8] They also warned that due to the current trends in encryption technology, in two years' time, the cracking of video games may become impossible.[8][9]

[8] Owen S. Good (9 January 2016). "Piracy group nearly gives up on cracking Just Cause 3, warns of bleak future". http://www.polygon.com/2016/1/9/10741274/just-cause-3-crack-.... Retrieved 17 January 2016.

[9] Robert Purchese (8 January 2016). "Finally, tide turns in war with PC game crackers". http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-01-08-denuvo-game-cra.... Retrieved 18 January 2016.

[Anthony-G]

Oxxide is actually arguing against this headline: https://torrentfreak.com/no-more-pirate-games-in-two-years-g...

[y_tho]

> it's quite naive to believe the W3C members are virgins here and did this out love for the web and for the consumers.

So, no evidence, only a feeling of evidence.

[ehsankia]

"There's a lot of money involved, therefore there must be foul play."

I personally would much rather have a secure, optimized and clean implementation, rather than hacky plugins and poorly developed solutions that put me at risk and destroy performance.

[slrz]

But hacky, platform-dependent plugins is exactly what we get. Websites just get a standardized JS API to talk to these hacky binary-only plugins.

[mozumder]

DRM is also how you get media companies to publish on the web.

Media companies couldn't give any less fucks about the web. They can go 100 years without publishing on the web, since they have other revenue paths that they're perfectly happy with.

This whole process of enabling DRM is web developer's efforts to kiss media-companies ass in order for them to publish their products on the web. Artists and other creatives have the option to publish their works wherever they see fit. It's their creation, not the public's. In fact, there are actual art galleries that won't sell you their works if they don't deem you sufficient enough. How you exhibit their work matters to them. That's their right.

The web needs these media companies more than the media companies need the web.

Anyone that complains about DRM is doing it wrong. You are limiting the web because you are saying you don't want media companies to publish on the web. You are now causing the web to compete against media companies private apps or physical media, which is a losing proposition.

No one gives a shit about freedom. Everyone wants to use rights-managed content online. And the ONLY way to do that is with DRM.

So, yah, I'm not seeing any corruption here. Just acknowledgement of the fact that artists own their works, and web developers need to kiss their ass if they want artists to publish on the web.

[jgust]

> The web needs these media companies more than the media companies need the web

When you hear about the multi-billion dollar fines and the immense amount of resources spent chasing down and punishing pirates, I have a hard time following this argument. I'd argue that the content owners and media companies need to get on board with providing the most seamless, easy to use, and accessible product for consuming their wares or this

> other revenue paths that they're perfectly happy with

won't continue to exist.

[kelnos]

> I'd argue that the content owners and media companies need to get on board with providing the most seamless, easy to use, and accessible product for consuming their wares

Right, and that's exactly what EME is. Because DRM-free content is a show-stopper for them right now, but they recognize that DRM is a pain point for customers.

[mozumder]

Do us a favor and actually think your cunning plan through for a minute.

Why should content owners post their products for free consumption? What is the incentive for them to do that? How much money do you think they will make?

In case you haven't noticed, the web is losing to apps at every level, from things like Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat to shopping apps. Even newsreaders are being turned into apps. My parents only use the Apple newsreader, for example.

Do normal people even use the web anymore? It seems the web is only used by tech developers.

Such a sad loss for the web..

[imtringued]

Requiring a server to playback the media is already the strongest form of DRM possible. If that's not enough they can just make their own native applications that implement all the DRM that they could possibly want. The only disadvantage of a native application is that they are not crossplatform and EME CDMs aren't exactly cross platform either. They are native code that require the module to be ported to the operating system that.

What's the point of the web if it's just another crappy proprietary platform? EME is basically Flash 2.0.

>Such a sad loss for the web..

What loss? Is the only purpose of a software platform to devour everything without any integrity and it's worthless if it fails to adhere to the will of multibillion dollar companies?

[tveita]

> Media companies couldn't give any less fucks about the web.

This is pure bluster. As if they'd just walk away from one of the highest reach distribution platforms and all the money that comes with it just because they were denied a gaping vulnerability surface that provides no benefit for either them or the consumer. Sure, instead of learning the lesson from Spotify they'll just leave pirating as the #1 accessible and convenient method of getting content.

The media companies are coming to the web, DRM or no DRM, but of course it costs them nothing to bluff and claim they will take their ball and go unless they get all the special treatment they want.

[kelnos]

They certainly wouldn't walk away from the web for discovery and advertising, but they can and would easily walk away from it for the last part of distribution: sending you the content bits and having them display on your screen. They don't need the web for that, and they can build a perfectly good experience without it.

[krapp]

>Media companies couldn't give any less fucks about the web. They can go 100 years without publishing on the web, since they have other revenue paths that they're perfectly happy with.

No they can't. Physical media is going under. Newspapers and magazines are folding, music is primarily distributed digitally, even TV stations are treating the web as their primary means of content distribution. Media companies have no other revenue paths that will matter over a decade, much less a century, and most no longer have the money, resources or capabilities to do anything else.

