Doesn’t this make everyone feel like writing their own browser? It’s so easy now with the standards body ensuring that there are standards to follow.
Except there are already several ways this can be done today. The technology isn’t stopping them because the technology exists. the reason pay-per-read hasn’t taken off is that you have to have some pretty compelling content for it to successfully live behind a pay wall otherwise it is irrelevant.
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To be fair, it’s his house.
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Your choices as a browser maker are:
- Don’t implement a DRM box, keep Flash, Silverlight, and other binary plugins that do DRM.
- Implement the DRM box, which allows for DRM for those that choose to use it, but let’s you get rid of Flash, Silverlight, and other existing binary plugins.
Which of these two makes you happy, @doctorow? The first is already there so browser makers either keep the first or do the second. Which one gets your seal of approval? You only get these two choices because, frankly, at the end of the day, Internet users want to watch Game of Thrones, Netflix, etc. in their browsers and any browser which stops users from watching the content they want to consume will be abandoned. Full stop.
Of course, you can do the full RMS answer and say of #3 and say “No one should be allowed to consume this content in a browser and no binary plugins should be allowed.” That isn’t good enough for the many millions of people on the Internet though.
Note, for perspective, how many security issues have been caused by Flash over the last 10 years, before you answer.
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or you can keep the ones called “Adobe Flash” or “Microsoft Silverlight.”
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and why would anyone allow for that?
Don’t just say “Because…”
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Those statements sound pretty much exactly the same to me, accounting for Cory’s typical level of hyperbole.
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Why would anyone allow web pages that require 3 megs of JavaScript to load 3 paragraphs of raw text? It will happen because of lazy programming, half baked ideas and be unopposed because most Chrome/Safari/Edge/even Firefox users won’t realise because they’ll just use the same browser they’ve always used without any power user add ons and with EME enabled by default.
As for Flash vulnerabilities, EMEs will have to plug into the system kernel as tightly as Flash does to form a complete protected media pathway, so between that and the complexity of HTML5 scripting expect similar numbers of exploits, just not grouped as neatly under a separate plugin package.
Cool story, bro.
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Without multiplexing, a long-distance call would cost a freaking fortune. Putting tens or hundreds of calls onto a circuit was absolutely necessary to make the telephone anything other than a plaything for the rich.
The first usable transistors didn’t happen until 1948 - but it took time for them to figure out how to apply it to telephone switching. Efforts to build an electronic central office switch began in the 1950s, but the 1ESS didn’t enter production until 1965. Western Electric still continued to crank out step-by-step and crossbar switches well into the 1970s.
While Ma Bell certainly had its problems, Bell Labs made enormous contributions to science and technology, and the Bell System planned ahead for decades; contrast that to today, where the money manipulators can’t be bothered to fund basic research that might take decades to exploit. Gotta prop up this quarter’s stock price!
To me, the modern Verizon/AT&T duopoly represents much of what was bad about the old Bell System, and little or none of what was good about it.
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Excellent trolley – your responders are by no means dummies, but I’m still only a little surprised they were taken in.
Come on, guys…there’s no snark tag but I think this should have clued everyone in:
LOL!
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First they came for the video files.
I did not care for video files, so I said nothing.
Then they came for…
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As an aside, I love the fact that Microsoft Silverlight isn’t supported by Microsoft’s latest browser.
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I agree. It would be very hypocritical of them to make an exception to their no extensions rule for themselves and that they didn’t makes me very happy.
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I agree with everything you said, and it misses the point. The point is that monopolies don’t innovate. Bell became much more innovative after MCI and the MFJ. But my point was more about tech companies like Google and Amazon who are bidding for a monopoly on the web. If they succeed, we will see a drastic decrease in innovation - in fact the whole point of laws protecting DRM is to prevent innovation. A lot of copyright law is designed to prevent artistic innovation, at least the fair use kind.
These guys are winning, and I expect the next century will be rather dull.
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We would like less of that if possible.
Not if you want to watch movies on Netflix or HBO To Go or whatever.
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