Is there an extension that brings this button back?
I know publishers hate this, but publishers don't exactly have a good track record of treating their user well. Non-copyable text, hijacking right click. Regardless of how they feel it's all workaroundable (inspect) but still a hostile user experience.
I use to ensure devtools > Networking is open when I press play (or reload the tab if it's autoplaying). If it's streaming the timeline should make it obvious which resource it's about. Then just right click on the item and "Open in new tab" or even Save (I don't remember if it's an option). When in a new tab, just save the page as the page will be the media file itself.
FYI, this level of interference is trivially circumvented using several of the possible alternative methods for serving video, even without applying actual DRM wrappers.
>publishers don't exactly have a good track record of treating their user well
That's an overly broad and vague statement to excuse entitlement. I'm fine with downloading content that's publicly available, but not because "they had it coming."
I know publishers hate this, but publishers don't exactly have a good track record of treating their user well. Non-copyable text, hijacking right click.
And why did publishers start playing those games? Because too many visitors were abusing the trust they had before.
Regardless of how they feel it's all workaroundable (inspect)
Not in this case. There are plenty of alternative ways to serve video content that aren't easily copied through any standard browser tools. Every single one of them is more user-hostile and more at risk of breaking something useful than using plain ol' HTML5 video elements where most people aren't going to abuse them even if technically they could.
Yes, but then you have to catch the request and it's far more effort than just pressing a download button.
I find the request window especially hard to use on sites with a lot of assets (e.g. SoundCloud loading a million avatars for a song) as the performance slows to a crawl.
It should be easy even to write a bookmarklet that walks the DOM, finds the video element, and opens the source in a new window. And it would work in all browsers.
This doesn't work if the video element has a streaming source or if the video is being rendered using something other than a plain HTML5 video element.
Hijacking these controls as a way to prevent copying/inspecting used to be far more prevalent. For the most part these days it's not done to intentionally interfere with these actions, but rather as a misguided attempt to replace core functionality with something supposedly more "user friendly / beneficial".
The worst offender now is the applying of click event handlers for links that simply navigate to a URL. The inability to open a link in a new tab only because the developer chose to use a <span>/<div>/<li> that triggers a javascript framework routing action, instead of using an <a> tag pointing at that route... sigh.
Perhaps they are new to web development. This is the nature of developing for the web: you have to perform cross-browser testing and you have no control over media. The only thing you can do is test upcoming browser versions and respond appropriately. They do release future versions as canaries. Developing for the web has always been this way.
If the dev doesn't have time to be a commercial web developer then they should hire an assistant.
> If the dev doesn't have time to be a commercial web developer then they should hire an assistant.
Some companies that do web development (commercially, internally, or whatever) have tighter release schedules than the cool DevOps style Continuous Deployment that we see the unicorn startups like Basecamp, GitHub, Slack, etc. doing where code can get pushed to production a dozen times a day. The place I work at has governmental regulations and SLAs we have to comply with when we deploy, which puts us on a cadence with something akin to Chrome's release schedule (e.g., Dev is CI/CD, QA is CD, UAT is kept to about once a week, Prod is every 4 weeks with capabilities at a 2 week hot fix window). Additionally, we just don't have the resources or budget available to keep one developer twiddling his or her thumbs all day waiting for new buttons to show up on a browser control that we have to hide or mitigate the impact of.
I completely understand what your argument is, and it's valid. We have QA run integration, regression, validation and smoke tests any time code is promoted up the environment chain that tries to catch issues like this, and we do our best to keep on top of it all. This issue isn't something that effects us, but it shows a reactionary approach to dealing with these issues. Teams that do spend their time reacting to changes like a new button, or an underlying OS update breaking some compatibility or what-have-you have always been a thorn in my side. It's no way to deliver value to their customers since their time is consistently being hijacked from new features to put out fires, which is stressful and leads to burn out very quickly.
This is the nature of developing for the web: you have to perform cross-browser testing and you have no control over media.
It used to be that we had standards for this kind of thing precisely so that huge amounts of effort on ongoing browser testing wasn't necessary.
And you have plenty of control over the way this sort of content is presented. Unfortunately all this sort of change and the supportive attitude widely seen in this discussion will do is push sites towards the less flexible and user-friendly options, particularly the sites that didn't previously go for things like DRM.
Developing for the web has always been this way.
No, it hasn't. "Evergreen" browsers that move the goalposts every few weeks are a relatively recent development, and particularly in the area of media elements and the related controls their approach has been a nightmare from day one.
If the dev doesn't have time to be a commercial web developer then they should hire an assistant.
How is that attitude going to get more new and useful content onto the web?
You're making this as a throwaway, but obviously are not writing anything controversial here. So are you leaking industry information to us? Why not write more. It might be slightly off-topic but no more than the rest of this thread and it's interesting.
How exactly does the DRM work when I refuse to download the DRM-protected content? That's like saying I'm circumventing DRM by not renting movies to watch in my Bluray player. Your comment is nonsensical.
That's an easy one. Construct the page so that the client can't tell the difference between real content and ads. There's no inherent reason ads have to be served from ad-specific domains or downloaded into HTML elements that are detectable as ad space. That requires you to download the whole package, including ads. Then, when the client attempts to analyze the content before display, it could potentially be construed as "circumventing DRM".
Pre-legal speculation disclaimer: IANAL.
They'd have to define DRM as not only preventing ripping the video outside of its normal context but any type of alteration prior to display, even if it occurs after the encryption module terminates. That'd be hard because the decoder ordinarily makes some alterations to the decrypted video stream, e.g., scaling for different displays, overlaying subtitles, applying filters, etc.
HDCP is intended to make DRM circumvention apply to any intermediary devices, like capture cards, but that wouldn't work for computers since HDCP is just working between the display and the GPU driver, if it supports HDCP; the program used to playback the content would be unconcerned with this.
Again I'm not a lawyer but I don't see how blocking ads could be construed as counteracting DRM, as long as the analysis is occurring after the normal decryption cycle.
