I&#x27;m completely confused why the W3C is relevant at all. This already did happen, the browsers created the WHATWG. Since the browser vendors&#x27; opinions are the only ones that matter, why do we care what W3C thinks?

We should simply start doing new standards through other organizations. There&#x27;s no fundamental reason to float new standards through W3C rather than some other organization.

Just because some horrible thing currently happens to exist doesn&#x27;t mean you need to (explicitly or implicitly) endorse it.We should make implementing DRM as expensive and inconvenient as possible.

DRM doesn&#x27;t and will never work. It only serves to annoy people that pay for the movie&#x2F;game&#x2F;whatever legitimately. It&#x27;s against everything the W3C stands for.You dont&#x27; have to support something just because it&#x27;s happening. You fight it, you don&#x27;t give into it.

DRM was coming to browsers with or without the W3C’s blessing. In fact, it was already there via plugins and wasn’t going away. This has changed nothing except where the implementation is documented.The hysteria over this is just ridiculous.

&gt; convince meIn case you haven&#x27;t read this excellent piece against DRM - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;InformationDoesntWantToBeFree" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;InformationDoesntWantToBeFree</a>

I think that W3C is what makes us believe we&#x27;re sitting at the table when it comes to decide where the web is heading, when in reality we&#x27;re not. So while I think W3C has good intentions and is acting in good faith (I&#x27;m somewhat undecided on DRM, please convince me of your opinion), I hope for a push to bring the lack of stewardship of the web to public attention, and another standards body (ISO&#x2F;IEC, IETF, whatever), or W3C under a new statue to emerge and take the role of W3C-as-it-is.(Re-posting this from the other thread [1] which didn&#x27;t make it)[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15277622" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15277622</a>

I would posit that RIAA&#x2F;MPAA&#x2F;etc want DRM, and won&#x27;t consent to Google&#x2F;Microsoft&#x2F;Apple opening up access to content without it, so we get DRM.

Will it matter? Any organization created to manage web standards is going to be dependent on browser vendors. Google&#x2F;Microsoft&#x2F;Apple want DRM so we get DRM.

sure, if you want to become the wwgnu foundation.nobody cares about things they perceive as fringe ideological issues until it&#x27;s too late.they&#x27;ll marginalize you by making fun of your personal habits while the open web dies.only those of us who knew the web before it was closed will really know&#x2F;care why it was special.

So this is how the open web dies.Can we fork the W3C into a non-corporate puppet now?

Wouldn&#x27;t publishers just refuse to distribute keys to said browser?

So hopefully Firefox will simply display DRM content and ignore any restriction DRM imposes.

I don&#x27;t believe this formal standardization will affect end-user web browser features.All major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE, Edge, Safari) have already included HTML EME DRM support for years, so it is a de-facto standard already.

&gt; I would suggest not underestimating Mozilla&#x27;s market influence.They have no market influence. They have maybe ~10% of the market globally (I&#x27;ve seen figures between 5-15%), and that&#x27;s primarily desktop - which is decreasing daily. On mobile it&#x27;s even worse (probably less than 1%).Any influence they have solely extends to the desktop, and that&#x27;s not the primary way people are interacting with the internet nowadays.

&gt; displays DRM content and ignores DRMNothing says &quot;attempting to survive as a legitimate corporate entity&quot; like &quot;let&#x27;s flagrantly violate <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WIPO_Copyright_and_Performances_and_Phonograms_Treaties_Implementation_Act#Section_103" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WIPO_Copyright_and_Performance...</a> ...&quot;

&gt; It would be possible to create a browser that displays DRM content and ignores DRM.The DMCA makes this illegal. No browser vendor is going to take that risk. Maybe some anonymous developers will release a firefox fork or similar, but that&#x27;s a big risk. Not to mention, most groups who pirate content tend to keep their methods secret and only release the content.

I would suggest not underestimating Mozilla&#x27;s market influence.It would be possible to create a browser that displays DRM content and ignores DRM. The only thing that content publishers could do is ban that browser. And then it would adapt to disguise itself as other browsers.DRM on the web can only happen if all of the major players (that is, browser publishers) agree to play along.I am very excited about this news, this is probably the most important news in weeks, and could impact the Internet for years to come.

It seems self-evidently unharmful, in that we appear to be in a golden era of delivering content online so extraordinary that it threatens traditional television networks.I understand that this is an extremely unpopular sentiment on HN, but here goes: at least with respect to video content, the industry seems to have largely proven DRM concerns unfounded.Update: modulo the Hickson concerns below. Continuing:DRM certainly has kept some (power) user-friendly features off the market. You can take this as a serious harm inflicted by DRM. But I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s reasonable to take that harm in isolation; the alternative isn&#x27;t simply a world with no such limitations, but also a world with less content made available online.But I don&#x27;t see a lot of evidence that those limitations, if genuinely important to users, can&#x27;t be competed away. The restrictions might be dealbreakers for Paramount, but in 2017, Netflix can route around Paramount.

It&#x27;s not harmful to them. I suggest reading this if you haven&#x27;t already: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plus.google.com&#x2F;+IanHickson&#x2F;posts&#x2F;iPmatxBYuj2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plus.google.com&#x2F;+IanHickson&#x2F;posts&#x2F;iPmatxBYuj2</a>

&quot;It is very difficult to make someone understand something if their livelihood is predicated on them not understanding it.&quot;

There are some blockchain based systems in the works that may help with this mess. If a middleman can be removed, content creators could publish directly to p2p networks without losing the ability to earn money from their contributions. Instead of relying on some rights mgmt company to authorize content they could create a smart contract to programmatically allocate earnings to all parties involved. Time will tell but check out <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pepperlaw.com&#x2F;publications&#x2F;music-and-the-blockchain-2016-09-07&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pepperlaw.com&#x2F;publications&#x2F;music-and-the-blockcha...</a>This also has the side effect of eliminating curation bias &#x2F; censorship allowing for all sorts of new content to become available that might not otherwise be allowed on iTunes&#x2F;Netflix etc.

Or we could convince media rightsholders that they don&#x27;t need to deliver their DRMed content through the Web.

iTunes ditching DRM for purchased audio was never really a glimmer of hope for video, and lets face it this discussion is really about video more than anything else.iTunes movies still have DRM. Arguably DRM free audio had extremely little bearing on the future of video, given the very different demands of each marketplace.Remember also, that with a few exceptions (Sony rootkit anyone?), music had a long history of being DRM free before digital distribution came along (vinyl, tape, CD etc). Video distribution by contrast has a long tradition of many copy prevention &quot;solutions&quot; over the years on many different physical formats.

Make a browser extension that works across all browsers to sync user data. Then inform consumers. Consumers then easily switch to better independent browser builds,  forcing media holders&#x27; hands. 
If consumers have no desire or ability to become aware, and can&#x27;t muster the will to delay gratification for a few days it&#x27;s hopeless. Consumer awareness must be the end goal; rather than establishing a smaller subset of aware representatives to tell the media holders the consumers care. The media distribution channels own the media right holders. They control the flow of $ completely. Six corporations have complete control.  Same corporations choose which of the infinite security flaws to discuss on the news, and effectively dictate the browsers and consumption methods&#x2F;endpoints people use. No solution will acomplish the result of total consumer awareness, for any period of time, without first achieving  consumer awareness.

Didn&#x27;t I used to be able to buy mp3s from amazon - no DRM? That was before spotify and other streaming solutions of course.Do people want DRM-free media, or do they want ease of use?

We have to forbid DRM by legal means...Void copyright if DRM is employed, the same way you can have secret parents.Legal protection shouldn&#x27;t come without a price.

You&#x27;d have to convince them that DRM is against their best interest or provide them with something event better than DRM for their best interest. That&#x27;s much tougher.

