06.30.13

Microsoft and Its Partner Netflix Pollute the Web With DRM Because Silverlight is Dead

Posted in DRM, Microsoft at 5:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Time to eject Jaffe

Jeff Jaffe at the event announcing the Microsoft/Novell deal (2006)

Summary: Jeff Jaffe, who became (in)famous for designing the Microsoft/Novell deal which started Linux ‘patent tax’, is now threatening to pollute the Web with DRM because Microsoft and its satellite say so

JEFF JAFFE is poison inside the W3C. He not only promotes software patents but also Microsoft software such as .NET, Mono, and Moonlight. He really loves software patents, and wants more of them. How can such a guy have been given the CEO position at the W3C, whose founder, Tim Berners-Lee, is so openly hostile towards software patents [1, 2]? This never made sense.

Over in the DRM category we have many stories which warn about the main ‘advancement’ in the Windows Vista series, including Vista 8. That massive failure of an operating system gets a “say for pay” review from Microsoft mouthpieces, apparently some who troll writers. “Enderle is still being hired,” iphk says. “Hadn’t seen him for a while.”

Yes, well, and if one talks to actual professionals in the market, hatred of Vista 8 is evident. As Pogson puts it:

Two pictures speak 1000 words here. Consider share of page-views according to StatCounter for the United Kingdom from 2008 to 2013. First there was growth for GNU/Linux and then stagnation for years as “7″ seemed good enough for many. Along comes “8″ and both “7″ sees a drop to a plateau and GNU/Linux sees a spike. People are choosing and enjoying that they finally have a visible choice. That’s the result of the ubiquity of small cheap computers running */Linux and the horror that is “8″ for people who love the desktop.

[...]

What GNU/Linux lacks in salesmen, M$ makes up for with its salesmen serving as software-designers. Now, GNU/Linux is finding its way onto retail shelves and onto UK desks. According to these data, about 10% as many choose GNU/Linux as choose “8″ but about 15% as many as choose “7″ are choosing GNU/Linux. The future is a lot higher than ~1% GNU/Linux because those choosing GNU/Linux are just the early adopters and they have friends and associates who will see, at last, that GNU/Linux works for them. I expect to live long enough to see ~30% going with GNU/Linux. There’s no telling where the trend will end once it reaches about 10%.

Microsoft sure lost its momentum and Silverlight died because, taking mobile devices in account as well, Windows has minority market share. Netflix, which has a CEO strongly connected to Microsoft, is dropping Silverlight and is now trying to pollute web standards with DRM, demonstrating this with Microsoft to advance Vista 8:

Netflix today announced that it has finally taken the first step towards ditching Silverlight for HTML5, largely thanks to Microsoft, no less. The company has been working closely with the Internet Explorer team to implement its proposed “Premium Video Extensions” in IE11 on Windows 8.1, meaning if you install the operating system preview released today, you can watch Netflix content using HTML5 right now.

Blame that lackey from Novell (the man behind the Microsoft deal, Jaffe), who probably needs to be ousted already because he thinks he works for Hollywood, not for the Web. Jaffe now works for the W3C as CEO and Dr, Glyn Moody calls his claims “rubbish,” adding that the “W3C [is] getting desperate” (see Twitter for original quote).

Here is an offensive article from ZDNet. It parrots Jaffe as saying: “The web would be in danger of losing content if it were to turn its back on DRM-protected media, said Dr Jeff Jaffe, CEO of the web standards body W3C.”

Nonsense.

As another article put it in the headline, Jaffe implies “Developers need to quit worrying and learn to love DRM”.

Slahsdot did some Microsoft promotion over this and the FSF campaign took it up a notch with a new push to cancel Netflix.

Soon enough (maybe next week) we’ll have an interview about this with Richard Stallman. █

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