Re: EME and proprietary plug-ins

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 11:00 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 9:13 AM, Glenn Adams <glenn@skynav.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 12:50 AM, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:
> >> EME poses the threat of unleveling the playing
> >> field for browsers even within operating systems in addition to
> >> keeping the playing field unlevel among operating systems.
> >
> > If unleveling means moving away from the status quo of using only
> > Flash/Silverlight for distribution of protected media content, then you
> are
> > correct.
>
> You know what Henri means, and it's not that.  He means, very
> obviously, that individual browsers may be locked out even on a given
> OS.


I understand Henri's point, but I believe it based on speculation and not
necessity. I believe EME can function perfectly well on all OS/UA
combinations, and the issue of which CDMs will be available on those
combinations cannot be predicted. For example, I don't believe one can
claim with certainty that any given CDM will not be available on some OS/UA
combination, e.g., on Ubuntu/FF.

The choice of which CDMs can be used for deploying some given content will
be determined by the content owners, as is their prerogative. The existence
of the EME solution that supports a variety of CDMs will increase the
number of options for content owners.



> > The issue of OS playing field is a non-issue.
>
> Several people disagree.  I'm not sure why you think it's a non-issue,
> or why you think it's *such* a non-issue that it can be dismissed
> out-of-hand like that.  Producing technologies that will only be
> usable on particular OSes is a bad thing.
>

There is nothing about EME that prevents it from being implemented on any
OS. Whether a given CDM is supported on an OS/UA combination or natively in
a OS is a deployment decision outside of the scope of the EME
specification. There is nothing in principle that prevents any CDM from
functioning on an OS. That's why this is a non-issue.


>
> > EME will enable new opportunities, while the status quo keeps content
> locked
> > out from the web or locked into the Flash/Silverlight solutions.
>
> The "new opportunities" are locking content into new plugins.  It's
> not materially different from the status quo, and you shouldn't try to
> pretend that it is.
>

It is substantially different from the perspective of those content owners
and content providers that are actually delivering content. I don't feel it
necessary to repeat again the reasons I and others have cited before.