Comment by sigi45 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sigi45 | Hacker News Reader

I think i don't get it.

A company called Microsoft builds a software which is able to render html. This company makes money and talks to another company called google which also is making money by selling movies and stuff and which builds a software which is able to render html. And those two companies are talking to a third huge company, who makes a shit ton of money and also makes a software which is able to render html.

All those _companies_ decided together, that they still are using some form of drm and want to standardize it, to make it easier for there consumers.

Now a few people, who are using the software from those companies thought this code is written for free and without strings attached?

I mean i do understand the risk but still i'm surfing around and use my software, written by companies, to surf primarily on company sites and not for surfing on other private pages.

Even linux and other free software is written, primarly by people who get there money from companies right?

I don't think that DRM would be gone if no EME exists.

> to make it easier for there consumers.

No, never. DRM Is never easier for consumers.

What happened was that Apple banned alternative browsers and plugins like Flash on iOS which meant there was a sizable platform of - importantly - semi-rich people that did not have a usable DRM solution outside being told to install an app.

The user dropoff from demanding you install an app is huge.

They were losing money, plain and simple, on people who didn't A. download a plugin or B. install an app to push DRM on them.

This battle was over years ago. Safari adopted EME, all the corporate powers that be that wanted to have their cake and eat it too on the buffet of consumer ignorance to how dicked over they are when companies shovel proprietary code down their throats. No major browser wanted to even try fighting this. New browsers that turn up will never gain traction if they don't "support Netflix".

Those of us who care about ethics go on using Firefox without the DRM bullshit plugin / Chromium / etc and the rest keep being ignorant as they always have been.

Really, DRM isn't even helping anyone. It is a lawyer requirement for legal contracts between media producers and distributors. "We require you fuck over your customers to give our old rich men investors who have no clue what technology is a false idea that nobody can copy our floppy". Pirates will continue to circumvent and distribute better quality versions of everything than any company is willing to stream you anyway, and people who were using the streaming services in the first place weren't pirating to begin with.

What this does mean is what should be straightforward user experiences for online video are going to start becoming a clusterfuck of broken, insecure proprietary blob DRM drivers every video site "automagically" downloads and runs on users computers that either don't work cross platform or breaks all the time. Web video will have peaked in 2016, when ubiquitous mp4 support meant almost any site can just host videos and have them work, and 2018 and on will be the era of everyone trying to use shitty DRM plugins that will fail and break everywhere just like Flash and Silverlight did years ago. But having the option available is going to inspire companies like newspapers that have no business trying to DRM lock their newscasts to try to use DRM anyway because fuck ethics.

Those companies made it easier for the consumers because those companies would have never accepted non DRM Video (period).

You still can watch h264 on all modern webbrowser.

And still it is there choice how they wanna offer there content.

Don't get me wrong, i don't like DRM but it is still there choice and they are big enough to do it and the just did because it is and was there standard for there internet to reach there consumers.

drm is intrinsically bad for consumers.

any consumer should have the option of using it, if they want.

the problem here is the codification as a standard, and the implicit endorsement that the W3C creates in providing the standard.

DRM is expensive to your freedom, and it should be as expensive as possible for media companies to implement. by making it opt-in rathen than can't-even-opt-out-if-you-want-to, the W3C are really giving the public interest the middle finger.

of course it wouldn't be gone. It would just be where it belongs.

somewhere else.

unfortunately.

that won't be happening.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com