>The web needs these media companies more than the media companies need the web.

The web is nothing but a network of networks. It wouldn't even blink if every big media company went bankrupt and took all of their content with them. The web would be a lot less interesting and a lot less fun, and make a lot less money, but it would still exist, and people would just keep distributing and pirating what they have.

Media companies, meanwhile, have bet their entire future on the web, and are only now realizing that it isn't the gravy train they thought it was.

> Just acknowledgement of the fact that artists own their works, and web developers need to kiss their ass if they want artists to publish on the web.

Whether or not artists own their works is orthogonal to the fact that digital content distribution has rendered their works nearly valueless, and opened a nearly infinite competitive market for similar work.

Rights are irrelevant. Morality is irrelevant. What the artists want or feel entitled to is irrelevant. The cultural significance of the corpus is irrelevant. Effective DRM is technically impossible and if that's what artists are depending on to survive in the digital age, then they will lose.

They can die like the dinosaurs, or adapt to the new order and become birds. But they cannot, ever, ever unstrike the meteor that is the web.

[kelnos]

I think you're conflating "the web" with "the internet". Media companies only need the web for discovery; for display they can release native desktop apps, which can even be launched from the web.

I'm not thrilled with DRM in the browser, but at least it's heavily sandboxed, and is way preferable to a series of native apps that get full access to my desktop.

[krapp]

>Media companies only need the web for discovery; for display they can release native desktop apps, which can even be launched from the web.

What percentage of consumers exclusively consume media through apps, though?

[ori_b]

> The web needs these media companies more than the media companies need the web.

Why? The web seemed to be doing perfectly well without them. Maybe the profit margins of concerns like Youtube and Netflix need them.

[AOsborn]

> They can go 100 years without publishing on the web, since they have other revenue paths that they're perfectly happy with.

I accept your logic but disagree with your premise. Online media is the future, and any media company knows this.

[AlexMax]

They do not need the web to distribute their content online.

[AnthonyMouse]

Then let them suffer the loss of revenue from losing all of those potential customers. Content producers who don't use DRM will be happy to take those customers from them, and those will be the content producers who have more money with which to make new content tomorrow.

[freshhawk]

That used to be their attitude, and then they saw the drop in viewers as young people shifted to different online ways of distracting themselves.

They discovered that the whole "You will come to us. We are the rulers of content" attitude was delusional.

Now they are falling over themselves to get back to the top, while kids watch idiots play video games on twitch.

And even my 60+ year old parents just stream torrents because no one can provide a better experience no matter how much you are willing to pay.

[AlexMax]

Very well put.

Ultimately, as long as the big content companies have content that people want to consume, they will have leverage. They want DRM, they will get DRM, or else they will take their content elsewhere, to alternative platforms that people will then flock to, making the web less relevant.

EME is the wrong hill to die on.

[betterunix2]

By my memory the web BECAME relevant before DRM, before streaming video sites, before media companies started pushing their DRM on us. Remember how in the late 90s media companies were ignoring the web? Remember how webmail, web search, and social networking websites were the killer apps that people flocked toward?

Media companies tried to ignore the web because it is the antithesis of their business model. The result was that the media companies became less relevant, because the web is better than cable TV, better than movie theaters, better than physical discs. We could and should have ignored EME and forced media companies to adapt or die, just like all those other outdated industries.

Media companies are not special cupcakes, they are just businesses and like any other business they have to contend with disruptive new technologies. Nobody shed a tear when the film processing industry faded away; nobody suggested that digital cameras should be restricted for Kodak's benefit. Why are we acting like Hollywood deserves such special treatment?

[betterunix2]

> DRM is also how you get media companies to publish on the web.

Forgive me not really giving a hoot.

> Media companies couldn't give any less fucks about the web. They can go 100 years without > publishing on the web, since they have other revenue paths that they're perfectly happy with.

Thus explaining their interest in the web, up to and including their push to lock it all down to prop up their outdated business model. If they are happy to stick with other sources of revenue they should do so.

> The web needs these media companies more than the media companies need the web.

Is that so? Funny how the web was already popular before media companies tried to get in on the action.

> You are limiting the web because you are saying you don't want media companies to publish on the web.

That's a strawman. Nobody is saying media companies should not publish on the web. We are saying that the thing that made the web valuable in the first place is openness, to which DRM is antithetical. Media companies are welcome to use the open system that is the web if they want to, and like the rest of us they will have to put up with certain trade-offs -- or at least that was the situation prior to EME.

> Everyone wants to use rights-managed content online.

I seriously doubt that the majority of web users -- billions of people -- care about rights management. The evidence seems to suggest that the overwhelming majority of users could not care less about copyrights, let alone the expansive "rights" that DRM is enforcing. People seem to ignore those "rights" at their convenience; in fact, people seem to seek the entertainment they want without regard to any "rights."

