API to access file system (was Re: Review of May 15 WebRTC 1.0 draft)

My recollection is that this comes from use case 2.3.9. "Simple Video 
Communication Service with File Exchange". At the time (as I remember 
it) Tim Terriberry pushed for this (and even went beyond this saying 
that if you want to transfer all files in a folder, each of them should 
go on a different SCTP stream) if memory serves.

As we considered at the time that existing and APIs defined by other W3C 
groups (such as the Audio API can be used for panning) could be used we 
(I) figured that this is OK since there is the File (picker) API 
already, and most browsers already at the time (remember that this was 
six years ago) supported that.

In hindsight it creates a strange dependency since it sort of requires 
the support of APIs defined elsewhere. On the other hand that is also 
the case for where we depend on Audio API (and other APIs).

I don't know if it is worth updating the requirement doc now.

Stefan

On 14/06/17 20:37, Cullen Jennings (fluffy) wrote:
>
>> On Jun 7, 2017, at 7:53 AM, Randell Jesup <randell-ietf@jesup.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> A1              The web API must provide means for the
>>>
>>> application to ask the browser for permission
>>>
>>> to use cameras and microphones as input devices
>>>
>>> and to have access to the local file system.
>>>
>>> Just a question about this requirement: why does the application
>>> need access to the file system? Am I misinterpreting this?
>>
>> Not sure where this came from... archaeology on the archives?
>
> The discussion at the time was a privacy consideration. The idea was
> that if the JS asked for a camera, the browser could allow the user
> to instead provide video from a pre recorded file on disk instead of
> a real camera. The JS would not be able to tell that the media was
> coming from the file and not form the camera.
>
> As time went on, the thinking that this was needed or even possible
> seem to sort of disappear. I can't see any reason a browser could not
> do this if they wanted to.
>
> I would propose we amend that to just remove the "  and to have
> access to the local file system."
>
>
>
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 14 June 2017 19:18:57 UTC