> DRM is also how you get media companies to publish on the web.

Forgive me not really giving a hoot.

> Media companies couldn't give any less fucks about the web. They can go 100 years without
> publishing on the web, since they have other revenue paths that they're perfectly happy with.

Thus explaining their interest in the web, up to and including their push to lock it all down to prop up their outdated business model. If they are happy to stick with other sources of revenue they should do so.

> The web needs these media companies more than the media companies need the web.

Is that so? Funny how the web was already popular before media companies tried to get in on the action.

> You are limiting the web because you are saying you don't want media companies to publish on the web.

That's a strawman. Nobody is saying media companies should not publish on the web. We are saying that the thing that made the web valuable in the first place is openness, to which DRM is antithetical. Media companies are welcome to use the open system that is the web if they want to, and like the rest of us they will have to put up with certain trade-offs -- or at least that was the situation prior to EME.

> Everyone wants to use rights-managed content online.

I seriously doubt that the majority of web users -- billions of people -- care about rights management. The evidence seems to suggest that the overwhelming majority of users could not care less about copyrights, let alone the expansive "rights" that DRM is enforcing. People seem to ignore those "rights" at their convenience; in fact, people seem to seek the entertainment they want without regard to any "rights."

In fact, your beloved media companies also seem to not care terribly much about rights. The rights that copyright confers do not apply solely to copyright owners; included in copyright is the notion of the public domain and of fair use. Those rights are routinely ignored by media companies, through their lawsuits, their takedown notices (dancing baby), and their DRM systems which never include provisions for copyrights expiring and works entering the public domain. So other than yourself I am not sure ANYONE wants "rights-management."

Moreover, people have learned to love an entirely new kind of video entertainment: homemade, amateur videos of cats and other pets; of random people expressing their views; of dashcams in Russia; of idiots doing stupid things; etc. etc. In other words, while media companies were working hard to break the openness of the web, people were embracing that openness to create new forms of entertainment that the media companies could never have created on their own. Oh, yeah, it turns out the websites where those sort of videos are shared are the most popular video streaming services in the world and that more people (in the world generally) are watching videos on those sites than there are people watching cable TV.

So much for the all-important media companies.

> Just acknowledgement of the fact that artists own their works

We have evidence of artists dating back hundreds of thousands of years. Copyright and the notion that ideas and artistic expression can be owned only dates back to the 18th century and was just the final stage of European society adapting to a new communication technology (printing presses). We now have a new communication technology (computer networks) and society is adapting to the new rules and realities of that technology. Some ideas about art and artists rights are going to die, but in their place we will have new ideas and new rights. It is already happening, although in all likelihood none of us will be alive to see what society ultimately settles on.

So basically, the "fact" you are acknowledging barely rises to the level of a footnote in the history of artistic expression, one that is already fading into history as the Internet eats the remaining legacy communication systems. Sorry if that is a hard pill to swallow.