
Mozilla bug 923590: Pledge never to implement HTML5 DRM - chris_wot
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=923590
======
guelo
What's ridiculous about everybody bending over backwards for the Netflix
usecase is that Hollywood isn't letting Netflix have the content anyway
because they want to control and destroy yet another medium. Hollywood is a
corrupting evil in our technical, legal and political systems and should be
shunned, not accommodated, as much as possible.

~~~
shmerl
Netflix can't excuse itself for being a mere conduit for evil DRM lobby. No
one was forcing them, it's their own choice to be that conduit. And for that,
they can be blamed not less than the DRM lobby itself. Since Netflix helps
proliferation of DRM in a big way.

Users can vote with their wallets in order to reverse the sick trend of
publishers who push DRM everywhere, but it's not as effective as distributors
voting with their wallets. And Netflix clearly votes for DRM, not against it.

~~~
kemiller
I don't really get the resistance to DRM in the Netflix case. I'm against DRM
on any media that is represented as a _purchase_. But you're not buying movies
from them, you're renting them, and it's never represented as anything else.
DRM seems not only acceptable in the rental case, but probably necessary.

~~~
shmerl
Resistance to DRM should be in each and every case IMHO. Why should Netflix
suddenly be excluded? Renting of digital data is a stupid idea to begin with.
And using DRM to enforce the renting aspect (since without it, "enforcing" it
is not possible) is even more stupid and unethical at the same time.

All this comes from some paranoid and unhealthy urge of publishers to restrict
copying (even legal copying).

~~~
kemiller
Since nobody has come up with a DRM system that doesn't depend on a central
service that can go away or change its terms, all DRM-based content is
effectively rented. What is unethical about renting something? If you claim
that your customer is "buying" something, that they will then "own", then yes,
that's outright fraud. I am absolutely against that. But if it's a service,
what's the big deal? You can sign up for the service or not. You don't have a
supported platform? I guess you can't do it. Nothing new or surprising there.
Find a different service, or find a different way to entertain yourself.

If you want to talk about the death of ownership and the rise of rental, and
how that might be damaging, that's a fine an interesting topic, but I don't
see how it's about ethics.

~~~
azakai
> Since nobody has come up with a DRM system that doesn't depend on a central
> service that can go away or change its terms, all DRM-based content is
> effectively rented.

If we consider anything that works to prevent media from being copied in
violation of copyright, then there is one solution that does not have a
central service, and is not rent-based: watermarking.

Every purchase is watermarked for the specific customer. If they give someone
else a copy, it is detectable from who they received it, so legal action is
possible. But fair use is never prevented, as copying is always technically
possible.

(Yes, it is possible to remove watermarks, but it is also possible to get
around DRM - all of these schemes are continuously escalating arms races.)

~~~
ensignavenger
What happens if I sell the content, then the purchaser distributes it? Do I
then get blamed for copyright infringement?

~~~
azakai
If you buy content for personal use, like you buy an episode of Game of
Thrones, you aren't allowed to sell it to anyone. But you can copy it between
your own devices as you see fit.

~~~
ensignavenger
If you can't sell it, it isn't yours- you don't own it. (At least, according
to most definitions of ownership).

~~~
throwawaykf02
Another comment I made downthread might address this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495063)

------
ddebernardy
I think you're barking up the wrong tree... And that it has the potential to
blow up in Firefox's face.

Remember what happened to html5 video. Everyone but Firefox was pragmatic, and
implemented h.264 -- primarily, but not only for hardware acceleration
reasons. Years later, Webkit-based browsers are ubiquitous, and Mozilla is
developing a phone OS nobody will care about, in a desperate effort to become
relevant again.

Imo, Mozilla ought to spare itself another embarrassment by being the only
guys in the room with the contrarian opinion. Take the issue to the W3C
directly -- or for that matter vote for your local pirate party. HN and other
tech news venues might be the correct places to recruit support, but you
ultimately want to lobby your case directly.

~~~
Udo
What drove me to Chrome at the time was the resource hunger and the inferior
UI of Firefox, not the video thing. If DRM is the consensus, Mozilla _should_
(and probably for technical reasons must) have the contrarian opinion. It
would be enough to make me switch back, actually.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I like Chrome. I think it's a better browser than Firefox. Having to switch
back, after several years settling into Chrome's extensions and
configurations, would really piss me off. But I'll do it if Chrome implements
this bullshit and Firefox doesn't.

Wonder if I've still got tabs saved from the last time I seriously used
Firefox, years ago. Probably not...

~~~
babby
I use both browsers regularly, but Firefox out of preference. It amazes me at
how under performing chrome has become over the years. Font rendering, for
one. The fact that they STILL don't have DirectWrite font rendering on
Windows, something that has been with IE and FF since FF 3.6, amazes me.

Good luck trying to get a webfont to render the same (or look any good) in
Chrome as it does in IE and FF on Winderps. The sheer fact that it isn't IE
for once...

The font thing, while somewhat recent in usage, should have been in Chrome
ages ago. Not going to bother getting into Chromes other more critical flaws
as I feel like these threads devolve into this kind of shit too easily.

Just sucks that Chrome has gone from this cool browser that actually is
progressive, to some kind of Ad-friendly extension of Google that just
qualifies as "better than IE!".

Methinks you should jump on FF, it's better, and not because it may not
support some arbitrary HTMl5 spec that we wont see for half a decade.

~~~
fafner
It seems many Chrome users have last used FF 3.6 and still compare Chrome to
that. Meanwhile Chrome has gotten slow and annoying. The old "boiling frog"
anecdote comes to mind.

~~~
bluecalm
Yep. I remember Chrome was blasting fast when I switched to it when it
appeared. I switched back to FF few months ago and I like it better,
especially on Android.

------
Fice
DRM can't be properly implemented in free (as in freedom) software. Either you
will not be able to run any modified version not signed by the vendor on your
device, or any version you build yourself will lack DRM support. DRM is all
about restricting the user control over their devices.

DRM-enabled Firefox would be effectively non-free software: you could not
modify it and rebuild it from source while retaining the DRM functionality.

~~~
ZachWick
Firefox is already non-free software. The Mozilla branding is the main reason
why - those parts are licensed under non-free licenses.

~~~
pslam
Firefox is non-free due to trademark protection, but that's VASTLY different
to being non-free due to being a paid download, or being closed source, or
patent licensing, or restrictive licensing terms, and so on. It's almost
irrelevant to the parent poster's comment to claim that.

~~~
quadrangle
Firefox is NOT non-free, period.

[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-
list.html#MPL-2.0](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#MPL-2.0)

~~~
pslam
No, there are disputes over this, and it's exactly why there is Iceweasel in
Debian:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Debian_project)

It's not really a big deal, but the trademark restriction does mean you can't
just redistribute Firefox as-is. Whether you count that as non-free is
subjective.

~~~
quadrangle
I agree there's some subjectivity but "you can't just redistribute Firefox as-
is" is NOT subjective. That is flat out wrong. You _can_ redistribute Firefox
as-is. What you can't do is redistribute _modified_ Firefox and keep the name.

------
skrebbel
Can some of the more involved please explain the consequence of a choice like
this? If Mozilla chooses to not implement this spec, will the effect be that:

    
    
        * Firefox is the only browser that can't play certain content
        * Firefox is the only browser that plays all content
    

?

I would assume the first, because it should be easy for a content provider to
just block a certain browser entirely (and that block could be circumvented,
but the majority of people won't do that). People will blame Firefox, not the
content provider.

~~~
doublec
Any browser that doesn't implement the EME spec won't be able to play content
protected using it. So if large video streaming sites were to use it those
browser would be locked out. Internet Explorer 11 can play netflix videos
using EME without plugins for example [1]. Browsers that don't support EME
would need to use plugins for as long as the site supported that.

[1]
[http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2013/06/27/netflix...](http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2013/06/27/netflix_html5_player_working_in_internet_explorer_11_on_windows_8_1)

~~~
josteink
_Internet Explorer 11 can play netflix videos using EME without plugins for
example_

While technically true, it's certainly stretching the truth a wee bit.

