- From: Philippe Le Hegaret <plh@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 16:57:44 -0400
- To: "Henry S. Thompson" <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org
Hi Henry, thank you (and the TAG) for trying to understand the set of issues around EME. One clarification that I'd like to make regarding your background information however: [[ Ignoring (3) above for the moment, the prospective situation seems, as Triplett [3] points out, to be broadly comparable to what we already have with respect to the <object> tag and e.g. Flash or Quicktime: videos embedded in <object> tags with the relevant Adobe/Macromedia/Apple classids historically could only be played using proprietary, non-open-source plugins. As I understand it, Tim's argument (and that of other W3C staff, including CEO Jeff Jaffe) depend essentially on that parallel. They amount to saying "We're just giving you the EME" (|| "we're just giving you the object tag"), "if content owners use that functionality to deliver (protected) content and users install the necessary CDM (|| proprietary plugins) to view it, that's a matter between consenting adults and part of the Open Web". ]] I do not believe that Tim or Jeff tried to draw a parallel with the object tag in their respective blogs. Certainly there is a desire to reduce the proprietary footprint in the Web stack and there is an open question of whether or not EME helps enough, but neither Tim nor Jeff have stated support for EME itself as a solution so far. The only support that has been stated was for having work on content protection in scope, as a consequence of the use case for premium content. And, by content protection, it was never meant to reduce it to a mechanism that would rely on a CDM. The use of "content protection" is meant to be general and not force a technical approach. Effectively, EME adopts one approach that will make use of CDMs but I'd like to reemphasize the fact that EME has not been endorsed by Tim or Jeff. I do realize that, since the HTML working group is working on EME, many people believe that the W3C Director will endorse EME at the end but the option not to endorse is still on the table. EME itself contains a list of issues in its status and we're still interested in understanding the pros and the cons. The discussion within the TAG can certainly help. Philippe
Received on Thursday, 24 October 2013 20:57:55 UTC