
Netflix, Microsoft, and Google just quietly changed how the web works - MrsPeaches
https://theoutline.com/post/2304/netflix-microsoft-and-google-just-quietly-changed-how-the-web-works
======
tannhaeuser
A long overdue outcome of this new W3C disaster is the realization that the
consumer or the general public doesn't sit at the table when it comes to shape
the Web's destiny.

Self-proclaimed "standard bodies" W3C and WHATWG have failed to address the
Web's rampant problems: privacy enforcement standards (or lack thereof), and
oligopolistic or even monopolistic concentration of large parts of the web
infrastructure in the hands of Google, Facebook, Cloudflare, and very few
others, with a lack of incentive to do something about it because of W3C's and
WHATWG's financial dependency on the very parties having no interest in
changing the status quo.

What W3C and WHATWG do have delivered instead: DRM, and privacy-invading de-
facto requirement of JavaScript for even the simplest of interactivity
features, and WASM (even more privacy-invading, procedural features, from the
guys that brought you JavaScript).

~~~
BoiledCabbage
It's almost as if consumers need collective bargaining power, like a union.

Asymmetrical negotiations in all aspects of society produce asymmetrical
outcomes.

~~~
aversafe
You can vote with your wallet. But most won't, because when push comes to
shove it's more important to have access to shows than to care how they get to
you.

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CuriousSkeptic
What makes me most angry about all this is that the conflict is framed as
being between "consumers" or "users" the anonymous masses expected to just
passively download and experience "the content" and the "producers" the real
contributors who fill their browsers with this oh so valuable "content".

But that is not what the web should be about at all! Yes in any social
gatherings there will be a large corpus of passive participants but we should
never just bifurcate the community into consumers and producers because of
that. Between the active and passive participants there's a large space of
interesting levels of participation, the commentators, remixers, transducers,
the ones keeping quiet until they don't and and so forth.

The web should be about this large interactive space where people can exchange
and collaborate in any chosen capacity. Not a distribution infrastructure of
"content".

So please forget any arguments about what "consumers want to consume" it just
promotes this unproductive bifurcation.

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5_minutes
Good write-up article. Also note:

"Before the EFF quit, the organization offered a compromise that would have
forced rights holders to sign a covenant saying they would not use copyright
law to sue people who interacted with their soon-to-be standardized DRM in the
course of doing security research or accessibility work. "

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sqldba
W3C was always going to do this.

Nothing called a “consortium” will ever have the general populace’s best
interests in mind.

And there’s no opposing force that could leverage a penalty of any merit.

So they can just do what they like and will earn themselves or their host
companies the most money.

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zurn
For a critical article, the headline page oddly parrots the DRM proponents
agenda: "At issue was how to support copyright-protected video in web
browsers". Copyright protection is of course independent of DRM, and it would
be arguably better for web content (video included) if big media would't buy
itself these kinds of browser features.

~~~
rocqua
What other methods are there for enforcing copyright protection?

~~~
zurn
Same methods that are there for enforcing other laws of course. We had a
functional copyright system long before DRM.

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knlje
In my country DRM is a way for the copyright holder to communicate to the user
that private copying is prohibited. All DRM systems can be trivially broken
but it is illegal. If the content is not DRM protected you can legally make
private copies.

Thus the major differences between DRM and DRM-free products are:

1) The DRM-free product you own for the rest of your life. You can legally do
format conversions for future proofing your ownership.

2) The DRM product you can use for a time which is usually less than your
lifetime. Sometimes the physical product format deteoriates (e.g. DVD) or the
file cannot be used anymore (e.g. if Audible shuts down its login servers).

In the case of a streaming provider I do not understand why to go through so
much hassle to prohibit private copying. You could just include a text that
says "private copying prohibited". This would be an easier way to achieve the
same thing.

I have a feeling that there are some people actively misleading copyright
owners to use these DRM solutions and pay for their use. After all they only
pay for delivering this message to the end user in an overly complicated
manner.

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skrebbel
Nothing changed at all. W3C came up with lots of stuff that vendors chose to
ignore, and vice versa. Ever since the web was remotely popular, browser
vendors did their own thing.

Browser DRM is no different from <font> in that respect. The only difference
here is that the W3C didn't take years to bend over, but months.

This is like a kid crying "wolf!!" in the zoo.

~~~
5_minutes
You can not compare the <font> tag or a technology that is convenient for
Netflix's business model.

~~~
skrebbel
That's besides the point.

My point is OP acts as if W3C ever had any authority and the DRM affair took
it away. In reality, they never had much authority.

Browser vendors will pretty much do as they please, as they always have.

~~~
aversafe
Absolutely. Vendors have long looked upon W3C as providing opinions. The
history of web innovation has always been one or more parties moving quickly
to build something new, and W3C playing catch up to try and herd all the cats
into something developers can support across as many browsers as possible.

------
merricksb
Discussed previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15278883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15278883)

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rblatz
Anyone know the implications of EME on things like new “super cookies” or
other privacy invaiding techniques?

~~~
Santosh83
As it stands, EME has no direct impact on privacy, but since its very nature
is a binary blob explicitly outside the control of the browser or the user,
one can imagine DRM being used for purposes other than it was originally
conceived for. And such kind of tracking would be impossible to simply
"block", without disabling the whole page/site/app, a trade-off that most
people will make in a predictable manner.

DRM is just a natural consequence of commercialisation of the web and the
pushes and pulls that big money brings into the picture. We won't be going
back on this. The best we can hope for is govt regulation and more awareness
leading to better choices from the end user, who has the power to shape the
web but sadly remains distracted, diverted and ignorant, by and large.

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eli
If the W3C doesn't support DRM wouldn't that quickly lead to more non-W3C DRM?
I don't get the big deal. Netflix would ship their own browser if they had to
(and that'd be a bad thing).

~~~
shiven
_Netflix would ship their own browser ..._

They already do, it browses only Netflix, and they call it an app - at least
on all non-general purpose computational devices e.g. smartphones, smart tvs
etc.

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timeimp
If the closed part of EME and the remote possibility of being thrown in jail
for researching such extensions was removed, would there have been such an
outcry?

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taylodl
So this is the much ballyhooed new Microsoft? Doesn't look like the Tiger's
stripes have changed so much after all.

~~~
harrygeez
Not sure which side do you agree with but it sure seems like you just
conveniently ignored that besides Mozilla, all other major browser makers
Microsoft, Google and Apple are for this as well and actually already have it
implemented and ready.

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grondilu
Once you accept the idea of DRM, I don't see what's wrong about standardizing
it.

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ztjio
The web was a pile of nearly nothing before corporations embraced it. You can
always go back to that. Nobody's stopping you.