The wiggle room for publishers is probably in whether or not destroying the ads creates a "derivative work" or not. The consumer's argument that the page is not saved and displayed only temporarily would probably not work due to the RAM copy doctrine.
Things like the Family Movie Act [0], which was passed in 2005 to pre-empt a lawsuit filed against ClearPlay, a DVD player that provided fast-forward and mute macros to bypass objectionable content in legitimate DVD copies, would not apply since they explicitly authorize "making imperceptible [...] limited portions of the audio or video content of a motion picture [...] for private home viewing"; scope limited to motion pictures only.
Ad blockers have been challenged several times in European courts, where they've won, but I don't see how they could expect to win a copyright challenge in American courts (beyond blatant judicial activism).
My assumption is that big shots like Google have not pursued this yet because they're more worried about the Streisand Effect than allowing relatively advanced users to install ad block. Knowing that the blockers are legal in Europe, there's probably nothing they could do to stop people from using them, and it'd just create a huge PR issue.
Maybe the DRM angle is intended to get European courts to rule against ad blockers? I don't know.
Modern "upgrades" of the DRM have completely locked out any kind of modification from the source to the destination and prevent you from even drawing over the content on screen.
I'm talking about the AACS 2.0 Blu-Ray DRM format, which requires you to have a compilant BR player, compliant motherboard with DRM support, compliant CPU with DRM module (!), compliant GPU, AVR and display. All of those components are built to lock you out from modifying or capturing the picture stream from BR to the display itself.
With the draconian craziness of DRM and widespread support for it (even here on HN), it's easy to see this kind of lockout being deployed on the web as well, especially if that allows advertisers to shove more ads in your face without the possibility of using an adblock.
It honestly sounds pretty convoluted and unenforceable, and with little payoff. How are you going to detect and sue someone for what they do on their own computer?
They can hardly successfully sue folks for torrenting. Text and image advertisements aren't affected by this, either.
As far as blocking video ads goes, you don't even need to access the video. EME protected video components still show their length in the browser. Blockers which never actually see the content are entirely possible by just looking for videos less than a minute or so.
>How are you going to detect and sue someone for what they do on their own computer?
MAI v. Peak is the case that proclaimed the "RAM copy doctrine", which says that loading a computer from disk onto RAM constitutes a new copy under the Copyright Act, and therefore may infringe.
The specific case was about whether Peak, a computer maintenance and repair company, had the right to load diagnostic software that the computer's owners had purchased. The Court ruled that they did not, and that by copying the program data from disk to RAM (that is, running the program), the computer technicians had violated copyright.
Congress addressed this case specifically with reference to computer repair by carving out a special exemption for repair technicians to run the software that the computer's owner had purchased. Said exemptions don't apply to anyone else, though the owner can "make or authorize the making of" copies if they are necessary to actually use the product (I don't know why the owner's authorization to make a copy wasn't good enough for Peak).
Practically speaking, of course it's unenforceable on the large scale because as you say, it'd be hard to detect who is doing it, and the more fuss they make about this type of stuff, the more damage they do to themselves.
Continuing in the vein of the other reply comment here, do you have any suggestions for workarounds, loopholes or things that would be a good idea for us to do to fight this, if things are as suggested?
As some of the comments mention, the download button is an issue for sites that are using third party content which they have permission to use, but not to allow users to redistribute. Unlike browser extensions or even right-clicking on the video, a download button implies that users have permission to download the video, and arguably even to share it, which could get the site owners into trouble unless they develop custom controls to remove the download button.
ooo, but using the Fetch API requires users to open devtools and right-click something in the network tab, which is surely beyond the grasp of anyone with 5 minutes and Google /s :<
All true. But one extra step and the most important one: users need to know that is possible. Otherwise they'll never get to point where they know what to google.
Most people see websites as they see movies: they type facebook.com and hey, an image. Enter login and password and enter and hey, another image.
The fact that things are built on top of other things (websites -> html and assets) is deep magic.
It only takes 1 user to download it, upload it elsewhere for N users to spread it from there. It's like exploits, it takes an expert to write one, but any scriptkiddy can attack thousands of systems once it has been written.
tl;dr The download button removes a small barrier that users currently have to save HTML 5 content. The size of the barrier depends on the media but the justification on the part of the content owners/creators is the same: protect the value of the content or the website it was published on.
While the concerns are valid, if history is any teacher, technology will march onward and we'll soon have download buttons on all HTML5 content, one way or another.
People on the comments are also complaining that the download button is showing for content that cannot be downloaded leading to user complaints to the website.
That actually makes sense - their service might allow you to download something in a special format that you want, and the website uses a video to preview it. For example a video editing or animation generation tool. You might want to save the definition so it can be edited again later. Then people are ended up with just the preview and have lost their work.
Lets say I run a news site. I'm hip and modern and I want to host my stuff with static HTML5 using modern open source encoding (VP9/WebM). I don't want to force my users to use some crummy Flash player that will slow down their browser and be unsafe.
But I don't want the user's browser to provide an immediate and obvious "DOWNLOAD" button on my content. Sure, if they really want to, they can inspect the page and download the video. But having a download button right in my content is not the user experience I have in mind for this site. Not because I don't want people downloading my videos. But because I don't want to ADVERTISE downloading my videos, which is what this button does without my consent.
So since that's a non-starter, now I'm going to have to use a crappy flash player that will reintroduce that small barrier preventing them from having an obvious "download" button.
> which is what this button does without my consent.
Your consent does not matter how content is ultimately rendered on and by the user's machine, it's their machine, not yours. If they want the <video> element displayed in a specific way it will be displayed in a specific way. This merely gives you an illusion of control, control you never had since video elements (especially their context menu) are not part of the DOM.
Your consent does not matter how content is ultimately rendered on and by the user's machine, it's their machine, not yours.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, that isn't really true at all. There are plenty of other ways to serve video, and plenty of ways users' own machines can be used against them that are widely supported by the companies building those machines.
