> It's somewhat ironic to me that some folks arguing passionately for the openness of the web (something I and many of the proposal contributors are also passionate about)
I cannot imagine the level of cognitive dissonance required to simultaneously believe you are passionate about the open web, and push something like WEI.
Either they're flat out lying about their "passion", or they've internalized some very contradictory ideas. Not sure which is worse.
Of course then there's:
> Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don't give in to criminals or bullies.
Which makes me think they're just lying. Or, at best, they don't understand basic logic. Personal attacks and doxing are unacceptable, but just because people who do bad things hold a certain opinion, it doesn't mean everyone who holds that opinion does bad things. Or even that more than a small, vocal minority do.
But ultimately Google is an advertising & surveillance capitalism company. If you're going to work there, and on one of most of their public-facing products, it's pretty likely you're going to eventually do shady things in service of the company's main revenue streams. Your continued employment depends on it.
> I cannot imagine the level of cognitive dissonance required to simultaneously believe you are passionate about the open web, and push something like WEI.
> Either they're flat out lying about their "passion", or they've internalized some very contradictory ideas. Not sure which is worse.
After observing Google for many years, I've figured out that when Googlers say "the open web", what they mean is "running in a browser, not a native app". So anything that makes apps running in a web browser more competitive with native apps is "good for the open web", even if it reduces openness. I think for a lot of people this is not even bad faith; it's just how language is used inside Google, and people pick it up and it shapes their thinking.
>I cannot imagine the level of cognitive dissonance required to simultaneously believe you are passionate about the open web, and push something like WEI.
Imagine a world where EME was not accepted as a standard.
1. Browsers do nothing to support DRM and sites like Netflix recommend people to just use a native app to experience the full Netflix experience. This weakens the open web by having sites leave the web and opt to move users to the mobile web instead.
2. Browsers adopt a closed standard for DRM. This weakens the open web because now a care use case of the web now uses a closed standard instead of an open one.
> 1. Browsers do nothing to support DRM and sites like Netflix recommend people to just use a native app to experience the full Netflix experience. This weakens the open web by having sites leave the web and opt to move users to the mobile web instead.
It would be easier if it was just Netflix using this crap like you imply. Nowadays, a good 10% of the websites have a popup "this page has DRM content, do you want to enable it?", I'm assuming it's used for advertising fingerprinting and malware even more than videos.
So yeah, requiring a netflix app is an improvement on the current situation.
> 2. Browsers adopt a closed standard for DRM. This weakens the open web because now a care use case of the web now uses a closed standard instead of an open one.
DRMs aren't the open web, they are the closed web, regardless if there's a specification or not, that doesn't change a thing.
And having an open specification for it lowers the cost of deploying them (as we've seen now, it's in a lot of places) which is bad.
The open specification doesn't really even mean much, because the specification covers how the DRM module interfaces with the browser, not compatibility between DRM modules. In practice, there is exactly one DRM implementation used on the web, and it is proprietary (Wildvine). You could implement another standard-compliant DRM scheme, but no one would use it; the value of the standard is basically nil.
>So yeah, requiring a netflix app is an improvement on the current situation.
If you are botherd by popups I'm sure you can disable them. I've never seen a popup asking me to enable DRM when I browse the web.
>DRMs aren't the open web
EME has a standardized javascript API for people to use. This is a public standard developed openly.
>And having an open specification for it lowers the cost of deploying them (as we've seen now, it's in a lot of places) which is bad.
Allowing copyright holders to have their hard work be protected is a good thing and allows for them to be willing to share them more if they can trust they won't be stolen from. Artists want control over how their art is used. Saying tough luck and that they should just deal with it being stolen is not productive and is ignoring their needs.
I cannot imagine the level of cognitive dissonance required to simultaneously believe you are passionate about the open web, and push something like WEI.
Either they're flat out lying about their "passion", or they've internalized some very contradictory ideas. Not sure which is worse.
Of course then there's:
> Attacks and doxing make me personally MORE likely to support stronger safety features in chromium, as such acts increase my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don't give in to criminals or bullies.
Which makes me think they're just lying. Or, at best, they don't understand basic logic. Personal attacks and doxing are unacceptable, but just because people who do bad things hold a certain opinion, it doesn't mean everyone who holds that opinion does bad things. Or even that more than a small, vocal minority do.
But ultimately Google is an advertising & surveillance capitalism company. If you're going to work there, and on one of most of their public-facing products, it's pretty likely you're going to eventually do shady things in service of the company's main revenue streams. Your continued employment depends on it.