A really good example of this is the recent stories about Adobe's streaming DRM being 'broken'. For example
- On slashdot - Adobe Flaw Allows Full Movie Downloads For Free claims that Adobe's DRM is broken.
The summary (as ever on slashdot) is quite 'tabloid' - the Sun would be proud. It appears the story is a couple of issues rolled together
- It is possible to capture un-protected flash streams - This is NOT news and is what I would think the open source crowd would expect and want!
- Amazon are using such unprotected streams for their movie download service - well up to them! This is NOT adobe's fault.
- Flash RTMPE (with player verification) which is Adobe's DRM has been misconfigured by a number of people and it is possible to rip its contents when it isn't properly configured.
The only real issue here with misconfigured 'DRM' is the last one and Adobe issued a tech note when this was first reported!
This is a real problem for Adobe as it is going to knock confidence in their solutions - which is going to hurt mainly Linux.
There are only two DRM options in town - Silverlight and Flash. Both are now cross platform on the 'important' platforms - Mac/Windows. Only flash DRM currently supports Linux (on x86).
If people want to see Linux being a viable desktop replacement it is going to need, high quality online video. Currently to get good content means using DRM. Knocking Adobe for something that isn't their fault is only going to push this content into solutions that will never work on Linux.
A lot of people will argue - well they will just pirate it - may be - but Linux will never become mainstream if it depends on piracy to deliver video. The irony here is the Open Source community used to claim MS spent effort delivering FUD against them - now they are doing it themselves!
UPDATE - Adobe have published a response to the original article.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment