RE: W3C HTML Fork without Digital Restriction Management

Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 19:58:46 -0500
From: jeff@w3.org


    On 1/16/2014 5:16 PM, Fred Andrews
      wrote:

    
    
      
      

        

        > Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 09:49:06 -0500

          > From: jeff@w3.org

          > To: hsivonen@hsivonen.fi

          > CC: public-restrictedmedia@w3.org

          > Subject: Re: W3C HTML Fork without Digital Restriction
          Management

          > 

          > 

          > On 1/16/2014 3:31 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:

          > > On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 5:58 PM, Jeff Jaffe
          <jeff@w3.org> wrote:

          > >> I have not heard about any objections from the
          Free Software Community about

          > >> any of the Open Web Platform (OWP) specs other
          than EME.

          > >>

          > >> Accordingly, a subset of the OWP which removes
          EME would more accurately be

          > >> characterized as a "profile" of the OWP, rather
          than a fork of the OWP.

          > > The above implies that you consider EME to to be
          part of the Open Web

          > > Platform. On what basis? On the basis that EME alone
          (without a CDM)

          > > is non-proprietary even though all its current and
          expected

          > > deployments involve a proprietary CDM and,
          therefore, the actual uses

          > > of EME fall outside the Open Web?

          > 

          > To rephrase in a way that I hope you would agree:

          > 

          > I have not heard about any objections from the Free
          Software Community 

          > about any of the W3C specs other than EME.

          

          I dispute Tim's interpretations of the principles of the web,
          and dispute that DRM is compatible with the open web, and this
          is a core issue.

        
      
    
    

    > Yes, this is exactly why there are objections specifically to EME.

    
The objection is to the change in the charter not just the EME and Tim has already made a decision on the charter, right?  The EFF tried to offer Tim assistance in this matter, and he had access to their objection well in advance of making a decision on the charter.  Are you suggesting that Tim might remove DRM from the charter in future?   That Tim might change his mind on the compatibility of DRM with the open web?   That Tim is not going to bother reconsidering the matter until the EME is at an advance stage?   Many of us have better things to do than to defend this matter - make your decision and stop wasting our time.

    
      
         

          > Accordingly, a subset of W3C specs which removes EME
          would more 

          > accurately be characterized as a "profile" of the W3C
          specs, rather than 

          > a fork of the W3C specs.

          

          DRM is a restriction, a mis-feature, a negative.   If a
          profile is the subtraction of features, then subtracting the
          EME mis-features is an addition!
      
    
    

    > A profile is a subtraction of a specification

The EME specification imposes the restrictions - it limits the set of solutions that we are free to deploy in the web community.   If a 'profile' just means the removal of wording, and if that wording could add or remove from the solution space, then 'profile' has no meaning for the set of solutions.  It's not going to help resolve the dispute.  You also ignore the laws that enforce the restrictions - they are not up for debate or to change in the resolution of this dispute - we can not just agree to disagree and use separate branding and then all get along, not to mention that the lack of consensus would damage the web.

There is a better path.  Just keep the DRM out of the web. The proponents of the EME have still not produced the requirements that lead to the choice of the EME and that requires adding DRM to the web. They have not explored a solution that is compatible with the web without DRM, and without their requirements we can do little more to assist. If you want a resolution then get on their case.

This would all be over if a specification were advanced that allowed the DRM content to be deferred to external apps or devices - it would be the solution that worked for the largest set of users and thus the solution that content owners and web developers would want to use.  The vendors of proprietary stacks could bundle the required players just as easily as they could bundle CDMs, and it could be trivial for open source web browsers to invoke the players on these platforms.  People would still not be happy with the promotion of DRM, and not happy that it would exclude users of open source stacks.  But users of open source stacks might consider that the use of a separate device for viewing DRM content is a good outcome as it clearly separates software that they can not verify from their general purpose computer.

cheers
Fred