IP owners are protecting their assets which are worth a lot. The irony is that the value of those assets come from us content consumers. And I'll be the first to admit that I'm a lot less interested in the local amateur hockey team than the national league team I follow. I chose to consume that brand. But I don't have to.
Yes I lament the loss of a vision for free-flowing information. But the society in which we live, unfortunately, values and protects powerful asset owners. Technology cannot fix a society problem.
Seriously?
Nothing has really changed, has it? Video services want to use DRM so they developed or bought tools to do so. A de facto standard emerged around the frameworks and the W3C essentially ratified the standard. If I understand it correctly, the standard itself isn't DRM, rather it's a place where DRM controls can be installed.
I get that the EFF saw this as an opportunity to ask for a promise from DRM companies to not sue researchers and I applaud them for that. But now that they lost that battle, I think it's entirely appropriate for them to drop out and apply their resources elsewhere. For example, if they can get rid of the ability to sue researchers in the first place, then none of this really matters.
I don't think there's a demand for DRM free browsers but there is a demand for DRM free content.
EME existed for several years already, and was implemented in browsers. Standardization doesn't change much.
And no one except the big movie producers even wants to use DRM. If you don't watch movies on the web, you'll never see DRM.
Firefox is DRM-free by default. It will download Widevine CDM if you start watching Netflix, but you can untick a flag in the settings to completely forbid it from downloading the CDM, if you're afraid of accidentally signing up for Netflix :D
It is now. But next year? In five years? And if it's gone, then what?
> This is a paranoid slippery slope.
Well, it's a slippery slope. And I do tend to plan for the worst. Plus a safety factor.
The "OMG EVERYTHING WILL BE DRM" panic is not new. We've had widely available DRM back when Flash was super popular. And still, to this day, the only DRM'd thing is movies.
Maybe you meant to type 'the only thing I care about'.
I meant to type "I never actually saw DRM on the web in person".
Also, proprietary desktop software is still usually "protected" by just a serial number :D
The ineffectuality of most DRM isn't really an argument for it (or even just an argument against arguments against it), though.
Not really; there's a lot of sophisticated DRM going around at least since the 70's..
There is not a demand for DRM-free browser.
I don't know anyone in the real world that demands a DRM-free browser.
But there is clearly a demand for DRM-free browsers. And if the worst fears are realized, and mainstream browsers won't display media without DRM, or become snooping devices for IP oligarchs, that demand will increase.
Sure, it'll never be more than a niche, but DRM-free browsers will be there for those who want them.