&gt; If we could convince media rightsholdersEven that is not ultimately necessary. What we need to do is convince politicians that it&#x27;s a bad thing, and in theory we should have a lot more influence over those. They can pass the necessary laws to say DRM is illegal and it would be much better plus potentially easier than crawling and begging to the media companies to throw us a bone.In practice it&#x27;s not so easy because the US has a broken and corrupt political system where the politicians are more dependent on rich donors than on the People who vote for them.So once again we arrive to the same conclusion Larry Lessig did many years ago: if you want to fix the copyright issues, or the climate issues, or healthcare issues, or any other big issue, you need to fix money in politics first. Everyone on all sides, no matter what other conflicting issues they have with each other, should be working hard on that issue if they want any hope for their other issues.

This is really the issue. If we could convince media rightsholders that DRM is harmful and unnecessary then all of this heartache wouldn&#x27;t be necessary.I don&#x27;t expect this to happen in my lifetime. Any slight glimmer of hope from Apple ditching DRM on iTunes has died as nobody else shows the slightest interest in following their lead.

Safari supports DRM, it just uses FairPlay instead of Widevine.
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;FairPlay" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;FairPlay</a>

&gt;The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to try to exclude DRM is MozillaDidn&#x27;t Spotify just abandon Safari (OS X) because unlike Mozilla it doesn&#x27;t support the DRM they need?

If I&#x27;m on my computer as opposed to a mobile or TV device, I use the browser. It&#x27;s not as often, but I definitely have done so, even within the past week.

Due to DRM it&#x27;s the only (legal) way I can watch it on my computer.

I&#x27;m guessing you don&#x27;t have young kids?  I say that because if I want to watch any R rated content (like Bojack Horseman for example, which I did last week), the only place I can safely do that is in my office with headphones on, since the toddler tends to creepily sneak up on us in the middle of the night after climbing out of bed.

Me. I&#x27;m on my computer 50% of my day. I have it handy the most often.

I do all the time, although I do it in a separate window with all the browser chrome hidden (and usually maximized to a side monitor anyway).

Who watches Netflix with their browser?

GNU IceCat would be a better choice of &quot;last outpost&quot;.

Pale Moon will be the last outpost in the world of suitable open-source browsers?<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;MoonchildProductions&#x2F;Pale-Moon&#x2F;issues&#x2F;1354" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;MoonchildProductions&#x2F;Pale-Moon&#x2F;issues&#x2F;135...</a>

I 100% agree, and I wouldn&#x27;t have agreed to it had I not been on a standardization committee in a before&#x2F;after situation.  The before was mainly implementers.  At least they had a super majority.  After was 5% implementers and it was a complete disaster.  That 95% was like a kid in a candy store: no regard for implementation difficulty or what it would do to language consistency. Thankfully, the effort died quite quickly, so I never had to make much of the issue.

As several people have pointed out elsewhere in these comments, Mozilla has already implemented EME. That makes it seem unlikely that it would quit over the adoption of this recommendation, even though Mozilla also stated that DRM is bad.

&gt; In politics, very often, there are no strictly enforced rules, there are groups of pressures pushing in opposing directions.All power is ultimately politics, not rules. People can use politics to change the rules, which happens often through lobbyists, influence, or even force.Powerful actors operate on the level of politics; they write the rules. The plebeians operate at the level of rules. If I&#x27;m unhappy with something a major corporation does, I can operate within the rules and complain to a regulator or take the company to court. If the corporation is unhappy then they get the rules changed, for example by having laws passed that prohibit my lawsuit, eliminate their liability, or hamstring the regulator. It also happens in smaller domains, such as among employees of a business: those skilled in politics get the internal decisions and rules made in their favor.The exception is, broadly speaking, more common than the process described above: The issues most people deal with in their everyday lives aren&#x27;t important enough to motivate political action.

&gt; This is a small amount of pushing power.Not true. See Google&#x27;s NaCl and Mozilla and Microsoft&#x27;s own alternatives to that. Neither went anywhere because each browser pushed in a different direction. It&#x27;s only through W3C that they managed to build WebAssembly and all agree to use it.I see this DRM thing the same way. Without W3C they may have built their own DRM solutions (and in fact, they have, years ago), but they wouldn&#x27;t be compatible with each other, which means they wouldn&#x27;t get too much adoption either.

It took me a while to understand how politics are very different than the binary world of logic and strictly enforced rule of my CS universe.In politics, very often, there are no strictly enforced rules, there are groups of pressures pushing in opposing directions. W3C has no way to prevent proprietary browsers for doing what they want, they just put some pressure on them. They know that going through W3C is the easiest way to agree on a standard and to provide interoperability for their users.This is a small amount of pushing power.EFF withdrawing is normal: that&#x27;s the main item they were interested in. The question now is to see whether Mozilla will stay.

Sadly that is the ugly Truth about politics. Not really about rules it is all about power, hard power.

The original vision for hypertext absolutely had multiple &quot;browsers&#x2F;clients&quot; and feature parity between them was not even remotely an issue.The idea was that you tell the server what capabilities you have, it then tells you what it wants to offer you and a negotiation ensues.I have no idea where this concept of a &quot;standardized hypertext client&quot; came from! ;-)

&quot;... web developers are going to go by the behavior of [what] the browsers do.&quot;I have pointed this out before.It is an important point that I think perhaps is overlooked when users ponder how to change the web.Want to change how the web is presented, fix annoyances, scratch an itch?Try to achieve through web development? Good luck.Try to achieve through browser development? Far more interesting. Alternative, open source, non-commercial browser. For example, implements limited set of features.Web development follows browser development.For example, a browser that does not automatically follow URLs so that ads and other crud can be loaded into pages.Giving users access to a browser like this may be a far more effective means of influencing web development away from annoying &quot;user experiences&quot;.If such annoyances rely on a certain modern web browser feature, then use a browser that lacks the feature.Non-commercial means developers do not care about &quot;market share&quot;. They are not trying to &quot;compete&quot; with the major browsers on features. They care about creating a superior alternative to major browsers that shifts the focus from advertisers and media companies to users.If the annoyances users have while using major browsers are bad enough, then they will try alternatives and the &quot;market share&quot; may shift. Or maybe not. But who cares? Because with an alternative browser &quot;market share&quot; is not the goal.In another thread, a Chrome developer perhaps a former Firefox developer tells of how they dropped some feature because it was too &quot;power-user&quot; and that is not &quot;what [they] were going for&quot;. Maybe you are within the market they &quot;are going for&quot;. And maybe you are not. If you are not, then waiting for developers at a large corporation, whose customers are advertisers, to cater to your needs is futile.

You wouldn&#x27;t need to scrap all of it by a long shot. You could take a small subset of the stack and make something enormously simpler to implement. Start with supporting only one version of HTTP, TLS, (X)HTML, CSS and JS and fork them if necessary. Even drop CSS to start with and finally start relying on semantic markup and good browser defaults. Use existing open source libraries where available, such as for TLS and markup&#x2F;media parsing. Pull out libraries for everything so the browser is easily composable and forkable. You don&#x27;t want JS support at all? Compile without it.

&gt; If people want to do something about it, they need to fork the web itself. HTTP, TLS, HTML, CSS, JS ... the entire stack needs to be scrapped and replaced with something sensible with a focus on simplicity.That&#x27;s flash.

If we want to win that war, we should focus on content not technology, Mosaic got a lead in the game because, despite the &#x27;techies&#x27; seeing no use for images, image support was added, with images came the transition of media, users were au fait with articles containing text and images and could now experience similar on line, this alone was not enough, content creators starting creating content that people wanted to consume, that&#x27;s what drove people to &#x27;get online&#x27;, they were missing out.Don&#x27;t get me wrong, it&#x27;s still a long shot, but if an organisation could build a raft of talent, get that talent to make content that was only available on an open and progressive platform, then you might get some traction. So what might that look like, well, say I had the funds to secure 100 of the worlds best financial journalists and only delivered that content on a novel protocol, do you think I might be able to persuade some people to run a novel application to access that content, oh hang on, did I just describe Bloomberg...

Correction: its the loss of _American_ net neutrality, places such as the EU for example already has enforced net neutrality for all members.

