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Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), a mechanism by which HTML5 video providers can discover and enable DRM providers offered by a browser, has taken the next step on its contentious road to standardization. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the standards body that oversees most Web-related specifications, has moved the EME specification to the Proposed Recommendation stage.
The next and final stage is for the W3C's Advisory Committee to review the proposal. If it passes review, the proposal will be blessed as a full W3C Recommendation.
Ever since W3C decided to start working on a DRM proposal, there have been complaints from those who oppose DRM on principle. The work has continued regardless, with W3C director and HTML inventor Tim Berners-Lee arguing that—given that DRM is already extant and, at least for video, unlikely to disappear any time soon—it's better for DRM-protected content to be a part of the Web ecosystem than to be separate from it.
Berners-Lee argued that, for almost all video providers, the alternative to DRM in the browser is DRM in a standalone application. He also argued that these standalone applications represent a greater risk to privacy and security than the constrained, sandboxed environment of the Web. He acknowledges that DRM has problems, chiefly the difficulties it imposes for fair use, derivative works, and backups. He notes, however, that a large body of consumers don't appear overly concerned with these issues, as they continue to buy or subscribe to DRM-protected content.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:35PM (1 child)
Yes. And everyone hates Flash because there is one thing you can be assured of... it is outdated and must be updated before the page you want to see can be displayed... or you click the "show me anyway damnit" button. Java was so horrible for so many years you can't even use it anymore because no browser will allow it. Same for Silverlight. That is what I am talking about, DRM being associated in the average user's mind with lame, annoying crap.
So here is the state of play now:
Legit video content:
Easy to locate and buy content.... if available and compatible, etc., otherwise impossible.
DRM encumbered, meaning annoying in the ways I already enumerated.
Usually expensive.
Region locked, not usually an issue here in the U.S. but a big one everywhere else, even Canada.
Guilt trip free
Pirate Bay / Usenet / Etc:
Uneven quality
Harder to locate less popular content
Risk of your ISP giving you problems unless you invest time and effort into a VPN or trade by sneakernet
Guilt trip because it is in fact stealing.
Content that plays effortlessly everywhere, forever.
What we have to do is make the pirate option enough better that average people begin to prefer it to avoid the annoyance of 'legit' media's lockdown. Then the big media industry will have to decide whether to go down with all flags defiantly flying or surrender to the customers. We know what the music industry decided. We have to apply enough pain for them to give up their dream of unlimited monopoly rents and eternal DRM enforced copyrights.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @12:37AM
Guilt trip free
You're giving money to scumbag corporations that bribe our government to get ever more draconian laws passed, so I think you should feel guilty.
Guilt trip because it is in fact stealing.
Making a copy of something doesn't make the original vanish and doesn't incur any additional expense upon the author. The only way you can possibly reach the conclusion that it's stealing is if you assume that potential profit is in fact a physical possession that the author owns before he/she even has it, but that requires that the author owns your money before you even agree to give it to them, which is patently absurd. Obtaining something that costs money is not necessarily stealing if you get it through copying (for the reasons previously mentioned), so that argument doesn't work either. Enough of the propaganda. [gnu.org]
But that's not to say that I support people sharing this stuff, because I don't; that just gives more publicity to the evil corporations that produced it. Boycott it all, I say.