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 Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 12:17 AM, Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> wrote:
>> > So, again, it depends on your definition of open standard. I'm looking
>> > at
>> > open-stand.org. I see no reason why a traditional standards organization
>> > couldn't fully define a DRM system under those principles. I think
>> > you're
>> > working with a stronger definition of "open".
>>
>> nope, I used your definition, the one you linked to earlier and refer to
>> here
>> (link is http://open-stand.org/principles/ for those not wanting to go dig
>> for
>> it)
>>
>> which says:
>> - in point 4: "are made accessible to all for implementation and
>> deployment."
>> - and in point 3: "provide global interoperability"
>>
>> EME+CDM violates both, *by* *design*
>
>
> I disagree. Anyone can implement EME and it will work anywhere. The recently
> published Microsoft paper pointed the way to a public CDM API and when that
> is available we will have a proof point.

That's a pretty broad statement without some qualifications.

In the usual sense of "anyone can implement" (that is, "anyone with
enough time and skill can implement  by reading the spec and writing
code without asking permission from anyone"), anyone can implement the
exact parts that are defined in the EME spec, but you won't get
something that will "work" for the intended purpose of EME by doing
only that, since the interesting bits are not defined in the EME spec.
The Microsoft/Fraunhofer whitepaper gives a scenario that allows
anyone to ship the browser that includes the EME JS API provided that
someone else has already baked a PlayReady implementation that exposes
suitable CDMi API surface in the underlying platform.

If you are working with an underlying platform that does not already
have a CDMi-exposing PlayReady implementation baked into it, it's not
a matter of "anyone can implement" in the usual sense of "anyone can
implement". To start with, you'd need permission from Microsoft.

(I take it that the paper being referred to is
http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/en/fokus/_pdfs/Interoperability_Digital_Rights_Management_and_the_Web.pdf
.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@hsivonen.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Friday, 11 October 2013 08:20:37 UTC