Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by mattie_p on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the if-you-can't-beat-'em dept.

An anonymous coward writes:

"In March, 2013 Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, proposed adopting DRM into the HTML standard, under the name Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). Writing in October 2013, he said that "none of us as users like certain forms of content protection such as DRM at all," but cites the argument that "if content protection of some kind has to be used for videos, it is better for it to be discussed in the open at W3C" as a reason for considering the inclusion of DRM in HTML.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has objected, saying in May of last year that the plan 'defines a new "black box" for the entertainment industry, fenced off from control by the browser and end-user'. Later, they pointed out that if DRM is OK for video content, that same principle would open the door to font, web applications, and other data being locked away from users.

public-restrictedmedia, the mailing list where the issue is being debated, has seen discussion about forking HTML and establishing a new standard outside of the W3C."

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:20PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:20PM (#1815) Homepage Journal

    It's all fine to whine about how DRM and copyrights etc. are evil and nasty, but the fact is that they're something that we have to live with.

    No, we don't. The very concept is stupid, and there is nothing I absolutely need that is protected by DRM. I'd subscribe to NetFlix were it not for Silverfish DRM. Instead, I'll just torrent. Fuck 'em. If you want me to pay for your shit, sell me what I want and don't add any stinky garbage.

    Whether you're a creator who actually likes to think that their work is protected from being reused and resold by other people, or you're someone who's just fed up with ham-handed DRM implementations, you'll have to agree that what we have now is a big ugly mess.

    I'm a content creator (BUY MY BOOK!)who knows good and well that DRM doesn't protect diddly squat and I agre that it's a big ugly mess. A big ugly mess I refuse to have anything to do with.

    And the people selling bootleg copies of Beatles records in the 70s had about the same moral sense as the people selling bootlegged copies of Photoshop. Both are wrong on a pretty fundamental level.

    I agree about bootleg copies being sold. That's just wrong. But even though there was a big stink from the labels about bootleg sales back then, I never saw a single bootleg copy of anything for sale. OTOH cassettes of albums were traded back and forth like P2P dies now, and what's more, it was specifically legalized by the Home Recording Act of 1976 (or was it 1978?).

    And like P2P, it led to sales. Like today, back in the late sixties when I was a teenager the radio played garbage. You didn't hear Zeppelin or Hendrix or Sabbath on the radio, although you might hear "Magic Bus" or "You Really Got Me" once a month mixed in with the Archies and similar commercial dreck. My friends heard of Zeppelin from me; I was in a record store the day their first album came out and the store was playing it. I wouldn't have heard of Hendrix or Iron Butterfly without our sneakernet P2P file sharing. And there were no complaints, it was legal.

    The KSHE came around in 1967 and changed St Louis radio forever.

    If the corporations who make their living off of music, software, or media want us to respect their claims of ownership they need to do two things:

    Price their products at a level that people feel is reasonable. (Is $40 for a downloadable audiobook "reasonable?")

    Figure out how to do DRM in a way that's transparent, works for all platforms, and which never, ever gets in my way.

    Impossible. If you can't copy it you can't back it up. I have LPs that are 45 years old, will your DRMed content still be available in 2050? But your first two statements are on the money: if someone wants your product and can afford your product and your product is actually available, they'll buy it. Piss them off and they'll download it from TPB.

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org