All this attitude does is promote more heavy-handed control. People complain about the rise of devices that aren't so user-programmable, and the standardisation of technologies like DRM, and the limited availability of some content on minority platforms like Linux, as being user-hostile and reducing freedom and openness on the web. And yet then we see discussions like this, full of people abusing that freedom to break the law and openly apologetic of a simple change that invited even those who wouldn't intentionally violate another's trust to do so unwittingly.
> But I don't want the user's browser to provide an immediate and obvious "DOWNLOAD" button on my content.
Ok, but why?
> Sure, if they really want to, they can inspect the page and download the video. But having a download button right in my content is not the user experience I have in mind for this site.
That reads like misdirection given what's coming next:
> Not because I don't want people downloading my videos. But because I don't want to ADVERTISE downloading my videos, which is what this button does without my consent.
Why?
More importantly: why would you, given your desire to control presentation to the sending side, use a technology which fundamentally gives that control to the receiving side?
Because it invites users to break the terms of use for a site and the law, even if they are otherwise responsible and cooperative people and don't realise they would be doing anything wrong by doing so.
Go read the feedback on the issues raised as soon as Chrome did this, and you can see just how widespread a problem this has been for real world site operators and the developers working for them.
More importantly: why would you, given your desire to control presentation to the sending side, use a technology which fundamentally gives that control to the receiving side?
Maybe some people just prefer not to apply heavyweight and possibly broken DRM just to deal with a small minority of users who would abuse less restricted access to the material?
Unfortunately, if the prevailing attitude in this HN discussion is anything to go by, anyone who wants to operate a viable site that way is out of luck, and we should all just assume all users are hostile and restrict them as heavily as possible through whatever legal and technical means are available. That kinda sucks if you actually wanted to be nice about how you ran a site.
It won't be a browser, it will be an app store, or a custom channel for some more restricted device. And these things already exist, and they do remove flexibility we have previously enjoyed on the Web, sometimes under circumstances that would have been useful and not harmed anyone. That is the world people are pushing towards by supporting Google's actions in cases like the one we're talking about.
It's called the User Agent for a reason: it's intended to serve the user's wishes, not the website. Why do you think you have any right to control how the User Agent presents the data you sent it? You don't even know (or control) which browser the user is using or the features it provides to the user.
> they can inspect the page and download the video.
Inspecting the page isn't necessary, and the user's agent (the browser) already downloaded the video. You need to realize you lost all control over that data when you decided to send it to the user. The addition of a button to save the already downloaded video is patenty a useful feature for a User Agent. The publisher's interests are not relevant.
> some crummy Flash player that will [...] be unsafe.
Given that you explicitly show you understand that using the Flash player is "unsafe"...
> I'm going to have to use a crappy flash player
...this is intentionally exposing your users to known risks so you can pretend you have any control over what the user and their agent does with the data you sent them. The mental gymnastics involved in justifying that as anything even close to ethical behavior must be really impressive.
Why do you think you have any right to control how the User Agent presents the data you sent it?
Because in many cases the user has explicitly agreed certain terms for accessing that content?
You need to realize you lost all control over that data when you decided to send it to the user.
Please go and argue that with the people who say DRM is evil and content providers shouldn't have any right to limit what users can do with their own equipment, because in the real world your positions are contradictory.
> Please go and argue that with the people who say DRM is evil
I've been one of those people since about a decade before we called it "DRM".
> in the real world your positions are contradictory.
Maybe try re-parsing my comment? Why would I argue about DRM, which I never mentioned? Users do have the right to use their own property (a General Purpose Computer[1]). Obviously, they would be liable if they made copies of copyright protected work that were sent to them from a website, but the fact that tools can be used for illegal purposes or to break contracts doesn't change the fact that you still have the right to use those tools. This is true even when the manufacturer olf a tool adds a feature you don't like.
> Because in many cases the user has explicitly agreed certain terms for accessing that content?
So what? If-and-only-if an actual contract was offered, understood by all parties, and agreed to, then you're free to find them the user in breech of contract. None of that is relevant to a tool having any particular feature. Even when a contract actually exists (a ToS is not a contract), the browser creators are an unrelated 3rd party.
If-and-only-if an actual contract was offered, understood by all parties, and agreed to, then you're free to find them the user in breech of contract.
Obviously. And just to be clear, this is the situation in many cases where people have been upset by these changes.
None of that is relevant to a tool having any particular feature.
Sure it is, if the tool is actively promoting something that will interfere with a lawful contract with another party. The law often recognises this problem explicitly, in many jurisdictions. (If you weren't aware of this, you might like to look up "tortious intereference" as a starting point.)
Even when a contract actually exists (a ToS is not a contract), the browser creators are an unrelated 3rd party.
They cease to be unrelated when their actions interfere with the first two parties in a way that harms one of them.
I can only assume you're just posturing because the size and scope of Flash and the size of scope of Flash's security problems are _way_ beyond just a DRM blob.
[0] http://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2015-6639/ - Integrity Impact Complete (There is a total compromise of system integrity. There is a complete loss of system protection, resulting in the entire system being compromised.)
It is also worth noting that finding vulnerabilities may be a crime in many jurisdictions [1] (thanks to the DCMA), which would prevent researching coming forward.
Really wish browsers didn't allow overriding mouse events, or it was a permission that you'd have to grant for a site ("this site is attempting to modify the behavior of the mouse, allow?").
I'm surprised IDM has been updated for so long... I paid for it many years ago and have been getting free updates for this whole time, all on the same license.
Or any of the many other ways of downloading media like youtube-dl (or in your terms, of the CHROMIUM extensions), without bashing Firefox into others faces.
I remember this appearing, and I recall other contemporaneous threads asking how to make it go away, but I can't find the reference in the Chrome 55 release notes that this would show up: not in this friendly blog post [1], not in this release blog post [2], and the source control log [3] is still loading....
