For people willing to pirate, it, yes. However, it's far less convenient to pirate movies and get them to your big screen TV than it was to use napster and listen to songs on your mp3 player. On the flip side, Netflix (i.e. content with DRM) accounts for roughly 1/3 of nightly internet traffic in the US. DRM facilitates consumer access to restricted content.
> Besides, for the w3c, where is the business incentive, where is the money involved?
The w3c is primarily an industry group. The players pushing DRM in HTML5 are Google, Netflix and Microsoft, all of whom have a business interest in being able to stream content via browsers.
What good is protection against piracy from people not willing to pirate?
And no, pirated content is far more convenient than DRMed content. DRM can only reduce the conveninence, not increase.
It's about business. Protection that works for 99.5% of the population is good enough for the old content industries. Netflix couldn't exist in its current form without DRM -- Netflix does not succeed because of novel technologies, but rather because of successful content licensing.
To be clear I'm not a fan of DRM, especially not when it's baked into the HTML standard.
> And no, pirated content is far more convenient than DRMed content.
I didn't say that - you're arguing against a position I didn't state.
I require a definition of how they are "considered harmful" because I seriously doubt that.
What's to stop someone from creating their own web client that doesn't implement that part of the standard? Where's it written that we have to follow every bit of the standard as it is written? Who gave this select group of people that much power over the open web?
Personally, I think the W3C was approaching being corrupted long before this issue. Maybe not in the terms you are describing right now but I've had issues with the behavior of various standard bodies and browser providers that happen to be a part of these bodies for a while now.
As for artifacts of culture being locked away from future generations, that is a potential problem. But we all know a silly DRM scheme isn't going to stop that. But that kind of thing has been in practice for a long time, way before we had electronics and the human race seems to be moving along in despite.
To me, a better solution is to show that people are willing to move on from these aspects of culture that everyone is so hung up on. If enough people show that these schemes don't work in the long run the content providers are more apt to change their ways. Look at the music industry, it's vastly different than it was just a few years ago and continues to change. Let these people attempt their schemes, in the long run it will matter little.
I keep pointing out that people are claiming that this is harmful in some personal way. I keep asking how. The best I've seen is that it creates harm to the standards, which is more about causing harm to the people who control the standards. This decision directly harms the standards body itself, it does not harm the open web. Corrupting the standards with bad decisions hurts the reputation of the standards body, which will eventually importance in the scheme of things. The open web will just move on to something else. The reason I say that is because if the web is truly open, it is free to ignore the "standards" it doesn't like. Meaning, the people who use it can choose to not participate. It's a standard because everyone agrees to use it together. If the people using the open web decide they don't like a browser that implements DRM they don't agree with, then they have the option to choose a browser that doesn't implement the DRM. If there isn't such a browser, the open web allows someone to create and share it with the masses.
If this decision actually causes harm to the open web, then it's not truly open because that implies no one can get around the decisions made by this select group of people. If that's the case, then the web doesn't sound very open as it stands today.
>>> or Hollywood makes content available on proprietary platforms that provide it.
Let them. They will spend tons of money on it and all those money will go down the drain once somebody wakes up and understands that treating customers as customers is better than treating them as enemies.
Strange how the general public don't get DRM-free movies from hollywood...
Either way, my point was exactly about 'Hollywood', if you want to call them that, it's them that are delusional about their ability to protect content with DRM.
>> Money shapes reality in this world.
In this case it sems to propagate delusions.
As for your statement that Hollywood is being delusional about DRM being able to prevent piracy. They are not delusional about it at all. They know exactly what's going on. They want DRM that prevents casual copying so that Uncle Bob doesn't give a copy of the latest movie to his entire family which is not an attempt at monetary gain. That way they only have to spend money going after serious piracy efforts that exist for the purpose of making money. Your statement assumes that Hollywood is being run by stupid people and that's a serious mistake to make in this type of debate.
Do they?
>> They may grumble when they have to purchase a movie for the second or third time.
So not happily then. And not what they actually want.
>> but they continue to do so
Because the choice is that or piracy, and many choose piracy. 'Not participating in popular culture' is a choice, but it's never going to be a big one.
>> You are attempting to apply your viewpoint on the general public, which clearly does not agree with you.
The general public are dolts, but even you have admitted they grumble and don't get what they want.
>> They want DRM that prevents casual copying so that Uncle Bob doesn't give a copy of the latest movie to his entire family which is not an attempt at monetary gain.
Then they have failed, because cousin bill, Bob's kid, has that figured out on them innernets.
>> That way they only have to spend money going after serious piracy efforts that exist for the purpose of making money.
Serious piracy efforts like usenet, torrents, IRC etc? Nobody makes much money there. There are for profit piracy-streaming services that advertise I guess. Never seem to have much legal trouble.
>> Your statement assumes that Hollywood is being run by stupid people and that's a serious mistake to make in this type of debate.
It is. Powerful, litigious stupid people with a lot of vested, anti-consumer interests.
Yes, yes they do. Take a look at the proceeds from those industries and tell me people are not handing over money for said content.
