Re: CfC: to publish Encrypted Media Extensions specification as a First Public Working Draft (FPWD)

Mark Watson:
> On Feb 1, 2013, at 10:58 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>> It looks like you're avoiding the concern that has been repeatedly
>> brought up, which is that individual DRM providers have a long
>> history of only providing their stuff on the most profitable subset
>> of platform (often just one or two versions of Windows, and perhaps
>> the current Mac version), which means that the UAs are still stuck
>> without the ability to play any video at all.
>
> That's certainly an issue. We would like our content to be
> available as widely as possible.
>
> But that's not an issue we can solve here. It's tautological that
> content which requires a certain kind of protection will only be
> available on platforms where that protection is available. We can't,
> in W3C, change either the requirements of the content's authors or
> the platforms on which that protection is provided by the DRM vendors.

Thanks for this summary of the situation.

The "OpenStand" principles - which were endorsed by the W3C - state:

"Broad consensus. Processes allow for all views to be considered and
addressed, such that agreement can be found across a range of interests."

The views of Open Source operating system users are not and can not be
addressed by EME and a broad consensus does not (and will not) exist
regarding EME.

"Balance. Standards activities are not exclusively dominated by any
particular person, company or interest group."

EME is essentially dominated by a particular interest group. And it is
not realistic to assume that the Open Source community will participate
in the future.

http://open-stand.org/principles/

And therefore the W3C should not publish EME as FPWD.

That alone probably will not stop DRM, but it will send a message that
DRM is considered to be incompatibe with openness by the W3C.

Finally let me point to a longer document published in 2005 by the EFF
and other organisations:

Digital Rights Management:
A failure in the developed world, a danger to the developing world
https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-rights-management-failure-developed-world-danger-developing-world

It already stated:

"Free and Open Source Software

"Free and open source software is critical to current and future
development efforts as it provides a hedge against anticompetitive
behavior, and is readily localized into local languages"

"DRM technologies cannot be embodied in FOSS and so any field where DRM
is adopted crowds out FOSS and eliminates the development benefits therein"

Cheers,
Andreas

Received on Friday, 1 February 2013 21:05:59 UTC