Critics slam World Wide Web Consortium over inclusion of DRM in HTML5

[soybean]

So I guess our only hope is with WHATWG. I don't think DRM works well in the web environment. What do you think?

 

Link: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/100413-w3c-html5-274529.html

[tyson]

I know its considered against the grain to many, but I think DRM would be a good idea for the web in some ways.

 

In the case of web movies and renting I don't see how anyone can say it's bad.
I would love something like a world-wide Netflix available on all HTML5 systems.

 

Now, if only they had a W3c payment system someone could build a HTML5 Steam.

[joannesalfa]

Someone says open source is communism.

 

DRM would bring more opportunites, I don't believe DRM is bad idea, they don't know about the thiefs exist.

[sandy234]

DRM would be cracked on Day one. Whats the point.

[Ezelia]

if you want plugins free browsers you should accept DRMs, think of them as a transport layer that provide you a service in exchange of money.

 

and if you think that internet is actually free you're wrong, you allways paye in some way or another.

[rich]

I'm a bit confused as to how they'd actually implement it though. I mean most popular browsers are fully open source, right? So you'd have to make the whole part of them that decrypts/manages the DRM either closed source, which seems insane, or give out all the code from day 1.

[Ezelia]

security is not obtained throught obscurity, all (almost?) encryption algorithms are Open Source, this does not mean that you can decrypt a message knowing the algorithm ...

browsers can implement a layer that allow the transport of encrypted content, and temporary decryption keys ...


of course, it'll be allways possible to crack it or at least to save the stream and redistribute it, but DRMs will give some control to make it hard for common people to bypass the payement.

 

[tyson]

Apparently the part the DRM decrypter part will be a (presumably closed-source) binary 'blob'.

 

So I think the browser will either request the 'blob' or have it built-in.

[captainherisson]

There is a great discussion on moz bugzilla over here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=923590

 

The comment that made me change my mind about EME:

"The EME runtime is a proprietary obfuscated blob. You cannot implement this blob open source. It will have to rootkit the machine it lands on because it cannot allow other programs than the approved browser to operate its API.

Linux will not be able to interoperate with EME unless you allow a third party blob onto your machine that rootkits it. Ouya will not be able to operate EME. Firefox OS will not be able to operate EME. Third party browser vendors like Mozilla, Opera and others will be frozen out from EME because it will not allow to be used by those programs."

[captainherisson]

Also about the need for DRM:

Google Play Music is serving plain MP3 files, sliced but not encrypted. It proves paid content can be served using HTML5 without the need for DRM. I haven't heard any record company withdrawing their content from Play music or anything like that.

[mwatt]

I withdrew this post.  It was opinion and not fact.

[Kolba]

Someone says open source is communism.

 

DRM would bring more opportunites, I don't believe DRM is bad idea, they don't know about the thiefs exist.

Nothing bad about communism.

[xiaomis123]

I feel pretty good open source