DRM Moves Ahead With HTML5 Specification

[Serge]

Why is it a given that there won't be an internet without DRM? I think RMS and supporters of his argument make a very good point when they argue that standardizing DRM encourages it to spread. I don't understand why we are supposed to take it as a given that the internet must have DRM.

Why is it such a fad for everyone with an internet connection to write against national governments' attempts at increasing their involvement in internet governance, but anytime someone argues against corporate encroachment into the same, they are labeled as "unrealistic" and "out of touch with reality"?

Why is it that governments = bad while corporate = good? Governments at least try to balance the needs of their people against the needs of the corporations that lobby them. Corporations value nothing over their own profitability.

[brosis]

Brutal truth indeed.

If we are going to deal with DRM in our lives, the least they can do is to standardize its implementation.

Before there were platform incompatible flash plugin, now there will be platform incompatible DRM plugins.

Can you think of a better way to stop people from pirating content?

Even humble indie bundle games get pirated.

Piracy is a good thing! Ability to copy is a good thing! View this as a marketing possibility and offer service to paying customers instead of stupidly selling copies, which everyone can do.
I have personally scratched, lost and broken several legal CDs already and I explicitly required to torrent them to make them work! Even Steam has limitation in that it prohibits its users to mod their games, and some games become playable only in modded state.

[Vim_User]

Why is it a given that there won't be an internet without DRM? I think RMS and supporters of his argument make a very good point when they argue that standardizing DRM encourages it to spread. I don't understand why we are supposed to take it as a given that the internet must have DRM.

Pretty easy: The Internet has already DRM in form of Flash or Silverlight. The content providers demand DRM. So you have either the chance to standardize DRM and make it at least accessible to all OSes or the content providers will stick with the existing solutions, ruling out some OSes (Silverlight) or using dead technology (Flash). Or they come up with their own proprietary clients, of course only for the OSes with the largest marketshare.

Why is it such a fad for everyone with an internet connection to write against national governments' attempts at increasing their involvement in internet governance, but anytime someone argues against corporate encroachment into the same, they are labeled as "unrealistic" and "out of touch with reality"?

Don't want the DRM connected with services like Netflix? Simple, don't use those services. Don't want your government to spy on you? What to do, not use the government?

Why is it that governments = bad while corporate = good? Governments at least try to balance the needs of their people against the needs of the corporations that lobby them.

You mean like with the background check for gun purchases in the USA, where the lobbyists prevented those checks against the will of a very large percentage of the population? That didn't work very well, I would think.

[brosis]

I start to dislike google more and more. First, they essentially kill-off youtube by their implementation of DRM regional censorship, then they offer payed channels boosting chance video becomes DRMed/payed even more. Now they lobby DRM extensions, standing on same line as microsoft. :/

[elanthis]

No. And i really understand people that want to "protect" their creations and get money from them. But content (be it games, movies, music, text etc) has no value on itself since it can be copied and shared easily. If you want to make money you have to add something to your content that will make it desirable for someone to pay for it. In some cases this is easy in others its not.

Fuck that. Games cost millions of dollars to make, as do movies. TV shows can also be quite expensive. Music isn't free to record. There is value in that if everyone's lazy freeloading worthless ass doesn't pay for it, _it won't get fucking made in the first place_. There is no need for value-add to "pay for this or just don't consume it." There's only assholes who steal other people's hard work and pretend they have a God-given right to consume whatever media whenever they want even if it cost 200 people 3 years of their lives to make. The content has value - either you want to consume it and you pay the asked-for price or you don't pay and then you live your life without ever experiencing the content just like millions upon millions of other people manage to do just fine. Piracy is purely the domain of self-entitled douchebags who want things they haven't earned or worked for. DRM might not be the answer, but "add more value to an $80,000,000 title so I won't freeload" is fucking moronic.

[Guest]

I think this is bad news for the Web.

First I'd like to point out, that EME only standardizes API for Content Decryption Module (CDM), which is NOT standardized by W3C[source]. So unless someone provides CDM for Linux that Hollywood trusts, you wont be able to use Netflix on Linux conveniently (without Wine). Voddler says it openly here that some content companies don't trust Linux and thus haven't given them rights to show films on Linux. Would they trust Linux now? Even if they trusted, would they work on Firefox and Chromium or only on proprietary Chrome? And the CDMs be maintained and tested on Linux actively?

