Re: Nice summary of the risks of DRM in HTML

On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Duncan Bayne <dhgbayne@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> From the FSF:
>
> "This means that each time a part of the Web starts requiring DRM software
> to decrypt it, it becomes inaccessible to free software. And if influential
> companies like Netflix, Google and Microsoft succeed at jamming DRM into
> the HTML standard, there will be even more pressure than there already is
> for people distributing media to encumber it with DRM. We'll see an
> explosion of DRM on the Web -- a growing dark zone inaccessible to free
> software users. This threatens to happen at a time when the state of free
> software-friendly media on the Web was starting to improve, with the
> increasing quality of free video codecs and the decline of Flash
> accompanied by the rise of the HTML5 video tag."
>

So, we've been over this many times on this list. It's not at all clear to
me why the availability of a W3C EME specification would encourage people
to use DRM who wouldn't otherwise do so. What is the rationale for
believing that to be likely ? The paragraph above reads as if there will be
large swathes of presently non-DRM restricted content that would be
inexorably drawn into the "dark zone" by a W3C specification. How does that
work ?

EME and CDMs may eventually make it easier for those who *already use DRM*
to reach more platforms, but the choice to use DRM involves much bigger and
more costly issues than the difference between EME/CDMs and
Flash/Silverlight never mind the even smaller difference between W3C EME
and *de facto* EME, which is in fact the question we are looking at here.

I think a lot of discussion on this list vastly overestimates the
importance of a piece of W3C paper to people making decisions to use DRM or
not. It seems highly unlikely that people or businesses making that
decision will care about whether there is a W3C EME specification or not.

On the other hand, this work in W3C could significantly improve things for
users of services which have already made the decision to use DRM.

...Mark






>
> I don't always agree with the FSF but they've hit the nail on the head
> here. That dark zone they talk about is the exact opposite of the Open Web,
> and is the basis of my objection to the W3C working on this proposal.
>
> --
> Duncan Bayne
> ph: +61 420817082 | web: http://duncan-bayne.github.com/ | skype:
> duncan_bayne
>
> I usually check my mail every 24 - 48 hours. If there's something urgent
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>
>
>