- From: Emmanuel Revah <stsil@manurevah.com>
- Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 18:50:35 +0200
- To: public-restrictedmedia@w3.org
On 2013/05/15 17:36, Mark Watson wrote: > What we are trying to do with EME is to *reduce* the amount of > non-standard proprietary technology needed to do this. I would reduce > it to zero if I could, I just don't know how to do that. My IMHO is that this should be done outside the scope of the W3C. Some say it's the same thing, but it's not. Having DRM in the scope of the W3C means the W3C has something more to worry about, it also means that any W3C respecting browser should support it too, which in turn means telling it's users that it's okay to install the non-free bits that websites may propose. We understand that that all those proprietary plugins that allow you to DRM your content are all dying. Because web standards have proven to be sustainable and cross platform (except with IE, though I heard it's almost compliant), it's only logical that you (Google, MS, Netflix and others) look this way for a future proof solution. I get that, 100%, even if I don't like it. What has made the web so popular was the absence of restriction. The web is built around sharing knowledge (and cat photos), everything is a remix of something else, including this phrase. Now that the Interweb has proven to be a good place for commerce walls being built, and now content needs to be as unsharable as can be. Having EME in the spec is likely to encourage more content producers to restrict access. (Is disabling "right-click copy" going to be part of all this ?). So yes, there are ethical and moral reasons to object to EME, and of course we wont always agree. There are also pure technical reasons to think of EME as a waste of time, as in that it's already broken. Users will be able to record the streams with a simple plugin. Because there's no such thing as streaming content to a user's computer and that computer not being able to easily record the stream (except perhaps on one of those CloudOSes where the user does not have access to the computer). This part is of course debatable and much effort will be spent (lost) in trying to make an unbreakable blackbox. The truth is likely to be somewhere in the middle, as in some user's still can't figure out how to copy text on "JS protected" websites, while others can download any video with a single click using a plugin. There are other technical concerns I've mentioned in other posts like CDM trust issues, Free/Open source incompatibilities and some other ethical concerns about default in-browser CDMs which would favour certain content over other. I've yet to find answers for the last questions, except for the Free Software/Open source question, that we know is plain and simple not technically possible. -- Emmanuel Revah http://manurevah.com
Received on Wednesday, 15 May 2013 16:51:11 UTC