Re: Cory Doctorow: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards, says it's OK for your browser to say "I can't let you do that, Dave" [via Restricted Media Community Group]

On Oct 11, 2013, at 1:57 , Emmanuel Revah <stsil@manurevah.com> wrote:

> On 2013/10/10 20:05, David Singer wrote:
>> On Oct 10, 2013, at 3:42 , Emmanuel Revah <stsil@manurevah.com> wrote:
>>> Flash has been around for over a decade, almost every browser had it installed at some point. It was never part of the W3C spec. Same for other plugins.
>> But the object and embed tags, which enabled it, were.  They stand in
>> almost exactly the same place as the EME APIs, except the EME APIs are
>> much more circumscribed in what the external plug-in can do (which is
>> an advantage).
>> David Singer
>> Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.
> 
> 
> Good point, except that embed is simply a spot to include any non-HTML/standard elements. It can be Flash or anything else (open or closed, obfuscated or clear), it's just a way of inserting "anything non-standard" in a standard way.
> 
> 
> EME is like embed, except that it is itself a mechanism to restrict and control usage of standard HTML elements. It's only purpose is to give the publisher control over the user's browser. EME exists only for the DRM.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure that's a good thing, but let's say that's more of opinion territory, the fact part is that EME clearly says DRM is a good for the "Open Web".


I think it admits that protected content exists, and prefers that protected content be referrable by URLs, use the open web as its presentation layer, and so on.  There are plenty of specs which do the best they can without implying a value judgment of whether that's 'good' (or 'bad').

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Friday, 11 October 2013 15:34:55 UTC