Saying "Internet Explorer 11 can play netflix videos using EME without using
additional plug-ins because it ships with specific DRM-implementations built-
in" would be the more correct version.

I mean... Chrome can play Flash-content without any plug-ins, because the
Flash plug-in is built in. When you put it that way, it doesn't sound so
impressive any more, now does it? Further extending the browser _will_ require
plug-ins.

The special about this thing, is that it's a plug-in architecture deliberately
created to enable DRM, to take control away from the user. That's legitimizing
DRM as a concept in a supposedly open standard.

That's as just madness and 100% self-contradicting.

------
devx
It's bad enough that governments are starting to restrict the Internet all
over the world [1], almost in unison, why should the last bastions of freedom
on the Internet fall so easily, too?

I see the _corruption of W3C_ (because that's what it is) by corporations
almost as bad as the corruption of NIST and the security standards by the NSA.

And for what exactly? The apparent "convenience" of not having a 3rd party
plugin, but instead a "native" plugin in the operating system, that will only
work on certain operating systems and browsers? HTML and DRM are incompatible
in principle, and will be incompatible in practice, too. It won't give you any
convenience, and will potentially make things worse in many other ways.

And all of this because we're starting to buy into the idea that the content
companies are right and piracy is hurting their sales? I guess repeating a lie
long enough, does make it true in the end - even though it probably isn't [2].

So once again, why are you letting our Internet freedom slip away without even
a fight?

[1] - [http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-
net-2...](http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2013)

[2] - [http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-isnt-hurting-the-
entertainmen...](http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-isnt-hurting-the-
entertainment-industry-121003/)

~~~
gsnedders
The W3C is an industrial consortium — its direction and what it produces is
down to its membership, so obviously it will follow what corporations want,
because that's what industrial consortia do.

------
frozenport
I wonder if this will finally kill Firefox? Imagine a world where FF can't
play YouTube or watch Netflix? What if DRM content becomes so prevalent it FF
will render most websites like Lynx?

~~~
spongle
Well I'll have a lot more time on my hands so perhaps it isn't a bad thing.

Perhaps the fragmentation it will cause will destroy closed media on the
internet as a whole.

Nothing bad can come of it.

~~~
duckduckblert
> Perhaps the fragmentation it will cause will destroy closed media on the
> internet as a whole.

It almost certainly won't. The majority of consumers won't care (or even
notice) so long as good products are being made with the technology.

------
aaronem
I'm still trying to figure out how we go from "UA streams encrypted content to
EME plugin -- oops, sorry, 'extension' \-- and EME extension streams decrypted
content back to browser" to 'View Source' being prohibited, copy-paste of text
demanding micropayments to complete, dogs and cats marrying each other, and
Satan going to and fro on the earth.

~~~
chris_wot
I'll deal with what I wrote only, not the rest of your silliness :-)

The basic argument is that those who want restrictions to content have been
attempting to chip away at what is essentially an open platform. While the
W3C's argument is that it is an "extension" to the HTMLMediaElement, and while
the draft goes to great pains to state that it is not a DRM system, in actual
fact it goes a great way towards allowing for a DRM system.

If you review the diagram in the draft [1], you will see that it covers
playback of certain content. Currently, it is restricted to media files. But
you can see that once this is adopted, it would then lower the barriers for
media companies and other interested actors to push for encryption mechanisms
for individual elements.

Even worse, note that the Content Decryption Module (CDM) is a "part of or
add-on to the user agent that provides functionality for one or more Key
Systems". In other words, these will probably need to be implemented as binary
blobs which are add-ons for browsers. They may need to use specific
technologies that are part of particular operating systems.

