Is EME usable regardless of the software/hardware I use ?

I have a few questions and thoughts, they may appear naive, simplistic 
or may contain comprehension errors, let me know if I misunderstood.



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On W3C » Standards » Browsers and Authoring Tools - 
http://www.w3.org/standards/agents/Overview.html

"We should be able to publish regardless of the software we use, the 
computer we have, the language we speak, whether we are wired or 
wireless, regardless of our sensory or interaction modes. We should be 
able to access the web from any kind of hardware that can connect to the 
Internet – stationary or mobile, small or large. W3C facilitates this 
listening and blending via international web standards. These standards 
ensure that all the crazy brilliance continues to improve a web that is 
open to us all."
-------------------------------------------------

The W3 should promote specs/standards/technologies that can be used 
regardless of the user's choice of software (for reading or writing). 
Free/Open or proprietary, the choice the user will make should not be 
dictated by the standards.

For me this isn't about Free or non-free, indeed it's not the license or 
source code availability that will enable/disable playback, the concerns 
is that the user will have to install software specifically provided by 
the website (CDMs, via the site or its partners(s)). Does this go 
against the "regardless of the software we use" idea ?



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Encrypted Media Extensions - http://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/

"This proposal extends HTMLMediaElement providing APIs to control 
playback of protected content."

[...]
  * Support a range of content security models, including software and 
hardware-based models
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Will I be able to publish EME regardless of the software I use ?  Or 
reformulated, will it be technically possible for me to make any use of 
EME to control playback of protected content, without any imposition on 
the software required for me to implement it ? (and for visitors to read 
it).

I am trying to understand if EME is a standard designed to be usable by 
everyone to read and write the W3C's definition of the web.





Back to the first quote, regarding hardware + from the EME draft (1.1 
Goals):
-------------------------------------------------
"We should be able to access the web from any kind of hardware that can 
connect to the Internet"

* Support a range of content security models, including software and 
hardware-based models
-------------------------------------------------

I've understood from one of Mark Watson's emails to this list that there 
could be hardware implemented DRM/CDM which would allow a user's system 
to run only Free Software for the operating system, the playback control 
would be part of the GPU or some other hardware. (some may accept this 
others may not, but that's not my point). I also read about TrustZone 
http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/trustzone.php which 
is exactly that, DRM built in to hardware.

I personally do not oppose companies producing products I don't wish to 
purchase, it happens all the time. The question is:

Would this mean that to access the web (the part of the web defined by 
the W3C) I may need to have specific hardware ?  Would "any kind of 
hardware that can connect to the Internet" no longer be true.
Will it become possible, using EME, to limit access to the web based on 
hardware ?





-- 
Emmanuel Revah
http://manurevah.com

Received on Wednesday, 5 June 2013 09:58:31 UTC