So how would this draft advance pluginless web? CDM is much like, if not completely like plugins today. Would CDMs that work on Linux be maintained and tested on Linux actively or will they be abandonded like Adobe Flash (on Linux)? I think that EME only makes situation worse since it actually encourages usage of proprietary plugins (which CDMs are).

Also, Web does NOT need Big Media ? Big Media needs the Web. Please read more from here. Big Content companies already provide music without DRM. If they don't provide their content to the Web, they will start losing money.

I think it would be better that Netflix and others would stop using DRM or just start using Adoble Flash. Even though it's proprietary plugin, it's better alternative than bringing standards to HTML5 that are threat to interoperability and openess of the Web

I hope this EME draft doesn't go any further.

[startzz]

Well, thats one of the biggest problems - when you want to buy some software or a game, you absolutely dont know what are you buying, not to mention some facts, that most games and many software doesnt have demo versions, and even demo versions can differ from full products, i.e. performance, plus you can buy some shitty game like that new simcity from shitty company like ea gamez, which likes to leave games unfixed even with critical bugs. So i fully understand piracy, plus its not preventing other people to buy those products.

[Kivada]

Fuck that. Games cost millions of dollars to make, as do movies. TV shows can also be quite expensive. Music isn't free to record. There is value in that if everyone's lazy freeloading worthless ass doesn't pay for it, _it won't get fucking made in the first place_. There is no need for value-add to "pay for this or just don't consume it." There's only assholes who steal other people's hard work and pretend they have a God-given right to consume whatever media whenever they want even if it cost 200 people 3 years of their lives to make. The content has value - either you want to consume it and you pay the asked-for price or you don't pay and then you live your life without ever experiencing the content just like millions upon millions of other people manage to do just fine. Piracy is purely the domain of self-entitled douchebags who want things they haven't earned or worked for. DRM might not be the answer, but "add more value to an $80,000,000 title so I won't freeload" is fucking moronic.

You are an idiot. All of these content types existed before there was a profit motive to make them. If a musician wants to make money they need to go on tour and play. Their recordings should only be used as a crowd builder and as such given away.

Movies and TV are needlessly expensive since everyone involved thinks their time is somehow worth $100k per minute.

Games are also needlessly expensive, I've found more enjoyment in sub $20 games made by a team of 5 people or less and way under a million dollars in development then I have in the vast majority of "AAA" titles that are priced at $50~70 and require you to pay another $5~10 every few months for minor DLC that should have just been part of the actual game.

To top it all off, all of these twits want to make it harder for the paying customer to actually use what they've paid for. They've fought for the ability ti twist and mangle the rules that define the differences between owning something and simply licensing it so that they can claim that the paying customer has a license to their product, but the company is not liable when said product is defective by design.

[89c51]

Fuck that. Games cost millions of dollars to make, as do movies. TV shows can also be quite expensive. Music isn't free to record. There is value in that if everyone's lazy freeloading worthless ass doesn't pay for it, _it won't get fucking made in the first place_. There is no need for value-add to "pay for this or just don't consume it." There's only assholes who steal other people's hard work and pretend they have a God-given right to consume whatever media whenever they want even if it cost 200 people 3 years of their lives to make. The content has value - either you want to consume it and you pay the asked-for price or you don't pay and then you live your life without ever experiencing the content just like millions upon millions of other people manage to do just fine. Piracy is purely the domain of self-entitled douchebags who want things they haven't earned or worked for. DRM might not be the answer, but "add more value to an $80,000,000 title so I won't freeload" is fucking moronic.

Value as in being something that will generate money on itself (since its easy to copy/share). It has cost (ie 80.000.000mil title, studio time etc), and it also has artistic/academic/whatever value. But like it or not thats the case. People will not pay for content on itself.

[Serge]

Don't want the DRM connected with services like Netflix? Simple, don't use those services. Don't want your government to spy on you? What to do, not use the government?

I don't think the two issues are that different. Governments can be changed. I am asking why we don't approach corporate encroachment into our lives the same way.