In fact, your beloved media companies also seem to not care terribly much about rights. The rights that copyright confers do not apply solely to copyright owners; included in copyright is the notion of the public domain and of fair use. Those rights are routinely ignored by media companies, through their lawsuits, their takedown notices (dancing baby), and their DRM systems which never include provisions for copyrights expiring and works entering the public domain. So other than yourself I am not sure ANYONE wants "rights-management."

Moreover, people have learned to love an entirely new kind of video entertainment: homemade, amateur videos of cats and other pets; of random people expressing their views; of dashcams in Russia; of idiots doing stupid things; etc. etc. In other words, while media companies were working hard to break the openness of the web, people were embracing that openness to create new forms of entertainment that the media companies could never have created on their own. Oh, yeah, it turns out the websites where those sort of videos are shared are the most popular video streaming services in the world and that more people (in the world generally) are watching videos on those sites than there are people watching cable TV.

So much for the all-important media companies.

> Just acknowledgement of the fact that artists own their works

We have evidence of artists dating back hundreds of thousands of years. Copyright and the notion that ideas and artistic expression can be owned only dates back to the 18th century and was just the final stage of European society adapting to a new communication technology (printing presses). We now have a new communication technology (computer networks) and society is adapting to the new rules and realities of that technology. Some ideas about art and artists rights are going to die, but in their place we will have new ideas and new rights. It is already happening, although in all likelihood none of us will be alive to see what society ultimately settles on.

So basically, the "fact" you are acknowledging barely rises to the level of a footnote in the history of artistic expression, one that is already fading into history as the Internet eats the remaining legacy communication systems. Sorry if that is a hard pill to swallow.

[nkw]

>Media companies couldn't give any less fucks about the web. They can go 100 years without publishing on the web, since they have other revenue paths that they're perfectly happy with.

LOL. With what? Their paper? Their DVDs? Their CDs? Their cable channel subscribers?

[kelnos]

Their in-house or contracted native app, of course. Which you bet they'd build if they didn't succeed in getting functional, reliable DRM on the web.

Most of them already have pretty nice mobile apps; writing a decent native desktop app or three wouldn't stretch their capabilities at all.

[appleflaxen]

let them go, and take their drivel with them.

if they want DRM, let them convince their own customers; just leave it off my machine.

[lern_too_spel]

There are multiple open source web browsers. You are free to install one without DRM and free to visit websites that don't need that feature. What changes for you just because there is a standard?

[AnthonyMouse]

Websites that otherwise wouldn't have used DRM start to use it, that's what changes.

[yarrel]

The security holes that the standard introduces into my browser.

If I can compile it out, or get a version that someone I trust has compiled with it removed, that only leaves the rest of the web as a botnet attack surface.

That's what changes. Or doesn't improve, depending on how one views the timeline.

[burkaman]

The parent comment is not the first line of argument, it's the continuation of a years-long argument. Even if you completely ignore the history, the first line of argument is found in the article, not the comments. If you would like to understand the fundamentals of this debate, this comment section is not the right place to start. It's very easy to find arguments and proposals from all sides of the issue elsewhere.

[ori_b]

No, it's probably not intentional corruption and malice. Just a belief that users are getting more of what they want as passive consumers paying large companies for services, rather than as creators in a peer to peer web. Realistically, they're likely to be right.

[otakucode]

I agree that this style of debate is not terribly useful, but I will grant that this issue does stir significant emotion in people who are seeing their baby suffocated to death. However, I am uncertain what you believe is meant by 'actual corruption'? How could abandoning consensus, the normal functioning of the body for decades, and refusing to continue discussion in order to reach a compromise, not be a de-facto corruption of the organization?

[rnhmjoj]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h94ZKGVg-B8&t=8m23s

If they are not corrupted they certainly acted in an extremely suspicious way.

I advise you to watch the whole video because it gets better and better, the press conference part in particular.

[nebabyte]

Frankly I'm far more interested in which developing or first-world locales, if any, exist where net freedoms like these are protected by the majority, rather than having to be fought for by the minority against a wave of complacency and apathy.

I'm pretty much done with trying to fight the american capitalist ideology which empowers these companies to steamroll over the average consumer happy to give up their own rights and freedoms then left to complain with the extortionist environments that leads to.

I don't think the world can continue on the way it's going without some serious ideological fragmentations in the near future, and the moment some country embraces its "Pirate Party" or creates an "Internet Bill of Rights" establishing the core tenets the EFF and others fight for as the basis of their internet-related litigation - is the moment I know where the sane people all probably went (or would go as time goes on).

[is71515124]

> the extortionist environments that leads to.

Media delivery in 2017 is hardly an extortionary environment. Practically speaking, Americans spend very little of their income on the Audible/Netflix/HBO Gos of the world. Netflix costs $120 a year? Against a median household income of $55,000, that is next to nothing.

If anything, it's the opposite: there's a glut of content available to consume, in nearly every possible genre, at very low price points. There is far, far more good television than any person could reasonably watch, all for a couple thousandths of the typical person's annual wages.

[digital_trench]

It's not about the content available. It's about the control.

