[QUOTE]The World Wide Web Consortium has formally put forward highly controversial digital rights management as a new web standard.
Dubbed Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), this anti-piracy mechanism was crafted by engineers from Google, Microsoft, and Netflix, and has been in development for some time. The DRM is supposed to thwart copyright infringement by stopping people from ripping video and other content from encrypted high-quality streams.
The [URL="https://www.w3.org/TR/2017/PR-encrypted-media-20170316/"]latest draft[/URL] was published last week and [URL="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017Mar/0016.html"]formally put forward[/URL] as a proposed standard soon after. Under W3C rules, a decision over whether to adopt EME will depend on a poll of its members.
That survey was sent out yesterday and member organizations, who pay an annual fee that varies from $2,250 for the smallest non-profits to $77,000 for larger corporations, will have until April 19 to register their opinions.
The proposed standard is expected to succeed, especially after web founder and W3C director Sir Tim Berners-Lee personally endorsed the measure, arguing that the standard simply reflects modern realities and would allow for greater interoperability and improve online privacy.
But EME still faces considerable opposition. One of its most persistent vocal opponents, Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argues that EME "would give corporations the new right to sue people who engaged in legal activity." He is referring to the most recent controversy where the W3C has tried to strike a balance between legitimate security researchers investigating vulnerabilities in digital rights management software, and hackers trying to circumvent content protection.
The W3C has also received three formal objections:
– It does not provide adequate protection for users
– It will be hard to include in free software
– It doesn't legally protect security researchers
The W3C notes that the EME specification includes sections on security and privacy, but concedes "the lack of consensus to protect security researchers remains an issue." Its [URL="https://www.w3.org/TeamSubmission/2017/SUBM-sdbp-20170302/"]proposed solution[/URL] remains "establishing best practices for responsible vulnerability disclosure."
It also notes that issues of accessibility were ruled to be outside the scope of the EME, although there is an [URL="https://www.w3.org/2017/03/eme-accessibility.html"]entire webpage[/URL] dedicated to those issues and finding solutions to them.
It has been a long and winding road getting to the point where the W3C has formally proposed a standard that allows controls to be placed on content – something that many internet engineers remain philosophically opposed to. But despite the lengthy efforts to address a plethora of concerns, the formal notice still goes out of its way to note that "publication as a Proposed Recommendation does not imply endorsement by the W3C membership."
There is little opportunity for those bitterly opposed to the measure to stir up a grassroots campaign against the spec, due to the entry barriers for W3C membership and the fact that only members can vote on approval.
It is that barrier – created to make the W3C financially sustainable – that some feel is pushing the organization down a path too closely aligned with corporate interests rather than the will of internet engineers.[/QUOTE]
[url]https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/22/w3c_drm_web_standard/[/url]
i want to see them try.
Well this has some scary implications.
Code of ethics and open standards my ass.
What the hell, W3C? I remember reading up on your tech. reports during the late 90's to understand networking and web design. What a joke.
You fucking what?, if something can't be ported, (EME definetly can, but the DRM mechanisms surely can't) it does not belong on the web standard.
so instead of ripping the video, i can just record my screen for the duration of the video
Been hearing about this for a while as I'm a fan of Doctorow's work, and I have to say the article's assertion that the financial motivations of the W3C currently are impacting its decision-making is spot-on.
I'd like to see the corporatist morons try- people will soon find ways to defeat it, and even then potentially just create alternative services and software platforms outside of the influence of EME.
[QUOTE]Google, Microsoft, and Netflix[/QUOTE]
One of these companies has driven down piracy rates in pretty much every country it has been introduced. Another one of these companies has a free and pretty good alternative to the last company's expensive but also pretty good software. How ironic of two of them to be for this shit
[QUOTE=Omilinon;51997497]Code of ethics and open standards my ass.
What the hell, W3C? I remember reading up on your tech. reports during the late 90's to understand networking and web design. What a joke.[/QUOTE]
It's not like it's impossible to have an open DRM standard. We have open security standards and they work just fine after all. And the DRM is only going to be "unethical" based on the implementation of the standard within a browser.
The W3C are [I]the[/I] guys to make this decision, it's their entire job. If the tech sector has come to the conclusion that "shit a lot of people are implementing stupid as fuck bespoke DRM standards and we don't want to support them all", it's the W3Cs' job to fix that.
It's better to have an actually open, native standard that can be uniformly implemented than the dumb shit we're already seeing where you have to use plugins like Flash, Silverlight, etc. to watch something. It's an inevitability as the owners of IPs want to protect their content.
(besides it's not even been accepted as a standard yet, the vote is down the members of the W3C committee in the end, their track record isn't exactly bad)
[QUOTE=Mobon1;51997540]so instead of ripping the video, i can just record my screen for the duration of the video[/QUOTE]
[I]For now.[/I] What companies envision is an unbroken chain of DRM from their studios to your eyeballs, and this is only one part of it.
[QUOTE=r0b0tsquid;51997596][I]For now.[/I] What companies envision is an unbroken chain of DRM from their studios to your eyeballs, and this is only one part of it.[/QUOTE]
I'm sure that's what game devs envisioned, and no matter how ridiculous the DRM they used year after year, it always got cracked. At the end of the day it just ends up inconveniencing loyal customers, and even in some cases, cracked/DRM-removed versions actually work better than a paid copy with DRM
DRM makes no sense, specially, for video and audio, people will claim it's made to avoid the "average person" from being able to pirate by just right clicking->save video, but that's something that can be disabled.
