Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
From: m...@sap.com (Martin Rex) DRM system are evil in any way you look at it. Originally, copyright was a conceived as a temporary (50yrs) monopoly. The protection period has in recent years been prolonged in many years to at least 70 years. [...] I read an analysis somewhere that pointed out that DRM is evil in considerably different ways than one naively thinks. You tend to think of DRM as a way of enforcing copyright. But the real power of DRM is in effectively eliminating the right of first sale. Currently, once you've bought a copy of a copyrighted work, you have bought a physical object, the copy, and that ownership gives you a bundle containing a considerable number of rights, including the right to sell the copy to someone else. The real economic purpose of DRM is to be able to subdivide the bundle of rights traditionally associated with the copy so that they can be sold and priced individually. Even better, since the copy may no longer be transferrable between customers, different customers can be charged different prices for the same thing. The net effect is that the work creators can get larger aggregate sales for the creation than before. Which may or may not be a good thing. Wikipedia has a long article, Price discrimination, on this. Dale
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
On 26/04/2013, at 9:38 PM, Alessandro Vesely ves...@tana.it wrote: Injecting DRM through EME is a disservice to web standardization, since the latter is supposed to foster the Internet revolution. What does that *mean*? I'm wary of waving around banners like the Internet revolution, since they can so easily be misused. The Internet revolution is the big step after the industrial revolution. I didn't mean to misuse that banner: It is a typical effect of industrial revolution to bring many workers to some large factories. Free-software development, for a counter example, doesn't fit into that model. I'd agree that the phenomenon is still young and that the economics of the new model definitely need to be improved. However, that cannot be done while sticking to the old production model. Which direction is the media industry heading to? Watch-on-demand could have been implemented on private networks and proprietary equipment. However, cables had not been laid until the Internet took root, and that was pushed by the web. The direction of history seems to be clear enough to allow taking a firm position. Well said. If you haven't done so already, please sign the FSF petition: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/no-drm-in-html5 -- Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
On Fri 26/Apr/2013 21:59:52 +0200 Brian E Carpenter wrote: 3. EME should have a very low or zero cost of entry for a content provider. Quoting from a commenter on The Register: The DRM mechanism must allow *individuals* (or small groups) a low-cost low-hassle way to use it. That's because the way to destroy the various evil DRM empires is not to steal content - it's to allow creators to manage the sale of their own creations without needing a big bad bloodsucker to help them. That means a DRM system that anybody can use to protect their own stuff. A DRM add-on that individuals or small groups use to protect their stuff seems to be a chimera. Manu Sporny [1] points out that even Microsoft is unable to support Silverlight on Internet Explorer 8 on older versions of their operating system and the latest version of Chrome on certain versions of Windows and Mac. Can small groups be expected to do better? A comparison with youtube suggests that yet another software barrier is not what small media producers really need. [1] http://manu.sporny.org/2013/drm-in-html5/ -- If you haven't done so already, please sign the FSF petition: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/no-drm-in-html5
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
On 27/04/2013 20:02, Alessandro Vesely wrote: A DRM add-on that individuals or small groups use to protect their stuff seems to be a chimera. Has anybody tried to design one? Brian
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
On Fri 26/Apr/2013 02:53:58 +0200 Mark Nottingham wrote: Personally, I don't have a firm position on these issues, but I couldn't let this pass by. On 25/04/2013, at 7:38 PM, Alessandro Vesely ves...@tana.it wrote: DRMs are obviously designed to be non-interoperable, and EME is a standard for managing such non-standard stuff. That is going to break interoperability, as any given browser will inevitably miss some decryption modules. The same could be said about the Content-Type header in HTTP; allowing for new, even non-standard formats in browsers is by design, not counter to the Web (or Internet) architecture. Correct, and Content-Type is in mail too. In that case, standardization is encouraged for each type and subtype. All implementations moving in lockstep is not the same as interoperability, and we have plenty of examples of such extension points in our protocols here. Yes. Injecting DRM through EME is a disservice to web standardization, since the latter is supposed to foster the Internet revolution. What does that *mean*? I'm wary of waving around banners like the Internet revolution, since they can so easily be misused. The Internet revolution is the big step after the industrial revolution. I didn't mean to misuse that banner: It is a typical effect of industrial revolution to bring many workers to some large factories. Free-software development, for a counter example, doesn't fit into that model. I'd agree that the phenomenon is still young and that the economics of the new model definitely need to be improved. However, that cannot be done while sticking to the old production model. Which direction is the media industry heading to? Watch-on-demand could have been implemented on private networks and proprietary equipment. However, cables had not been laid until the Internet took root, and that was pushed by the web. The direction of history seems to be clear enough to allow taking a firm position. -- If you haven't done so already, please sign the FSF petition: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/no-drm-in-html5