[is71515124]

"Extortion" typically refers to using force to unjustly extract money from someone. Without unjust extraction of money, there can be no extortion. I understand that others have concerns about control, and that's totally legitimate, but it's also not what I was responding to.

[AnthonyMouse]

The thing being extorted doesn't have to be money. It can be, for example, control of a distribution channel to lock out prospective competitors.

[is71515124]

> average consumer ... complain with the extortionist environments that leads to.

I suppose so, but I wasn't really talking about entities that might be able to control a distribution channel. I was talking about average consumers.

Realistically, the limiting factor in (legally) distributing movies is not the technology, but getting the rights-holders to sell you those rights. This DRM tech does not really change the landscape on that, because a small new entrant already had no shot at making a deal.

[drak0n1c]

Perhaps there is potential in Seasteading.

[wolfgke]

> We're losing the internet day by day, if we haven't done so already.

Let's just "fork" the web from W3C (or 3WC as some people like to call them by now) instead.

[ashleysmithgpu]

Is the EFF a big enough presence to "fork" the W3C standards? I hope so.

[frivoal]

That's the wrong question. W3C itself is relatively tiny, and has fairly ordinary (albeit well tuned) software/server infrastructure. Reproducing the legal framework would be more of a pain, but even that could probably be done. But W3C is mostly its member companies, and the're not switching, since the majority of them, including all browsers, were in favor of this. So if all existing specifications continue to reside on W3C's web site, and all new specifications continue to be produced (by member companies) in the same place, there's not meaningful forking possible.

If members are disgruntled, you can fork. That's happened before when there was disagreement about what to do with HTML, and it led to the creation of the WHATWG.

By and large, members this time are supportive. Not all, mind you, but all the large players.

[exikyut]

What's the WHATWG's position on EME and particularly these developments?

[ocdtrekkie]

The only party with the capability of "forking" Internet standards as we know them is Google. Because as the majority share of web browser traffic an extremely dominant percentage of web server traffic, Google can define the Internet as it wishes, and everyone else has to follow along or fall behind. This is the same with EME. Standards organizations stay relevant by accepting what Google gives them, they would simply be left behind if they didn't.

(For those who don't know, Widevine, the DRM scheme that is currently best known as compatible with EME, and which taints my Firefox browser so I can watch movies, is owned by Google.) http://www.widevine.com

(Sidebar to the sidebar: Widevine has the least Googley website you've ever seen. Stock photos of a physical padlock, HTML code entirely based on table tags for layout. It's so strange.)

[KGIII]

I doubt it. Specifically, I doubt they will, or even want to. That's not really what they do, they are mostly advocates.

As advocates,I'm sad to see them do this. I will still donate to them, but it's unfortunate to see them quit. This means they will no longer have a seat at the table for future discussions.

They still do enough good to be worth donating to, but this was not a very good choice on their part.

[emodendroket]

And which browsers are going on this fork?

[yellowapple]

If Mozilla has any integrity, then I suspect Firefox might.

[riquito]

Mozilla ended up accepting EME in 2014, because otherwise it would have become "the browser where you cannot see videos" https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-missi...

"We have come to the point where Mozilla not implementing the W3C EME specification means that Firefox users have to switch to other browsers to watch content restricted by DRM."

[wolfgke]

> Mozilla ended up accepting EME in 2014, because otherwise it would have become "the browser where you cannot see videos"

Rather: "the browser where you cannot see DRM-infected video" - which is an active protection of the user against malware.

[gcp]

which is an active protection of the user against malware.

You should look at how Mozilla implemented EME then. The CDM is sandboxed, in a much stricter sandbox than the rest of the browser even. So no, the CDM potentially being dangerous (for privacy or security) isn't actually that much of an issue.

Of course, someone might at some point claim that the privacy features harm the copyrights protection, at which point choices will have to be made.

History provide ample evidence that Mozilla will make the choice their users ask for (which is, by the way, not necessarily the choice some users will voice the most loudly).

[untog]

...and which no-one will download.

To be clear: if DRM is not implemented in browsers, Netflix and the like will just make native apps, which are far larger vectors of malware attack than the locked down EME standard is.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, but "people should just not watch DRMed video" is not an actual answer to the problem at hand.

[bubblethink]

What good is integrity if nobody uses Firefox ? That was the main reason they added EME support in the first place. Firefox staying relevant in the browser market is a better strategy in the long run than a hard line stance against DRM.

[dTal]

What good is Firefox if it doesn't have integrity?

[kibwen]

I can't tell if this is satire. Does anyone seriously believe that surrendering the war when you've lost one battle is an intelligent strategy? Mozilla contributes a whole lot to OSS, including providing a browser that can be trivially used without any black-box DRM-enforcement code hitting your system.

[lern_too_spel]

You are free to run Firefox without the DRM module.

[thatzerodude]

True that. Time to start using Firefox forks. Pale Moon, Iceweasel, GNU Icecat.

Maybe go even further outside the box, use gngr: https://gngr.info/

[yellowapple]

Exactly. The whole point of Firefox is to be the browser that actually protects its users. If I wanted DRM shoved down my throat, I'd be using Chrome.

