tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post6591235386477903585..comments2024-03-28T02:31:38.608-07:00Comments on DSHR's Blog: The Amnesiac Civilization: Part 4David.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-64901531624868037232019-05-29T13:08:03.813-07:002019-05-29T13:08:03.813-07:00Cory Doctorow's How DRM has permitted Google t...Cory Doctorow's <a href="https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom.html" rel="nofollow"><i>How DRM has permitted Google to have an "open source" browser that is still under its exclusive control</i></a> is effectively an update on this post:<br /><br />" A year ago, Benjamin "Mako" Hill gave a <a href="https://boingboing.net/2018/06/21/digital-enclosure.html" rel="nofollow">groundbreaking lecture</a> explaining how Big Tech companies had managed to monopolize all the benefits of free software licenses, using a combination of dirty tricks to ensure that the tools that were nominally owned by no one and licensed under free and open terms nevertheless remained under their control, so that the contributions that software developers made to "open" projects ended up benefiting big companies without big companies having to return the favor.<br /><br />Mako was focused on the ways that "software as a service" subverted free/open software licenses, but just as pernicious is "digital rights management" (DRM), which is afforded a special kind of legal protection under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act: under this rule, it's illegal to reverse-engineer and re-implement code that has some connection with restricting access to copyrighted works. That means that once a product or service has a skin of DRM around it, the company that controls that DRM also controls who can make an interoperable product.<br /><br />That's where Google's web-dominating Chrome browser (and its nominally free/open cousin, Chromium) come in: these have become the defacto standard for web browsing, serving as the core for browsers like Microsoft Edge and Opera.<br /><br />And while you can use or adapt Chromium to your heart's content, your new browser won't work with most internet video unless you license a proprietary DRM component called Widevine from Google."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-40759624284558255472019-04-03T10:36:25.711-07:002019-04-03T10:36:25.711-07:00Who could possibly have predicted this? In After y...Who could possibly have predicted this? In <a href="https://boingboing.net/2019/04/03/i-hate-being-right-2.html" rel="nofollow"><i>After years of insisting that DRM in HTML wouldn't block open source implementations, Google says it won't support open source implementations</i></a>, Cory Doctorow reports as follows:<br /><br />" The bitter, yearslong debate at the World Wide Web Consortium over a proposal to standardize DRM for web browsers included frequent assurances by the pro-DRM side (notably Google, whose Widevine DRM was in line to be the principal beneficiary) that this wouldn't affect the ability of free/open source authors to implement the standard.<br /><br />The absurd figleaf used to justify this was a reference implementation of EME in open source that only worked on video that didn't have the DRM turned on. The only people this impressed were people who weren't paying attention or lacked the technical depth to understand that a tool that only works under conditions that are never seen in the real world was irrelevant to real-world conditions.<br /><br />Now the real world has arrived, and it was just as predicted."<br /><br />Specifically:<br /><br />"Maddock wanted to allow his users to do this with the videos they pay to watch on Widevine-restricted services like Hulu and Netflix, so he applied to Google for a license to implement Widevine in his browser. Four months later, Google sent him a one-sentence reply: <b>"I'm sorry but we're not supporting an open source solution like this"</b> (apparently four months' delay wasn't enough time to hunt up a comma or a period).<br /><br />The connection to the Article 13 debate should be obvious: for years, advocates for the Directive insisted that it could be implemented without filters, <a href="https://boingboing.net/2019/04/03/i-hate-being-right.html" rel="nofollow">but of course it requires filters</a>. Likewise, for year, EME's backers insisted that it wouldn't prevent us from having open, auditable, free-as-in-speech browsers that anyone could inspect, improve and distribute. But of course it does."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-72248355216708481992017-09-18T11:20:15.718-07:002017-09-18T11:20:15.718-07:00EME, DRM for the Web, is now an official W3C Recom...EME, DRM for the Web, is now an <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/drm-for-html5-published-as-a-w3c-recommendation-after-58-4-approval/" rel="nofollow">official W3C Recommendation</a>:<br /><br />"Final approval came after the W3C's members voted 58.4 percent to approve the spec, 30.8 percent to oppose, with 10.8 percent abstaining."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-51702717893233332762017-08-08T16:02:12.281-07:002017-08-08T16:02:12.281-07:00IFLA, the International Federation of Library Asso...IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, has asked <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/librarians-call-w3c-rethink-its-support-drm" rel="nofollow">W3C to reconsider EME</a>:<br /><br />"Technological protection measures (TPMs) play a useful role in tackling copyright infringement, complementing legal provisions. However, they do not always stop at preventing illicit activities, and can often serve to stop libraries and their users from making fair uses of works. This can affect activities such as preservation, or inter-library document supply. To make it easier to apply TPMs, regardless of the nature of activities they are preventing, is to risk unbalancing copyright itself."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-7266224841285058772017-07-31T09:51:28.123-07:002017-07-31T09:51:28.123-07:00The legal threat is not just the DMCA. At Ars Tech...The legal threat is not just the DMCA. At <i>Ars Technica</i>, Timothy B. Lee's <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/linkedin-its-illegal-to-scrape-our-website-without-permission/" rel="nofollow"><i>LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission</i></a> reports on the threat the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act poses for Web archiving:<br /><br />"HiQ scrapes data about thousands of employees from public LinkedIn profiles, then packages the data for sale to employers worried about their employees quitting. LinkedIn, which was <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/microsoft-will-acquire-linkedin-for-18-5b/" rel="nofollow">acquired by Microsoft last year</a>, sent hiQ a cease-and-desist letter warning that this scraping violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the controversial 1986 law that makes computer hacking a crime. HiQ sued, asking courts to rule that its activities did not, in fact, violate the CFAA."<br /><br />LinkedIn could have used robots.txt to ban the crawl, crawling would then violate the DMCA. But the CFAA's ban on "unauthorized access" is very vague and troubling. Orrin Kerr:<br /><br />"argues sites wanting to limit access to their site should be required to use a technical mechanism like a password to signal that the website is not, in fact, available to the public.<br /><br />"It's hugely problematic to let the subjective wishes of the website owner and not their objective action" determine what's legal, Kerr told Ars."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-55794737830433311832017-07-13T14:53:56.344-07:002017-07-13T14:53:56.344-07:00The EFF has appealed the W3C's decision.