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
On 26/04/2013 23:38, Alessandro Vesely wrote: On Fri 26/Apr/2013 02:53:58 +0200 Mark Nottingham wrote: Personally, I don't have a firm position on these issues, but I couldn't let this pass by. I've thought about this a bit and looked at some on-line discussions. In as far as this might be an IETF-W3C liaison issue (and it probably should be), I would suggest that three points could be made: 1. DRM is a fact of life, and it is therefore better that there should be a well-formulated standard than a free-for-all. A free-for-all is a guaranteed route to non-interoperability. 2. DRM should be off by default. That's probably a given (if a content provider doesn't use EME there will be no DRM) but it needs to be specified. 3. EME should have a very low or zero cost of entry for a content provider. Quoting from a commenter on The Register: The DRM mechanism must allow *individuals* (or small groups) a low-cost low-hassle way to use it. That's because the way to destroy the various evil DRM empires is not to steal content - it's to allow creators to manage the sale of their own creations without needing a big bad bloodsucker to help them. That means a DRM system that anybody can use to protect their own stuff. Brian
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Brian E Carpenter brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com wrote: 1. DRM is a fact of life, and it is therefore better that there should be a well-formulated standard than a free-for-all. A free-for-all is a guaranteed route to non-interoperability. Crack cocaine, prostitution, and political corruption are also facts of life. OK, pardon the cheap shot, but I don’t think SDOs that have some sort of stewardship relationship to the Internet should ever play any part whatsoever in the facilitation of DRM. I won’t consume your input bandwidth by backing up this position; the arguments pro and contra DRM are not exactly secret, and I haven’t heard any new ones in some years. -T
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
OK, pardon the cheap shot, but I don¹t think SDOs that have some sort of stewardship relationship to the Internet should ever play any part whatsoever in the facilitation of DRM. So it's ok to define protocols that manage access to services (e.g., TLS, GSS, SASL, etc), but not to the content that might be delivered by those same services? Barring the technicalities around around how authorisation is enforced, I don't see a distinction. Josh. Janet(UK) is a trading name of Jisc Collections and Janet Limited, a not-for-profit company which is registered in England under No. 2881024 and whose Registered Office is at Lumen House, Library Avenue, Harwell Oxford, Didcot, Oxfordshire. OX11 0SG. VAT No. 614944238
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
On 04/26/2013 10:23 PM, Josh Howlett wrote: OK, pardon the cheap shot, but I don¹t think SDOs that have some sort of stewardship relationship to the Internet should ever play any part whatsoever in the facilitation of DRM. So it's ok to define protocols that manage access to services (e.g., TLS, GSS, SASL, etc), but not to the content that might be delivered by those same services? Barring the technicalities around around how authorisation is enforced, I don't see a distinction. Some technicalities count: DRM schemes are always easily broken by anyone who cares. Personally, I think that's a good reason to discourage work on them. S. Josh. Janet(UK) is a trading name of Jisc Collections and Janet Limited, a not-for-profit company which is registered in England under No. 2881024 and whose Registered Office is at Lumen House, Library Avenue, Harwell Oxford, Didcot, Oxfordshire. OX11 0SG. VAT No. 614944238
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
Brian E Carpenter wrote: 3. EME should have a very low or zero cost of entry for a content provider. DRM system are evil in any way you look at it. Originally, copyright was a conceived as a temporary (50yrs) monopoly. The protection period has in recent years been prolonged in many years to at least 70 years. When you add DRM into the picture, the monopoly will effectively *FOREVER*, because there is unlikely going to be someone around to remove the DRM protection after that time has passed, and it may also easily happen that the data format is not supported that long -- and converting the data to a newer format is what DRM is made to prevent among lots of other things... -Martin
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