We should all move back to gopher.  Seriously.

Agree. Here&#x27;s how to approach it, imho:1. Assume we will eventually converge to a virtual machine target like WASM. Thus, eventually, browsers will only have to implement the low-level instructions of WASM, which will make building a browser much simpler. Note that as a side-effect, browsers may also become more secure.2. Start with a working webbrowser, like Firefox or Chromium.3. Step by step, move functionality from the browser into the browser&#x27;s user-space. Eventually, JavaScript and the rendering of CSS and HTML will run in the browser&#x27;s user-space.

Should a single developer working full time be able to implement an OS within a year?The web is pretty much an operating system.

ehhh HTML parsers&#x2F;DOMs are trivially easy to write. after that you need to go get a JS lib (like ducktape) and write a css and json parser.After that all you need is a layout engine, which GUI tookits like tk and gtk+ already have for text editing.

I am hoping feature-testing continues to be a good practice - I don&#x27;t expect to have webgl, the webusb, or webaudio APIs available...

I think you&#x27;re right, but only for a narrow definition of &quot;browser&quot;. Sure, something that looks and works exactly like Chrome, Safari, et. al. would be a gargantuan effort for a sole developer. But an &#x27;HTTP client&#x27; can take many forms and still offer value, even advantages over the existing browsers which serve a very specific remit.A basic text browser is the kind of thing that&#x27;s buildable in a year. Moreover, once you start building that, maybe you have an idea for certain features that current browsers don&#x27;t do well (bookmarking, navigation) or at all (change monitoring, api integration, editing).I&#x27;m optimistic that there is a lot of unlocked potential in the HTTP&#x2F;HTML platform.

as the standard gets bloatted, new players could leverage this weakness and build something entirely new. yes, reinvent the wheel. =)

Why stop with creating a browser from scratch? You&#x27;ll need hundreds of millions of dollars in capital just to build your own compiler technology that would be successful enough and incorporates enough instruction set optimizations present in commercial CPUs that your custom browser can be built upon.Maybe you&#x27;ll need your own hardware as well...

The web has been engineered to a complexity level so grossly obscene that it is all but impossible for independent developers to produce fully independent web browsers anymore. You would need hundreds of millions of dollars in capital and strong leadership to produce a browser that would be successful in today&#x27;s world.I could dedicate the rest of my life working 100 hours a week on a browser, and I would die before I had something that could compete with browsers of 2017, let alone of the browsers far into the future at my demise. The standards grow in complexity faster than a small team of developers could possibly keep up with.The best we have are attempts at forks of major browser engines, which will never gain any serious traction to have any power over the direction of web standards.If people want to do something about it, they need to fork the web itself. HTTP, TLS, HTML, CSS, JS ... the entire stack needs to be scrapped and replaced with something sensible with a focus on simplicity. If a single highly talented developer working full-time can&#x27;t implement a reasonable browser within a year, then the standard is too complex. This will of course never happen.And so, on the subject of DRM, we&#x27;ve officially lost the war today. And combined with the impending loss of net neutrality, brace yourselves everyone: it&#x27;s only going to get worse from here on out.

I agree. I&#x27;m curious as to what percentage of Netflix users primarily stream through a web browser rather than an app. I know my personal experience amounts to basically nothing but I can&#x27;t even remember the last time I watched something on Netflix through a browser. I just have a hard time imagining that a lack of Netflix would kill Firefox.

&gt; The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to try to exclude DRM is Mozilla, and unfortunately, if they do that, the users will switch to the browser that makes watching Netflix easiest.This is simply not true. Netflix&#x27;s entire business model is based around one thing: video content delivery. It started with DVDs in red envelopes, and has evolved to be app-based streaming now. Neither of these two things has any relevance to web browsers.Netflix&#x27;s wish to be able to provide its content on as many platforms as possible for the lowest cost? Yes, that would make a lot more sense for why they are pushing this. Not an enticing enough argument for destroying web browser-based DRMs imo.

They could definitely hurt Netflix by making it a shitty, barely workable experience.

It has always been like this (see browser wars, WHATWG).In this case W3C is involved just as a tool. Microsoft&#x2F;Netflix didn&#x27;t need W3C for anything other than the brand name lending legitimacy to the spec they&#x27;ve designed and implemented before presenting it to the W3C, and didn&#x27;t materially change it after.

It is truly a tragedy of the commons. It makes sense for the individual to consume their content, they&#x27;re not giving up much by themselves. The problem arises when everyone does it.

&gt; The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to try to exclude DRM is Mozilla, and unfortunately, if they do that, the users will switch to the browser that makes watching Netflix easiest.This is the world we live in. People are willing to sacrifice privacy and security in favor of convenience. Sounds a hell of a lot like a book I read in high school.People are so willing to make these sacrifices because they don&#x27;t even understand what they&#x27;re sacrificing. They don&#x27;t understand what they&#x27;re sacrificing because they couldn&#x27;t be bothered. Apathy is the disease that will bring down the world. I&#x27;m calling it now.

Basically, unless you are writing a browser with decent marketshare, you defacto have no voice in making the standards. Basically, the only voices that matter are Mozilla (Firefox), Apple (Safari), Google(Chrome), and Microsoft (Edge&#x2F;Explorer). Despite what any standard says, web developers are going to go by the behavior of the browsers do. The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to try to exclude DRM is Mozilla, and unfortunately, if they do that, the users will switch to the browser that makes watching Netflix easiest.

Grassroots populist opinions of the people only prevail when the wealthy and corporate interests already coincidentally happened to be lobbying for it. And by coincidence, I mean overlap, so it isn&#x27;t just a matter of convincing the wealthy interest groups either because they don&#x27;t care.This study was regarding laws passed and regulations changed, but it would apply to non-state consensus garnering organizations.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cambridge.org&#x2F;core&#x2F;journals&#x2F;perspectives-on-politics&#x2F;article&#x2F;testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens&#x2F;62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cambridge.org&#x2F;core&#x2F;journals&#x2F;perspectives-on-poli...</a>&gt; Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.Same study, in article form with graphs, responding to critics of the study<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;monkey-cage&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;23&#x2F;critics-challenge-our-portrait-of-americas-political-inequality-heres-5-ways-they-are-wrong&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;monkey-cage&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;2...</a>

In fact Chrome was the first browser to support HTML DRM. Google enabled this when nobody else did.Google is absolutely not your friend.

And that&#x27;s their DRM, by the way. Google bought the company in 2010.

Chrome has been shipping DRM called &quot;Widevine&quot; for years.

No, I mean Play DRM content, not Flash plugin. I&#x27;m on developer edition though, and it&#x27;s been a while since I installed it, so I might be wrong. Thanks for your info!

I just created a new Firefox profile (v55.0.3, current stable), and the &quot;Play DRM content&quot; setting is enabled by default.You may be thinking of the Flash plugin, which I believe Firefox and Chrome both do block by default and have done so for a while now.

Google was one of the organizations that pushed the DRM standard through the W3C.  Because Youtube.

The default in Firefox depends on which build, which operating system, which distributor. It&#x27;s a boolean pref that you can flip the other way if you don&#x27;t like the default you got.

Doesn&#x27;t Firefox block DRM content by default? If they continue to do so, and if Chrome does so, then this shouldn&#x27;t have much effect. If most peoples browsers block it, apps shouldn&#x27;t use it.

What&#x27;s the point, if this is another one of those &quot;industry groups&quot; they could at least have the decency to make it a great corporate junket with a meeting in Las Vegas or something.

The Tim mentioned in the letter is Tim Berners-Lee. He&#x27;s the overall Director of the W3C [0][0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.w3.org&#x2F;People&#x2F;#timbl" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.w3.org&#x2F;People&#x2F;#timbl</a>

Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the first web browser.

Who is this director exactly that forced this on one-sidedly?I guess he got something out of this. What a disgrace.