What does this leave us all with? Well, it leaves us with the promogulation of
a bad idea (restrictive DRM) implemented using a variety of browser specific
extensions that may need to utilise the specific technologies of a particular
operating system.

As an example, you could be forced to use an add-on for Internet Explorer that
can only be used on Windows 8.

So in other words, the plan is a bad one for technical reasons, and for
political reasons it lowers the barriers to campaigning for more restrictive
measures leaking nto the rest of the standard.

1\. [https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted-
med...](https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted-
media/stack_overview.png)

~~~
acdha
How is this different from the status quo? All you appear to be arguing is
that we should stick with the status quo where you are required to use
something supported by Flash or Silverlight.

The option I'd like, where video is watermarked or otherwise not encumbered,
isn't on the table and much as I'd like that to change, the security realist
in me would like a web without Flash even more.

~~~
BrendanEich
See
[http://www.otoy.com/130501_OTOY_release_FINAL.pdf](http://www.otoy.com/130501_OTOY_release_FINAL.pdf),
linked from [https://brendaneich.com/2013/05/today-i-saw-the-
future/](https://brendaneich.com/2013/05/today-i-saw-the-future/).
Watermarking is possible via GPU clouds, OTOY has demonstrated this. The
acceptability of it in lieu of DRM came from a Hollywood 6 member. I can't say
more, but there is hope.

~~~
acdha
Very cool news - I'd missed that part of your post. Thanks for pushing JS
performance so hard, too.

------
dingdingdang
Yeah, good luck the the DRM crap - it worked over so well with music (not) and
I'm sure it'll fly super fine with video too. Tim Berners-Lee has sold his
soul somewhere along the line. Following bit from Florian Bösch comment on
article sums it up brilliantly:

"The W3Cs (and Tim Baner Lees) support of EME shows clearly that once again,
the W3C has gone down a blind alley (like with XHTML) and is not interested to
serve the real needs of the web. The WhatWG was the result of W3Cs stagnation
on addressing real world needs. And once again the W3C is more interested in
stagnation than real world needs with EME. It has to be expected that the
relevancy of any W3C standard will substantially diminish in the future."

------
mmcclure
Mozilla wouldn't implement EME in the browser. It would come in the form of a
plugin. It's absolutely incredible what a few uninformed blog posts will do to
an otherwise very smart group of people.

I wrote pretty much the same thing in the comments on the blog post yesterday
when people were freaking out about this then. EME is a plugin spec for
implementing DRM, not something that would get baked into browsers.

Everyone put their logic pants on and stop freaking out for a second. This is
might be a silly spec for implementing a stupid premise (DRM), but it's not
the end of the open web.

------
ProNoob13
First of all, making a bug-ticket for something that doesn't exists yet isn't
going to solve anything. Second of all, why do you oppose DRM? It's been
around for years. Games, DVDs... Nobody really had troubles with it until the
bad (not so user-friendly) implementations came around. But, with W3
standardizing the spec for it, we get a win-win: We can watch all our
(streaming) video without Flash (which was previously used for DRM), and
content providers can be sure that the content we're watching is payed for.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _why do you oppose DRM? It 's been around for years._

So has syphilis.

~~~
ProNoob13
Haha, good point. But my idea behind that argument was that it won't hurt
anything more than it does already.

~~~
shiven
By making it a part of a "standard", you help spreading the disease. Right
now, the fact that DRM is implemented via Flash paints it as 'painful-to-use'.
Once you implement it without the pain that is Flash, you have removed the
barrier that is slowing the spread of DRM.

~~~
aaronem
Yes. Because heaven forfend anyone should get _paid_. One cannot serve both
God and Mammon.

~~~
chris_wot
Actually, DRM systems prevent me from seeing content I'm willing to purchase.
I tried to buy the Dragon Book on Kindle some time ago, but I couldn't because
I live in Australia.

What was that about getting paid again?

~~~
curiousdannii
Or _any_ active content! Why would Amazon sell apps in only North America?!

~~~
chris_wot
It's called geoblocking. The Australian Senate held hearings into it. Fun
fact: I was looking to buy Cowboy Bebop and Star Trek: The Next Generation on
iTunes. Not available, but definitely available in the U.S. App Store.

