Yesterday I was interviewed by Christian Heilmann (@codepo8) about HTML5 canvas and game development. I had a great time and I'm very thankful to be given the opportunity, and to be considered a person of HTML5. I've embedded the video below, but definitely check out the full text interview on Mozilla in which we cover many things not mentioned in the video.
Christian Heilmann from Mozilla interviews me about HTML5 canvas and game development.
Transmissions Received
Mark
As an actionscript developer, html5 is, in many ways exciting, but I can’t see how the benefits of visible source code come anywhere close to outweighing the obvious cons (which you did bring up). The same can be said about all of the assets that one might use in a game or any program—images, sounds etc…
Granted, a determined hacker could usually get this information from decompiling a swf…still, the more barriers in the way of plagiarism the better in my mind. I have already had to contact several sites about plagiarising my work ...and html5 seems like such an open invitation to effortlessly plagiarise
Rob Hawkes
@Mark: HTML and JavaScript are open platforms; it’s just the way they are. If you’re a developer that wants to lock down their code and assets, then you shouldn’t be using these types of technologies.
I think there is a problem at the moment with people wanting exactly what they have with proprietary solutions, like Flash, but in the browser, and open. It’s just not going to happen, I’m afraid.
However, this doesn’t mean that HTML5 and JavaScript are useless, or that Flash is better. It just means that these open technologies have a particular purpose, as does Flash (DRM, etc.) This is exactly why HTML5 video and audio are proving a contentious issue, as broadcasters and the like want to protect their work from being downloaded for free.
Personally, I think people will download your work for free regardless of how protected it is. I also think people are scared to put their work on open platforms, because they fear that they will lose revenue and have their work plagiarised. This stuff happens with DRM and proprietary technologies anyway; what’s to say it will be any worse otherwise? I think people put too much value on potential revenue that could be lost, instead of worrying about the real reason why their work is being stolen in the first place. Perhaps their work is shit? Or perhaps the industry hasn’t woken up to the age of the Internet yet.
Perhaps I’m living in a utopian world, but I really don’t think the Internet is a place where work placed out in the open can’t earn you an income. In all honesty, I believe the complete opposite is true.
Locking up your work and criminalising your users (by treating them as potential pirates) is only going to make matters worse.
Luciano Mammino
I think it’s not a matter of protecting our code, it’s just a matter of writing good code and even greater apps.
As both of you said, even swfs can be decompiled and our contents and code can be stolen.
We work in a world where everything is digital and we all know that digital things are perfectly reproducible. Sometimes cloning digital data may be truly difficoult, but as far as I know is still possible.
So I think that we should focus on producing the best application for our needs without thinking to much on how protect them phisically. We should use our copyright wisely, but copyright infringement will still occur often.
I think that as far we do our best and promote our original work, people will recognize us for what we have done and we can claim the copyright of our works…
Sometimes, instead, is just a matter of ideas and, we know, you can’t claim the copyright on ideas… So, i repeat, you can just use your ideas the best you can!
I said to much, so please overcome all the english error in this comment :P
Julio Cesar Ody
Since when this became an issue?
Google has been launching products on the web for years now without anyone stealing anything.
Like with any client-server application, only so much of the architecture likes on the client side, so the fact you can see the client code won’t change anything.
I doubt there’s ONE solution to a problem which one vendor would know that no one else could find out, that’s worth protecting. Finding solutions to problems on the Internet is so trivial that if you’re going out of way to copy and paste from a comercial application, the real problem you have is you don’t know how to find information.
This is most definitely a non-issue.
Mark
@ Julio It has been and continues to be a ‘problem’ and far from a ‘non-issue’. If you’ve never had your own work plagairised and had to chase after webmasters to remove it, then I wonder what experience you have had in creating content that can be downloaded via the internet. I know of 2 URL’s that are live right now with content that has been created by my company. I personally find it a pain in the *!#A to have to chase down webmasters and get them to remove plagairised stuff. Maybe you don’t mind spending your time doing that..but I do ;) And open source code will not diminish this issue.
@ Rob Hawkes “I think there is a problem at the moment with people wanting exactly what they have with proprietary solutions, like Flash, but in the browser, and open. It’s just not going to happen”. I completely agree and personally am coming to enjoy messing around with HTML5.
Personally, the reason I dislike the idea of open source code—Is I hate the time I sometimes have to put into chasing down webmasters to remove content I created. Admittedly, it’s not all that ofte,n but it’s still a waste of time, and as I find myself learning HTML5 and preparing to start making some canvas based apps…I do fear it’ll be a larger chunk of my already chock-full schedule!
In the end, I hope there will be some good obstructions to plagairisers—maybe a good JS obfuscator will be made that will basically turn your code into mumbo jumbo.