HTML5 | Technologie - Technology News Aggregator

Declare DRM freedom!

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:07:33 EDT

Oct. 10, 2007 is the day I threw off the chains locking my music. I purged the last DRM-protected file from my personal catalog -- and not by stealing. I purchased every track, and getting them Digital Rights Management-free wasn't easy six years ago. The base collection started from CDs. The problem: Songs purchased from iTunes, starting in April 2003. Later, Apple offered facility to remove copyright restrictions. Meanwhile, I repurchased some tunes, or just did without them. But chains remain. Every video purchased or rented for download is DRM-protected. Far worse are ebooks. There, the unsung hero -- your advocate and champion -- is JK Rowling. In late April 2012, she released the entire Harry Potter series as ebooks, DRM-free, baby. Rowling is more than a hugely successful writer; she stands up for readers, too. HTML5 Ruin You can take a stand also. May 3rd is "International Day Against DRM". That's right, today. There is good reason now, as rights protection is headed to HTML5, and it's helluva controversy, too. "There is a proposal currently before the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML5 Working Group to build DRM into the next generation of core Web standards", Electronic Frontier Foundation's Peter Eckersley and Seth Schoen explain. "The proposal is called Encrypted Media Extensions, or EME. Its adoption would be a calamitous development, and must be stopped". GNU Project founder Richard Stallman calls DRM "Digital Restrictions Management". In a post on the GNU website, he asserts: Allowing a few businesses to organize a scheme to deny our freedoms for their profit is a failure of government, but so far most of the world's governments, led by the U.S., have acted as paid accomplices rather than policemen for these schemes. The copyright industry has promulgated its peculiar ideas of right and wrong so vigorously that some readers may find it hard to entertain the idea that individual freedom can trump their profits. Price-Fixers He's spot on. Publishers demand onerous digital rights mechanisms that defy fair use-laws that prevent people from sharing content they purchase for personal use. Take ebooks, for example. If I buy hardcover or paperback, I can share with family, or even friends. But not ebooks. DRM restricts usage to a single user account. If my daughter at college wants to read the same book, she must buy another copy. Isn't that a form of price fixing, a practice that U.S. antitrust law prohibits, since DRM compels even members of the same household to buy more than one copy of a title when using separate accounts on different devices. Buyers can read Kindle books on any device running Amazon's software, for example, but rights restrictions limit or prevent sharing the titles with, say, family members on their separate accounts. In a competitive market, particularly a growth one, competition should loosen rights. That's what happened with digital music, where DRM ruled early on but today is all but gone. Consumers benefit from the ability to share music within a household. Ebook publishers generally grant no such rights. Same applies to Hollywood-produced movies and TV shows. U.S. antitrust and trade laws are supposed to protect consumers from harm. What's not harmful or anti-competitive about onerous DRM? If rights restrictions come to HTML5, music freedom could give way to chains. Again. Stop EME The Free Software Foundation's "Defective by Design" campaign asserts: EME would be an irreversible step backward for freedom on the Web. It would endorse and enable business models that unethically restrict users, and it would make subjugation to particular media companies a precondition for full Web citizenship. Just as Flash and Silverlight are finally dying off, we should not replace them with the media giants' latest control fantasy. Furthermore, EME contradicts the W3C's core values. It would hamper interoperability by encouraging the proliferation of DRM plugins. It would fly in the face of the W3C's principle of keeping the Web royalty-free -- this is simply a back door for media companies to require proprietary player software. It is willful ignorance to pretend otherwise just because the proposal does not mention particular technologies or DRM schemes by name. I agree. If you do, too, sign FSF's petition "We don't want the Hollyweb", opposing EME. Photo Credit: Nomad_Soul/Shutterstock

W3C Declares DRM In-Scope For HTML

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:07:53 EST

FredAndrews writes "The W3C has ruled DRM in-scope for their HTML standard. A lot of big businesses have supported advancing the Encrypted Media Extension, including Google, Microsoft, and Netfix. The BBC calls for a solution with legal sanctions. The EME could well be used to implement a DRM HTML engine. A DRM-enabled web would break a long tradition of the web browser being the User's Agent, and would restrict user choice and control over their security and privacy. There are other applications that can serve the purpose of viewing DRM video content, and I appeal to people to not taint the web standards with DRM but to please use other applications when necessary." Looks like the web is becoming more like Xanadu, but not in a good way. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

3 million Freesat receivers now out there, and boxes to get YouTube

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 04:07:49 EST

I'm sick of this high value content, get me some CATS Freesat is celebrating the sale of three million reception-capable devices, and will be showcasing an HTML5 YouTube client on its new "" boxes really quite soon now.…

Dedicated YouTube channel coming to British TV

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 05:08:05 EST

Freesat, the BBC and ITV-backed satellite TV operator, has unveiled plans to launch a dedicated YouTube channel from next month. This will be the first time Google’s service has been made available through a free-to-air provider in the UK. Available by the end of March, the YouTube channel will be the very latest iteration built on HTML 5 and, according to Freesat, offer a "TV-optimized, visually stunning and fully interactive viewing experience". Viewers will be able access videos to watch through the main programming guide. Peter Sherman, Product Marketing Manager for YouTube said, "We’re happy to be working with Freesat so that Freesat users can now access YouTube from the platform. Our creator community is developing quality content that will delight and inspire viewers and we’re pleased to be able to bring it to people in new ways". Freesat customers require a set-top box to access the service but do not have to pay a subscription fee. The service launched in 2008 and has just sold its 3 millionth product. Photo Credit M.Stasy/Shutterstock

