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Comment by cyrus_ | Hacker News Reader

The W3C is the guardian of the world wide web, a system for disseminating information publicly and globally to all those who may benefit from it. By standardizing DRM for video, they are giving legitimacy to a technical kludge that is designed specifically to prevent the dissemination of information. There are legitimate reasons why someone may wish to save a video to their hard drive, just like they can save an image today. There is no reason the web should be built upon mechanisms designed specifically to privilege corporate interests over the interests of those falling under fair use exemptions to copyright laws.

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If I had my way we wouldn't have copyright at all. It seems idiotic to me for the same reasons patents are.

But we do, and so just as you say there are "legitimate reasons" why someone may wish to save a video, there are too "legitimate reasons" someone may want to share their work in a protected manner. It's a product. If you don't like it don't buy it.

There is no part of this that forces the user to view only DRM protected websites. As far as I can tell this only increases the rights of copyright holders, which, again, I think is stupid, but seems completely legal and a reasonable thing to do under our existing legal framework. Edit: it also does not seem like it will fundamentally change the user experience of the web since the things that it allows are mostly already doable, just not with an HTML standard.

If some copyright holder wants his stuff DRMed then they are free to implement their own DRM plugin or App. But I don't see why we should support them. Especially when it makes our nice open web depend on proprietary closed source binary blobs.

The idea was that HTML5 gets rid of Flash and similar plugins and not that HTML5 turns into a vehicle for "yet another Flash".

Next thing we are adding a spy module feature because advertisers and the NSA demand it? Well at least the spy module could be free software unlike the proprietary closed source binary blobs needed for Digital Restrictions Management.

DRM doesn't "increase the rights" of copyright holders, it just intentionally goes out of its way to stifle everyone else. The fact that it's called "Digital Rights Management" is a bit of doublespeak, which is why the FSF encourages using the more accurate description of "Digital Restrictions Management."

Although it seems the word "copyright" is also a bit of doublespeak these days. In general it doesn't go out of its way to give authors the right to control how publishers distribute copies any more, it's been co-opted as a system for publishers to deny every individual the the ability to make their own copies for any reason. If you ask me they should call it a copy-block instead of a copy-right.

What I don't understand is that if these companies want so desperately to enforce DRM, why are they using the web? A native application is better suited to what they want to do, and they are going to end up writing DRM modules in native code anyway. So why are they targeting the web at all, and why do they insist on getting something that is fundamentally closed (DRM) put into something that was meant to be open (HTML)?

IMO, this is a very dumb approach. This would not be OK anywhere else. Feel free to enforce your copyright, but don't expect me to bear your burden without kicking and screaming.

Content providers want to be on the web, because that's where the audience is. If they're made to feel unwelcome on the web, they certainly will take their content away. This makes the web less useful and harms users.

The web has had copies of that content well before the "content providers" even had a website, and it'll have copies of the content well after they decide to leave.

All they can take away is the sources that actually bring them money.

The "web" has existed in a mature form for over 2 decades.

The web's success has been extraordinary in the same terms of any monumental human achievement -- the discovery of anti-biotics, the moon landing, the Magna Carta.

Why would we cripple that set of features just to make a tiny group of people happy (relative to the world's population, the copyright "special interest" cartel is indeed microscopic.)

And I thought web sites screwing up keyboard shortcuts was annoying..

    If I had my way we wouldn't have copyright
    at all. It seems idiotic to me for the same
    reasons patents are.

Excellent news! So it's ok if I copy the images, CSS and HTML on your landing page for your employer for my competitor, then?

Edit: I'm obviously not serious.

It's not my company, and the things I'm saying don't represent the opinions of my employer.

To your question, is it "ok," I couldn't provide the answer as I don't own the copyright.

My statement was that I wish we lived in a world without copyright. The rules would be very different, and thus we would act and compete differently. As is, brand is an important asset for a company. I think you know all this.

I also think your argument is a bit sophomoric and I find it obnoxious that you are calling out my employer's name.

What do brands have to do with copyright law?

Or are you also advocating for changes to trademark law?

It seems counter intuitive and even foolish to suggest that you could increase innovation and creativity by getting rid of copyrights and patents. But there is a great great example of an industry that actually thrives in both sales and innovation, despite not having any copyrights or patents - the fashion industry.

This TED talk explains it quite well : http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashio...

The elephant in the corner of your argument is trademarks, which are vigorously protected by fashion labels.

You're right, I'm conflating the two. I mean to be saying intellectual property law in general, which I am not a huge fan of.

If you're against "intellectual property" then you shouldn't use that propaganda term. Refer to the specific legal protections at issue, like copyright, patents, or trademarks, because they are all have very different functions and purposes.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

Copyrights, patents and trademarks all share a single unifying assumption: ideas are things that can be owned. Since I disagree with that assumption, it makes sense to speak about "disagreeing with intellectual property" if IP is just a synonym for "a legal framework that uses violence to support laws that allow ideas to be owned."

That's an interesting piece, thanks for sharing. I think from the perspective of "what existing pieces of culture can I use to create something new" IP is actually a useful bucket. From the perspective of people who have already created or are consuming that piece of culture, I agree that combining trademark with copyright and patents is not useful.

I wouldn't recommend it: the name and logo are trademarked, and even if you replaced those, if anyone noticed the rest of the copying, you'd be the laughingstock of the internet. Who'd want to buy your product then?

Zynga doesn't particularly seem to care about that kind of thing and they're doing pretty ok...

Zynga only had one profitable year in 2010. They have lost $600 million since then.

Worst. Example. Evar.

They are?

The exec$ are doing ju$t fine I'm $ure

I think you're proposing dire consequences where there aren't likely to be any.

Google copying Yahoo's front page code? Okay, that'll be in the news and everyone will have a good laugh.

Some Joe Schmoe Web Developer lifting CSS/HTML from an unknown client to sell to an unknown client? Eh, not so much. This probably happens often and goes undetected.

I wonder how explosive the web's growth would have been if Hyper Text Markup Language was complex, pre-compiled, and invisible to end users.

"The W3C is the guardian of the world wide web"...

I completely disagree. You are the guardian. Every one of us is the guardian.

"Guarding the web" isn't in the W3C's mission at all: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission.html They design standards used internationally. That's it.

> The W3C is the guardian of the world wide web

At least they were.

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