Comment by josteink | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josteink | Hacker News Reader

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There is already a massive amount of proprietary tech running the web. From internet explorer to the secret algorithms used by google. Pretending that the web is some hippy utopia is not accurate.

That's a bogus argument and misses the point completely.

That you have closed source systems deployed on the open web is completely OK. That you have closed sourced browsers interpeting markeup is also completely OK. As long as the markup and code produced and published is compliant to the open standards we have all agreed upon.

Because then anyone with the specification can interact with that content. That means that anyone, of any size, can sit down and implement a fully valid and compliant web-browser.

This latest proposal from W3C means an end to that. Having the HTML specification will not be enough to create software able to render all the content on the web. Your browser will need to be "sanctioned" and "supported" by the DRM-vendors in order to work on the web.

New platforms (FirefoxOS, Tizen, etc), new browsers, any new players at all and all open source endeavours are effectively shut out from this new web the W3C is drafting. That is unacceptable.

This is a disastrous departure from any former W3C specification and directly in opposition to the W3C's own mission statement.

We are only left to guess what sort of corruption has lead to W3C sinking this low. Whatever happened to allow this rot, a new consortium seems like a good way to solve it.

The proposal is to have a standard for a way the browser communicates with non-standards compliant DRM encumbered (essentially encrypted) video.

Anyone is still free to write a client which consumes the standards-compliant parts of the page, but will be unable to consume the non-standards compliant DRM encrypted video.

In this way, it is similar to existing non-standards compliant web plugins like flash. For a long time nobody could just sit down and write a client which consumed flash animations (they were bound by the flash license, which prohibited mobile flash runtimes for example).

I don't agree with this inclustion by the w3c myself, but your argument isn't a powerful argument against it. My objections to it revolve around the w3c overstepping their responsibility (why is it THEIR job to cater to one specific plugin family - is it being driven by political pressure), the futility of its inclusion (they expect an open source implementation, which probably isn't possible for this kind of technology), and the self contradictory statements in the original w3c announcement.

PS. Calling an argument bogus and leaving it at that isn't helpful. If you see flaws in an argument you have to identify them point by point.

Not at all, your browser does not need to be sanctioned.

Anybody can build a browser that speaks HTTP and can send HTML pages around.

There is no mandate that you integrate DRM to be standards compliant, it's perfectly valid to write a browser that simply says "no" to any requests to perform DRM functions.

https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted-med...

You can simply implement a "clear key" system which does not require any CDM.

That misses the point. While anybody can built partial web-browsers, they can't build competitive alternatives to those sanctioned by DRM-vendors.

Just speaking HTTP and partially parsing HTML pages does not a web-browser make.

Yes, you can.

You are free to support whichever content protection systems you want to support. The only DRM mechanism which is part of the standard is clearkey which is DRM in the same way that SSL is DRM, i.e not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5791579

You mean you are free to implement a second class citizen on this new, closed down and Hollywood-driven web.

Yeah. That sounds really sexy. That sounds like the pinnacle of achievements for open standards.

Hollywood does not have jurisdiction over the majority of web. They cannot force you to use DRM.

They can lock you out, when you are not using DRM.

They can only lock you out of their content (as they are already doing). They can't lock you out of HN for example.

This is problem for you, if you are browser creator: "your browser sucks, I cannot watch Hulu".

You are free to implement whatever content protection systems the developers of the content protection systems allow you to implement, so long as it doesn't conflict with their contracts with content providers (which it probably will in many cases).

The HTML5 ECE spec is intended to make sure it's a criminal offence to implement any "content protection" scheme without permission. In the eyes of both W3C and its proponents, that's a non-negotiable feature.

How is it a criminal offence to implement a content protection scheme? Who's permission does one need?

If I write a content protection scheme that runs everything through ROT13 I don't understand why anyone would care.

Because if you don't have a permission to do so, you're basically 'circumventing' DRM which is illegal under copyright laws in many countries around the world.

Why would I need permission to implement my own CDM? I would not be circumventing unless I attempted to reverse engineer someone elses.

Is for implementing someone's other CDM. It's the "your browser is great, but I cannot watch Hulu in it, therefore it is unusable" scenario.

Why would you implement it yourself? Just integrate this standard and now your browser can talk to Hulu's CDM.

The CDMs are not OS independent.

This proposal only defines how the browser communicates with the module. It does not define, how the module communicates with OS and hardware. These modules will use OS facilities like Vista's protected path. If your OS does not support it (and free software OS like Linux cannot support it by definition), good luck getting it. And even if it supported anti-features like that, the owner may not bother with porting ("not enough market share for you").

True, but that's basically the same situation that you have right now.

Not really. The situation now is labeled "proprietary", the situation then will be "we just use standards". It shifts the framing.

Why would that be a problem?

Because then the standards would no longer be open.

> While anybody can built partial web-browsers, they can't build competitive alternatives to those sanctioned by DRM-vendors.

That's true, but it's not connected to the w3c inclusion in the spec.

People hosing DRM encrypted video could stop your third-party browser from consuming their video with or without the w3c spec provision.

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