At 02:38 25-04-2013, Alessandro Vesely wrote: The Encrypted Media Extensions (EME, a.k.a. DRM in HTML5) specification is not a real DRM itself. It provides for add-on parts described as Content Decryption Modules that provide DRM functionality for one or more Key Systems. DRMs are obviously designed to be non-interoperable, and EME is a standard for managing such non-standard stuff. That is going to break interoperability, as any given browser will inevitably miss some decryption modules. I read https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted-media/encrypted-media.html From what I understand Digital Rights Management technologies attempts to control what I can and can't do with the media and hardware I have purchased. I did some reading [1] and I found that: An open DRM interoperability standard accelerates content consumption in the home network and propels device volume growth and thus benefits the consumers, the content owners and the device manufacturers I found that hard to believe. There is a paper about a weakness in the High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) scheme which may lead to practical attacks [2]. Someone found a way put the theory into practice. There was a paper about The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution [3]. Quoting the Introduction: People have always copied things. In the past, most items of value were physical objects. Patent law and economies of scale meant that small scale copying of physical objects was usually uneconomic, and large-scale copying (if it infringed) was stoppable using policemen and courts. I suggest reading the paper. Regards, -sm 1. http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/60/slides/perm-4.pdf 2. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.70.184rep=rep1type=pdf 3. http://crypto.stanford.edu/DRM2002/darknet5.doc
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
* Alessandro Vesely wrote: If you haven't done so already, please sign the FSF petition: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/no-drm-in-html5 The W3C is asking for comments on its Encrypted Media Extensions pro- posal, including on whether W3C should continue work on the document, to be sent to the publically archived public-html-me...@w3.org mailing list (see the Status of This Document section of the proposal). A few days before I attended my first W3C meeting, hundreds of people answered a similar call for comments via e-mail. Tim Bray, Alan Cox, Theo de Raadt, Aaron Swartz, Richard Stallman, Tim O'Reilly, Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric S. Raymond, Tim Berners-Lee and many others shared their thoughts on the Patent Policy the W3C was proposing back then on W3C's list, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/. In contrast, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/ has almost no relevant comments. If people have nothing to say, they will not be heard. -- Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjo...@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de 25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/
W3C standards and the Hollyweb
The Encrypted Media Extensions (EME, a.k.a. DRM in HTML5) specification is not a real DRM itself. It provides for add-on parts described as Content Decryption Modules that provide DRM functionality for one or more Key Systems. DRMs are obviously designed to be non-interoperable, and EME is a standard for managing such non-standard stuff. That is going to break interoperability, as any given browser will inevitably miss some decryption modules. Internet, globalization, and the information age may well entail a change in the basic principles of economics. However, IMHO, DRM is not a solution to copyright infringement, not more than postage is a solution to spam. Injecting DRM through EME is a disservice to web standardization, since the latter is supposed to foster the Internet revolution. If you haven't done so already, please sign the FSF petition: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/no-drm-in-html5 Thank you
Re: W3C standards and the Hollyweb
Personally, I don't have a firm position on these issues, but I couldn't let this pass by. On 25/04/2013, at 7:38 PM, Alessandro Vesely ves...@tana.it wrote: The Encrypted Media Extensions (EME, a.k.a. DRM in HTML5) specification is not a real DRM itself. It provides for add-on parts described as Content Decryption Modules that provide DRM functionality for one or more Key Systems. DRMs are obviously designed to be non-interoperable, and EME is a standard for managing such non-standard stuff. That is going to break interoperability, as any given browser will inevitably miss some decryption modules. The same could be said about the Content-Type header in HTTP; allowing for new, even non-standard formats in browsers is by design, not counter to the Web (or Internet) architecture. All implementations moving in lockstep is not the same as interoperability, and we have plenty of examples of such extension points in our protocols here. [...] Injecting DRM through EME is a disservice to web standardization, since the latter is supposed to foster the Internet revolution. What does that *mean*? I'm wary of waving around banners like the Internet revolution, since they can so easily be misused. If folks want to argue against DRM, or even accommodating DRM in standards, that's great, but let's not use bad arguments to do it. Regards, -- Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
