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No, HM, it doesn't inevitably follow that the provision for DRM on streaming media will lead to DRM on all other media for HTML5 and/or all other protocols everywhere.
It's like this. Does anyone here have Flash installed? Anyone?
Then you may sit down and shut up. You've been running a DRM platform that you couldn't see the source code for, controlled by a single corporation (Adobe), working outside of web protocols. And it was, up until recently the by-far predominant method of display of most video on the web.
When Netflix came along, they didn't like how Flash was all like controlled and whatnot, and so they chose Silverlight. Another DRM platform that you couldn't see the source code for, controlled by a single corporation (Microsoft), working outside of web protocols. Do you watch Netflix on your PC or Mac? You have chosen to use a non-web protocol controlled by Microsoft.
It's shitty that these various corporate-controlled platforms sit like barnacles on the web. They are dragging the whole boat down. Why can't we figure out a way to have everything be HTML5?
Why does Doctorow think this is giving away the keys to some secret castle? End of everything? Did he not notice that all iPads, iPhones and iPods are a seriously closed platform that people choose of their own free will? Did he not notice how much of the web is happening outside of web protocols? Maybe he had a bad day. I know I've sat on conferences where I thought the result was going to be the end of the world. It never turned out to be true.
Part two, next message.
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