[wolfgke]

> What good is integrity if nobody uses Firefox ? That was the main reason they added EME support in the first place.

This was rather the point of Fall of Men ("Zeitpunkt des Sündenfalls") in Firefox' history to me. It was also the point in time where I stopped donating to them.

[sgift]

And what's your solution (proposal) for the problem they faced?

[azakai]

Mozilla opposed EME very strongly. But when it was clear that Google, Microsoft and Apple all supported it and were shipping it, Mozilla was forced to ship it as well (with a flag that makes it easy to disable for users that want to).

[wolfgke]

> Mozilla was forced to ship it as well

If anybody was forcing them, it were the media companies.

[kibwen]

Google is also a media company. (Microsoft too, though Xbox isn't especially relevant here.)

EDIT: Yes, and Apple, I completely forgot about iTunes.

[AnssiH]

Firefox has included support for EME DRM since 2015, despite it not being formally standardized.

I don't see them dropping it even if the HTML standard Firefox follows drops them, unless other browser vendors drop EME too.

[HappyCynic]

FireFox included closed-source DRM back in 2014. They've already picked their side.

[gcp]

The users picked by collectively not giving a fuck.

[zizek23]

Mozilla is playing a double game of pretending to be on the users side while completely being in Google's pocket. For Google this ensures they cannot be accused of being a monopoly.

And those working for Google attempting to divert attention to Hollywood are symptomatic of the reality distortion field and self deception of SV. Google is a spyware company engaged in mass surveillance and creepily following everyone on the planet for profit. There are no redeeming values here. SV is basically a gold rush with greed and money being the primary driver glossed over with dollops of pretension.

The world just has to step up to take control and diminish the ideology that drives SV. So far be it open source, web services, standards or regulations there is no contribution. Why are there no alternatives to Firefox, Google, Facebook and others? You can't be completely dependent on these companies and then claim victimhood.

[ubernostrum]

Mozilla is not funded by Google anymore, and hasn't been for several years (the Google contract ended back when I was still working at Mozilla).

If you're interested, I wrote up some notes/thoughts from my experience in one of the sessions about EME and whether to implement it:

http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2013/oct/16/eme/

[zizek23]

That deal may be over but Mozilla still gets money from Google for search. Why is user advocacy so low key and half hearted, this being just one of them. What do they have to lose?

They have consistently thrown in the towel while diluting the very things that users would choose them over Chrome for.

There are many ways to exert influence in this world. Mozilla is in SV and is very much part of the culture and ecosystem. We need genuine alternatives and activism against entrenched interests.

[nix0n]

GNU IceCat[0], which is a Firefox fork.

[0]https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/IceCat

[emodendroket]

There's a browser lighting up the usage charts.

[frivoal]

They are not a W3C member, and do not contribute to standards. So no.

[CJefferson]

No, the W3C is the web. You'd be forking to what?

This was basically wanted by Firefox, Apple, Microsoft and Google. They are the modern web. Trying to go against them is how we ended up with XHTML, a standard no-one really wanted, or implemented.

[azakai]

> This was basically wanted by Firefox, Apple, Microsoft and Google.

Not accurate. EME was created and driven by Google, Microsoft and Netflix, as you can see here:

https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/

Firefox opposed it very strongly, and only gave in and implemented it when it was clear that all other browsers were behind it - at that point the battle was already lost.

When the EFF says

> The W3C process has been abused by companies that made their fortunes by upsetting the established order, and now, thanks to EME, they’ll be able to ensure no one ever subjects them to the same innovative pressures.

It is safe to assume the companies the EFF refers to are Google and Microsoft.

[josteink]

> This was basically wanted by Firefox, Apple, Microsoft and Google.

This was absolutely NOT wanted by Firefox.

They were the only browser to represent the users in this fight.

Don't put Mozilla in the same group as those other traitors.

[goialoq]

Mozilla's users outvoted Mozilla staff, and Mozilla staff gracefully conceded that users are best served when they have the OPTION to consume DRM-controlled content or free content.

[wolfgke]

> They were the only browser to represent the users in this fight.

They were folding, too.

[xeromal]

If they didn't fold, they'd just lose more users to other browsers. Sometimes it's wise to retreat or lose a battle to stay in the fight.

[Certhas]

And they implemented it as strictly opt in (they ask before installing it), and fully user controlled:

"Firefox downloads and enables the Google Widevine CDM on demand, with user permission, to give users a smooth experience on sites that require DRM. The CDM runs in a separate container called a sandbox and you will be notified when a CDM is in use. You can also disable a CDM and opt out of future updates by following the steps below. Once you disable a CDM, however, sites using this type of DRM may not operate properly."

[wolfgke]

> If they didn't fold, they'd just lose more users to other browsers.

They rather lost a unique selling point. Not implementing EME/DRM is a form of protection of the user against malware.

[bitmapbrother]

>This was absolutely NOT wanted by Firefox. They were the only browser to represent the users in this fight. Don't put Mozilla in the same group as those other traitors.

