We are Huxleying ourselves into the full Orwell.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Cory Doctorow, the dude from boingboing and a whole slew of other things, is pretty up on the internet and things that affect it. I've always considered him to be pretty stable, as in not doing the sky is falling bit. So this struck me as serious shit.

Try as I might, I can’t shake the feeling that 2014 is the year we lose the Web. The W3C push for DRM in all browsers is going to ensure that all interfaces built in HTML5 (which will be pretty much everything) will be opaque to users, and it will be illegal to report on security flaws in them (because reporting a security flaw in DRM exposes you to risk of prosecution for making a circumvention device), so they will be riddled with holes that creeps, RATters, spooks, authoritarians and crooks will be able to use to take over your computer and fuck you in every possible way.

As near as I can work out, there’s no one poised to do anything about this. Google, Apple and Microsoft have all built proprietary DRM silos that backed the WC3 into accepting standardization work on DRM (and now the W3C have admitted the MPAA as a member - an organization that expressly believes that all technology should be designed for remote, covert control by someone other than its owner, and that it should be illegal to subvert this control).

Once this is standardized at the W3C, all the alternative browsers (eg Firefox) will also have to ship closed, opaque, illegal-to-report-vulnerabilities-in software to support it.

And it’s basically all being driven by Netflix. Everyone in the browser world is convinced that not supporting Netflix will lead to total marginalization, and Netflix demands that computers be designed to keep secrets from, and disobey, their owners (so that you can’t save streams to disk in the clear).

We are Huxleying ourselves into the full Orwell.

I’m not kidding about any of this. I can’t sleep anymore. I think it may be game over.

link

[Griff]

Netflix!!? I can't decide whether to keep up with and argue this stuff, switch off, or just take it in the mouth when all is lost. I wrote an email to Bob Casey recently and he (er underling) sent back a pretty focused and reasonable sounding reply but the bottom line was what we find concerning and what officials inside the government find concerning are pretty out of sync.

[Clodfobble]

Doesn't this just mean that we'll all have our main home "media center" computer, that runs Netflix and lets us read NYTimes articles, and then we'll all have our secondary computers that run alternative browsers and go to all the non-corporate-behemoth sites we want to go to?

The technically-inclined will always find a way around stuff. The corporations just have to make their system easy enough, and hard enough to circumvent, for the average person not to bother. See iTunes vs. bitTorrent. Everyone said the MPAA was a bunch of Orwellian bastards and no one would ever pay for mp3s, but they made it work for 80% of the people, which is all they really had to do.

[Molasar]

am I a jerk for not knowing what netflix is?
is it anything to do with the much-loved and sadly missed Netscape?

[Clodfobble]

Home-delivery DVD rental and movie/TV streaming service. Because of Netflix, my family does not watch live TV anymore, ever.

[Molasar]

I've just googled it.
netflix is for streaming tv and movies to games consoles.
I have never done this on any device and will never get a games console.

I don't see a problem here, unless the bit that spies on movie streams also spies on my activities that are nothing to do with movies, like work emails for example.

[Molasar]

thanx clodfobble, was typing mine as you posted yours.
using an iPhone and rubber-ended stylus thing, fingers/thumbs not compatible with tiny onscreen keyboard.

[Clodfobble]

It's not just to games consoles and dedicated media machines like the Roku; it's also to regular computers and smartphones. Most of my viewing happens through my laptop on the kitchen counter. Even if you never stream on your regular computer, what matters is that a lot of other people do, and Netflix thus has power over all the browser companies. The problem is not "what does Netflix do while I'm running it," the problem is "what requirements and/or content blocking does Netflix require the browser companies to incorporate into their products, which will then negatively affect your ability to, say, get to other sites whose content is not deemed (by the all-knowing god Netflix) to be DRM-compatible, and will also allow the criminally-minded to access your data in ways you cannot see or verify because the browser companies refuse (on behalf of Netflix) to allow you to see their code."

[lumberjim]

so we should boycott Netflix?

if firefox is currently 100% open source, as I've recently read... couldn't we just continue to use the current version if they decide to make a closed version?

will the next revolution be fought in cyberspace?

[Undertoad]

I read the EFF argument against this, and it was chock full of slippery slope. Apparently this proposed change to make it harder to capture a streamed video will lead directly to a world where you can't cut and paste a paragraph of text.

[Happy Monkey]

They already have ways to make it hard to cut and paste a paragraph of text (javascript, overlays), but due to open standards, it's usually possible to get around them. Is it really an unjustified slippery slope argument that they will use the available technology to do for real what they are already trying to do?

[Undertoad]

Yes.

All slippery slope arguments are logical fallacies.

[Molasar]

so the answer seems like getting the last version of everything* befor the shits change it to the HTML5 taking-it-roughly-up-the-arse-from-Netflicks version, and then never ever accept any upgrades?

* Firefox, iOS, Safari, Linux, whatever, etc.,

[lumberjim]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Yes.

All slippery slope arguments are logical fallacies.

once you start using slippery slope arguments, the next thing you know you're employing straw men and red herrings. it's a slippery slope.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Yes.

All slippery slope arguments are logical fallacies.

No they aren't.

Originally Posted by wikipedia

... a slippery slope is logical device, but is usually known under its fallacious form in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question.

"It's already happening, but the tools are imperfect. This provides better tools to do it." is a rational argument and demonstrable mechanism.