Save Firefox: The W3C's plan for worldwide DRM would have killed Mozilla before it could start

boing
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The W3C is no longer a legitimate body of the internet, it should be disbanded and replaced by something less corrupt.

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#STOP WASTING MIDORI 

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Such as? Who will join this body? Do you think the people that actually work on operating systems and web browsers will do so?

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Reddit users seem to be not so hot on this piece either:

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That’s not my problem. Stay out of the W3C standards.

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The W4C. Which everyone will listen to because they’ll be greater than the W3C.

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Uhm, no. What’choo going to do about it?

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The idea that all the DRM-pushers will all have to use the same system does have its merits.

All the world’s crackers can then concentrate on just one thing. One mistake or bad decision made anywhere in there, (or one person intentionally weakening it) and boom - everything becomes free to everyone everywhere and all the DRM-pushers lose.

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I have noticed a trend of Cory blindly repeating EFF copy of late. I don’t think he’s the problem exactly, but it does put the hurt on his tech cred.

I get that the EFF is saying the world is going to end with any new DRM, but, really, they’ve failed numerous times over the past ~20 years, and the world hasn’t ended. In fact, it’s continued to get more awesome. I say this as a dude who in his 20’s ended up working for a non-DRM arm of a Big Bad DRM company and me and my coworkers were pretty cynical about it.

Hey man. Crazy idea. Maybe DRM isn’t the end of the world, and (really crazy idea here) maybe it has its place, in the sense that it gives content producers the peace of mind to release digitally. For those who are cynical about this proposition, maybe try putting yourself in the shoes of popular youtubers. There is a plague of people lifting videos verbatim to make money (in fact, there’s a huge industry of “compilation” videos of basically other people’s videos).

Or hell, try being a musician and trying to ensure that your music at minimum gets an attribution!

Yes, But! Teh Evil Empires! I hear you saying. Piracy is not the way to take down predatory record/media companies. But, it may have its role; society is still figuring it out. Many artists are seeing great success in direct-to-consumer sales. Fantastic. Maybe the future is DRM-free and pay-what-you-want? I doubt it, though. That works great for music when you’ve got usually between 2 to 7 people involved in the financial pot. But film can easily involve thousands of people.

If that’s what it takes for us to get movies on Netflix and Amazon, so be it. People want to pay for content, just make it easier than pirating. Stupid simple principle, and everyone can live with it as long as the target is casual pirates.

Don’t get me wrong. The DMCA is the devil. The US copyright office is the devil. DRM is sometimes a pain in the ass (really, quite rarely).

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You realize he’s an EFF staffer brought back to focus on DRM issue and he wrote the pieces for them that he’s quoting?

The rest of your points stand well, though. :slight_smile:

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Well that explains the shrill hyperbole and lack of concrete facts.

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¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Really, it doesn’t even need to be easier, just not so much more painful like it is. Anywhere in the same neighborhood would be a start.

  • load the content up first instead of laggy buffering in the middle of the video, followed by dropping to low-res
  • make pause/resume/bookmarking work consistently
  • drop the anti-features like region-locking that prevent customers from watching what their friends are watching for no reason (relevant to the customer)
  • provide all the content so customers don’t need to search across 4 or more services to find the thing they’re looking for (maybe work out referral deals?)
  • keep the content, so things that customers had started watching don’t mysteriously vanish before they finish (or when they want to re-watch)
  • provide obscure content, not just the most-hyped pop-culture stuff
  • ideally, let the customer use the media player of their choice instead of making them install a separate app for each service (presumably that’s what this EME is trying to address)

Even with the awful app interfaces and annoyances like ads on hulu, a few simple things like that could go a long way.

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It is? Really?

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Yep. ­

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But he wants to stamp his feet until they listen!

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