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Comment by snird | Hacker News Reader

Technology should never force it's users (the sites creators) to use one technology or another. Not implementing DRM is idiotic for couple of reasons:

1. The decision of whether or not to use DRM should be of the site creators. That's as "free" as it gets. forcing them otherwise by not letting them the option is bad.

2. Even without implementing it, DRM is available through flash or silverlight or any other third party plugin. The only result not implementing DRM gets is that of hurting the HTML5 video component.

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> The decision of whether or not to use DRM should be of the site creators. That's as "free" as it gets.

Why does that mean that we should facilitate their use of DRM? If they want to use it, they can specify a third-party plugin.

Because it's a need of the market, using third-party plugin is no harder, maybe even easier to implement. So it's not an overhead for the site implementing it.

But rather it's an overhead for the user. you'll have to install a third-party plugin on your computer. Making it to your job now to make sure this plugin is not security vulnerable, that it is updated etc' etc'. And, it's probably closed. the web is open.

> And, it's probably closed. the web is open.

Do you understand that these new HTML DRM plugins will be closed as well?

So by that logic, if a site creator wants their site in powerpoint 97 .ppt format instead of using HTML, are browsers obligated to support it?

you are right, I haven't stated my point correctly.

The missing point is that of the market demand. DRM is out there, it's too late. It will be used anyway, with flash\silverlight or what have you.

So, this demand should be answered, using flash is no overhead for the site, but rather a bad thing for the end user. not implementing DRM isn't hurting the sites wants it, at that point, it only hurts the end users. so implementing it is the right decision.

> The missing point is that of the market demand. DRM is out there, it's too late. It will be used anyway, with flash\silverlight or what have you.

Flash is out there and will be used anyway. Luckily since mobile devices didn't (iPhone) support is or supported it badly (Android) it became out of favor. This was eased a lot by the situation that many people already disliked Flash in their browser.

May DRM become out of favor, too. Thus as a first step, you - as a customer - should never accept websites that use any DRM mechanism. Write to their customer support and if they don't offer a DRM-free version cancel subscriptions. Closing your purse is a powerful tool.

If enough people want it, then yes.

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