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

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

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

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.

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

What I said is technically true. You are simply talking about conspiracy theories and politics.

TV/Movie producers have a legitimate reason to want to protect their media. The lower the bar is for viewing the content they spend lots of money and work producing for free the more people do it. If there were no barriers to viewing movies then there are zero ways in our current economy to get a positive return. You can't fund Wonder Woman on money from advertisements. There needs to be a system where people pay for content.

EME is a means to an end. It's not inherently evil. If someone takes it and uses it for an evil purpose then we might have something to discuss, but today there is no way for our modern media to exist in a fully open source world. If EME didn't exist then we would still be using plugins to view Netflix. There is no situation where Netflix can operate in a fully open source system. And that's not a bad thing.

>>TV/Movie producers have a legitimate reason to want to protect their media.

I disagree.

>>>The lower the bar is for viewing the content they spend lots of money and work producing for free the more people do it. If there were no barriers to viewing movies then there are zero ways in our current economy to get a positive return

umm they are the ones creating the Barriers, DRM is a Barrier. I can not tell you how many times I have wanted to buy a movie or some other content only to find out it is not on the Platform or service I have choose to use.

Instead they want to only use the Platforms or services they bless. This is where the monopoly power of copyright breaks down.

If I want to watch a movie using my rPi running kodi I should have an easy way to buy a movie that just plays via a standard codec, it should not only be on a netflix, or worse now that every studio is making their own streaming platform we are going to see more piracy because they are simply refusing to sell their content in the manner consumer wants to buy it.

Basicly if you do not use Windows/Mac/Andirod/iOS you are out of consuming media. Linux haha screw you

>>EME is a means to an end. It's not inherently evil

DRM is inherently evil..

>>but today there is no way for our modern media to exist in a fully open source world.

That is completely false there is thousand and thousands of hours of media that exist in a fully open source world.

Music is almost all DRM free today, there is a strong push for DRM Free books,

TV and Movies seem to be the last hold outs for Defective by Design DRM.

They already have the most advanced form of DRM possible. Unlike a DVD or BD they can always cancel your account, pull movies from their catalog and dictate from which country you can watch movies. What do they gain from adding clientside DRM? The only thing I can imagine is plugging the analog hole but that is fundamentally impossible. At some point the photons of the screen have to reach your eyes. Even in the worst case scenario you can just use a capture card or even make your own by modding a display with an FPGA. It's futile to try to stop "pirates" with DRM. The only thing you can achieve is imposing even more restraints on your users.

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

> 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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".

> 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.

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.

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.

How is it not in their interests?

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.

> 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.

Yes, if you can achieve a massive boycott you might see some success. I don't see anything like a broad-based movement to that end going on right now.

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

Really? I can see a pretty good argument for why it SHOULD be legal. If I want to post some content I make online why shouldn’t I be able to try to protect it?

And let’s not go through the ‘But Sony rootkit!’ stuff. You can make safe DRM. Rooting someone’s computer is already a crime, that’s why Sony in trouble.

> As soon as these companies were making big money with DRM-free content...

Far too many people see nothing wrong with piracy. It works on music because it’s so cheap. I don’t think you’ll get 99c TV shows or especially movies any time soon. It probably isn’t sustainable, especially for movies.

So people will pirate, out of cheapness or inability to pay or ‘righteousness’ or whatever.

It’s not going to happen.

> ... I am pretty sure the large media companies would in the long run give up their stupid idea that DRM is necessary.

Why should they, from a business perspective, give up control they have now with basically no downside? I don’t even see a moral argument they should give it up.

Now I agree we need better fair use laws, and security people should be able to poke at DRM to make sure it’s not doing evil things. But I don’t see why society, under moral or business obligations, could support outlawing DRM.

> Really? I can see a pretty good argument for why it SHOULD be legal. If I want to post some content I make online why shouldn’t I be able to try to protect it?

The current state of affairs is that it's not just legal to use DRM, it's illegal (DMCA) to try and break a DRM scheme, _even if you do so in order to exercise your legally guaranteed fair use rights_.

It seems to me that there should be some sort of sort of moral right to self-defense that applies here: just like society/the law recognises that it is morally acceptable to use deadly force to defend yourself from someone who is trying to murder you (even if it wouldn't be otherwise), we can recognise that it is morally acceptable to use the legal equivalent of deadly force (ban DRM, make it illegal for them to enforce their right to protect their content) in self-defense (against them using DRM to make it illegal for you to enforce your right to fair use).