~~~
mmagin
Even before streaming, the media publishing industries have been into
segmenting the world into different markets for the same product: For example:
books separately published in the US and the UK, DVDs and Blu-Ray disks with
region codes that prevent playing on the other region players (providing
they're players which obey this flag.)

~~~
chris_wot
Time to disrupt these arseholes.

------
alkonaut
Either make way for content protection for video in some kind of standard, or
we are stuck with Silverlight and Flash video forever. Why wouldn't I want
some kind of standard platform for delivering protected video in my browser,
rather than getting and updating 2-3 different insecure plugins all the time
for doing the same thing?

Is this just a crusade agains DRM as a whole (good luck with that) from the
free software movement, or do they have problems with this exact proposal from
the w3c?

~~~
jimktrains2
> or we are stuck with Silverlight and Flash video forever

This proposal simply trades one insecure, binary blob for another. It doesn't
really solve the problem.

> rather than getting and updating 2-3 different insecure plugins all the time
> for doing the same thing?

IIRC each site can provide its own module, so it'll be many more than 2-3
plugins

> Is this just a crusade agains DRM as a whole (good luck with that) from the
> free software movement, or do they have problems with this exact proposal
> from the w3c?

Why good luck with that? DRM simply makes honest users jump through hoops and
allow themselves to be controlled. Also, the proposal itself doesn't really
solve any of the problems that flash and silverlight do. And those binary
blobs will still probably not run in linux...

~~~
alkonaut
Yes, the problem: the only way the content owners will stream tonights game to
my computer is if it is protected somehow. If there is a way to make a
transparent & open platform that allows content to my computer in a way that
makes the content providers happy, then I'm all for doing that instead of
having the system of insecure binary blobs. But is that possible? If it is
possible, wht isn't the W3C pushing for that instead of the "plug your own
binary"-platform? Is security through obscurity inherent in DRM?

~~~
jdjb
"Yes, the problem: the only way the content owners will stream tonights game
to my computer is if it is protected somehow."

No, the problem is that they think they reserve the right to control what your
hardware displays.

~~~
alkonaut
My screen displays what I tell it to? If it is a FairPlay/PlayReady stream or
not. I wasn't talking about hdcp or other hardware/end-to-end drm. I don't
think systems like FairPlay are going away anywhere soon. Surely it must be
possible to make an open standard similar to FairPlay? It can't be all
security through obscurity?

------
chris_wot
P.S. in case anyone asks, I submitted the bug on my iPad... Hope it's not too
disconcerting to see the WebKit user agent on this bug! :-)

~~~
lmm
So you choose convenience over freedom for yourself, but want Mozilla to not
cater to people like you?

~~~
aaronem
It's about as coherent as most of what's coming out of the "all DRM is evil
period" camp right now, or at pretty much any other time. Besides, I'm sure
his iPad is jailbroken.

~~~
chris_wot
It's not.

------
code_duck
They say,

"A Web where you cannot cut and paste text; where your browser can't "Save
As..." an image; where the "allowed" uses of saved files are monitored beyond
the browser; where JavaScript is sealed away in opaque tombs; and maybe even
where we can no longer effectively "View Source" on some sites, is a very
different Web from the one we have today. It's a Web where user
agents—browsers—must navigate a nest of enforced duties every time they visit
a page. It's a place where the next Tim Berners-Lee or Mozilla, if they were
building a new browser from scratch, couldn't just look up the details of all
the "Web" technologies. They'd have to negotiate and sign compliance
agreements with a raft of DRM providers just to be fully standards-compliant
and interoperable."

Well, so essentially like the situation with native apps then. My guess is
most consumers wouldn't notice at this point.

