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Comment by Pxtl | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I think the w3c should've just told Netflix et al to get the heck out of the browser.

Really, that's what this is all about... but those companies are already building fully native applications for every platform other than win32+Web. Telling them to go make a native application (or keep dealing with Silverlight/Flash) for that one last platform would be completely appropriate.

The world of software has changed - now we have major companies building applications for multiple different platforms instead of "just windows" or "just web". The web doesn't need to do everything.

It doesn't need to do this.

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The W3C could have told Netflix et al to get the heck out of the browser, but the outcome of that would have been a different DRM mechanism in each of the main browsers. There's enough money in digital content distribution that browser developers will implement it regardless of what the W3C want. So the W3C had to decide between a standard they have an element of control over that's widely used, or several different DRM mechanisms that they have no input in to. The choice was not between DRM or no DRM. It never will be.

The W3C maintain web standards. They do not maintain what browsers can and can't do.

> outcome of that would have been a different DRM mechanism in each of the main browsers.

That's a common misconception of "W3C DRM". There is no such thing.

The EME spec doesn't define any DRM mechanism. There is a different, closed-source proprietary mechanism in each of the main browsers, by design.

EME is like the `<object>` tag. It doesn't do anything without a plugin (and the plugins are now called CDMs).

A different DRM mechanism in each of the main browsers is fine by me, because none of them would ever gain traction in that scenario. It takes everyone getting together and agreeing on one to achieve the critical mass required to make DRM happen. What is the use of having "an element of control" over exactly how you'll get screwed over?

DRM gains traction from people buying services that use it. It's that simple. If there's enough demand for a Netflix-like service in an ecosystem where only one browser does DRM, a company will spring up that provides such a service only for users of that one browser, even if it's a relatively small market. But, as it happens, watching digital content over the internet is a huge market, so every browser is going to have DRM built-in whether there's a standard or not. The market is big enough to support many different DRM mechanisms (we can tell that by the fact it already does).

Consequently we have to accept that DRM is going to exist whether we (the technical "elite" who understand the issues) want it or not. If we want an internet where DRM isn't entirely pervasive, where video will work without being DRM'd, where it doesn't spill out in to things like only running "signed HTML" or something horrible, we will need a decent standard that people on both sides of the debate agreed to on a pragmatic level if not an ideological one.

I believe that a W3C sanctioned DRM is a hell of a lot saner than Microsoft, Google and Apple coming up with their own systems.

What's on track to becoming W3C-sanctioned (EME) is about Microsoft, Google, Apple and now Adobe having their own systems.

But that's entirely the reason Netflix wants this. They don't want to create a separate application for every platform. EME offloads the cross-platform responsibility onto the browser vendor.

But why should standard bodies and browser vendors help them out?

Because it so happens that two important browser vendors: Google and Microsoft also distribute DRM content. They have as much to "gain" from this as Netflix does.

And a third browser vendor (Apple) is also a DRM vendor.

They want to have one lame web app instead of a set of nice native apps? I mean it's very efficient for start-ups and a cost-saver, but they seem to be past early stage...

Native apps have a huge set of their own problems. People don't want to have to install junk just to look at what should be a website, especially not when so many love grabbing all the personal data they can. If it had to be watched through an app, I'd bet any sum of money you'd find many/most accessing things like camera, mic, location, messaging, contacts, device ID, and other things they have zero business intruding in.

Why should it be a website? The only connection between movies and hypertext is both can be delivered over the internet. Why the HELL would you shoehorn a branded DRM-enabled movie streaming application into a document viewer?

> into a document viewer?

DRM discussion aside, the browser has not been a simple "document viewer" for quite some time, despite its origins.

One can teach a dog how to dance, but we don't say that dogs make good dancers.

Not necessary one web app, but one streaming layer, yes.

Then contribute to the development of a cross-platform environment that allows DRM. Push Microsoft to get Silverlight onto every platform. This does not need to be under the w3c's bailiwick.

> Then contribute to the development of a cross-platform environment that allows DRM.

That's exactly what they did here.

> Push Microsoft to get Silverlight onto every platform.

Why do that when you can get every company to adopt DRM with the pressure of browser competition?

> This does not need to be under the w3c's bailiwick.

Agreed, just pointing out how this benefits Netflix by offloading a development cost onto browser vendors.

> Honestly, I think the w3c should've just told Netflix et al to get the heck out of the browser.

The w3c isn't some nameless, faceless entity. What happened is that Google and Microsoft, two influential figures in the w3c, developed and pushed EME with Netflix.

The w3c couldn't have stopped them, EME came from the companies in the w3c.

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