I suspect that would have killed every advance in making audio and video content easier and cheaper to access for millions of people from the past decade.
Reminds me of the time when they removed the "arrow" buttons on the scroll bar on Windows, or when they randomly decided to apply a lot more whitespace to bookmark menus. In both cases they had to backpedal, because Chrome is just so essential to so many people that even the tiniest change breaks somebody's workflow. At this point Google should probably just fork Chrome and make another browser where to test all the changes, big and small.
You're exaggerating, right? Chrome isn't perfect, but pushing automatic updates, ongoing security improvements and UX (mixed content restrictions, marking plain HTTP "not secure", etc) are just two of the very user-friendly things the Chrome team have delivered over the years.
Too little, too late for many of us, I expect. We switched to using MSE some time ago, which provided a way to avoid both the download button and other normal file-saving functionality showing up in the first place.
Ironically, the biggest problem with this wasn't the ability to download itself, because of course that was always available to those who chose to look for it in any major browser. The real problem in our experience was the customer perception that because an obvious download button had appeared, it was now OK to download and save content from video-based sites. Users, understandably enough, made no distinction between a site-provided facility and a browser-provided one when the change appeared, and just assumed the terms now allowed it.
I'm honestly surprised that no-one seems to have tried to sue Google over this one yet. It has upset a lot of people over the past few months, and in some cases it must surely have cost site operators a significant amount of real money.
The early cases were different in nature to what we're talking about here, and they also took place in a time when there was much less awareness of mass infringement and there were fewer legal protections for rightsholders against it. Any analogous case today would be tried in the context of the Internet, DMCA, EUCD, etc.
This is why video content websites suck. Getting in the way will only frustrate users.
In my country there is a legal right to copy audio and video content for your own consumption. We can download your video, play it on the TV in living room, save it to our phones and watch it in the train to work. And if your content is interesting enough, people will do so.
If your site were interesting enough, I'd probably write a quick Chrome extension that adds a big download button to save others the hassle of going through the developer tools.
Given that exists I'm ok hiding the download button so people don't accidentally download previews rather than the high-res version they actually wanted.
Once content has reached my computer, it is mine to do with as I wish and consume as I wish. If you choose to interfere with this, your site is BROKEN, and I and many others would not use it.
When I buy a book, I'm allowed to do a lot of things with it (read it, sell it, burn it) but I'm not allowed to do anything I please. Copyright limitations are a reasonable thing for society to extend to content producers. What protections should exist digitally, and how should they be enforced by software tools, is a reasonable thing to debate.
Hate to even invite the rabbit hole, but even on HN you will find many people who fundamentally disagree with your assumption that copyright itself is reasonable in the first place.
It is akin to the marijuana legalization movement in many ways - pot was always illegal, so it should always be illegal, and to question why it is illegal is to be unreasonable. Debate about sentencing, classification, possible medical use - possibly reasonable, but to question the fundamentals starts drawing on cultural and emotional ire and identity that starts breaking down reasonable debate.
Copyright to many works much the same way - especially when no new works have entered the public domain in the lifetime of the vast majority of the populace - it has always been there, thus even if you debate duration you assume it must remain because to question why it exists in the first place is, again, to be unreasonable.
That may well be true but in that case, the comment probably should have been "I oppose copyright because X and Y". Otherwise, it's hard to tell whether the commenter really was making a statement against copyright or simply being overly reductionist without realizing it.
People are perfectly entitled to disagree with the principle of copyright and to advocate for change. Heck, I'm a content creator in several different contexts and I have aggressively lobbied my representatives for changes towards a more reasonable and balanced copyright regime over many years.
But the fact remains that copyright is the law today, and encouraging users to break that law is apparently a consequence of what Google did. It's not unreasonable to debate the actual legal situation, not the legal situation that people who don't like copyright would prefer to exist.
We see this every day in the modern era where copyright is used to censor critics, prevent research (especially security research), and prevents more content from being created by locking up ideas for over a century
Copyright is a Negative for Society, and for Creators
What if you had to sign up to something, with agreed terms, before you were allowed to download that content? For example, is it OK to agree something is pay-per-view and pay for one viewing, but then exploit whatever technical loopholes are available to save it anyway?
I presume that they meant "do whatever you want with it" as in "consume it however they see fit, as many times and when and wherever they like", not including re-broadcasting publically etc.
And that idea was solidly cemented back in the days when VCRs were common - you had a right to record anything and watch it again whenever, wherever you liked.
Actually in many cases people didn't legally have the rights they thought they did even with VCRs, but it was prohibitively difficult to detect and penalise infringements so in practice that made little difference.
What you never had the right to do, even with a VCR, was something like borrowing a movie from your local video rental store, paying a lower rental price rather than a full purchase price for it, and then copying that movie so you could keep it after you returned the original cassette.
You're describing US law only, right? Because the rent-a-VHS-and-keep-a-copy thing is perfectly legal in many parts of the world. It'd be that way with BluRays too, except that there are laws now that prohibit the breaking of DRM systems.
Because the rent-a-VHS-and-keep-a-copy thing is perfectly legal in many parts of the world.
Where is this legal? I'm quite sure it would have been an explicit breach of the membership conditions for every video rental store I ever belonged to in the UK, for example.
More equivalent might be "an apple appeared in [your] house", but this falls apart since apples are physical, finite, and unique entities, unlike streams of bits.
From what I understand about copyright law, it has to do with use and distribution of content. As long as I'm not redistributing or using your data in my product, I don't think I'm breaking copyright. If I have a book and a copier, its no one's business if I make a copy of a book I own for my own use. No one is losing business. Its only an issue if I start trying to sell those copies, thus stealing business from the writer and publishers.
Respectfully, your understanding of copyright law is wrong almost everywhere, because the kinds of provisions that are relevant here are covered by international agreements to which almost all first world countries are signatories.