Ideally all content publishers start to really depend on this &quot;feature&quot; and then one or two of the major browser vendors a few years down the line suddenly stop enforcing any restriction the DRM had. Now the publishers have to spend a bunch of money to move back to the plugin style DRM.

My guess is they claim it can&#x27;t work because they don&#x27;t want it to work, and figure with enough agreement someone somewhere will be convinced. (Saying this independently of my own views on the matter.)

The argument is essentially that in order for you to enjoy the content, the content must be present unencrypted at some point before it hits your eyes and ears. Because of this, it should always be theoretically possible to extract the unencrypted content at that point.

It could be easy to view but hard to save and distribute. Why can&#x27;t it? Or do you really think these people have no idea what they&#x27;re taking about?

By its very nature DRM of media content makes no sense. How can audio and video be delivered to the user without also allowing the user to save and distribute that content later? At some point, the content must be available in unencrypted form, even if that point is when the content is sent to the display, it can just be captured there.

&gt; Cryptogtaphically speaking,Honestly, this might be why people aren&#x27;t on the same wavelength. They&#x27;re not cryptographically speaking.

I know content creators. There is a large group that hate their content being copied. That&#x27;s not going to change.

Even if everyone were to replace their hardware for DRM-friendly monitors, you can bet that in a week the market will be flooded by chinese made hardware dongles that allows you to bypass it.

Cryptogtaphically speaking, what is DRM. We want to give an untrusted user access to content, so that they can see it, without giving them access to the content, so they cannot copy it. This is simply impossible in theory. In practice, we can make copying it difficult, possibly resorting to hardware support (so decryption happens in the monitor) and rely on the DMCA to make any attempts to break DRM illegal. Of course non of these solutions actually work in theory; and the farther down the arms race we go, the more annoying it gets to legitimate users.

Mainly that. There&#x27;s no way to show me a video in my own home wherein I can&#x27;t simply videotape the screen. So even if it&#x27;s perfectly locked down digitally, it has to be converted to analog at some point for human consumption, and you can always capture that.But I also disagree that DRM should be baked into &quot;the web&quot; as a standard, especially when most users seem to disagree, the EFF disagrees, and almost half of the committee disagrees.

DRM does work. Whether Denuvo is successful depends on how it is implemented. Implementations of Denuvo have survived a year+ without being cracked. As you said, DRM often isn&#x27;t intended to be secure forever, just for long enough that the major sales buzz is over anyway.You can also think of DRM as branching into online services. DRM commonly required some form of interaction with an online service to validate a key or whatever else. As a result, some DRM is in fact built into the foundation of the software and this is the most successful. Think of World of Warcraft or Everquest. To essentially crack that DRM, you have to recreate the server backend which is a serious undertaking. This has been done, but it took a long time, only applies to older versions and doesn&#x27;t connect you to the legitimate service.Steam is an online service and games which use SteamWorks are coupling at least some of their features with the online service, but this is not as complicated as something like World of Warcraft so it is easily cracked. Denuvo attempts to fill that gap by more strongly coupling the software with Steam. As a result, Steam is technically the DRM while Denuvo is helping to enforce it and thus is not labeled as &quot;3rd party DRM&quot; on the Steam Store pages.There is a balance between the popularity of your software and the difficulty of breaking the DRM. If your software isn&#x27;t extremely popular, then a crack is not in high demand. If the software is easy to crack, then even if it isn&#x27;t in high demand it may get drive-by cracked. If it&#x27;s difficult enough, many people will decide that their time is better spent elsewhere even if it is possible to crack.As we enter the age of encrypted processing where both the code and data are encrypted during execution on the processor, cracking will be time consuming enough and have enough prerequisites that it simply won&#x27;t be able to keep up with even the most popular software. It will be a while before this can become mainstream, because unless governments start requiring it, there will always be devices without encrypted processing that companies can&#x27;t ignore in order to maximize profit. It won&#x27;t surprise me if we see both governments that require encrypted processing and governments that ban encrypted processing.Obviously for static media like audio or video this is harder to deal with, but there have been a number of novel solutions to this that just haven&#x27;t been widely adopted. There are also still a lot of consumers with older hardware that publishers want to target, because not targeting them is worse than the concern of piracy. These are more about mitigation rather than outright making it impossible for a time period.

DRM doesn&#x27;t work. Every form of DRM has historically been broken in one way or another. There are a couple of current systems that haven&#x27;t been broken yet but it doesn&#x27;t matter; content will be available from unauthorized sources the day they are released for streaming and no technical means is going to stop that.Even Denuvo, the darling of the major games publishers, is broken on a regular basis. The company acknowledges that their software doesn&#x27;t last forever (they tout &#x27;300 days&#x27; on their website as the longest any of their DRM schemes has held up, it usually is broken in a couple of weeks) and that the value is protecting the profits during that period.

It&#x27;s inherently ineffective because for content to be viewable, information about the DRM is widely spread. Consider Blu-ray. HDCP is a huge hassle for anyone trying to do anything with their video content, and it offers next to no security: Every Blu-ray player, TV, and disc producer has to hold the decryption keys, which means it&#x27;s trivial for the keys to leak out to the public.And consider the number of hands a piece of media goes through during the various stages of content production. Movies get stolen from anywhere from postproduction studios to the factories that produce the discs.Adding a layer of DRM on top of the consumer-facing product does almost nothing to prevent the content from reaching pirate sites. And once they&#x27;re there, the rest of the distribution problem is easy.

A chain of hardware, all with private keys in a &#x27;secure enclave&#x27; &#x2F; &#x27;TPM&#x27; can deliver DRM that is as unbreakable as the private keys are hidden and tampering detection is functioning. Really, the only hole that can&#x27;t be patched is analogue recording. Realistically, tampering with the screen or cable is probably the easiest target. Though, compromising the TPM would have more widespread effects.

DRM can&#x27;t work because the math doesn&#x27;t distinguish between receiving and decrypting content for a legal purpose like viewing it, and doing the same for an illegal purpose like copying and distributing it. If nothing else, there&#x27;s the analog hole of recording the screen (which could be done in software).If it did work, that would be a legitimate reason to include these potentially dangerous, un-inspectable DRM features. But it fundamentally can&#x27;t, so foisting this security risk on everyone seems misguided.

I think the most simple reasons to tell that DRM can&#x27;t ever work, are that:First DRM proponents have gone very far to protect their content. It costs them a lot of money and from a economical point of view it is difficult to see how DRM help them making more money.Second: The guys who use pirated stuff would anyway not pay if DRM was working, so why the media industry would bother to struggle with them?

&gt; why people here are so determined DRM can&#x27;t ever workIt is just that you can not have a video for watching it, and not having the video for distributing it. Computers don&#x27;t work that way, you either have the video or don&#x27;t.That said, things are more insidious than what is on the above paragraph. It&#x27;s computers that don&#x27;t work that way, so the solution that many people thought about was making computers illegal, and replacing them with closed controlled machines that resemble them in many ways but aren&#x27;t as powerful.

&gt;or even a framework for minting such schemes on demandThis is what video DRM will need. For games, where each game has a somewhat customized version of DRM, taking a few weeks to break is good enough. For video, this will give you a few episodes; but once it is broken it is broken for everything until you roll out a new scheme. Overtime, I would expect the breakers to get more efficient and automated at breaking schemes, while the DRM makers get increasingly lazy and complacent.

One other element: over the longer term, the scheme should be difficult enough to work around such that casual copying is discouraged.

People who are not fooled by the ideology of DRM are fully aware that DRM is a legal strategy, not a technology.That doesn&#x27;t change the technological harm of DRM. Putting a DRM-shaped hole in web standards makes browsers less secure, less stable, and less maintainable.iTunes copy protection used to be broken in a few hours, Blu Ray is long since cracked. DRM is neither secure nor cryptographically sound ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;craphound.com&#x2F;msftdrm.txt" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;craphound.com&#x2F;msftdrm.txt</a> ). The business models that work online keep on being built without DRM.But DRM remains an irresistible fantasy for corporations who haven&#x27;t worked out the economics of getting Apple, Amazon or Netflix to add locks to their content.