But they ended up including DRM in their browser. So they're traitors and hypocrites, right?

[NamTaf]

You can still get the EME-free browser. They released both because ultimately, giving those who care a choice is easier than surviving once you alienate the legions of those who demand it for Netflix or the like.

[crabasa]

The W3C is not the web. Look no further than the good work the WHATWG did to move the web forward while the W3C & Microsoft were holding the web back in the early 2000's.

[sgift]

> Look no further than the good work the WHATWG did

And who was WHATWG? Oh right, exactly the same companies that now voted for DRM as W3C standard. And why could they do WHATWG? Because they are the vendors of the majority browsers.

[dannyobrien]

WHATWG did not include EME in the WHATWG HTML living standard, and supported EFF's proposal to protect security researchers: https://blog.whatwg.org/drm-and-web-security

Ian Hickson also came out strongly against DRM when this whole debate started: https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2

[epistasis]

The W3C has pretty much zero power to prescribe what happens on the web.

Look at the history of their standards, and the direction that the web has actually gone.

The power for where the web goes is in the hands of web developers and browser developers. The W3C documents some things, but they are not a major player.

[nebabyte]

> No, the W3C is the web.

"L'etat, c'est moi" - until a new state comes to power.

The web is its users.

[justinjlynn]

Actually, no. The Web is more an API for browsers at this point than anything. The W3C is, well, secondary, if browser manufacturers get behind another body - it'll happen.

[hughw]

W3C is not the web. Check out the history and motivation behind WHATWG. They led on HTML5, then W3C followed.

[hellbanner]

Well, its corporations with money that make communication technologies.

The history of wide scale, maintainable, free speech just hasn't worked. Ever. Why should computers be any different?

[vkou]

Great, I'm sure the enterprises on the W3C who voted for this will jump on board.

Oh, you mean I can't get Netflix on the forked internet? Welp, back to mainline.

[josteink]

For me it's the other way around.

Netflix is on the other side? Cancel 'em.

[tempay]

I applaud you and anyone else who does this but I fear too many people sit on the other side of caring more about having Neflix now than maintaining the open internet. I know I won't be able to persuade my partner that we shouldn't watch Netflix anymore because of an issue she doesn't care about.

[quickthrower2]

Maybe you can persuade your partner with:

1. Cancelling Netflix saves money.

and ...

2. Watching less TV gives you more free time to get outside, exercise etc.

[jakelazaroff]

I'm willing to bet there are quite a few zeroes between the decimal point and the other digits of the percentage of people who will actually practice what you're preaching here.

[vkou]

If you want a text-only web, with no major content producers on it, you already have that. Just disable your browser's multimedia plugins. Or use Lynx, or some other browser of the 90s. The open parts of the web will still work.

Anyways, Netflix, Google, Apple, and Microsoft (probably - they aren't making their votes public) support this, so this is a great time to cancel your subscriptions and stop using their products.

[wolfgke]

> If you want a text-only web, with no major content producers on it, you already have that.

And that (the web as it is) is exactly what I want. And I want that the media companies who cannot accept that the web is free of DRM to stay away from it.

[rimliu]

I will gladly take DRMed netflix over ad-ridden crap that "free" web gives us. It seams that people are using "walled garden", "free/not free", "user hostile" without giving any thought. It sure cannot be user hostile when there are no users, can it?

[KGIII]

That's not your decision to make. They own their sites and content. You are, of course, free to ignore it. If you don't like a site, use the back button.

You can complain, of course. What you can't do is control others. That's something the web is good at working around.

[nebabyte]

"Mainline web: 0-rated DRMed Netflix if you pay ever-more exorbitant prices for our increasingly tiered package deals that make you try and remember the joy of 'cutting the cord'"

"Alternative web: Some competition without DRM, zero-rating, or other nonneutrality bullshit"

You go ahead and stick with your Netflix, buddy, and best of luck to ya.

American ISPs and legal precedent are all of course bought up by the interests building the former, but luckily I'm not tied down here.

[nucleardog]

Your assertion that standardizing DRM forces everyone to use it makes about as much sense as the assertion that teaching teenagers about condoms will make them all have sex.

[saalweachter]

All I ask is that you don't use W's in your acronyms. If you just fix ONE THING with your reboot--

[justonepost]

It's digital serfdom, pure and simple. Rather than letting us own, they want us to pay rent. It's the electronic feudal lords looking out for one another. This lawyer explains it well: http://www.newsweek.com/silicon-valley-private-property-and-...

[benevol]

Capitalism at work - a handful of ultra-rich guys winning even more ground over common folks again.

[thephyber]

Technically "capitalism" would also mention the small long-tail of web consumers that refuse to use browsers that enable these new W3C specs.

That said, most of actual market transactions involve some sort of subtle coercion or manipulation of emotions, which means they violate the core assumptions of economics. {Marketing, sales, religion/cults, magicians, A/B testing} all involve some sort of cognitive / psychological manipulation -- the core incentives of the modern economy incentivize companies to optimize for attention capture and behavior exploitation.