There are some jurisdictions that do have special private use provisions in their copyright laws that apply under some circumstances, which is probably the closest you'd find to what you're describing. If you're in one of those places then for you the situation might be different. However, even those often have significant strings attached, not least because they obviously undermine any alternative business models based on offering temporary access in return for a lower price.
As a case in point, the UK tried to add a much more limited set of personal use provisions to its copyright law not so long ago, after many years of reviews and consultations. They lasted just a few months before getting struck down at EU level because of those international agreements, and the government backed down rather than pick a fight.
I can appreciate where you're coming from. It's now in my computer and you don't get to reach in and control things on me.
But I'm not so sure that's actually fair and reasonable. If I rent you a VHS, once it's in your house, is it your right to consume as you wish? Do you get to make a copy to watch at a future date? Maybe I don't want that. Maybe the contract I make with you is that you can purchase a loan of this VHS to watch over the next few days.
Maybe when I host your favourite music videos, I don't want you copying to your disk to watch hundreds of times without seeing any ads.
Using the video analogy, your VHS player still has a record button. Video rentals discourage copying by showing anti-piracy notices. So perhaps websites should show notices like that too "Don't press download. You might break the law".
A lot of sites do have models along those lines. Think pay-per-view sporting events, Netflix-style subscription libraries, and so on.
The biggest problem here was that when Google suddenly moved the goalposts, a lot of users assumed it was now OK to download and save stuff anyway. They don't understand that it's a browser update they didn't know anything about that made the change, not the web site they're visiting.
A lot of people complain about moves to incorporate DRM as an official web standard, but it's the sites that haven't who got screwed on this one. It's rather disappointing to see so many people on HN apparently supporting the "I've got it now, it's mine whatever" attitude you'd expect on Slashdot. It's hardly the way to promote either useful new business models or businesses trusting their customers rather than slapping the strongest DRM they can find on everything.
Content creators (and their publishers) should have the right to specify licenses for their content.
You should have the right to enter into license agreements with them.
Including limiting what you're allowed to do with that content.
Under your regime there would be nothing wrong with me claiming I am Aviral Dasgupta and that everything you've posted at https://github.com/aviraldg and http://www.aviraldg.com/ are actually my work and you are the impostor.
Content creators (and their publishers) should have the right to specify licenses for their content.
That is an entirely different thing from requiring (or even expecting) third parties to reduce the functionality of their product to help enforce that license.
As I said in my very first comment here, the biggest problem in this case wasn't that the facility was available, it was that Google's change in the presentation of it was widely interpreted by users as implying that actually using that facility was authorised, regardless of the actual licence.
Is it though? DVD players conform to region code requirements.
Edit to add: I think people like me, who aren't content creators (not to any degree that anyone should care about), need to be careful about telling people who are content creators what they should and shouldn't be allowed to do to protect their content.
Is it though? DVD players conform to region code requirements.
And at the time DVDs were launched, many in hacker/geek/whatever circles were pretty horrified by this development. To me, it's more than a little alarming how rapidly we've normalised the idea that end users' devices should be obeying the wishes of content publishers rather than their owners.
And at the time DVDs were launched, many in hacker/geek/whatever circles were pretty horrified by this development.
And yet right here in this HN discussion there are numerous people openly defying the current legal and technological position, which is just going to promote more and stronger technical measures to limit how content can be consumed. For example, it's already hard to just buy a permanent copy of a lot of TV shows on disc any more. They're moving to online, streaming-only channels where it's harder to copy, and that's reducing choice even for legitimate paying customers.
To me, it's more than a little alarming how rapidly we've normalised the idea that end users' devices should be obeying the wishes of content publishers rather than their owners.
I agree, but it's also more than a little alarming how rapidly we've normalised knowingly breaking the law and/or explicit agreements with other parties and totally ignoring economics just because something is technically possible.
In what other circumstances would it be OK to make an explicit deal with someone, then totally renege on that deal and just say "Well, I don't think you really deserved what we agreed anyway"?
In what other circumstances would it be OK to knowingly break the law to someone else's cost and in the expectation of suffering no adverse consequences and just say "Well, I don't think this law is a good law so I'm not going to follow it"?
The everything-should-be-free culture of Generation Me isn't sustainable. Maybe the laws and economic models we're using today aren't the best way forward, but that doesn't mean we should support or condone totally ignoring them until we've got a better idea.
libdvdcss is also consider to be illegal for distribution in the US as it is circumvention tool in violation of DMCA
It is a legal gray area if a individual who obtains libdvdcss breaks the law by using it, however no software vendor can include it if they are a US Company
This is why VLC, Handbrake, and many other organizations that distribute it are very very clear they are not US Organizations and exist outside the Jurisdiction of US Courts
They can do anything they like to protect their content, at their own expense.
Again, that's an entirely different thing from trying to force a third party (who is receiving neither money nor the benefit of viewing the content) from going out of their way to enforce those protections (especially if it reduces the usefulness of their own product).
There's a big difference between "we have a good relationship so I'll do X" and forcing third parties to enforce those protections. Those content provides aren't required to distribute their product and once a proper framework is set up for their situation there's no reason other people can't use it.
Content creators should feel free to do as they please with their content. I, however, as a technologist am saying I will not do anything to help them build software that limits others freedoms, will encourage others not to do so as well, and to whatever degree possible, boycott them and those who help them.
I do believe in licensing though, so your comment motivated me to add a (permissive) license to my website. That's the only good use for it.
There was a time I believed something similar too, until I realised I haven't created anything worth protecting, so who am I to have an opinion on protecting content.
You've never owned a big chemical plant, so who are you to have an opinion on protecting chemical plants from environmental regulation?
Unless everyone is living on a different planet, some people will necessarily be affected by the consequences of the chemical plant's operations. Looking out for those people is reasonable.
You've never had an income over 100 million, so who are you to have an opinion on how that income should be taxed?
That's a different and actually quite a good question, from an ethical point of view. Answering it without resorting to arguments based on either greed or envy is surprisingly difficult, and almost certainly requires some exploration of both economics and philosophical views on the nature of modern society.
