Re: EME and proprietary plug-ins

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 11:41 PM, Chris Wilson <cwilso@google.com> wrote:
> > Actually, Henri, you're conflating Flash (or Silverlight) availability
> with
> > "known licensing terms for DRM module".  That's not actually true...
>


> I think it's you—not me—who is conflating the licensing of the module
> itself and whether content providers are willing to target the module.
>
> The licensing of Flash Player and Silverlight is a known thing
> (including it being known that they are unavailable in many cases). I
> have no illusions that having Flash Player available made different
> platforms equally targeted by content providers. See
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-admin/2013Feb/0019.html


Indeed, I saw that message, and I'm not arguing with your point.  I'm
merely saying "Flash/SL as a baseline req" doesn't mean "Flash/SL is
sufficient".  I think that you're saying that, also, here.

The "type of device" part of
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-admin/2013Feb/0153.html
> strongly suggests that EME won't solve the problem Google TV faced.
>

I would hope.


> Currently, browsers within the Windows platform have roughly equal
> opportunity to host Silverlight and Flash and browsers within the Mac
> OS X platform have roughly equal opportunity to host Silverlight and
> Flash. And Netflix targets Silverlight apparently without
> authenticating its host browser. (Netflix works in unofficial builds
> of the Firefox code base, for example, and NPAPI doesn't provide a
> trusted way to authenticate the host anyway.) On the other hand, on
> Android, Netflix is equally unavailable in all browsers and all
> browsers have equal opportunity to send intents to the native Netflix
> app. On desktop Linux, Netflix is equally unavailable in all browsers.
>

Although those examples are true, there are counter-examples - for example,
Fox blocked GoogleTV based on UA string.  But this isn't relevant, really -
all I was saying is that as a baseline requirement, I think EME is less
costly than Flash/SL, and that content providers will make their own
decisions about where they will license and allow their content - as they
are already doing.  I was responding to the thread of reasoning I thought I
heard you making that said "EME would make the playing field less level
than it already can be (and is) with Flash/SL."  I don't believe that to be
true, other than browsers that don't support EME.  Using Flash/SL as the
black box to insulate a browser from getting its hands dirty delivering
content protection is just fooling yourself, in my opinion.  If you want to
be hardcore that DRM is bad, then shut off Flash and other proprietary
plugins.

I should be clear I am not representing Google in this matter; my opinions
are my own.