[Bug 10902] <video> element needs to support some form of DRM solution

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10902

Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|REOPENED                    |RESOLVED
         Resolution|                            |WONTFIX

--- Comment #24 from Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> 2010-10-06 17:20:57 UTC ---
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are
satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If
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Status: Rejected
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: 

Ok so apparently "DRM is evil" was a little too pithy, so let me be more
long-winded:

* DRM is mathematically impossible. You can't create a tool that
  simultaneously allows the user to access data while preventing the
  user from accessing that data. It's just not possible. It doesn't
  matter if it's hardware-based (HDCP is broken), run purely by a
  private vendor (FairPlay is broken), a trivial protocol (CSS is
  broken), or a complicated protocol (AACS is broken).

* One can't even make a pretence that DRM is possible in an open
  standard with open source implementations. By definition DRM assumes
  that there is a shared secret involved, at minimum a secret
  per-vendor key shared between a coordinating entity and the user
  agent implementor. That is completely incompatible with a world
  where anyone can recompile their browser.

* Actually working DRM, were it possible, would be user-hostile. Its
  entire purpose is to prevent users from doing anything they want
  with the content.

* DRM, even in its broken state, is user-hostile. It adds a "ripping"
  stage to any unusual use case.

* Any kind of encryption intended for content protection may lead, in
  some jurisdictions, to implementors being liable if they can be
  argued to allow the user to circumvent that encryption.

* DRM is intended to prevent piracy, but in practice content that is
  protected by DRM is uniformly and regularly available without such
  protection on file sharing networks, often long before the
  DRM-protected content is actually released to the market. Thus DRM
  doesn't actually work to solve the problem it's intended to solve.

* The DRM technology space is heavily patented, and it is quite
  possible that it would be unreasonably difficult to create a
  specification for a DRM scheme that was unimpeded by patents, which
  is incompatible with W3C policy.

* In any case, defining a DRM format is out of scope for HTML, since
  it is a video format issue.

Any one of these points would be sufficient grounds to reject this bug.

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Received on Wednesday, 6 October 2010 17:20:59 UTC