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HTML has always been an open standard. Every part has been open. Just by reading the spec, you could implement a fully functional web-browser. There were no sec

HTML has always been an open standard. Every part has been open. Just by reading the spec, you could implement a fully functional web-browser. There were no secrets bits or black boxes. So people went ahead did just that. They made new and exciting web-browsers, with new and novel features, on lots and lots of platforms. And that's why the web was a success: It was open to use by people. It was open for new clients. Nothing was locked down. With DRM in the HTML spec comes a big, black box: You can no longer implement a fully compliant web browser from the spec alone. You'll need closed-source blobs from DRM vendors, if they are willing to provide them to you, and if they bother about compatibility with your browser, your OS, not to mention your HW architecture. The web used to be 100% open and 100% cross-platform. The single move of adding DRM instead makes it a platform which now will only be 100% "compliant" in browsers blessed by DRM vendors, on OSes blessed by DRM vendors, on HW architectures which the DRM-vendors has bothered to implement DRM for. It's a complete turn-around. A 100% FOSS web-browser can no longer be made. It basically has put the 3 top DRM-vendors (Apple, Google, MS) in 100% control of which people, and on which operating systems, can get to have a full web experience. I guess I don't need to argue why this is bad. You can take it from here, right?

floatboth 10y ago
No. No one is required to ship a DRM module. You don't need a DRM module if you don't want to watch Netflix. The spec defines a standard interface to these modules. This is not worse than NPAPI.
- alexvoda 10y ago
  From a technical and standards point of view, indeed it's not worse than NPAPI.You could argue that without Flash and other plugins you could not get the full web experience in the past. And therefore, in terms of browsers, OS's and HW platforms were at the mercy of Adobe, Microsoft, etc. . But as I argued in my other response, EMEs are worse because they send the wrong message about DRM.

floatboth 10y ago

No. No one is required to ship a DRM module. You don't need a DRM module if you don't want to watch Netflix. The spec defines a standard interface to these modules. This is not worse than NPAPI.

alexvoda 10y ago
From a technical and standards point of view, indeed it's not worse than NPAPI.You could argue that without Flash and other plugins you could not get the full web experience in the past. And therefore, in terms of browsers, OS's and HW platforms were at the mercy of Adobe, Microsoft, etc. . But as I argued in my other response, EMEs are worse because they send the wrong message about DRM.