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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

Either make way for content protection for video in some kind of standard, or we are stuck with Silverlight and Flash video forever. Why wouldn't I want some kind of standard platform for delivering protected video in my browser, rather than getting and updating 2-3 different insecure plugins all the time for doing the same thing?

Is this just a crusade agains DRM as a whole (good luck with that) from the free software movement, or do they have problems with this exact proposal from the w3c?

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> or we are stuck with Silverlight and Flash video forever

This proposal simply trades one insecure, binary blob for another. It doesn't really solve the problem.

> rather than getting and updating 2-3 different insecure plugins all the time for doing the same thing?

IIRC each site can provide its own module, so it'll be many more than 2-3 plugins

> Is this just a crusade agains DRM as a whole (good luck with that) from the free software movement, or do they have problems with this exact proposal from the w3c?

Why good luck with that? DRM simply makes honest users jump through hoops and allow themselves to be controlled. Also, the proposal itself doesn't really solve any of the problems that flash and silverlight do. And those binary blobs will still probably not run in linux...

Yes, the problem: the only way the content owners will stream tonights game to my computer is if it is protected somehow. If there is a way to make a transparent & open platform that allows content to my computer in a way that makes the content providers happy, then I'm all for doing that instead of having the system of insecure binary blobs. But is that possible? If it is possible, wht isn't the W3C pushing for that instead of the "plug your own binary"-platform? Is security through obscurity inherent in DRM?

It's not possible. DRM is impossible when a user has access to the full system. That is why there is a push for locked boot loaders and security modules and such. The more access the user has the easier it is to defeat DRM. Conversely, the less access they have the harder it is to break.

"Yes, the problem: the only way the content owners will stream tonights game to my computer is if it is protected somehow."

No, the problem is that they think they reserve the right to control what your hardware displays.

My screen displays what I tell it to? If it is a FairPlay/PlayReady stream or not. I wasn't talking about hdcp or other hardware/end-to-end drm. I don't think systems like FairPlay are going away anywhere soon. Surely it must be possible to make an open standard similar to FairPlay? It can't be all security through obscurity?

> Is this just a crusade agains DRM as a whole (good luck with that)

Like the crusade against DRM in mp3s? Which succeeded.

Or the crusade against DRM in ebooks? Which is making progress.

Or the crusade against DRM in broadcast TV (the broadcast flag)? Which succeeded.

The history of crusades against DRM is that they succeed. It's baffling why some people are giving up on fighting web DRM so easily.

I have never heard about those actually. I'm only interested in live stereaming sports, which are ridiculously expansive for the rightsholders but worthless once the broadcast is over. I can't see a future where they'll switch from their current platform unless the new platform offers something similar. If I was them I'd rather skip the browser completely and settle for apps (e.g in smarttv/win8/Mac/iOS/consoles). I'm not saying its stupid to be resisting drm in HTML, but it will mean some services won't exist in the browser.

Live streaming sports are actually a perfect case for non-DRM web video. Video takes time to pirate; it has to be captured, transcoded, and distributed. So the pirated version will most likely come out after the end of the broadcast. If the rights really are worth so much less after the event, then the pirated version appearing afterward won't affect the rights value very much at all.

With no DRM, someone would almost certainly find a way to mirror the live stream and put their own ads with it, or charge people much less than the official source to view it. It's all just data, right? What stops you sending it on wherever you please?

The point of DRM is precisely to make sure that it does take time and effort to capture and redistribute video. So live events are actually a perfect example of where DRM is useful.

That's the kind of situation that watermarking handles well. With no time to remove the watermark, it would be straightforward for the stream source to find the offending stream consumer and shut down their stream.

But the stream source would then have to be very active in hunting for unauthorised mirrors, because there would be nothing to find after the event has ended.

If the piracy is happening on a large scale, it should be easy to find the unauthorized stream. If the piracy is happening on a small scale, then it's not a big problem for the stream source.

What if it's happening on a small scale many times over? Thousands of links, posted to forums in all kinds of languages.

And we're both assuming that the people running those mirrors won't work out a way to disable the watermarks in real time. I've not read up on digital watermarking technology, but it's hard to imagine that it's bulletproof.

Fair point. I think detecting and booting some fraction of those streams would have a deterrent effect on the rest, but who knows for sure unless it gets tried?

And yes, I'm assuming that robust-enough watermarking methodology is possible. I don't think it has to be bulletproof, I just think it has to be good enough to enable cancelling enough stream consumer accounts to deter casual mirror-ers. DRM isn't bulletproof either; watermarking is preferable for users because it doesn't require that the stream producer take control over your machine.

It's already transcoded live and re-streamed. That isn't technologically different. Finding European football is trivial whereas some other rightsholders have cracked down on streaming sites and people posting their screencast urls in forums effectively removing it from the visible web (Swedish ice hockey is one such example). Games are expensive ($20-30) and unlike movies it's often ok to watch in a low quality stream that is easy to distribute with modest hw/bandwidth.

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