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Comment by yk | Hacker News Reader

Since no one else is writing the obligatory HN "I like the idea, but it will not work." comment, here it is.

I really like the general idea of a way to validate websites for privacy issues. In the best case they should even do this client side. But I think that they need to figure out two rather hard problems, one economically and one rather philosophical.

The economical problem is, why should any web site owner use it. I simply do not see a strong incentive.

And the philosophical is, what is actually meant by freedom? I see a lot of edge cases besides DRM which are sketchy, like user tracking. But to reliably stop user tracking, it is likely necessary to ban cookies ( which have of course a lot legitimate uses). And JS is a different can of worms, it can be used to spy on the user. The list goes on, iframes and third party content? Does freedom HTML get tainted by it?

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Philosophically this is utter hyperbole. Not being able to watch Arrested Development, or any content, under whatever circumstances you prefer does _not_ infringe on your freedom.

A content creator has the right to stipulate whatever contractual conditions she prefers in order for you to partake of the content she's produced. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

That being said, it's another matter of what actually constitutes good business, likely there are not really any business advantages to DRM. You could also definitely make a case for this idea as a good method of consumer empowerment. I'd just prefer if they didn't pretend that this has anything to do with "freedom" or liberty.

Bad idea != attack on freedom

> Philosophically this is utter hyperbole. Not being able to watch Arrested Development, or any content, under whatever circumstances you prefer does _not_ infringe on your freedom.

But not being allowed to control my own property is. And this is specifically what DRM is supposed to do, it prevents me to switch the bits in my RAM in the way I want to.

And this was precisely my point, a important part of the standard depends on the precise meaning of freedom.

I dislike DRM as much as the next HNer, but:

>But not being allowed to control my own property is. And this is specifically what DRM is supposed to do, it prevents me to switch the bits in my RAM in the way I want to.

Freedom doesn't mean the right to coerce others. If Netflix offers you a certain contract (you pay their fee and accept their DRM, and in return they stream you content) and you want to enforce a different contract on them without their consent (you refuse the DRM and they still stream you content), you are not advocating for freedom.

You might as well say, "And this is specifically what murder laws do, they prevent me from projecting my bullets in the way I want to."

Normally when I think of the stereotypical disliked DRM scenario it is something along the lines of:

    A publisher offers to sell, I do mean sell not lease or contract,
    you an ebook.  The ebook however comes with DRM.  It is not
    legal, in the US, to break that DRM under most circumstances.

This is case where DRM conflicts with the first-sales doctrine [1] and most people belief that they should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they want to their own property.

Often publishes advertise something as selling property, but really only want to lease access rights, which is a different problem, false, dishonest or deceitful advertising.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

The context of this comment thread is Netflix, which no one can reasonably claim to believe to be selling, rather than streaming, content.

In the case of sales, I absolutely agree with you that DRM sucks and is misleading (perhaps to the point of being unethical) to the uninformed. And personally (being informed), I don't buy anything with annoying DRM.

That depends, watching something on Netflix does not grant you owner's rights in that case. So, DRM is a fair deal in that contract.

As for a DVD that you purchased? That's a different situation. Personally, I agree with you on that one, but you agreed to the licensing terms that likely stipulate you do not own the content on the disc. Therefore, you get your DRM.

It's not a direct attack, and theoretically what you said is true. However practically it won't be. The "networking effect" will come into motion.

Look at it from consumer perspective. They can choose a web browser that supports their favorite service, for which they have subscription or use another open source and free browser that doesn't support their favorite service. People leave, which leads to reduced revenue for that browsers and its development stalls and slows, leading to further loss of interest and eventually its death and/or fading into obscurity.

So open source and free browser, won't have much freedom other than to apply it however silly that sounds. So its not so much an attack on consumer freedom, but an attack on browser vendor's freedom.

This if ofc moot if OSS browsers can introduce DRM into their core, which might be possible.

DRM can't be implemented in FOSS because the ability to modify the software (and use the modified version) makes it possible to circumvent DRM restrictions (eg, insert some code to save the content after it is decoded).

DRM always implies restricting user control over their own computers.

> Philosophically this is utter hyperbole. Not being able to watch Arrested Development, or any content, under whatever circumstances you prefer does _not_ infringe on your freedom.

You are an impressive comedian. Kudos, to you, sir.

For those not in the know, a common joke on Arrested Development was that a character would accuse someone of doing something, and would then do the exact thing they were accusing someone else of doing.

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