On top of that your average person is not the person that will upload pirated versions of movies, it's a bloody pirate group that can circumvent DRM trivially.
[QUOTE=djjkxbox;51997616]I'm sure that's what game devs envisioned, and no matter how ridiculous the DRM they used year after year, it always got cracked. At the end of the day it just ends up inconveniencing loyal customers, and even in some cases, cracked/DRM-removed versions actually work better than a paid copy with DRM[/QUOTE]
Check out [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection]HDCP[/url]. I'm not pulling this out of my arse; I'm talking about real technology that exists, is used, and is constantly being improved on and forced onto the masses.
You're right to say that it's ultimately pointless and will eventually be circumvented. I only responded to the first poster because I'm worried that we're just going to be complacent about this and let it happen, and it will eventually hurt us as consumers when we can't watch our old backed up movies from years ago.
I can reveal you this,
We actually didn't Stop SOPA,
Instead They pulled the internet companies to do the backdoor deals.
[url]http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2012/08/sopaprotectipop_1.htm[/url]
The really sad thing is that they probably have to do this, or else companies will just implement their own shitty closed proprietary solutions. And it isn't impossible to have open DRM standards (funny to type that may be.)
[QUOTE=thelurker1234;51997710]The really sad thing is that they probably have to do this, or else companies will just implement their own shitty closed proprietary solutions. And it isn't impossible to have open DRM standards (funny to type that may be.)[/QUOTE]
EME makes closed proprietary solutions easier though.
1 huge ass problem thoigh is that by doing this they essentially make everything on the internet copyright protected through the horribly put together dmca
[QUOTE=gokiyono;51997551]One of these companies has driven down piracy rates in pretty much every country it has been introduced. Another one of these companies has a free and pretty good alternative to the last company's expensive but also pretty good software. How ironic of two of them to be for this shit[/QUOTE]
Two of those companies also make the most popular CDMs for EME, so it's not really ironic if business interests were their top priority.
We already lost this battle when people decided Netflix was more important than an open web, so I expect nothing to change now.
[QUOTE=Sableye;51997782]1 huge ass problem thoigh is that by doing this they essentially make everything on the internet copyright protected through the horribly put together dmca[/QUOTE]
The content that EME protects has always been copyright protected, it was just impossible to enforce those protections before. The DMCA only provides legal mechanisms for punishing violations, and has nothing to do with this.
[QUOTE=r0b0tsquid;51997596][I]For now.[/I] What companies envision is an unbroken chain of DRM from their studios to your eyeballs, and this is only one part of it.[/QUOTE]
Ah, Yes? But who's to say that this [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand"]invisible hand/chain[/URL] will be moving in their favor.
This wouldn't be such a big deal if content were always reasonably priced, or even globally available to start with.
[QUOTE=Ager O'Eggers;51998324]This wouldn't be such a big deal if content were always reasonably priced, or even globally available to start with.[/QUOTE]
DRM would be completely unnecessary at that point.
[QUOTE=Ager O'Eggers;51998324]This wouldn't be such a big deal if content were always reasonably priced, or even globally available to start with.[/QUOTE]
The problem is that the industry already thinks that it is "reasonably priced" and feels entitled to the revenues that it has become accustomed to through the years without needing to adjust their business model.
This is silly. WC3 standard will be applied to most browsers. It will only reduce performance without any meaningful impact on piracy - people will find a way to rip content still. dumb/10 would not drm again
They're better off using stenography to hide identifiers in the videos so if a video is found to be distributed they can track down where it originated and sue the person - I don't think they should but it beats drinking from the cup of DRM
[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;52000081]
They're better off using stenography to hide identifiers in the videos so if a video is found to be distributed they can track down where it originated and sue the person - I don't think they should but it beats drinking from the cup of DRM[/QUOTE]
This is too easy to abuse, what if your account is stolen or an account is made with stolen credit card? Outside of cinema leaks stenography is useless.
[QUOTE=rndgenerator;52000091]This is too easy to abuse, what if your account is stolen or an account is made with stolen credit card? Outside of cinema leaks stenography is useless.[/QUOTE]
[quote]I don't think they should but it beats drinking from the cup of DRM[/quote]
[QUOTE=r0b0tsquid;51997653]Check out [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection]HDCP[/url]. I'm not pulling this out of my arse; I'm talking about real technology that exists, is used, and is constantly being improved on and forced onto the masses.
You're right to say that it's ultimately pointless and will eventually be circumvented. I only responded to the first poster because I'm worried that we're just going to be complacent about this and let it happen, and it will eventually hurt us as consumers when we can't watch our old backed up movies from years ago.[/QUOTE]
Funny thing is Nvidia's Shadowplay actually outright ignores HDCP.
[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;52000095]I don't think they should but it beats drinking from the cup of DRM[/QUOTE]
But it doesn't beat that. People getting wrongly sued is much worse than internet DRM. Both of them are bad but one of them poses a real damage to people.
Call me crazy, but I don't see the issue in people wanting to protect their IP. I agree it's futile, but why all the hate on protecting media for its creators? If copyright law didn't exist, we'd have a very weak industry.
[QUOTE=Downsider;52000184]Call me crazy, but I don't see the issue in people wanting to protect their IP. I agree it's futile, but why all the hate on protecting media for its creators? If copyright law didn't exist, we'd have a very weak industry.[/QUOTE]
Because the means they use to protect it directly affects user experience and in most cases reduces usability. There's a lot of negatives for little to no gain. You inconvenience your users but your content gets pirated anyway. People hate it because IP owners do things that have no positives. DRM is a huge hassle and detriment to enjoyment of media.
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