Re: On the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) document

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 12:41 AM, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 6:10 PM, Philippe Le Hegaret <plh@w3.org> wrote:
> > This clarification is not a statement of support towards the technical
> > approach taken in the EME specification or the CfC itself.
>
> Is the Team taking a position on whether it's appropriate for a W3C
> specification to rely exclusively on components that cannot be
> independently interoperably implemented when the specification is used
> for its intended purpose? (Clear Key does not count, because none of
> the proponents of EME intend to use Clear Key in production.)
>

Please demonstrate how the EME "cannot be independently interoperably
implemented when the specification is used for its intended purpose". I for
one do not believe you can demonstrate this bold claim. To do so implies
that you have complete knowledge of its intended purpose(s) and complete
technical knowledge of the implementability of its intended purpose(s).
Clearly you do not, nor does anyone else participating in this thread have
such knowledge.


> Is the Team taking a position on whether it's appropriate for a W3C
> specification to include mandatory parts whose sole purpose is
> debugging or satisfying the form of the W3C Process?


>From the team response, I don't see any position articulated regarding
appropriateness or inappropriateness of any technical aspect of the EME
draft. The team has indicated that they believe the EME draft is covered by
the HTML WG charter. The only other thing the team might have said was that
the work of the HTML WG is not consistent with the W3C process, but they
didn't say that.

So at present, the team has done all they can reasonably do, namely, to
evaluate whether they believe the work was done under the charter and
within the process. They have stated clearly they believe it is in charter
and in process. Are you suggesting they have some 3rd avenue of inquiry
from which they can evaluate "appropriateness"?

 (Again, it

> appears that none of the proponents of EME intend to use Clear Key in
> production.


Surely you aren't you suggesting you have complete knowledge of the
(present and future) intentions of potential users of EME? What is the
bearing on possible uses of ClearKey and its inclusion in the EME draft?


> No one has stepped up credibly arguing that they
> themselves would put Clear Key to substantial production use. All
> suggested production use scenarios for Clear Key have been contrived
> in the sense that they'd be better addressed by another solution that
> the proponents of EME we not interested in pursuing [http+aes].)
>

There is nothing stopping you or another party from specifying an
additional CDM that employs [http+aes]. Are you suggesting it should be
done in the EME draft itself? Are you suggesting a choice needs to be made
between specifying ClearKey and [http+aes]?