Re: W3C FAQ on DRM and HTML5 ?!

Hi Henri (and others who make up a big chunk of "W3C"),

TL;DR: 1. What Pilippe said. 2 W3C is us. 3. Scope of a problem is in  
scope…

On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 09:53:07 +0100, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 8:33 PM, Philippe Le Hegaret <plh@w3.org> wrote:
>> So, we are definitively interested in the space,
>> independently of whether the HTML Working Group is interested in
>> developing a solution or whether it is done in a separate group.
>> Whatever we choose, we will do our best to get the right balance between
>> producers and consumers.
>
> Does the W3C intend solutions acceptable to the W3C in this space to
> be Royalty-Free per the W3C Patent Policy

W3C (which is in some sense a member Consortium, in some sense a group of
staff, and in some sense a broad development community) has expressed
opinions on this. For example, the W3C Patent Policy is actually an
agreement (of the members on whose behalf the W3C staff help administer
the W3C process) to seek Royalty-Free solutions. So the answer to your
first question seems to be yes.

As I (perhaps naively) read the patent policy, it has certain restrictions
on applicability. My personal understanding is that where a specification
requires things beyond the specification (the stupid example is that it is
hard to usefully implement a good web standard without a computer) those
things are not covered by the policy.

You could ask the PSIG to clarify this question, if it is about
interpretation of the Patent Policy. If it is about what the participants
in the Working Group think, you should ask us all - we are the part of
"W3C" that is making the decisions on this...

FWIW Opera has a fairly simple policy on IPR and we'd like it to be
possible to implement the Web without having to pay patent licensing fees.
We think it is worth working hard to realise that goal to the greatest
extent possible.

> 1) for the parts that are specced at the W3C
> 2) for the entirety of the solution that user agents would need to
> implement in order to interoperate even if parts of the solution rely
> on things not specified at the W3C

Glenn Adams said in reply:

> In the discussion at hand, I would expect the CDM interface and a 
> Clearkey CDM to be in scope

I think that is widely expected.

> and other CDMs to be out of scope (since they would not be specified
> by the W3C). However, I guess that you consider CDMs not defined by
> the W3C to be in scope, at least as far as the W3C is concerned.

I can't speak for Henri, of course. But I think he and others have raised
some reasons why leaving the choice of CDM totally out of scope could be
problematic. I have no current proposals on how to resolve the issues (if
there is indeed a possible resolution), but I think there are legitimate
grounds for considering them as within the scope of reasonable discussion.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles 'chaals' McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
       je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg kan litt norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com

Received on Tuesday, 6 March 2012 10:41:53 UTC