Goodbye Internet We hardly knew ye
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I already knew about this "HTML 5.1" BS and the corruption of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, but I just came across this, so I thought I'd share it. Way to go Mozilla, you and your new NSA management team have certainly put the user first yet again.
I am a member!
That's why I was wondering if there will be a Windows and Mac version of IceCat for those of our friends who haven't yet converted to GNU?
The browser would not recommend non-free plugins and would certainly not contain the DRM module mentioned in the article you referenced. The 100% commitment to the principles would go a long way towards making GNU IceCat the de-facto standard for freedom in the web.
Also having GNU in the name would be good advertising for the cause.
The reality is that content providers are stuck in their ways and if people do not play along, they get nothing. Google caves in because of YouTube and Netflix does because they rely on content for their business. Microsoft is a fickle bitch either way because they will add DRM yet won't ship royalty free codecs in their browser. It's silly because the Opus codec is based off of a Skype codec that they own.
I do like the watermarking concept the best. People can play it on any device, but if a single copy gets distributed too much, they can locate the source. It keeps people honest if they want to give money to independent publishers or some guy who wants to sell a performance.
Until somebody smart figures out how to scrub the watermark :D.
The biggest sign that these companies do not want to allow freedom of use in their products is that fully free codecs complete with LGLP licences still do not get support. It just does not make any sense from the customer's point of view.
I agree. I think it would be a good way to promote free software, even for people running it in a closed system. They have to start somewhere. I think IceCat (was?) or is installable in OSX with a program called (Fink?) I think thats what it’s called. Maintaining it would be a lot of work for someone though. Would it be difficult to port to Win8? A friend of mine with a windows phone for instance, could not install community maintained software of any kind, because it “was not allowed” by M$'s TOS, and content management on the phone. Everything had to come from their mostly empty "app" store.
What worries me is the trend though. Flash has been a nightmare, and is only now (I think) decreasing in use. If flash is the Frankenstein of the browser world, this thing will be the Godzilla. If this becomes mainstream most web pages will become unusable to us who refuse to use such black box components. Think how many websites are practically useless without javascript. If the internet is Mr Lee’s Wunderkind, he will soon turn it into everyone’s Frankenstein...
The more the internet becomes a thing provided 'for us, by them' the more obvious it is that they will lock it down and seek total control over it - like TV, radio and the printing press. The general trend is to get such things out of the hands of the likes of us (ordinary people) and into the sole control of them (rich people who have appointed themselves as overlords). They will kill the net, because they kill everything they touch, because all they can see is money.
I think the answer is the creation of an alternative internet consisting of copyright restriction free material, made available by people connecting their machines together, locally at first, but then over wider areas and to do all this without touching ISP provided connections. (A bit like a Car Boot sale - people trading without going to the shops).
There are already projects like this for instance... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_community_network
Yep, just as the online space looked to be opening up and finally allowing people to do as they pleased again in the video space, the big businesses are desperately trying to shove it back in a box before too many people realise the freedoms they have. The next few years will be very decisive indeed and I just hope that DRM will finally get the boot at least in most major uses.
I do get the feeling that things will have to get a lot of worse before a revolution of users begins. For as much as I see loads of people jumping on services like Netflicks and Spotify, I get the feeling that eventually the lack of preservable content rights for individuals will become more apparent as time moves on and content disappears.
Windows RT (Windows 8 for phones) is about as locked down as iOS is. Not Windows 8 for x86, though. x86 Windows users can install third-party software without Microsoft having to approve it.
Having both a Windows RT tablet and Windows 8 Phone... yes indeed. Probably the final straws of opprestion that finally made me just drop all that stuff. I'm sure MS would have labeled the RT as "The Dream", total control over the user.
"Until somebody smart figures out how to scrub the watermark :D."
Or until someone cracks the drm module, and posts his/her methods for the world. XD
"The more the internet becomes a thing provided 'for us, by them' the more obvious it is that they will lock it down and seek total control over it"
I think they are going to have a much harder, (and more expensive) time accomplishing that than they could possibly imagine. Unless they can make their magic "quantum computers" suddenly start working, which is BS.
"For as much as I see loads of people jumping on services like Netflicks and Spotify, I get the feeling that eventually the lack of preservable content rights for individuals will become more apparent as time moves on and content disappears."
What's sad about this is that their immediately selling out did a huge amount of damage, if they had just fought the throttling, they could have struck a Large blow for Net Neutrality.
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