And ...The EFF has <a href="https://boingboing.net/2017/07/12/save-the-web.html" rel="nofollow">appealed the W3C's decision</a>.<br /><br />And Cory Doctorow points out the <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/net-neutrality-wont-save-us-if-drm-baked-web" rel="nofollow">connection between the Net Neutrality and Web DRM</a> fights.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-53694202812471616822017-07-07T16:13:05.822-07:002017-07-07T16:13:05.822-07:00See also Mike Masnick and Cory Doctorow.See also <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170707/15544137737/tim-berners-lee-sells-out-his-creation-officially-supports-drm-html.shtml%22" rel="nofollow">Mike Masnick</a> and <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/amid-unprecedented-controversy-w3c-greenlights-drm-web" rel="nofollow">Cory Doctorow</a>.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-29122781412147993892017-07-07T14:46:41.913-07:002017-07-07T14:46:41.913-07:00At The Register, Thomas Claburn's Web inventor...At <i>The Register</i>, Thomas Claburn's <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/07/berners_lee_supports_emes/" rel="nofollow"><i>Web inventor Sir Tim sizes up handcuffs for his creation – and world has 2 weeks to appeal</i></a> reports:<br /><br />"Speaking on behalf of Berners-Lee in a note posted to the W3C mailing list, project management lead Philippe Le Hégaret <a href="https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017Jul/0000.html" rel="nofollow">said</a>, "After consideration of the issues, the Director reached a decision that the EME specification should move to W3C Recommendation."<br />...<br />EMEs will be published as a W3C Recommendation unless at least five per cent of the 475 members of the W3C Advisory Committee – composed of companies, non-profits, and educational organizations – support an appeal within 14 days. If an appeal it considered, members will have the opportunity to vote on whether to accept or reject the technology."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-34769877213331460272017-06-20T10:45:08.422-07:002017-06-20T10:45:08.422-07:00In discussions at the recent Web Archiving Confere...In discussions at the recent Web Archiving Conference, Andy Jackson pointed out that the British Library has legal authority to ask publishers for DRM-free versions of their content for archival purposes.<br /><br />This is good, but it doesn't affect my argument for two reasons. First, the DRM-free content acquired by the BL would be accessible only to scholars physically at the BL, so it isn't useful in the way public Web archives are. Second, the cost of negotiating with individual publishers and setting up individual ingest pipelines for their DRM-free content would be prohibitive at scale, it would only be feasible for very important content such as newspapers.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-68494838924301521532017-05-20T17:25:37.814-07:002017-05-20T17:25:37.814-07:00DRM has doomed all the digirabbits in Second Life:...DRM has doomed <a href="http://boingboing.net/2017/05/20/breedables-vs-drm.html" rel="nofollow">all the digirabbits in Second Life</a>:<br /><br />"Every Ozimal digirabbit in the venerable virtual world Second Life will starve to death (well, permanent hibernation) this week because a legal threat has shut down their food-server, and the virtual pets are designed so that they can only <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-_7k-VigxufaTM5b18yVXpvZU0/view" rel="nofollow">eat DRM-locked food</a>, so the official food server's shutdown has doomed them all."<br /><br />Perhaps the awful fate of all the cuddly bunnies will soften hearts at W3C.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-53959804214111338682017-04-28T10:14:16.470-07:002017-04-28T10:14:16.470-07:00Cory Doctorow points to a letter from Tim Wu to Ti...Cory Doctorow <a href="https://boingboing.net/2017/04/28/two-tims.html" rel="nofollow">points to</a> a letter from <a href="https://d2jhuj1whasmze.cloudfront.net/docs/EME_debate_6fMY.txt" rel="nofollow">Tim Wu to Tim Berners-Lee</a> drawing the parallel between the anti-competitive effects of DRM for the Web, and those of the removal of <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/20170427/00174437247/over-800-startups-tell-fccs-ajit-pai-not-to-kill-net-neutrality.shtml" rel="nofollow">net neutrality requirements</a>.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-91961925548349474552017-04-12T14:36:34.502-07:002017-04-12T14:36:34.502-07:00Yay, Portugal! Glyn Moody points to a TorrentFreak...Yay, Portugal! <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170411/08055537122/portugal-pushes-law-to-partially-ban-drm-allow-circumvention.shtml" rel="nofollow">Glyn Moody points to</a> a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/portugal-passes-bill-to-restrict-use-of-drm-grant-circumvention-right-170410/" rel="nofollow">TorrentFreak report</a> that:<br /><br />"Portugal's parliament has approved a bill that will restrict how Digital Rights Management is applied to some creative works, including those in the public domain or funded by public entities. Even when DRM is present, citizens will be able to circumvent the protection for education and private copying purposes."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-50266150525214005192017-04-12T08:12:56.880-07:002017-04-12T08:12:56.880-07:00Cory Doctorow reports that:
"German Member o...Cory Doctorow <a href="http://boingboing.net/2017/04/11/protecting-user-rights.html" rel="nofollow">reports that</a>:<br /><br />"German Member of the European Parliament Julia Reda ... has published an open-letter signed by UK MEP Lucy Anderson, raising alarm at the fact that the <a href="https://boingboing.net/2017/04/11/the-web-we-want.html" rel="nofollow">W3C is on the brink of finalising a DRM standard</a> for web video, which -- thanks to crazy laws protecting DRM -- will leave users at risk of unreported security vulnerabilities, and also prevent third parties from adapting browsers for the needs of disabled people, archivists, and the wider public."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-34436094947835693312017-04-07T21:21:29.865-07:002017-04-07T21:21:29.865-07:00At least in Ubuntu, the "Play DRM Content&quo...At least in Ubuntu, the "Play DRM Content" preference appears to be off by default.<br /><br />The explanation for DRM in Firefox is <a href="https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Video-audio-and-interactive/Watch-DRM-content-on-Firefox/ta-p/37423" rel="nofollow">here</a>. It includes the statement:<br /><br />"Similar opt-out capabilities will be offered on all new platforms where Firefox supports DRM."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-91864331508440973262017-04-03T19:12:43.547-07:002017-04-03T19:12:43.547-07:00UNESCO has joined in the chorus of calls to W3C no...UNESCO has joined in the chorus of calls to <a href="http://en.unesco.org/news/be-careful-about-proposed-technical-change-web-says-unesco-s-rue" rel="nofollow">W3C not to cave in to the copyright industries</a>:<br /><br />"Caution has been expressed by Frank La Rue, Assistant Director General for Communication-Information, in a <a href="https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/eme_letter_frank_la_rue.pdf" rel="nofollow">letter</a> sent to the <a href="https://www.w3.org/" rel="nofollow">W3C</a>, a standards-setting body that is considering a change to internet browsing with potentially far-reaching consequences.<br /><br />The technical change is known as <a href="https://www.w3.org/2016/03/EME-factsheet" rel="nofollow">Encrypted Media Extensions</a>” (EME), which would become part of the HTML 5 code for the World Wide Web, and therefore standardize how web browsers deal with encrypted video content. <br /><br />Encryption of video content is something that largely serve the interests of the copyright industry, but it also has significance for network security and content integrity.<br /><br />If agreed, the new EME standard could mean that internet browsers might increasingly “act as a framed gateway rather than serving as intrinsically open portals”, said La Rue."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-27040021813774679502017-03-22T15:14:11.818-07:002017-03-22T15:14:11.818-07:00Firefox is now "Netflix approved" i.e. i...Firefox is now <a href="https://betanews.com/2017/03/22/firefox-linux-netflix/" rel="nofollow">"Netflix approved"</a> i.e. it has HTML5 DRM support. Once I've upgraded I'll see if I can turn it off.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-89912870715130575582017-03-22T15:14:11.207-07:002017-03-22T15:14:11.207-07:00Firefox is now "Netflix approved" i.e. i...Firefox is now <a href="https://betanews.com/2017/03/22/firefox-linux-netflix/" rel="nofollow">"Netflix approved"</a> i.e. it has HTML5 DRM support. Once I've upgraded I'll see if I can turn it off.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-54766298506733087912017-03-21T12:08:21.989-07:002017-03-21T12:08:21.989-07:00Cory Doctorow's comment on this "next ste...Cory Doctorow's comment on this "next step" is <a href="https://boingboing.net/2017/03/21/we-cant-handle-the-truth.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-56856978702495782252017-03-20T20:05:19.661-07:002017-03-20T20:05:19.661-07:00Peter Bright at Ars Technica reports that DRM in H...Peter Bright at <i>Ars Technica</i> reports that <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/drm-in-html5-takes-its-next-step-toward-standardization/" rel="nofollow"><i>DRM in HTML5 takes its next step toward standardization</i></a>:<br /><br />"The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the standards body that oversees most Web-related specifications, has moved the EME specification to the Proposed Recommendation stage.<br /><br />The next and final stage is for the W3C's Advisory Committee to review the proposal. If it passes review, the proposal will be blessed as a full W3C Recommendation."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.com