------
tpainton
until you see some slime profit from your hard work by simply copying it...
it's easy to talk about how evil drm, and copyrights are. I know
photographers, great photographers, that were stunned when they googled their
images and found them front and center on some scumbags webpage, claimed as
theirs. musicians go thru the same ordeal. This isn't just about Hollywood, it
affects creators who are far from rich.

~~~
rkda
Wouldn't watermarking solve this problem? Then people would know the original
owners. Other people can't get away with claiming them as their own.

------
ksec
Realistically, how are content provider suppose to copy protect their
properties without the use of DRM?

~~~
icebraining
Realistically, DRM does fuck all to protect content; The Pirate Bay is proof
of that (most content there comes from DRM'd sources). All it does is control
paying users.

~~~
res0nat0r
Realistically, DRM keeps the majority of users from pirating content(otherwise
I'll venture to guess that BigBadCo would have found via their research it was
a losing proposition).

The internet dorks who frequent HN and Reddit who know how to easily
circumvent said DRM are the minority.

~~~
icebraining
_uTorrent & BitTorrent Surge to 150 Million Monthly Users_[1]

That's almost _double_ the unique hits on Reddit, and those are just two P2P
applications; there are plenty more that are extremely popular among other
populations.

 _otherwise I 'll venture to guess that BigBadCo would have found via their
research it was a losing proposition_

Only if you assume that controlling the paying users is not the real purpose.
It's much easier to get suckers to pay three or four times for the same
content if you lock'em up with platform-specific DRM.

[1] [http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-surges-to-150-million-
mon...](http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-surges-to-150-million-monthly-
users-120109/)

~~~
res0nat0r
>Only if you assume that controlling the paying users is not the real purpose.
It's much easier to get suckers to pay three or four times for the same
content if you lock'em up with platform-specific DRM.

When has charging $15-25 for a DVD/BluRay become a suckers bet? Sure most of
us here like all digital platforms, but many don't, and happily shell out that
amount of money. Also because it is easy to pirate a digital copy of a BluRay
(if you are technically inclined), doesn't mean that somehow all digital
copies of BluRay releases should somehow approach $0.

~~~
icebraining
You seem to be replying to a post I didn't write. I never said any of that.

------
lucb1e
I dislike this. Now sites will just say "View this site in Internet Explorer"
and I'll have to boot a virtual machine to legally view the content. Well, if
I ever get sued for it I guess I can always say Hollywood should provide me
with a Windows license.

~~~
chris_wot
You can choose not to view that content.

~~~
ricardobeat
What if all content was under DRM? What if I owned all the land on earth,
charged huge taxes, then told you 'you can choose not to live here'?

~~~
chris_wot
Do you own all the land on earth, and are you ever likely to?

------
Qantourisc
I'd like to make a comment, but does anyone know how this DRM works ? I mean
either you trust the client, by binary-blobs/hardware or other form of
protection, or you are delivering the content into the lap of the consumer.

So I wonder if FireFox CAN even implement it ?

~~~
fafner
The current proposal for Digital Restrictions Management is to have an API
which would load proprietary closed source binary blobs to handle the videos.
Or in other words: They force "Yet Another Flash" into HTML5. Perverting the
whole idea of an open web...

~~~
chris_wot
Not to mention tie content to a particular browser, not to mention a
particular OS.

------
chris_wot
I'm not sure I put this into the right category. It's really more than a
Firefox issue, it's something for Mozilla as an organisation.

------
zamalek
"To view this website please download our plugin that enables DRM-protected
content in your browser."

------
ialex
What a scary stuff is this?

Imagine the new world that would be open to the malware/spyware if DRM is
enabled they will easily use this to hide their shitty stuff and not allowing
anybody to see whats going on, how does w3c is going to let that happen :S

Hopefully Firefox wont be open to implemment this shit on their browser.

------
smegel
Well its either that or flash...think I would rather HTML5.

~~~
idlewan
Just because we hate flash doesn't mean we should accept something worse to
get rid of it.

