If Netflix doesn't work in the browser users aren't going to lean back in their chairs and think fondly of the freedom fighter jchw that protected them from working against their own interests, they are going to open Edge and watch Netflix.
No matter how much you opine the outcome is not going to change, the end users have spoken in what they want in their user agent.
> If Netflix doesn't work in the browser users aren't going to lean back in their chairs and think fondly of the freedom fighter jchw that protected them from working against their own interests, they are going to open Edge and watch Netflix.
Or maybe (hopefully) they download popcorn time instead
Yes... that's pretty much exactly what I said. Users will indeed just do what they need to do to watch Netflix, whether or not DRM is good for them or the web platform.
> Secondly, users don't really get a choice. Users are fucked because browsers implement features like DRM and websites hard-depend on them. So the user is no longer choosing whether or not to enable DRM, but whether or not they can watch Netflix on their laptop. User agents should not put users in predicaments like this where they are forced to make choices against their own interests. This is one of those situations where nuance is necessary.
That's why it shouldn't be a part of the web platform in the first place. Because we shouldn't force users to make choices against their own interests.
Here are some other examples of where we shouldn't force users to make choices against their own interests:
- Users should not have to give up their rights to be able to access legally-mandated warranty services or replacement parts.
- Users should not be forced to accept being tracked.
- Users should not be forced to forfeit their right to be a part of a class action lawsuit to use a product or service.
Try as you might, you're never going to convince anyone that the free market will just magically make all of the incentives align and make "the right choice", these are things that ultimately have to be solved with policy. The closest thing to "policy" on the web is standards, and W3C put EME in the standards despite widespread outcry, and that's why we're at where we're at.
Now the thing is, we have DRM in browsers, but we still don't have Web Environment Integrity, a complete and utter bastardization of the open web that would've made it cryptographically impossible for an open source browser to really meaningfully exist (since compiling it yourself would likely make it impossible for you to e.g. do banking or watch Twitch streams, since it would then fail attestation.) The reason we don't have WEI is because it was widely rejected by the community. Not because users made a choice.
It's nice to think that you can just leave it to the users to pick and they'll always do the right thing, but at the end of the day most people don't have time to care about DRM or WEI. Most people are not technical and just simply don't have the capacity in their day to be concerned about things like that. That's why it's literally the job of people who do have that capacity to fight for the user's best interests and try to avoid users being put into positions where they are basically guaranteed to be fucked.
And frankly, we're not winning the fight.
(This is no different from anything else. The vast majority of people can't be expected to fight for e.g. free speech rights either; it's always going to be a minority of people who hold the line.)
>It's nice to think that you can just leave it to the users to pick and they'll always do the right thing,
>it's literally the job of people who do have that capacity to fight for the user's best interests
A user agent should not be concerned about "doing the right thing", that's none of its business. You are proposing a developer agent, not a user agent.
"Doing the right thing" for the user's best interests is the job of the user agent. It's just that simple. Giving the user a "choice" by implementing anti-features that they will be coerced into using by abusive websites is not really much of a choice. What you're really building there is a website agent, with a side of deception to make it sound like it's actually good for the user. Coincidentally, Google makes a nice website agent called Chrome that serves their needs for advertising quite well.
This is also now the third time in this reply chain where I will point out that I am objecting to the inclusion of DRM technology in web standards, where this pitiful semantic debate about what a user agent is for doesn't even apply in the first place. What is fit for the open web platform and respective standards has nothing to do with decisions made by user agent developers. I am not going to point this out again. Further replies that try to drag this semantic debate out are just going to go ignored by me.
>"Doing the right thing" for the user's best interests is the job of the user agent. It's just that simple.
No, a user agent's sole job is to represent its user. It's right there on the tin: User Agent. Forcing no DRM is just as bad as forcing DRM, it's not the user agent's business to decide for the user. The fact that most user agents today are actually developer/publisher agents is part of the problems we are having.
>I am objecting to the inclusion of DRM technology in web standards, where this pitiful semantic debate about what a user agent is for doesn't even apply in the first place. What is fit for the open web platform and respective standards has nothing to do with decisions made by user agent developers.
Commercial interests are not going to fly the free-as-in-beer pirate flag no matter how loudly you bang that drum, and if the internet is open then those commercial interests also certainly have a right to be part of it.
It's ultimately not a problem if internet standards allow room for DRM schemes, because in a properly functioning system the users will decide through their user agent if they want to engage in DRM schemes or not.
So long as you are fueled by self-righteous dogma with a seething hatred towards people just minding their own business, you're not going anywhere and I would even argue you're actually contributing to the very problems you want to see resolved.
The HN Guidelines state to "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says", which is what I did. And yes, I was aggressive, but I don't think it was unwarranted given how strongly he feels about making people "do the right thing" as far as he is concerned.
It would be nice if we could go back(?) to a world where the user operates their computer, not the computer operating their user.
Yes, but as I stated no less than three times, I am talking about what goes into web standards and the web platform. That is before the term "user agent" comes into things, because web standards are about what the web is, not about the programs that serve and access it. It really side-steps the semantics debate quite elegantly, but it's inconvenient for your argument which is shallow and depends on a pretty lame interpretation of the words "user agent".
A user agent should chiefly do what the user tells it to do, but if you pay more attention, you'll see how bad web standards can actually still screw over the user. Because if you make particularly bad web standards, the user agent can still do what the user is telling it to do, but the website can then start behaving in a manner which goes against what the user is telling their computer to do.
If browsers had implemented WEI, a chief use case was to allow websites to control whether extensions and adblocking could be used while browsing their pages. And the clever part is, sure, your user agent could implement WEI "wrong" and let the user do whatever they want, but the attestation would allow the website to decide which user agents pass attestation, so you can't just make a user agent that does what the user wants.
DRM and WEI are pretty similar as they're both technologies that require computer programs to restrict what you can do on your own computer (and DRM does what WEI does with browser choice but in a litigation way instead of cryptographically-attested way), but I will repeat this again for hopefully the last time:
Not wanting DRM in web standards has nothing to do with the definition of a user agent.
One more time:
Not wanting DRM in web standards has nothing to do with the definition of a user agent.
Seriously, stop ignoring this. It's not like I didn't already aggressively state it previously.
No matter how much you opine the outcome is not going to change, the end users have spoken in what they want in their user agent.