Re: Campaign for position of chair and mandate to close this community group

Hello Mark,

> FWIW, EME *can* be fully implemented under a copyleft open source license
> on platforms that expose the necessary capabilities. That is presently only
> Windows, but nontheless.

The EME provides an interface to some rather underspecified module (of which 
the requirements are apparently confidential).  The module therefore becomes 
part of the EME's functionality.  If someone would try to implement the EME's 
functionality under a free software license then as a result they would also 
require to implement the functionality of the exposed modules.

What technical limitations are there to implementing this functionality under 
a free software license?  Is the implementation of the module publicly and 
openly specified under guidelines compatible to the W3C's and OpenStand's?

It seems obvious that this is not possible because the exposed modules 
inherently rely on being complete secrets.

What are the legal limitations?  The 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty requires 
parties to the treaty to implement laws against circumvention of DRM methods.  
This has been implemented in the US through the DMCA and the EU has also 
passed a directive to that regard.

Therefore it seems to me that implementing the EME with all its implicit or 
explicit functionality under a free software license would not only be 
technically unfeasible due to the lack of specifications but it would also be 
illegal.

The W3C's principles say (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission)

"One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, 
whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, 
culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability."

How can this goal be reached if the EME proposal (implicitly) depends on non-
portable ("only Windows") closed source proprietary modules which are illegal 
to reimplement.

Regards,
Rüdiger

Received on Wednesday, 15 January 2014 15:04:43 UTC