Create animated GIFs from YouTube videos with Any GIF Animator

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 04:07:59 EST

From a Captain Picard facepalm to a dancing Homer Simpson, there’s an animated GIF for every occasion. Which is one reason why they’re still regularly used in emails, forum posts, on web pages and so on. (Although another is probably compatibility: unlike more modern technologies, such as HTML5 or CSS3, animated GIFs work just about everywhere.) If you’re tired of reposting one of the standard animations, though, why not create a new GIF of your own? It’s surprisingly easy. Any GIF Animator imports just about any video or YouTube clip, and once you’ve zoomed in on the section you’d like to use, can have a quality animated GIF ready and online in just a few seconds. After a quick installation (no adware, but the program does ask to install Media Player Codec Pack Lite) you’re able to import your first video. The program can open a wide range of formats (3GP, ASF, AVI, DAT, FLV, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, RAM/RM/ RMVB, TS, VOB, WEBM, WMV), and it’ll also download YouTube clips if you just provide the appropriate URL. An embedded media player then allows you to browse through your video clip, find and mark the section you’d like to convert. Oddly, you can’t step through the movie in frames -- the smallest increment is a tenth of a second -- so you’re not able to be as precise as we’d like. But otherwise this is a fairly simple operation, and you’ll quickly have your core clip ready. If you’d like fine control over your animation then the good news is that Any GIF Animator provides lots of configuration options. So you can set the GIF’s size and frame rate; crop the image; tweak saturation, brightness and contrast; add a text caption, choose the best dithering method, set the animation type (looping, direction) and more. But if you’re not sure whether you need any of this, or are just in a hurry, then you can just accept the default settings -- they work well, most of the time. And when you’re happy with the clip, all you have to do is click "Convert to GIF" and Any GIF Animator will process your chosen video, create an animated GIF version, and upload it to the AnyGif server, where you’ll be given the URLs you need to share the clip with others. One very obvious issue here is that the program doesn’t offer you a choice about uploading animations -- it just does it. And your GIF will then immediately be visible to anyone who visits the site, so bear that in mind before you create anything of a, well, personal nature. (We’d also urge caution if you’re looking for something family-friendly; the program itself is fine, but view what others are creating on the website and you’ll find plenty of porn.) Perhaps most annoyingly, Any GIF Animator doesn’t even provide an option to save a local copy of your animation. If you want to do this then you’ll need to either allow it to be uploaded, then save it from your browser, or make a copy of the temporary file the program creates -- see C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Roaming\Any GIF Animator, for instance, or search your system for out.gif. There’s a lot to like about Any GIF Animator, then, and you can use it right now to produce quality animations. The program also has some significant annoyances, though, and it really needs a local save option to be added very soon. Photo Credit: Alex Kosev/Shutterstock

Ask Slashdot: Do Most Programmers Understand the English Language?

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 13:07:56 EST

Shadoefax writes "I have been developing Firefox add-ons for several years and all so far submitted to AMO have been translated (localized) into several different languages. My latest add-on is geared more to the web developer as opposed to the average web browsing user. (It is a utility for examining JavaScript Objects and their methods and properties.) By my reckoning, I believe JavaScript, HTML, CSS and the DOM are all pretty much designed to be easily understood by English language readers. My question is this: Can I assume that most programmers understand the English language well enough that I may forego localizing the UI? While this will save time, effort and bloat, it may also restrict the usage of (what I hope) is a useful tool for developers." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HTML holes exposed sensitive data for “private” Steam user accounts

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:08:09 EST

Aurich Lawson Valve has remedied a major potential privacy issue with the Steam Community website after it was brought to the company's attention by Ars. The flaw allowed anyone to view game purchase history, achievement history, recent play time, and more—even for Steam users that had set their profiles to private. I recently discovered the privacy hole when fiddling with Steam's profile settings and examining the source code behind the site. Since the problem exposed potentially sensitive data about Steam users, the examples cited in this article will primarily be from my personal profile. That said, we independently confirmed that the privacy hole applied to any profile that was set to "Private" or "Friends only." Many such profiles could be easily discovered using Google without prior knowledge of the user's Steam ID number or name. Out of respect for the privacy of Steam's more than 50 million users, we did not immediately publish our discovery of this privacy hole. Instead, we documented the problem and notified Valve of the issue late on Monday evening. Within three hours of sending our message, our spot checks showed that the problem appeared to be remedied. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Replace Notepad with the powerful and smarter EverEdit

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 06:07:56 EST

Windows Notepad may be easy to use, but it’s also horribly basic, and so it’s no surprise that an entire industry has grown up in providing more powerful alternatives. Some, like Notepad++, have become famous in themselves, but there are also plenty of powerful but lesser-known tools around, and EverEdit is one of the most interesting. The program gets off to a good start with its ultra-compact 1.25MB download, for instance. There’s no installation, no adware, not as much as a "Donate" button -- just unzip the file somewhere and you’re ready to go immediately. EverEdit’s versatility is apparent very quickly, too. Click File > New, for instance, and you’ll find the program has built-in template support (there are C, HTML and PHP templates included, and it’s easy to add your own). And while full Unicode support means EverEdit can open text files in any encoding, the program also has an option to open binary files in its own simple hex editor. The interface is surprisingly configurable for a program of this size, too. As well as having a central tabbed area where you can work on your documents, EverEdit can display a Directory View to browse your system; an Outline window for easier navigation of lengthy documents; a list of open files, and a command window. There’s even a Snippets window for speedy entry of commonly used text. Choose the HTML category, say, then double-click "Object (Flash Movie)" and EverEdit will insert an ‘