I think the most untenable part of the DRM model is the trust required. All user hardware behind the visual part has to be secure. That is, the manufacturer has to correctly implement any protocols.This goes (if I&#x27;m not mistaken) for the Screen, HDMI cable, GPU and OS. It&#x27;s a hard balance between keeping consumer happy with their choice and only accepting compliant and capable producers.The downfall of the DRM is either going to be stripping the legal protections, or competitors without DRM being able to offer a better experience. Sadly, whilst cutting DRM gives a massively better experience, it comes at the cost of control over the customer. I think Netflix really doesn&#x27;t mind that I can&#x27;t watch Netflix on Plex. Heck, they might even prefer that.This is what really scares me about DRM, it enables the building of walled gardens for much more than just media content.

In practical terms, DRM obviously can be made to work.People ideologically opposed to DRM tend to have two blind spots about the DRM service model.First, they assume that DRM users demand that DRM prevent any copies being made. But that&#x27;s not true: obviously, any video you show a user in the privacy of their home can be cam-copied. It has even been the case (though it will be less and less the case moving forward) that you could obtain a high-fidelity digital copy. DRM users have always understood that to be the case; what&#x27;s important is not that copies be impossible, but that they be difficult for ordinary users and, ideally, incur a quality hit. If copies are inconvenient and&#x2F;or of lower-quality, most of the market will pay for legitimate copies.Second, and more importantly, DRM opponents assume that the restriction DRM users are seeking is indefinite. But for the most part, content owners are much less concerned about long-term restrictions than they are about the new-release window when their content is most in demand. A DRM scheme only has to survive for a couple weeks to generate immense value for content owners.From a security and cryptography perspective, a scheme that can be resilient against expert adversaries for a few weeks, or even a framework for minting such schemes on demand, is a commercially reasonable proposition.

Given that apparently, google (Chrome), Microsoft (IE and edge) and Apple (Safari) supported the proposal, one could defend the decision as necessary to prevent obsolescence. That is, if they did not pass this, they&#x27;d just be ignored by 3 out of the 4 most popular browser producers.

To me the more interesting question is why this particular issue is so important that W3C felt compelled to break consensus. I think the answer to that question is a lot more revealing than another &quot;DRM is evil vs you&#x27;re an unrealistic hippie&quot; fight. Even if we take it for granted that DRM is good... why?

DRM works! It&#x27;s very effective at giving control of the playback environment to the copyright cartels.Unfortunately, a lot of people mistakenly believe the purpose of DRM is to prevent copying. That is the justification, not the goal, which has always been about maintaining control over playback device.

Publishers win control over playback hardware market which probably outweighs the loss, or they would have stopped doing it.

If you&#x27;re capable of actually consuming it (by seeing it with your eyes and&#x2F;or hearing it with your ears), then it is possible to pirate it. Exactly zero DRM technologies today actually prevent piracy, and exactly zero DRM technologies ever will.Meanwhile, user-hostile DRM can and will (and already does) push users to simply pirate the media in question instead of putting up with the DRM. Users lose, publishers lose, browser vendors lose, and pirates are entirely unaffected.

I&#x27;m a bit uneducated when it comes to the cryptography involved, but I&#x27;m wondering why people here are so determined DRM can&#x27;t ever work?Is it because someone will somehow get a copy and upload to torrents&#x2F;streaming sites which of course won&#x27;t have DRM. Thus only potentially annoying legitimate (eg. Netflix) users? Or are there other concerns?

We have a quality problem, even it there is ample quantity.

Developers are using open source. End users not so much, except open source bundled into their apps as libraries to actually power them.Getting an app into users hands nowadays is becoming gatekeeped more and more. Either through fearmongering (buy those certs for your apps approved by Gatekeeper X) or literal gatekeeping on app stores.You can argue that people don&#x27;t have to use locked down app stores, but then you&#x27;re just missing the point.

What&#x27;s important is not what software exists somewhere where somebody could theoretically download and use it, but what software actually gets used. Most users don&#x27;t even know what open source software is, much less where to find any; they use what comes with either Windows or OS X or their smartphone.Also, your software can be as open source as you like, but if it can&#x27;t interoperate with the rest of the Internet, it&#x27;s useless. Personally, I don&#x27;t watch TV or movies on my computer so I don&#x27;t particularly care whether my browser lets me do that or not. But I would care very much if, for example, my bank&#x27;s website started requiring a DRM-capable browser. Open source doesn&#x27;t address that problem.

Yet users are less free now than ever before.  The open source methodology leads to free libraries for devs, free labor for companies, but proprietary applications for users.

Is there though?There are more open source libraries, tools, frameworks, languages and other tools used to create softwareBut I am seeing a HUGE shift to Closed off, non open SaaS and property installed apps for end users.Outside of dev tools I am not seeing a shift to open source.GPL a licence that protects user freedom has fallen out of favor in place of MIT and BSD which protects developer freedomSo like EME, Open Source has become hostile users. Open Source is for dev&#x27;s not users

Hogwash, there is more open source software now then ever before.

Once a system becomes closed it is very difficult to become open again. It&#x27;s like personal liberty &amp; freedoms, if you&#x2F;we give them up they are almost impossible to get them back.

Probably it will take a few centuries to realise this, and every single right restriction. People are always bad at protecting their rights.

If you want the masses to care, the masses will have to lose first. They (not hackers) don&#x27;t get it, and it&#x27;s inconceivable that they ever will... Until they notice the closed system.Is there even a war taking place? Battles are often forgotten.Yes, we (the hackers) allowed this to happen. We need to think about it now. I feel like the YOU in your comment is slightly misaddressed. What can WE do about it?jus&#x27; trolling the good guys...

Do you use any Google&#x2F;Apple&#x2F;Facebook products? You are choosing with your wallet or personal data if you are. They only have power because we give them power either by using their products or giving them more data points.

We? talk about yourself. I didn&#x27;t have the chance to choose any of these.

&gt;A future where there has to be an App for thatStandardising on this means the exact opposite, there will not need to be an app for everything, just the web.

We are allowing large corporations to dictate and push the web toward a closed system. A future where there has to be an App for that, and if you don&#x27;t keep your head down you will be censored and cutoff from the rest of the online world.

&gt; Chrome and friends will refuse to load unsigned content, and then the death of the free web will be complete.I&#x27;m going to need some citations that this is even remotely in the plan (and requiring HTTPS isn&#x27;t the same as refusing to load unsigned content, since that&#x27;s on the transport level).

I&#x27;m not knowledgeable enough to fully disagree. However, I do not feel it is the browsers job to ignore a potentially useful technology (albeit for some evil media companies) because you have a distribution&#x2F;marketing problem with your own content.I think they will instead include this tech and make it usable for those who want it and continue supporting non-DRM media for those who don&#x27;t want it. They&#x27;re not going to block your ability to share your content without DRM.

&gt; Chrome and friends will refuse to load unsigned contentThis statement is SO RIDICULOUS it just broke my brain. How?! Why?!Even the evil movie companies don&#x27;t want to prevent you from sharing your home video online.

It is already very difficult to distribute your own content without subjecting it to some other entity&#x27;s distribution system, and soon it will be impossible. Chrome and friends will refuse to load unsigned content, and then the death of the free web will be complete.

I feel you&#x27;ve brought the Browsers (Software, layer 5+) to an ISP fight (Layer 1-4). One that the 99% lost a long time ago. This has been snowballing for a very long time, I feel that momentum is minimal. This snowball is being pushed by pure force.Power! Unlimited Power! 
-Darth Sidious

But how long will it take for websites to be delivered with DRM so they can&#x27;t be archived,scraped, saved to disk, screenshot, etc?I agree that it&#x27;s &quot;only&quot; a step in that direction, but this can snowball and get ugly pretty fast.

