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

On Thursday, June 13, 2013, Duncan Bayne wrote:

> > You might not think that the distinction is important, in which case
> > you should just say that. But there is a distinction which some people
> > do think is important and so it causes confusion when you represent
> > these two different things as the same.
>
> I thought I had been very explicit in saying just that.  Earlier I
> posted:
>
> "The reason EME is being proposed is to enable DRM.  Netflix, Microsoft
> and Google are interested in it for no other purpose.  No-one (to my
> knowledge) has proposed that EME might be used for any *other* purpose
> than interop with DRM systems.  Therefore, EME is a component of DRM
> systems, nothing more, nothing less."
>
> My reasoning here is fairly simple.  EME is a component of DRM systems,
> and has no other purpose.  Therefore, in recommending EME, W3C is
> recommending DRM.


When you say 'recommending' in the context of W3C it's usually taken to
mean publishing a Recommendation, i.e. a specification. There is no
proposal to publish a Recommendation describing a DRM system. Whether the
W3C publishes an actual specification of a DRM system or not is clearly an
important distinction, not least because doing so would imply the existence
of a DRM system meeting the W3C IPR rules and this is not something we want
to mislead people about.

Now, you could argue that publishing a Recommendation the known purpose of
which is to interface with DRM systems is an implicit 'recommendation' (in
the English sense) of DRM. That's debatable. Technical Recommendations are
all optional. They say 'If you do this, we recommend you do it this way'.
Strictly, no position is taken on whether someone should do the thing or
not.

I completely understand that the optics of a group like W3C working on or
Recommending an API for DRM is a negative for those involved in a broader
political fight against DRM, but that doesn't mean it's ok to mis-represent
the actual status by giving the mis-leading impression that W3C might
publish a Recommendation describing a DRM system or that W3C has a position
that people should use DRM ('recommend' in the English sense). Neither are
true.

...Mark

--
> Duncan Bayne
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