You've never had slaves, so who are you to have an opinion on protecting the property rights of slave owners?
That's more like the first question. The slaves are necessarily affected by that arrangement, and again looking out for them is reasonable.
Given that in the sort of cases we're talking about probably no-one needs to have access to any given content, the situation we're considering is actually closer to your second example than your first and third. And I'm not sure exploring the economics of content creation more thoroughly rather than making a superficial analysis is going to lead to the conclusions you want it to.
> That's a different and actually quite a good question, from an ethical point of view. Answering it without resorting to arguments based on either greed or envy is surprisingly difficult, and almost certainly requires some exploration of both economics and philosophical views on the nature of modern society.
It's actually not that hard: The concept of property itself is a social construct, so without a social norm that establishes property, you having an income of 200 million doesn't mean anything. If you simply claim ownership of something, but noone agrees with you, then you don't actually own it. If society grants you the advantages of this norm and enforces it for you, it's just as valid to partially revoke it where that is to the advantage of society at large. It would be completely arbitrary to say that everyone is obligated to help enforcing a norm that's to their own disadvantage and they should not have any say in it because the person profiting from it says so.
> Given that in the sort of cases we're talking about probably no-one needs to have access to any given content, the situation we're considering is actually closer to your second example than your first and third.
What does "need" mean? Does a slave need freedom? Or is that just a preference?
Is the ability to save and replay information sources under your own control (and as is explicitly exempted from copyright restrictions in quite a few places) just a luxury in a democracy?
Does a human need participation in culture?
In any case, you presenting those arguments already contradicts the idea that you only should be allowed to have an opinion on a norm if you profit from it.
> And I'm not sure exploring the economics of content creation more thoroughly rather than making a superficial analysis is going to lead to the conclusions you want it to.
The concept of property itself is a social construct, so without a social norm that establishes property, you having an income of 200 million doesn't mean anything.
I see what you're getting at, but I think you're missing something. What we're talking about here is a concept of legal ownership, which essentially means a recognised form of ownership that society will defend on the owner's behalf. The alternative to that, historically, is usually not everything being communal, but rather power resting with those wealthy or otherwise powerful enough to enforce their claims of ownership independently rather than relying on the state.
What does "need" mean? Does a slave need freedom? Or is that just a preference?
This one is easily argued on "veil of ignorance" grounds, I think.
Is the ability to save and replay information sources under your own control (and as is explicitly exempted from copyright restrictions in quite a few places) just a luxury in a democracy?
I don't think we're really talking about just being able to do these things under your own control, though for the record I challenge your claim about exemptions; I know of no jurisdiction where it is legal to copy content even for personal use when you've explicitly agreed not to as part of something like a PPV deal.
What we're really talking about in this sort of discussion is whether it's worthwhile for content creators to create and distribute new content at all. At present, it is, but in many cases that remains so only because of the customer base who do comply with the law and provide a solid economic foundation for doing the necessary work. Freeloaders benefit from the content but contribute nothing to support its creation, and if the legal environment were changed so that everyone could lawfully act as a freeloader, the economics would change radically. This is not to say that some other economic model to support creative work couldn't function as well or better than what we have today, but so far I don't think we've found one that does and I think it's quite clear that relying on voluntary donations alone does not.
In any case, you presenting those arguments already contradicts the idea that you only should be allowed to have an opinion on a norm if you profit from it.
I would think that common sense and common decency made it clear that everyone was entitled to an opinion on whatever subject they want, and however unpleasant anyone else might happen to find that opinion. What we're really talking about is how much weight or influence any given person's opinions should have on anything or anyone else, and I think the view that those doing the work from which many benefit should have more influence than those who are not contributing anything of value is at least a rational position to take.
What conclusion do I want it to lead to?
Perhaps I've misunderstood you, but you seem to be opposing the idea that the views of those who create the content should carry more weight than the views of those who merely benefit from the content's existence without contributing. In that case, economic arguments much like those you have just made yourself in favour of physical property rights would also tend to support strong IP rights that support the content creators in this debate.
> What we're talking about here is a concept of legal ownership,
Nope.
> The alternative to that, historically, is usually not everything being communal, but rather power resting with those wealthy or otherwise powerful enough to enforce their claims of ownership independently rather than relying on the state.
That's kindof a self-referential definition, isn't it? The power to defend property was with those who had the power and the property ... yeah, obviously?
All of that is rooted in social norms. What does it mean to have wealth? What does it mean to have power? Sure, if you have a gun, I guess you could say that that gives you power somewhat independent from social norms. But the moment you try to get someone else to use their gun to defend your property, they could potentially just ignore your request, and that would be the end of your power, and consequently of your property/of your wealth.
Power and property are granted by society, not an intrinsic property of the powerful or wealthy person. And that applies even to "communal property".
> This one is easily argued on "veil of ignorance" grounds, I think.
As can the equal say of everyone in deciding on copyright rules? That was kindof my whole point: The weight of your opinion should not depend on the position that you end up in in society, be it a slave, a slave master, a "content creator", or a "content consumer".
> I don't think we're really talking about just being able to do these things under your own control, though for the record I challenge your claim about exemptions; I know of no jurisdiction where it is legal to copy content even for personal use when you've explicitly agreed not to as part of something like a PPV deal.
Really, I am not sure how things map to modern technology and the business models/contracts it enables, and in any case, it's usually not just a blanket permission to make as many copies as you like, but there are quite a few options of what is in US law usually called "fair use":
Those exceptions usually exist for very good reasons, and are part of the rules that society decided to be a fair deal. Now, if modern devices/software intentionally don't implement the functionality that would enable people to make use of those exceptions (in addition to possibly illegal activity), that de facto takes away people's rights, which is why it's morally questionable: The software does not distinguish between a user exercising their right to, say, pull an excerpt from some video to create a political commentary on it, and another user illegally making a copy of a movie purely for entertainment purposes, it just enforces the wishes of the creator/platform.