&gt; is it beneficial for google to lock their code up behind a DRM blob? of course it is.No, it&#x27;s not. Their code is locked behind… uh… A SERVER. You could never see the server side code, and it&#x27;s always been that way.They do not give a flying fuck about people looking at their JavaScript UI code! That code is really, really NOT where the value is. The value is in the service — the databases full of data, the user accounts.

this is just the first step down a slippery slope.and it _is_ a slippery slope.are you really going to _not_ use gmail and google maps because you can&#x27;t see the source code? of course you&#x27;re not. but is it beneficial for google to lock their code up behind a DRM blob? of course it is.so there is every incentive in the world for web pages to be made proprietary, and no incentive at all for users to put up a fight (which is why this first step is so important: because it&#x27;s being made at the level of technologists, who supposably have the insight to know why it&#x27;s important).but after this, the progression will be slow, but relentless, toward a closed web. Even if a subset of ideological wackos decide to fight... they&#x27;re just ideological wackos.Stallman was right, and this is the exact same thing playing out again on a distributed medium.

On one hand, this is terrible for freedom in our software; on the other, this isn&#x27;t the &quot;death of the open Web&quot; that some are proclaiming.The media groups want DRM and they will get it. This doesn&#x27;t mean that we are going to lose all freedom on the Web. It&#x27;s a step in that direction, certainly, but we&#x27;re sure as heck not there yet.

Apparently one of them is Tim Berners-Lee?!?He&#x27;s the Director of W3C as far as I know.

How come we don&#x27;t know WHO sold us out for that beach house?

Is the EFF a big enough presence to &quot;fork&quot; the W3C standards? I hope so.

Great, I&#x27;m sure the enterprises on the W3C who voted for this will jump on board.Oh, you mean I can&#x27;t get Netflix on the forked internet? Welp, back to mainline.

And which browsers are going on this fork?

No, the W3C is the web. You&#x27;d be forking to what?This was basically wanted by Firefox, Apple, Microsoft and Google. They are the modern web. Trying to go against them is how we ended up with XHTML, a standard no-one really wanted, or implemented.

All I ask is that you don&#x27;t use W&#x27;s in your acronyms.  If you just fix ONE THING with your reboot--

&gt; We&#x27;re losing the internet day by day, if we haven&#x27;t done so already.Let&#x27;s just &quot;fork&quot; the web from W3C (or 3WC as some people like to call them by now) instead.

&gt; What&#x27;s going to happen without a standard? A bunch of proprietary plugins?What is supposed to be happen is a zero-tolerance and active fightback against anything DRM-related in the web - be it in the browser or be it a plugin.

Umm that is what is happening WITH the standardI still can not believe the number of people that do not understand what EME isEME enabled Properiertary Plugins, it gives control over the web to MS, Google, and Adobe. Full Stop.They will control everything.Widevine, Adobe CDM, and MS PlayReady. Those are your proprietary EME plugins that everyone must use nowWelcome to the non-open WebThanks Tim berners-lee, good job

What&#x27;s going to happen without a standard?  A bunch of proprietary plugins?

the market allows the DRM because people keep buying the content even when DRM is included, standardizing it may just mean less clunky implementations of DRMbut if we were to ban DRM from the market would something else crop up to replace it? would content creators stop making content?what about IP laws? if we got rid of them, there would probably be more content AND more DRM? or would it be more content and less DRM since it would only be a matter of time before someone legally reproduces your work so why bother with DRM?

Who are the &quot;common folk&quot; in this?(Complex issue but I&#x27;m not sure I see your point)

Technically &quot;capitalism&quot; would also mention the small long-tail of web consumers that refuse to use browsers that enable these new W3C specs.That said, most of actual market transactions involve some sort of subtle coercion or manipulation of emotions, which means they violate the core assumptions of economics. {Marketing, sales, religion&#x2F;cults, magicians, A&#x2F;B testing} all involve some sort of cognitive &#x2F; psychological manipulation -- the core incentives of the modern economy incentivize companies to optimize for attention capture and behavior exploitation.

In this case, the “common folk” you refer to don’t give a shit.

Capitalism at work - a handful of ultra-rich guys winning even more ground over common folks again.

One day HackerNews is chastising W3C for not adding encryption to the Payment Request API.The next day HN is lamenting about a standard encryption API being defined.

&gt; the extortionist environments that leads to.Media delivery in 2017 is hardly an extortionary environment. Practically speaking, Americans spend very little of their income on the Audible&#x2F;Netflix&#x2F;HBO Gos of the world. Netflix costs $120 a year? Against a median household income of $55,000, that is next to nothing.If anything, it&#x27;s the opposite: there&#x27;s a glut of content available to consume, in nearly every possible genre, at very low price points. There is far, far more good television than any person could reasonably watch, all for a couple thousandths of the typical person&#x27;s annual wages.

Perhaps there is potential in Seasteading.

Frankly I&#x27;m far more interested in which developing or first-world locales, if any, exist where net freedoms like these are protected by the majority, rather than having to be fought for by the minority against a wave of complacency and apathy.I&#x27;m pretty much done with trying to fight the american capitalist ideology which empowers these companies to steamroll over the average consumer happy to give up their own rights and freedoms then left to complain with the extortionist environments that leads to.I don&#x27;t think the world can continue on the way it&#x27;s going without some serious ideological fragmentations in the near future, and the moment some country embraces its &quot;Pirate Party&quot; or creates an &quot;Internet Bill of Rights&quot; establishing the core tenets the EFF and others fight for as the basis of their internet-related litigation - is the moment I know where the sane people all probably went (or would go as time goes on).

The parent comment is not the first line of argument, it&#x27;s the continuation of a years-long argument. Even if you completely ignore the history, the first line of argument is found in the article, not the comments. If you would like to understand the fundamentals of this debate, this comment section is not the right place to start. It&#x27;s very easy to find arguments and proposals from all sides of the issue elsewhere.

&quot;In 2013, EFF was disappointed to learn that the W3C had taken on the project of standardizing “Encrypted Media Extensions,” an API whose sole function was to provide a first-class role for DRM within the Web browser ecosystem&quot;With so much money involved here, it&#x27;s quite naive to believe the W3C members are virgins here and did this out love for the web and for the consumers.And:&quot;It is clear that the W3C allowing DRM technologies to be developed at the W3C is just a naked ploy for the W3C to get more (paying) member companies to join&quot;[0]0 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.whatwg.org&#x2F;drm-and-web-security" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.whatwg.org&#x2F;drm-and-web-security</a>

No, it&#x27;s probably not intentional corruption and malice. Just a belief that users are getting more of what they want as passive consumers paying large companies for services, rather than as creators in a peer to peer web. Realistically, they&#x27;re likely to be right.

I agree that this style of debate is not terribly useful, but I will grant that this issue does stir significant emotion in people who are seeing their baby suffocated to death.  However, I am uncertain what you believe is meant by &#x27;actual corruption&#x27;?  How could abandoning consensus, the normal functioning of the body for decades, and refusing to continue discussion in order to reach a compromise, not be a de-facto corruption of the organization?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=h94ZKGVg-B8&amp;t=8m23s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=h94ZKGVg-B8&amp;t=8m23s</a>If they are not corrupted they certainly acted in an extremely suspicious way.I advise you to watch the whole video because it gets better and better, the press conference part in particular.

Do you have any evidence or reason to believe there is actual corruption on the committee (aside from them making a decision you disagree with)?I suspect I agree with you on DRM but this style of debate, where there is no attempt to argue or explain the issue, and the first line of argument is personal attacks or denigrating anyone with an opposing viewpoint, is depressing. Consider that accusing climate scientists of corruption has also been fairly effective.For this particular issue, Netflix etc already requires DRM to play in a browser, and the browsers already provide DRM for Netflix etc to use. I would like to understand what the consequences of this decision are, if some of the way this works is standardized. Will this lead to more DRM? Is the only conceivable explanation that the MPAA is slipping the W3C members some bribes?