[spdustin]

In this case, the “common folk” you refer to don’t give a shit.

[nebabyte]

Only while the consequences of "not giving a shit" aren't immediately affecting them.

Those same people are the ones who turn around and complain "what can we do" and organize social media armchair protests when consequences simple enough for them to understand come along.

Not the best allies.

https://xkcd.com/743/

[luxuryballs]

the market allows the DRM because people keep buying the content even when DRM is included, standardizing it may just mean less clunky implementations of DRM

but if we were to ban DRM from the market would something else crop up to replace it? would content creators stop making content?

what about IP laws? if we got rid of them, there would probably be more content AND more DRM? or would it be more content and less DRM since it would only be a matter of time before someone legally reproduces your work so why bother with DRM?

[andybak]

Who are the "common folk" in this?

(Complex issue but I'm not sure I see your point)

[wildmusings]

>This is flat out CORRUPTION

That's a hell of an accusation. And you should present evidence if you're going to level it. It is dishonorable to make baseless attacks on people's character and integrity.

[orblivion]

Whether or not there's actual corruption, it's inevitable (in my opinion) that this sort of thing would happen. It's the march of economics. The open web just doesn't allow suppliers to meet demand. One way or another they'll find a way to do it. DRM snuck in the door via Flash. We just about stamped it out, but wouldn't you know it somehow it came back in a more insidious (if innocuous looking) form. People on our side like to claim that DRM is a foolish business model, but I'm not convinced that they're not just deluding themselves.

Whatever the answer is, I don't think it's stopping DRM with brute force. I think it will need to involve either coming up with alternate business models that are anywhere near as viable, or a way to keep it in a box to use for the few applications that really benefit from it.

[emodendroket]

What's going to happen without a standard? A bunch of proprietary plugins?

[syshum]

Umm that is what is happening WITH the standard

I still can not believe the number of people that do not understand what EME is

EME enabled Properiertary Plugins, it gives control over the web to MS, Google, and Adobe. Full Stop.

They will control everything.

Widevine, Adobe CDM, and MS PlayReady. Those are your proprietary EME plugins that everyone must use now

Welcome to the non-open Web

Thanks Tim berners-lee, good job

[rimliu]

There was a bunch of proprietary plugins before EME was even on the horizon.

[Crespyl]

And we were finally killing them off with the death of Flash, Java Plug-In, and Silverlight, and the adoption of HTML5.

[Sargos]

I don't think that's true. EME exists -because- we started getting rid of Flash, Java, Silverlight etc due to their security issues. There needed to be something to replace those proprietary plugins or else some of the largest websites on the internet would just break with no way to fix them.

EME is the standardized version of the needed functionality from those obsolete plugins.

[syshum]

I dont think that is true. EME exists because media companies have the strange desire to treat their customers like criminals and Technology companies have the desire to ensure the user can not control the devices they "buy" from them.

EME is about control and limiting freedom, not about replacing Flash

[rimliu]

Funny how all are up to arms against EME, but are fine with advertising crap. Just because it it open, I guess.

[wolfgke]

> What's going to happen without a standard? A bunch of proprietary plugins?

What is supposed to be happen is a zero-tolerance and active fightback against anything DRM-related in the web - be it in the browser or be it a plugin.

[epistasis]

That's a big shift from historical standards. Where has the pushback been for plugins that permitted DRM? Or from allowing them in, say Firefox?

I'm wondering why this proposal gets so much more attention than all the past DRM that's been on the web. Did people just not realize that it was there?

[khedoros1]

Flash and Silverlight DRM (as an example of 2) weren't previously web standards, and even the 3rd party plugins that included them had significant non-DRM-related uses.

This is a different animal: Adding standardized interfaces to browsers specifically designed to talk to dedicated DRM modules.

[epistasis]

That's what I'm asking about; where was the pushback on those two bits of DRM? The position advocated by the poster I was responding too would take a very harsh view on Flash and Silverlight, even with their other uses.

[khedoros1]

Right, and from what they posted, I'm sure they took a harsh view of DRM-supporting plugins at the time too. I was trying to answer your questions about why there wasn't historically pushback that matches what we're seeing over EME now.

There were people that complained about Netflix using Silverlight, and such (in my case, it meant I couldn't watch it on my PC, for example). People complained about Flash back in its heyday too.

EME isn't causing a general outcry though, outside of certain corners of the tech world.

[wolfgke]

> Where has the pushback been for plugins that permitted DRM?

I have never installed any plugin for DRM and don't know anybody who has.* I also warned people about the dangers of DRM all the time. In this sense the pushback was always there - but since browser plugins were hated anyway this was a rather easy fight.

* OK, to be 100% honest: I am aware that Flash allowed some kind of DRM - but I never seen or used any application which used it and I don't know anybody who used any application where Flash DRM was used. So the statement still holds.

[thephyber]

Flash and Silverlight plugins have been used by Netflix/Hulu on desktop browsers.