> I think it's quite clear that relying on voluntary donations alone does not.
I am actually not that convinced of that, but well, sure, some things might be difficult to finance on that basis.
> What we're really talking about is how much weight or influence any given person's opinions should have on anything or anyone else, and I think the view that those doing the work from which many benefit should have more influence than those who are not contributing anything of value is at least a rational position to take.
I think you might have inadvertently changed the topic: TheSpiceIsLife's comment referred to how much weight their opinion should have in determining the rules of society (in this regard). Your argument doesn't really make much sense in that context, as valuation is subjective and exactly the subject of political discourse, and it doesn't make sense to say that the creator of some thing should be given special privileges because they themselves value their work highly--and if you base the decision instead on how the rest of society values their work, you have just found a confusing way to say that everyone should get equal say in what the rules ought to be.
Your argument makes sense as a principle for how the rules that are to be determined should distribute power, not so much for who gets the power to decide the rules in the first place.
For the record: I definitely strongly agree with everything Silhouette wrote.
And I'd like to say, my opinion hasn't changed. I still think creators should have fairly strong rights over what they create, and that my opinion on the matter carries less weight because I'm not part of the creator cohort.
I don't think conflating slavery and intellectual property in this context is helpful at all.
> And I'd like to say, my opinion hasn't changed. I still think creators should have fairly strong rights over what they create, and that my opinion on the matter carries less weight because I'm not part of the creator cohort.
In other words: You haven't understood a thing I wrote?
> I don't think conflating slavery and intellectual property in this context is helpful at all.
The implementation of region code silliness is enforced by only licensing CSS/DRM-relevant patents to hardware vendors that agree to restrict their customers in that way.
That's one of the reasons the industry insists on DRM technologies, even if broken, and tries to encumber them with as many patents as possible. It allows them to exercise control over the end-user experience.
Which Betamax case involved making permanent copies of material you had explicitly agreed to access on some temporary basis in return for payment? Because that's the situation that a lot of site operators and web developers have been upset about here. Not all video served from web sites is freely available. Some of it you have to pay for, and it's provided on a certain basis in return.
Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.
Time shifting a video is a protected fair use.
> temporary basis
...which can be time shifted without violating copyright.
> explicitly agreed
As for any contract that may exist, that's separate from copyright. It isn't Google's job to enforce terms to a contract between two other unrelated parties.
(a) Time-shifting doesn't imply a permanent copy that can be rewatched multiple times.
(b) Not everywhere has the same legal framework for copyright as the United States.
As for any contract that may exist, that's separate from copyright.
No, it isn't. The default position in most jurisdictions is that any copy of a protected work is infringing unless an explicit licence has been granted by the rightsholder. Lacking such a licence, there might be an argument about some implicit permission, or there might be some affirmative defence or the equivalent depending on your legal jurisdiction, but typically that only becomes relevant when the act of copying was infringing by default.
Such as a video tape? Perhaps in Sony Betamax format?
That's exactly what "time shifting" means.
> that can be rewatched multiple times
Yes, tools can be used in improper ways.
> Not everywhere has the same legal framework for copyright as the United States.
You can assume my comments are limited to US jurisdiction. I make no claim about other jurisdictions that are outside my knowledge, experience, and legal liability.
Technically, you might be entitled to retain that copy only for long enough to watch the programme at a different time, after which keeping it would be an infringement. I haven't checked whether US law follows that pattern, but it's essentially what a lot of jurisdictions seem to have settled on for that particular case.
Yes, tools can be used in improper ways.
Yes, and doing so may be illegal, and Google's actions here actively invited people to do so. Do you see the problem now?
You can assume my comments are limited to US jurisdiction.
OK, but even in the US it's not clear that Google's actions here were legal.
> Yes, and doing so may be illegal, and Google's actions here actively invited people to do so. Do you see the problem now?
A Betamax machine shows you a record button at all times. This invites people to record. This does not invite people to perform illegal actions. I don't see the problem.
Actually it probably did invite people to perform actions that were illegal in some places, but at that time I doubt the law anywhere was settled in that respect and presumably broadcasters or whoever held the rights didn't feel like bringing a case.
The current situation is different anyway because Google suddenly added this new button where it wasn't there before. In practice, this demonstrably left a lot of users assuming that it was a new feature of the sites they were using and not realising that it was their browser updating that had caused the difference. And that in turn meant users thinking it was now OK to download and keep stuff where previously it hadn't been. I have personally seen messages from users that demonstrate this, and if you look at the numerous comments on the browser issues that were raised, it's clear that many others have observed that result as well.
I don't blame the users for having that reaction. Most of them probably have no idea how to tell the difference between what their browser does and what a site does, and many probably don't even realise that Chrome updates itself without telling them in the first place.
Google, on the other hand, should have known better. The consequences of doing this were predictable, and unlike users it's not as if the Chrome dev team don't know how online video serving works. It's bad enough for web developers that there is little consistency among browsers in how video controls appear and the browsers keep moving them around in updates, but adding something like this was obviously going to lead to confusion and be a concern for a lot of sites serving video content.
First, copyright is a civil issue, not a crime. While recent law may[1] have made specific types of mass infringement a crime, in general copyright infringement isn't "illegal". It only makes you liable for actual and statutory civil damages. I suspect this is even true in most jurisdictions.
> it probably did invite people [...]
This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright aw and how the Betamax case affected it. The case wasn't about "inviting" improper actions. There was no disagreement that people could use Betamax to violate copyright. Just like how you believe Google should be guilty of something[2], the movie industry believed Sony should be guilt of copyright infringement.
The allegation was that they had a right to effective protection of their copyright monopoly which video tape technology could undermine. However the court disagreed after Sony proved there were "significant non-infringing uses" for a Betamax tape recorder. From the majority opinion:
>> "The question is thus whether the Betamax is capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses ... one potential use of the Betamax plainly satisfies this standard, however it is understood: private, noncommercial time-shifting in the home. It does so both (A) because respondents have no right to prevent other copyright holders from authorizing it for their programs, and (B) because the District Court's factual findings reveal that even the unauthorized home time-shifting of respondents' programs is legitimate fair use..."