More bluntly: Content creators, with their support of the DMCA, have proven that they have no concern for my rights or freedoms. What standing do they have to expect me to have any for theirs?

Like I said I support better fair use laws as I know that’s a real issue right now.

The comparison to deadly force.... seems hyperbolic. No one is in mortal peril. I would have voted you up without that. Those kind of statements make it impossible to have/take discussions like this seriously.

I wasn't meaning to say that the legal prohibition to do something in this case is comparable (similarly bad) to deadly force; rather, I believe the relation between "prohibit DRM" and "use DRM to prohibit exercise of rights" is similar to that between "kill (in self-defense)" and "murder", and it seems accepted that in the kill-murder case, the latter justifies the former even though it would not be justified on its own.

On the other point, I'm not convinced that supporting better fair use laws is enough on its own. An equitable compromise between two parties with fundamentally opposing interests can rarely be reached if there is a deep asymmetry in terms of their ability to just take what they want and run. Maybe, if comparison to anything involving murder is going too far for you, we can instead make one to (ironically enough) stealing: if the local group of school bullies keeps dragging you into dark alleyways and taking your lunch money, will you also support better rights to keep your lunch money but think it is going too far to demand that they be put in detention, because you see a pretty good argument why they should have a right to free movement?

You went back to violent metaphors. Those seem far too strong for this issue.

The MPAA is not actively attacking you. They’re putting conditions on how you can view their content.

The only reason I'm resorting to violent metaphors is that our moral intuitions are usually more clear around those than around fairly recent societal constructions. Given the choice, I would rather be beaten up than subjected to any of the potentially life-wrecking legal threats listed in section 3 of https://www.eff.org/files/2014/09/16/unintendedconsequences2..., and I would think that this preference ordering is neither uncommon nor irrational. Given that, in what sense are the violent metaphors "too strong"?

> The MPAA is not actively attacking you.

Letting the police do the attacking stuff is just a formality.

Well that comment went as well as I expected. Can someone give a good argument why someone shouldn’t be able to use DRM to protect their content?

It goes against most people's notions of fairness to pay for a product and still have it encumbered with a lot of limitations. I think the case is stronger if we're talking about streams or rentals, but of course DRM is hardly limited to those.

But we’ve always had that. I mean every video tape I ever watched as a child had FBI warnings explaining that there were limits on what you could do with it.

The only difference is that the videotapes can now try and enforce it themselves.

But you also had rights enshrined in law, like resale.

Because it does not allow them to protect their content.

Their content will still be distributed without their consent, because DRM is broken as quickly as it is implemented.

And they will not be the one using DRM to control distribution of their content, the DRM vendor will be.

Next: why shouldn't I use the magic beans the mafia are offering me to protect my content?

That doesn't really answer the question, does it? If someone wants to lock up their bike with an ineffective lock, it might be a bad idea, but they're not outside of their moral rights to do so.

> Next: why shouldn't I use the magic beans the mafia are offering me to protect my content?

You don’t seriously expect people to engage in a discussion like this do you?

As emodendroket pointed out the rest of your comment is the argument against any kind of lock ever. It’s a false dichotomy.

Can you give a good argument, why computer owner shouldn't be able to control what her computer is doing?

Why computer should not serve its owner best interest and instead serve interests of media companies?

> 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.

Honestly I’m not sure it’s possible to make DRM illegal. On what grounds with that be constitutional? Artists have had rights to control how their work is performed in the US forever. How is this any different? Why would one form get protection and not the other?

I mean legally I don’t know if this counts as a free speech argument or not I just don’t see how such a long would end up passing muster.

This the only possible way to win on the long run.

Would an anti-DRM law actually be constitutional?

What part of the US Constitution would make it illegal? Companies should not have this kind of power. Internet is a basic need now, it's where we (as a race) create and share knowledge. If it is immoral to put restrictions on book consumptions, why should be moral to put restrictions on media consumption? And I'm not referring to access. You can buy a book on a store, and after that that book is yours you can lend to anyone else, and everyone can read the same pages on this same physical book. It the right to use the information after that you paid for it.

Yes, why not? Believe it or not it's not an issue Madison ever weighed in on.

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.