&quot;The interests of users are no longer front and center. &quot;Netflix is a &#x27;user&#x27; of the internet, as any other.The web is open - those who want to share their content freely can do that - those who want to DRM, they can do that.The &#x27;march of economics&#x27; is usually just the &#x27;march of reality&#x27;. Game of Thrones is expensive to make - ultimately, people have to get paid for it somehow.Most creative&#x2F;entertainment projects are a dud. Only a few even make money.

I think it&#x27;s time to start contemplating alternatives to the Web.The interests of users are no longer front and center. The past several years of the Web platform&#x27;s evolution have been characterized by privacy invasions, out of control Javascript, spammy push notifications, AMP... and now this.This is not what many of us signed up for. I don&#x27;t know if there even are alternatives to the Web at this time but when you can&#x27;t trust even the standards bodies to act in your best interest, it&#x27;s time to start talking about how we could walk away from the whole thing.

Wait, what? Perhaps you are right, but how do you make the leap from &quot;W3C standardizes DRM&quot; and &quot;the Web is about to be eaten by DRM?&quot;The Web is used for so many things these days. It is a publishing platform that allows anyone to host their own content to the entire internet, thanks to Web Browsers just loading it. I can see IPFS being an improvement over the Web but besides the web server being a single point of failure, why is a DRM standard specifically going to destroy the Web?Wordpress is used to power 20% of new sites. My own company is developing an open source platform for communities to run their own social networks (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qbix.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qbix.com</a>) so what is this &quot;eating&quot; you speak of?EDIT: This has been one of my most downvoted comments ever. Can someone explain the rationale? (Is it super obvious that the Web will be killed by DRM that asking the question should be punished?)

&gt; If someone launches a new HTML-based WebFew alternatives already exist (like gopher, the protocol).I found a new interesting one recently (ala markdown but tab-based and parseable with regexps):<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;contnet.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;contnet.org&#x2F;</a>There is also a new browser that is being developped (not related to ContNet):<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;netrunner.cc&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;netrunner.cc&#x2F;</a>

&gt; If someone launches a new HTML-based Web with crippled javascript (no network comm access, for one, including ability to trigger links or forms), some small, restricted subset of CSS, and much better built-in dynamic table and form elements, I&#x27;m there.Me too. There will be dozens of us.

I think you&#x27;re too quick to put DRM and WebAssembly in the same bucket. Yes, WebAssembly could lead to a future of closed-source proprietary technology on the web (and in that sense is similar to DRM), but the difference is that WebAssembly offers technical value. WebAssembly is a tradeoff for the public, whereas DRM exists strictly to restrict the public.

Ultimately, I think the failure of the open web runs deeper than that. When I visit, for example, a cookbook website, when I view a recipe, the problem isn&#x27;t just that the site can run arbitrary scripts on my computer. It&#x27;s also that I have no control over how that recipe displays because so much of that display is in HTML. I can&#x27;t pull it into a useful format and store it with all my other recipes because it&#x27;s in HTML. And contrary to its goals, HTML isn&#x27;t a semantic markup language. I can&#x27;t automatically convert imperial into metric units, because they aren&#x27;t represented as measurements at all. I can&#x27;t configure the display of the recipes for my nearsighted grandmother because that configuration happens when the recipe is rendered from a recipe document into an HTML document. The failure of the open web is that we need JavaScript to reasonably render the various kinds of documents which are being stripped of their metadata so they can be shoehorned into a non-semantic document format.Removing JavaScript prevents malware and adware vendors from running their programs on our machines, but it doesn&#x27;t empower users. We can control or data but we still can&#x27;t analyze data websites give us.The way forward, I think, is to create more standardized document types and let people build renderers for them. If I go to a cookbook website, I should be able to download recipe documents. If I don&#x27;t like how my cookbook program renders the recipe, I should be able to download another program can render it. This breaks the power that websites have as the sole entities with the capability to render their documents, and gives the power back to users.

Upvoted you, so count me in.Hard to believe in 2017, but as recently as five years ago Google (of all people) published the Caja compiler [1] for sandboxed&#x2F;statically verified JavaScript subsets, and there was AdSafe aiming for safe JavaScript as well.[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.google.com&#x2F;caja&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.google.com&#x2F;caja&#x2F;</a>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adsafe.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adsafe.org</a>

I&#x27;m guessing the folk around here include some who can make a browser happen.If it takes only well formed x&#x2F;html&#x2F;5 it&#x27;s not that big a deal.Ideally a lot of &quot;hooks&quot; so that the more determined can make it do their thing. Not the thing that somebody else wants to force on them.I wonder who&#x27;s game?

Count me in. And count my web server in as well, we&#x27;d make sure all pages are compatible.Your computer belongs to you. I&#x27;m ready to escape the cycle of &#x27;oh they own everything because they snuck human rights violations into their software and hardware and nobody stopped them&#x27;.

It&#x27;s not a technical problem. It&#x27;s a political problem. Those with the means will seek to control the web, no matter what technical solutions are invented to keep it open. Preventing tyrannical control of the web is an endless struggle.

C-HTML maybe? [1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;C-HTML" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;C-HTML</a>

I can&#x27;t tell if you&#x27;re being sarcastic or not, but I&#x27;ll point out anyway that literally every single feature of the current internet is opt-in. Most of the time it&#x27;s not even difficult to opt-out.If you really want a separate internet without the &quot;bad parts&quot;, you can still use Gopher. There are still sites around, and you won&#x27;t even get images, which were the first thing to &quot;ruin&quot; the internet, and were the launching point down the slippery slope to DRM video.On a side note, it&#x27;s interesting that so many HN readers are against this kind of DRM, but at the same time there&#x27;s a large group here who are against ad-blockers. Ad-revenue is the main driver motivating companies to shoe-horn this crap into the web. It&#x27;s not a coincidence that the biggest ad company in the world also makes one of the most popular web browsers and is a huge media distributor.

I am bitter that XML&#x2F;XSLT lost in favor of HTML&#x2F;CSS. It promised a stricter separation of content and formating and would probably have required less javascript to do the crucial functions.Unfortunately, among the crucial functions nowadays are the silly cosmetics, the parallax scrolling, the animated backgrounds, that allow marketers to pretend to have a website when all they have is formating for zero content. We failed to provide them with this fluff.

I threw this out there a year or so ago in the hope of getting some feedback on it:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eggplant.pro&#x2F;blog&#x2F;proposal-safeweb&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eggplant.pro&#x2F;blog&#x2F;proposal-safeweb&#x2F;</a>Really, I just need to find the time to do it.

We don&#x27;t need a new web; just more browsers that respect the user&#x27;s privacy. There are many ways to achieve this. At gngr[0], we are taking a &quot;safe by default&quot; approach. This is very similar to the NoScript &#x2F; uMatrix approach, but with one difference: the browser itself is offering this and is hence more water tight. There are no behind-the-scenes requests that a plugin can&#x27;t block.[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gngr.info" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gngr.info</a>

&gt; If someone launches a new HTML-based Web with crippled javascript (no network comm access, for one, including ability to trigger links or forms), some small, restricted subset of CSS, and much better built-in dynamic table and form elements, I&#x27;m there.Why not just do this yourself? Fork chromium and start commenting stuff you don&#x27;t want out. It would likely only take a weekend or two of hacking...

There was a time browser worked for you. Opera up to 12.xx offered a panel letting you configure what JS can&#x2F;cant do. It even let you configure global&#x2F;per domain storage quotas and forbid websites from dumping megabytes of garbage on harddrive (Im talking to you ad network trackers&#x2F;wikipedia). You can check out all of the sweet customization Opera 12.xx provided:<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.opera.com&#x2F;operaconfig&#x2F;versions&#x2F;Win32&#x2F;11.50&#x2F;en&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.opera.com&#x2F;operaconfig&#x2F;versions&#x2F;Win32&#x2F;11.50&#x2F;en&#x2F;in...</a>

If someone launches a new HTML-based Web with crippled javascript (no network comm access, for one, including ability to trigger links or forms), some small, restricted subset of CSS, and much better built-in dynamic table and form elements, I&#x27;m there.This Web&#x27;s about to be eaten by DRM and WebAssembly anyway. Pretty soon it&#x27;ll just be a way to deliver QT apps (or some other framework that runs in WebAssembly and renders to OpenGL or similar) and video. A web where the only thing you&#x27;ll find when you follow a link is more documents (or a download) and pages can&#x27;t try to make your computer do a bunch of stuff you don&#x27;t want it to would be nice to have again, and it&#x27;s clear now that the system itself has to ban the capabilities that enable all the garbage, or it&#x27;ll take over.

