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Comment by wyager | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. I was unaware of this.

But if this is the case, why is there such a push to put DRM in HTML? Browsers aren't DVD players. Users are free to use software like ABP to circumvent any features like "unskippable ads" mentioned in the post. Pressure on browser makers seems much less valuable than pressure on device makers.

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If DRM is implemented in HTML, then you WON'T be free to use software like ABP, since it will be a 'circumvention' method. Now, it will be harder to prevent software circumvention rather than hardware circumvention, but it will still be in the same legal situation.

For that exact reason -- browsers are the one "device" still open. They already have basically every other mainstream entertainment channel, if they can lock down browsers they'll have it all.

I don't think ABP and other extensions will have access to the DRM player. Isn't the whole point for the browser to just blindly embed the code provided by the media bosses?

If AdBlock becomes a big enough problem, publishers will create "unskippable" ads with current technology. HTML doesn't really change that. It's always been a cat and mouse with ad blockers.

It's possible to build a website that renders itself unusable if an ad fails to load, to prevent browsers with AdBlock enabled from viewing your content. The problem with this approach is that if a single ad fails to load for any reason, the entire website goes down. Do you trust your ad network to have 100% uptime?

There are ways to engineer around that, but it's always been a cat and mouse game. My point is that it's a side issue; ad blocking doesn't have much to do with having an "official" DRM spec. You can make ads harder to block without it, and you can probably still find a way to block ads with it.

Do you think that the likes of Disney and Sony care? If the ad network is down, they're not getting paid for that view, anyway.

Even if we assume that each page only loads a single ad, which either succeeds or fails, the perception of a site being unreliable hurts the company running it. Household names like Disney and Sony might be able to live with that, but they'll still do everything possible to avoid downtime.

But right now, it's a legal cat and mouse game for both sides. With DRM, it becomes illegal for the mouse to do anything but get eaten.

Maybe I'm just missing something, but I don't see why DRM being implemented in an HTML spec is any different from implementing it in Flash or Silverlight or Javascript. The DMCA doesn't care about specs.

I could "protect" the copyright on my site's content with a trivial bit of a javascript, and you would arguably be circumventing it with your ad blocker.

(To be clear: I think the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions are terrible policy.)

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