RE: !Oppose DRM Re: CfC: to publish Encrypted Media Extensions specification as a First Public Working Draft (FPWD)

At the end of the day the web obviously is a fantastic platform to connect, share and reach people and communities. This platform generates a countless variety of requirements and use cases most of which we don’t know yet or haven’t seen developed yet even though the web’s been around a really long time.

 

HTML5 browsers and resulting new web applications implementable out of it are more connected to the underlying platform than ever whether via storage, graphics, networking and/or media capability. Specific to DRM what I see developing is platforms with dual computing domains supported intrinsically. I look at EME as a conduit to tunnel access to CDMs implemented in parallel domains from the host OS. With EME providing guidelines on these conduits it isolates the headaches of dealing with CDMs to non-users of them.

 

EME seems to follow other very traditional models of computing not completely unlike providing interfaces to pushing a 3D model into a GPU to display, IPC or even sockets, it is just more black boxed to deal with the specific requirements and consequently simpler.

 

Regards,

~ Bill

 

From: Ian Fette (イアンフェッティ) [mailto:ifette@google.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 12:44 PM
To: Mathias Bynens
Cc: Andreas Kuckartz; public-html-admin@w3.org
Subject: Re: Oppose DRM ! Re: CfC: to publish Encrypted Media Extensions specification as a First Public Working Draft (FPWD)

 

While I hate DRM as much as the next person, one has to ask what the alternatives are. It's all well and good for us to sit high on our morals and say "DRM bad!" but the reality is that the web is competing with other ecosystems (Native apps like iTunes, plugins like Silverlight and Flash) where DRM is available. By saying "No DRM in HTML5" it's not clear to me that we're not blowing off our own own hand in an effort to deal with a thorn in our finger. I think what this does is simply give people one more reason to say "The web is inadequate, we need to stick with our native apps or plugins".

 

My personal opinion only.

-Ian