It&#x27;s digital serfdom, pure and simple. Rather than letting us own, they want us to pay rent. It&#x27;s the electronic feudal lords looking out for one another. This lawyer explains it well: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newsweek.com&#x2F;silicon-valley-private-property-and-new-feudalism-why-internet-things-marks-660102" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newsweek.com&#x2F;silicon-valley-private-property-and-...</a>

Whether or not there&#x27;s actual corruption, it&#x27;s inevitable (in my opinion) that this sort of thing would happen. It&#x27;s the march of economics. The open web just doesn&#x27;t allow suppliers to meet demand. One way or another they&#x27;ll find a way to do it. DRM snuck in the door via Flash. We just about stamped it out, but wouldn&#x27;t you know it somehow it came back in a more insidious (if innocuous looking) form. People on our side like to claim that DRM is a foolish business model, but I&#x27;m not convinced that they&#x27;re not just deluding themselves.Whatever the answer is, I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s stopping DRM with brute force. I think it will need to involve either coming up with alternate business models that are anywhere near as viable, or a way to keep it in a box to use for the few applications that really benefit from it.

BBS on HAM Radio? I&#x27;ve been toying with the idea for a while. The exact stack is not clear yet, but it has to &#x27;liberate&#x27; me from the current web&#x2F;internet insanity. It could be slow and imperfect, but dammit it would be ours again.

&gt;This is flat out CORRUPTIONThat&#x27;s a hell of an accusation. And you should present evidence if you&#x27;re going to level it. It is dishonorable to make baseless attacks on people&#x27;s character and integrity.

This will only lead to an eternal Copyright Term Extension Act  for online content...

Not exactly a corruption, it is just world doesnt belong to national governments - only to corporations. That wont change any time soon and will only worsen.

We have lost it: P2P should have been the future of internet. Instead it devolved into the &quot;connect to a server for everything&quot; cloud system.Internet should be like ZeroNet: a serverless system where content of interest is shared by its millions of viewers and where servers only use a small amount of bandwidth as backups and initial seeders.That the wikipedia still needs servers and asks donations yearly to keep them online is a testament to how stalled progress in internet infrastructure is today.

I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s as subtle as it is incoherent. I&#x27;ve yet to see a single article putting together the harm of DRM in terms tangible to a layman.

Shame, shame, shame.We&#x27;re losing the internet day by day, if we haven&#x27;t done so already.I&#x27;ve seen people and posts here and there calling for attention on these issues, but imho it&#x27;s all too subtle. We should start using harsher terminology for what&#x27;s actually happening. This is flat out CORRUPTION, and I&#x27;m not seeing anyone express it as such.It&#x27;s probably too late already, and unfortunately, this is merely a reflection on what&#x27;s happening in the world in the larger geo-political context. Corruption everywhere.

I understand them both to be based on Chromium at this point. Chrome already has support, so if the Brave&#x2F;Opera browsers want it it&#x27;s pretty much just a flip of the switch (Opera may already have it, I think).Basically if your browser lists any kind of Content Decryption Module (usually something called Widevine) among its plugins, you have EME support.

Brave and Opera both use the Blink rendering engine from Chromium&#x2F;Google. Therefore, you may see this new DRM W3C standard in Brave and Opera.

where does this leave Brave and Opera, two browsers I use regularly?

Looks like I&#x27;m sticking with the EFF only from now on.

It won&#x27;t be for the masses. For a physical-media model, look at SACD. You can&#x27;t burn your own SACD recordings, even if you have a DSD-capable recorder; the players will only play signed discs, and the signing keys are only available to pressing plants.

That seems about as viable as allowing anyone to be a certificate authority. This system relies on a list of trusted keys, that chain of trust needs to be anchored somewhere. Notably, easy implementations depend on controlling all trust anchors.

Of course youtube ToS allow thatAs far as I understand it, not really. You only grant them a license to use your video in the Service or for promoting it. Plus you cancel any rights by deleting the video.Some cases fall under Fair Use, but it&#x27;s my belief that unless they request permission from the video author(s), those media companies are infringing their copyright. But we all know these laws are just for the rich - who can afford to sue them anyway?

Now is the time to make it possible for individuals to use DRM when they publish videos online. How often do media companies show peoples stuff on TV and such without permission? Of course youtube ToS allow that, but this should all be changed ASAP. When large amounts of content actually come from individuals, it&#x27;s the individuals rights that need to be protected. When will we see DRM for the masses?

The article talks about a compromise that the EFF proposed and saw rejected.

The link at the top tells you all about the EFF&#x27;s comprimise proposal.

The covenant would have been a nice step forward and it&#x27;s unfortunate to see that it didn&#x27;t happen, but I think you overstate the consequences here.&gt; You can now for the first time be prosecuted for revealing a flaw in a W3C standard, overriding a browser &quot;feature&quot; on behalf of its user, or making a HTML video accessible without first asking permission of the DRM vendor who obfuscated it.Presumably you&#x27;re referring to the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions? Your second two examples are just as illegal now as they were yesterday: EME was already a browser &quot;feature,&quot; already being used for HTML video. The only thing that&#x27;s changed is the &quot;W3C standard&quot; part.The vendors presumably would have been fine to take EME, already a de facto standard and just leave it as-is, or &quot;standardize&quot; it in another body. Forcing that would have been nice for W3C&#x27;s purity and image in some circles, and maybe even a good move, but it doesn&#x27;t seem that it would have made any practical difference.

We offered to open a discussion about a covenant, modelled on the W3C&#x27;s own patent covenant, that would mean that W3C members would agree to only prosecute those who had broken the DRM within a W3C standard, if they had another cause of action. That&#x27;s to say, those companies could prosecute you if you broke the DRM and used it infringe copyright, but not if you only broke the DRM for lawful purposes -- such as security research, for accessibility, to protect privacy, and so on.There was a sizeable component within the W3C (I am still unsure as to what degree I can reveal how much, given that the W3C holds members to a confidentiality agreement.) who felt this was an important step to take before making EME a standard. In the end, the W3C executive team overrode those objections, and decided to go ahead without any such covenant.You can now for the first time be prosecuted for revealing a flaw in a W3C standard, overriding a browser &quot;feature&quot; on behalf of its user, or making a HTML video accessible without first asking permission of the DRM vendor who obfuscated it.

Whenever compromise fails, both sides blame the other for refusing to give any ground. Obviously browser vendors have a lot more power than the EFF does, and don&#x27;t necessarily need to compromise as much to get what they want. But I&#x27;m curious, for their part, did the EFF actually offer any compromises in defense of consensus?Edit: You guys are totally right, I missed it in the original article. Shame on me.

&gt; So last week, EFF increased its involvement in the W3C from being a regular participant and invited expert to a full member, to challenge DRM in the group&#x27;s future work<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;deeplinks&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;eff-joins-w3c-fight-drm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;deeplinks&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;eff-joins-w3c-fight-dr...</a>

Do Not Track was a document produced by an IETF WG, and totally unrelated to the W3C.

Do you have a source for that? The latest article that references the W3C on their site already shows them as a member, and it appears that they were heavily involved in Do Not Track work before EME. Did they post something somewhere when they were joining?edit: The reply below has the link. Thank you!

For the record, the EFF only joined the W3C to fight EME in the first place.  They&#x27;re not resigning in protest, they&#x27;re leaving the group because they didn&#x27;t win the single battle they joined for the purpose of fighting.

W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns