Re: Cory Doctorow: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards, says it's OK for your browser to say "I can't let you do that, Dave" [via Restricted Media Community Group]

On Oct 4, 2013, at 6:10 , Emmanuel Revah <stsil@manurevah.com> wrote:

> On 2013/10/04 13:00, Karl Dubost wrote:
> 
>> In the DRM debate, finding a better thing is key. Some of us can try
>> to change the international law about Intellectual Property and some
>> are trying, but that's a tough fight. I think EME is not a good idea,
>> but that's a negative argument. It doesn't create something.
> 
> 
> Why is that finding a better "thing" is considered as the only way to avoid W3C's recommendation of EME ?

Because the opposite 'spin' to yours is as valid:  by adopting EME, we come closer to integrating value-content into the web.  it gets URLs (and so can be referred to), uses HTML5 as its presentation layer, and so on.  We've both reduced the isolation of this content and reduced the footprint of what needs to be vendor-specific.

Also because "I don't like X" gets very little traction in standards work;  when people perceive a need or problem, those that get traction are the ones who have (possibly different) ways of addressing it.  Those without anything to contribute, alas, tend not to get so much attention.

> 
> Are retarded business models that want to be on the web more important than the web's users ? W3C says yes.

It just doesn't help to sling around insults like "retarded".  

> Of course the W3C is a community, but it has guidelines. From what I've understood, EME does not respect those guidelines. For example, there is no guideline that states "if you can't find a better solution then we should use this broken thing here".

Actually, there never has been a crisp explanation of exactly what W3C guideline is being violated. The lack of clarity on the actual problems makes it very hard to make meaningful suggestions as to how to ameliorate or address them.

> EME is broken (100% of DRM so far breaks at some point),

The goal is not to prevent all piracy all the time, but to sharply reduce it.  In that respect, it succeeds.

> it does not respect the users (the users must give up control over their computing to use it)

for me, indeed, the most troubling is the impact it has on 'fair use', but since fair use is not a technically well-defined concept, it's hard to see how to address that

> and mostly (because this goes against clear W3C guidelines), it allows "validated" websites to publish content that is not accessible to all.

That's true today for all sorts of content.  There are still websites that only work with IE6, for example.

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Friday, 4 October 2013 21:13:33 UTC