I highly doubt nobody you know has installed them. It's much more likely they simply don't tell you they did or it never came up in conversation.

[WorldMaker]

Plus most of the users using Flash and Silverlight for things like watching movies aren't likely to recognize that they are plugins. The answer to "How do you watch movies online?" is probably "Hulu" or "Netflix". Flash and Silverlight were never brands that non-technical users paid much attention to, they were means to an end. If they install something to "watch movies on Netflix", they may not remember because it was a one-time ask by the site they visit, and whatever it asked them to install didn't matter to the user so long as they could "watch movies on Netflix".

[wolfgke]

> Flash and Silverlight plugins have been used by Netflix/Hulu on desktop browsers.

> I highly doubt nobody you know has installed them

Netflix (let alone Hulu) is not as popular in Germany as it is in the USA.

[emodendroket]

It took the iPhone to kill Flash and even then not having it was one of the biggest complaints about the phone. And they killed it for reasons having nothing to do with DRM.

[emodendroket]

You can't really expect companies like Google, Microsoft, or Apple to take up that mantle -- why would they, when it's not in their interests? If you actually want to fix the problem you probably need to hit the regulatory levers.

[jacamat]

How is it not in their interests?

[MBCook]

It’s actively against their interests.

Their interest is in letting people use their browsers to view content. The media companies have made it clear that’s not happening without DRM.

So the browser companies support it.

It’s not manditory, you can ship content without it. But if Chrome said ‘DRM free only’ all that would happen is people would abandon it to be able to watch video online.

If you don’t like DRM then get legislation made. But you’ll never do that because even without the giant lobbying budgets I don’t see why lawmakers would make it illegal.

[wolfgke]

> The media companies have made it clear that’s not happening without DRM.

If people were actively boycotting anything that uses DRM and were bawling out media companies that use DRM, there would soon appear media companies that provide a "no-DRM media package". As soon as these companies were making big money with DRM-free content, I am pretty sure the large media companies would in the long run give up their stupid idea that DRM is necessary.

DRM is only necessary because there exist (too many) people who don't have a zero-tolerance policy against DRM.

[emodendroket]

> If you don’t like DRM then get legislation made. But you’ll never do that because even without the giant lobbying budgets I don’t see why lawmakers would make it illegal.

Well, a broad-based pressure group making them think they'd lose office if they didn't support such a thing is the only way anything like that ever gets passed. A lot of folks in Congress didn't want to see JASTA passed but felt they had no choice but to vote for it, so there's a model.

But yeah, this conversation, talking about how maybe if we ask Google nicely they'll act against their financial interests, strikes me as pretty naive.

[emodendroket]

They're likely to just lose users to people jumping ship to browsers that let them watch Netflix and they're all involved in distributing DRM-encumbered content themselves.

[5_minutes]

How come we don't know WHO sold us out for that beach house?

[craftyguy]

Tim Berners-Lee, for one.

[wavefunction]

Apparently one of them is Tim Berners-Lee?!?

He's the Director of W3C as far as I know.

[amelius]

Discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14759219

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14720591

[Iv]

We have lost it: P2P should have been the future of internet. Instead it devolved into the "connect to a server for everything" cloud system.

Internet should be like ZeroNet: a serverless system where content of interest is shared by its millions of viewers and where servers only use a small amount of bandwidth as backups and initial seeders.

That the wikipedia still needs servers and asks donations yearly to keep them online is a testament to how stalled progress in internet infrastructure is today.

[apatters]

I think it's time to start contemplating alternatives to the Web.

The interests of users are no longer front and center. The past several years of the Web platform's evolution have been characterized by privacy invasions, out of control Javascript, spammy push notifications, AMP... and now this.

This is not what many of us signed up for. I don't know if there even are alternatives to the Web at this time but when you can't trust even the standards bodies to act in your best interest, it's time to start talking about how we could walk away from the whole thing.

[alexasmyths]

"The interests of users are no longer front and center. "

Netflix is a 'user' of the internet, as any other.

The web is open - those who want to share their content freely can do that - those who want to DRM, they can do that.

The 'march of economics' is usually just the 'march of reality'. Game of Thrones is expensive to make - ultimately, people have to get paid for it somehow.

Most creative/entertainment projects are a dud. Only a few even make money.

[kelvin0]

BBS on HAM Radio? I've been toying with the idea for a while. The exact stack is not clear yet, but it has to 'liberate' me from the current web/internet insanity. It could be slow and imperfect, but dammit it would be ours again.

[ebcode]

Yes! sign me up. :)

[mfukar]

I don't think it's as subtle as it is incoherent. I've yet to see a single article putting together the harm of DRM in terms tangible to a layman.

[xvilka]

Not exactly a corruption, it is just world doesnt belong to national governments - only to corporations. That wont change any time soon and will only worsen.

[sogen]

This will only lead to an eternal Copyright Term Extension Act for online content...

[matchagaucho]

One day HackerNews is chastising W3C for not adding encryption to the Payment Request API.

The next day HN is lamenting about a standard encryption API being defined.