The fact that some people might use technology (Betamax, Google's button) to infringe copyright or break a contract isn't relevant, because that was not the primary, intended purpose of the technology. Because other, legitimate uses exist, the manufacturer of that technology is not liable.
I strongly suggest educating yourself a lot more about copyright and contract law actually work, because your arguments demonstrate a lot of misconceptions about copyright and fundamental errors about law in general.
> Google, on the other hand, should have known better
The only people that "should have known better" are the people that design their businesses to fundamentally rely on products they do no control or even have any contractual influence. Google will always be changing Chrome; expect that or find a way to remove that dependency.
[1] I'm not sure if it has been tested in court.
[2] Also, adding a save button to videos isn't tortious interference of a contract about renting videos either. Adding that button wasn't a tort ("wrongful act"), nor was it intended to affect a video rental business.
I'm well aware of the distinction between civil and criminal law. The word illegal literally just means "prohibited by law" and does not require a criminal act. If it has some more specific technical meaning where you are, that's your concern.
I'm also well aware of the landmark Betamax case. Leaving aside that it is specifically about US law, there were multiple fundamental details in that case that do not apply in this context, such as there being no likelihood of causing nonminimal harm to the potential market or value of the protected works, the time-shifting being described being used to watch a programme that could not be viewed live just once at a later time, and a significant likelihood of a substantial number of copyright holders not objecting to the action. None of these seem to fit my original question from the start of this discussion, which was simply "Which Betamax case involved making permanent copies of material you had explicitly agreed to access on some temporary basis in return for payment?" So the case you keep talking about does not appear to be relevant to the present discussion.
As for businesses knowing better, now a lot of them do, and the result is that they have redesigned their systems to prevent the undesired behaviour. However, I don't think it's reasonable to expect businesses to predict all possible future changes in browsers and to then expend resources dealing with changes that will predictably cause trouble. And again, I would refer you to the issue trackers for the browser, where it's clear that many other people take the same view.
> "Which Betamax case involved making permanent copies of material you had explicitly agreed to access on some temporary basis in return for payment?"
Copies on a hard drive are no more permanent than copies on a Betamax tape.
The browser has no idea if the content was intended to be temporary, or if there was payment. Plus something like cable TV fits that description too, and you're still allowed to record it.
Copies on a hard drive are no more permanent than copies on a Betamax tape.
And both are effectively permanent copies, at least until deleted, and as such both are potentially in violation of copyright law in many jurisdictions.
The browser has no idea if the content was intended to be temporary
Then maybe it shouldn't be actively inviting a user to download a permanent copy?
In many -- perhaps most -- jurisdictions, downloading and saving content off the Web will be an infringement of someone's copyright if not explicitly authorised, so the argument that the browser doesn't know the situation is weak.
And the potential for harm is pretty similar.
Do you really not see any potential for harm in inviting someone who agreed to temporary listening or viewing to save a permanent copy, in a way that is both highly visible and potentially confused with a facility provided by the site operator?
The only solution for site operators if that's the approach you want to take is to lock everything down as tight as possible with TPMs, causing extra work and costs for the site operator, potentially increasing security risks for the viewer, and removing any possibility of trust or turning a blind eye to minor cases that might have been useful for the viewer and tolerable for the site operator. As I've asked elsewhere in this discussion, how is any of that helping anyone?
The level of invitation, the level of harm, it's not that I don't see them, it's that they look exactly the same as you get with a Betamax machine. Insisting that a possibility of harm exists does not affect my point at all. And it's not a big risk, there's really no need to lock things down. Home taping never killed anything. If I had my way DRM on videos would be banned. It's not like it prevents piracy.
When Google introduced that button, I'm aware of some commercial sites that didn't use DRM and saw in the region of a 500% increase in the number of paying users grabbing whatever they could rather than paying for further views, continuing subscriptions, etc. Typically they soon implemented alternative methods of serving their videos, and the problem then disappeared again. It's a myth that such measures don't reduce piracy. They may or may not eliminate it completely, but piracy is not a binary problem and even eliminating a large amount of the casual piracy can be highly beneficial. Equally, even a significant incentive inviting casual piracy that was already possible but was not actually happening can be very damaging.
In England there are strict limitations on time-shifting. You're allowed to timeshift broadcast tv programmes, but only for a limited amount of time. (I think two weeks).
I don't think people time shifting at home was ever enforced in courts.
(I welcome any corrections. English copyright law isn't straight-forward).
if the button appears, the content is already available for download by the user. thus, chrome offering another option for consuming the content can be deemed as good usability.
the issues with your business model are completely separate from this feature. hiding features from users just because they are technically inept is ridiculous and has no place in open source software development and the Web Platform.
thus, chrome offering another option for consuming the content can be deemed as good usability.
It's not good usability to promote a function that was possible before but contrary to the terms of use and not widely used in practice, particularly in a way that misleads a significant number of users into thinking that it is now permitted use.
put up a paywall and switch to DASH.
That's exactly what a lot of sites have been doing for the past few months. Others have been going with full-on DRM. The open approach to the Web that you seem to value is dying in real time.
Unfortunately, that work meant wasting time and money updating infrastructure that could otherwise have been spent on providing more content. It meant dropping support for platforms that don't support the required technologies like MSE or EME, to the detriment of both users on those platforms and the site operators if they also lose some income. It meant removing the possibility of turning a blind eye to occasional downloads in cases like people wanting to watch something offline because they genuinely don't have a good enough Internet connection where they're going to be.
Exactly no-one won from this, and several groups have lost to varying degrees. How is this a good outcome, in any way?
I know publishers hate this, but publishers don't exactly have a good track record of treating their user well. Non-copyable text, hijacking right click. Regardless of how they feel it's all workaroundable (inspect) but still a hostile user experience.