You think the DRM blob would be less slow, less buggy, less closed and less
resource-hungry than flash is and has been? Think again.

~~~
takluyver
Why? The DRM blob has to do far less than Flash - it's not a whole runtime
environment, it just decrypts a data stream and sends it to be rendered. There
are very good reasons to think that that would be less slow, buggy and
resource hungry. Though I agree that it would be no less closed.

~~~
alkonaut
While I agree that it does seem like "less work" to just do the DRM bit, is it
really likely that this plugin will really decrypt data, leaving a normal
unprotected video stream for the browser to render?

In that case, a browser implementation could just write the unencrypted video
to disk or re-stream it over http to other clients, without even having to do
a new transcoding/compression (which costs cpu power and reduces quality).

The whole point of effective software video DRM is that the plugin must render
the video to screen itself, and ideally in a way that doesn't let the attacker
find the unencrypted stream in memory. Silverlight does this via PlayReady for
example.

------
shmerl
I still wonder what was Tim Berners-Lee thinking, when supporting DRM? He
should have known better.

------
AYBABTME
Maybe I have no idea of what I'm talking about, but my understanding over how
this "Media and Piracy" plot has gone is:

    
    
      - Media purchase was inconvenient and overly expensive.
      - People pirated because it was convenient and cheap.
      - Streaming services offered convenient, low cost 
        solutions.
      - People 'stopped' pirating because streaming is a decent,
        convenient legal alternative.
    

At least that's how I've (and everybody I've asked about) gone through it. So
in that perspective, it seems to be a useless attempt at defending from a
fading threat.

~~~
alkonaut
I have the same feeling. But like I have tried to explain elsewhere: live
streamed events (expensive sports broadcasts) are really sensitive to piracy.
At least if you judge by the precautions they use. Today they typically use
PlayReady DRM in a Silverlight video player (flash based solutions also
exist). They usually also randomly insert subscriber id:s as text at regular
intervals and random locations in the video stream thereby watermarking it and
making it a risk for whoever decides to re-stream their screen. So the current
situation is this: the broadcasters already have several methods of protection
(Watermarking, Encryption), which means any technology we wish they would
adapt better support at least what they have today.

------
Zigurd
Tens of billions of dollars worth of JavaScript source code are squirted out
to every person, good and nefarious, rich and poor, all over the planet
without boundaries, every day as they use Web applications. Why is nobody
promulgating a standard for hiding it?

The answer is that such proposals get laughed out of the room. They would
break the Web, which is far more valuable than anyone's JavaScript source
code. Has innovation in JavaScript suffered for lack of source code protection
in Web standards? That's also a laughable idea.

So, why not the same answer for passive content?

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captainmuon
Implement it, but don't implement it properly. Always tell the server (or
whatever does the checks) that DRM is available, and that the user is
authorized to play the content. Or add a button or setting to unlock any
content.

And even if they implement DRM, I could probably just grab the source and
comment out a few ifs, and would be fine (assuming its not just a wrapper for
Windows' DRM).

~~~
mercurial
I don't think it's supposed to work like this. It's not about implementing DRM
itself, it's about having a standard API which would allow an opaque binary
blob to implement the actual DRM. And then, as the issue points out, possibly
extend the reasoning to other elements, like Javascript code.

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crazychrome
am i the only one to against the pledge?

here is the reason: if there was such kind of mechanism in browser, we
probably already had snapchat years ago on browser instead of Apple's safe
guarded garden.

there is no evil technology. it just depends on how to use it. i'm surprised
so many are blindly naive.

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ChikkaChiChi
Please implement this. The faster we lull these stupid media companies into a
false sense of security, the faster we can get rid of Silverlight.

~~~
surrealize
Silverlight is going away regardless--it's already deprecated by Microsoft.
Just as Flash has been deprecated by Adobe. We don't need to do anything to
ensure that they go away.

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jheriko
well done. :)

as we all know drm is folly. if the data can be decrypted to use then it can
be stolen /always/.

------
thenerdfiles
The Grand Chancellor of English, or Webster's Dictionary, has confirmed that
utterance of protected terms is in scope of the latest edition.

