Cory Doctorow has written extensively on the problems with present plans to incorporate DRM in HTML5:
W3C DRM working group chairman vetoes work on protecting security researchers and competition – June 18, 2016.
An Open Letter to Members of the W3C Advisory Committee – May 12, 2016.
Save Firefox: The W3C’s plan for worldwide DRM would have killed Mozilla before it could start – May 11, 2016.
Interoperability and the W3C: Defending the Future from the Present – March 29, 2016.
among others.
In general I agree with Cory’s reasoning but I don’t see:
…Once DRM is part of a full implementation of HTML5, there’s a real risk to security researchers who discover defects in browsers and want to warn users about them…. (from Cory’s latest post)
Do you remember the Sony “copy-proof” CDs? Sony “copy-proof” CDs cracked with a marker pen Then, just as now, Sony is about to hand over bushels of cash to the content delivery crowd.
When security researchers discover flaws in the browser DRM, what prevents them from advising users?
Cory says the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA prevent security researchers from discovering and disclosing such flaws.
That’s no doubt true, if you want to commit a crime (violate the DMCA) and publish evidence of that crime with your name attached to it on the WWW.
Isn’t that a case of pride goeth before a fall?
If I want to alert other users to security defects in their browsers, possibly equivalent to the marker pen for Sony CDs, I post that to the WWW anonymously.
Or publish code to make that defect apparent to even a casual user.
What I should not do is put my name on either a circumvention bug report or code to demonstrate it. Yes?
That doesn’t answer Cory’s points about impairing innovation, etc. but once Sony realizes it has been had, again, by the content delivery crowd, what’s the point of more self-inflicted damage?
I feel sorry for content owners. Their greed makes them easy prey for people selling patented DRM medicine for the delivery of their content. In the long run it only hurts themselves (the DRM tax) and users. In fact, the only people making money off of DRM are the people who deliver content.
Should DRM appear as proposed in HTML5, any suggestions for a “marker pen” logo to be used by hackers of a Content Decryption Module?
PS: Another approach to opposing DRM would be to inform shareholders of Sony and other content owners they are about to be raped by content delivery systems.
PPS: In private email Cory advised me to consider the AACS encryption key controversy, where public posting of an encryption key was challenged with take down requests. However, in the long run, such efforts only spread the key more widely, not the effect intended by those attempted to limit its spread.
And there is the Dark Web, ahem, where it is my understanding that non-legal content and other material can be found.