>> So not happily then...
Ah, I see the problem. When I said happily I meant this definition: "felicitously; aptly; appropriately". Meaning they pay because that's what they are supposed to do. My bad. What they want and what they do are two different things. You see, they don't want to pay for multiple copies but they do, not because of DRM. They do so because that's what they are "supposed" to do. This is more of a philosophical, economical, and/or legal issue they complain about, not technological. DRM is technology that most people are probably not even that much aware of in their day-to-day lives.
>> ... many choose piracy...
I didn't claim otherwise. But, as you say, they have the choice to not participate. That's my current answer to what I feel is outlandish cable subscription fees as compared to my perceived value of what they offer. It doesn't work for me, therefore I don't pay for cable. I use other means to access the media that I wish to consume.
>> The general public are dolts...
I think it's rude of you to apply your viewpoint on a large group of people that aren't even aware of your problem. Then when they don't go along with what you think they should be doing or what you think they should know, your method to convince them otherwise is to insult them? You're not going to win anyone over with your argument.
>> Then they have failed...
Due to record profits, I think the situation has worked out quite nicely for them. I think you are exaggerating in your own mind the number of kids who are sharing movies with their families and the impact this actually has.
>> Serious piracy efforts...
If you think trading torrents is serious piracy, then you need to read up on what true media piracy is. I'm not talking streaming or torrenting content. There are areas of the world where you can buy a perfect copy of a DVD or Blu-Ray for very little and the original content owners get nothing. It's a huge industry and I'm not talking just movies/music here. Plus in these areas this is practically endorsed by the local governments as legal. And I believe there's been a few cases of big-time streamers having legal troubles, Megaupload comes to mind. Before you say anything, that fell apart because of government incompetence, not because of the lack of anyone actually breaking the law.
>> It is...
Then you are naive. Stupid people don't make that kind of money and do the things they do. Just because you think they're stupid and you can cast opinions on things they do as stupid doesn't make it true. Their anti-customer interests, which is only a recent thing mind you, are possible due to carefully crafted legal systems that took years of planning and execution that you claim they are too stupid to have accomplished. If you're going to fight this battle then you need to understand what you're up against.
Very few people are intelligent in all areas, these people are clearly shortsighted and stupid in many.
I'm not going to address the rest of your comment, needless to say I disagree with pretty much everything you have to say on the topic, and I think that you set up and knock down a variety of convenient straw men on your response there.
But if you want to skip the rest of the response by claiming straw men without defending your claim then that's fine. Especially since you did it yourself with your "very few people are intelligent in all areas" comment. I was directly responding to your statements so I fail to see how the straw man fallacy applies. I did not present a distorted version of your position, I directly responded to it. But, who cares, it's only a discussion between strangers on the Internet. We're not creating world peace here.
Apparently this applies to everybody except consumers.
There is no real barrier to piracy. There's a minimal barrier for the hottest Hollywood properties - meaning you have to go through the hassle of a torrent instead of just going to YouTube - but if you want the content for free bad enough, you'll get it. Usually before it is available through legal channels.
Where your kid might be the factor in the piracy bit is in file-sharing, which makes you an uploader and not just a downloader.
What's wrong with that scenario, exactly?
> What's wrong with that scenario, exactly?
Nothing. It's the current scenario. It can bother users, but overall it bothers big media, because piracy is active and well on those proprietary platforms. That's the complaint we hear from them.
There's a large part of W3C that want change so that people with disabilities (such as poor vision) can enjoy big media products. Of course, that assumes that big media cares about implementing the ARIA stuff. I personally believe that their not caring in the past, on proprietary platforms, is an indication of what they'll do in the future, on the Web.
DRM in the Web will be a proprietary platform! The EME proposal is a proposal to make the former open Web depend on proprietary platforms. The actual DRM is not specified (how could it be?) and it only proposes an API the browser should provide for the proprietary binary blob DRM.
This is a really horrible step and an attack on the open Web! I'd much rather have Netflix and Hollywood use a completely proprietary DRM platform for their streaming services than them ruining the Web.
When the people with money say "we want this", you don't argue. It doesn't matter if it's technically infeasible. It doesn't matter if it won't have the intended effect. When the people with money want something, YOU GIVE IT TO THEM. And let them deal with the consequences. Otherwise, you won't get the business, and life can otherwise be made very, very difficult for you.
The people who run Hollywood have lots of money to play with. The people who run the Web companies want a piece of that action. Hollywood says "no can do unless we have reasonable assurance that due diligence has been done to prevent piracy -- that means DRM." DRM isn't really about being effective -- it's about providing a nominal barrier to piracy that will dissuade casual pirates outright, and in the case of serious pirates, provides something that can be "broken" so the studios can go after the person who broke it with civil and criminal copyright infringement claims. Now you know why the DMCA anticircumvention provisions exist: so the copyright industry can do with the law what DRM alone couldn't do.
So the Web either gets DRM, or Hollywood makes content available on proprietary platforms that provide it.
Money shapes reality in this world.