Re: Netflix HTML5 player in IE 11 on Windows 8.1

On Sunday, Sun, 2013/07/07, David Singer wrote:
> On Jul 5, 2013, at 23:39 , Matt Ivie <matt.ivie@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> 1) THE W3C IS NOT WORKING ON A DRM SOLUTION!
> >> (Shouting most certainly intended. You can repeat this falsehood as
> >> often as you wish, it will not magically make it true).
> > 
> > But it is fitting the gloves for the working hands of Digital
> > RESTRICTIONS Management to fit into. MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT
> > THAT!(Shouting most certainly intended.)
> > 
> > Again also: what other standards has the W3C set that cannot be
> > implemented in free software?
> 
> EME can be implemented in free software.  Even some 'lightweight' DRMs
> can.

not usefully so:
- you don't just implement EME
- you also need all the popular CDM's to whitelist your implementation for 
use with their CDM

this is really no different from patents: 
yes you can can implement something despite the patent, you just can't 
legally do anything with it without getting the OK of the patent owner.

W3C has a royaltee-free patent policy exactly to prevent a patent-owner 
having a defacto veto-right over which standard implementations can be used.
W3C should demand similar guarantees with EME, and in the absense of any 
such guarantees reject it.

Right now those guarantees are completley absent in the EME proposal.
Consequently whoever holds the keys to whatever CDM's becomes popular will 
in practice have a similar defacto veto over implementations as a patent 
owner without a royaltee-free license.

Since any such guarantees are explicitly counterproductive to the very goal 
of DRM I'm not holding my breath on seeing them being added either.
Hence EME should be explicitly rejected all together by the W3C
--
Cheers, Cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)

Received on Monday, 8 July 2013 22:07:05 UTC