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Ultimately, the actual standard of the web is the behavior implemented by major browser vendors. Assuming the W3C committee voted down the EME standard, at thi

Ultimately, the actual standard of the web is the behavior implemented by major browser vendors. Assuming the W3C committee voted down the EME standard, at this late point in the game and with no competing standard to satisfy the use case, what stops Google, Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft from just implementing the standard as-drafted without the W3C's sign-off? At that point, the browsers will be enabling functionality that browsers that don't implement EME support can't enable, media channels can take advantage of EME-supported encryption modules, users will see less functionality in other browsers and therefore have soft incentive to migrate away from other browsers, and it becomes incumbent upon the W3C to either release documentation describing already-existing browser functionality (as they've so often had to do) or be ever-so-slightly inaccurate as an authoritative source for describing web standards.

asadotzler 9y ago
Nothing stops them, and in fact each of the major browsers have already implemented EME.
- kibwen 9y ago
  Chrome has been using EME with Netflix since early 2013. This fight was lost years ago.
  - bad_user 9y ago
    The point of web standards isn't to stop browsers from implementing anything else. Such a viewpoint is naive, that's not what W3C is. Back when IExplorer had a 90% market share, you could have argued that ActiveX needs to be a web standard. But it wasn't considered a standard even if it was a de facto one and now ActiveX is gone. I must be getting old if I'm talking with people that don't remember the browser wars or what web standards are about.
    - epistasis 9y ago
      I've been around since the browser wars, and disagree with your characterization here. Standards don't serve marketshare, they are about interoperability and documentation. A single user-agent technology shouldn't be standardized because that user agent has large marketshare. A tech should be standardized because multiple user agents want to use it, and be interoperable. The ActiveX comparison doesn't make much sense to me.
      - bad_user 9y ago
        "User agents" serve the market. The market wanted ActiveX. There were many companies and government institutions requiring ActiveX for their interfaces. Mozilla could have implemented ActiveX btw, but they took a stand against it. So by your definition, what does "many" mean? Is it more than one? More than two perhaps? Should it be all of them? What if I create a browser and announce that it will not support DRM. If market share isn't important, shouldn't this proposal be dropped? Yes, web standards are about interoperability, but the problem is that DRM being fundamentally broken it means that open source browsers running on open platforms won't be able to "interoperate", which in my book means that this can't be a standard.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        epistasis 9y ago
        I had a long reply, but when I went back and read your original comment, I realized I was just restating a portion of your original comment but with far more words. So I think I'm being unnecessarily contentious. Standards serve the purpose of when user agents want to interoperate, so Mozilla was definitely ok with not implementing ActiveX, just as they would be ok with not implementing EME. But if Chrome and Safari and Edge all want to interoperate with EME, they're going to do that. Whether it's a W3C standard or a WHATWG standard, or an RFC, or a IHateFreeSoftworeSociety standard doesn't really matter. It's just whether W3C wants to be part of the conversation or not. I see little benefit and little downside to having it be a W3C standard vs. anything else. Or even for that matter, whether the term "standard" is used; even if it's somehow disallowed it's still the same situation.
  - agildehaus 9y ago
    And yet, because it's not "integrated with the operating system", Netflix content providers do not trust Chrome's implementation and thus Chrome users are intentionally given lower-quality video.

asadotzler 9y ago

Nothing stops them, and in fact each of the major browsers have already implemented EME.

kibwen 9y ago
Chrome has been using EME with Netflix since early 2013. This fight was lost years ago.
- bad_user 9y ago
  The point of web standards isn't to stop browsers from implementing anything else. Such a viewpoint is naive, that's not what W3C is. Back when IExplorer had a 90% market share, you could have argued that ActiveX needs to be a web standard. But it wasn't considered a standard even if it was a de facto one and now ActiveX is gone. I must be getting old if I'm talking with people that don't remember the browser wars or what web standards are about.
  - epistasis 9y ago
    I've been around since the browser wars, and disagree with your characterization here. Standards don't serve marketshare, they are about interoperability and documentation. A single user-agent technology shouldn't be standardized because that user agent has large marketshare. A tech should be standardized because multiple user agents want to use it, and be interoperable. The ActiveX comparison doesn't make much sense to me.
    - bad_user 9y ago
      "User agents" serve the market. The market wanted ActiveX. There were many companies and government institutions requiring ActiveX for their interfaces. Mozilla could have implemented ActiveX btw, but they took a stand against it. So by your definition, what does "many" mean? Is it more than one? More than two perhaps? Should it be all of them? What if I create a browser and announce that it will not support DRM. If market share isn't important, shouldn't this proposal be dropped? Yes, web standards are about interoperability, but the problem is that DRM being fundamentally broken it means that open source browsers running on open platforms won't be able to "interoperate", which in my book means that this can't be a standard.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - epistasis 9y ago
        I had a long reply, but when I went back and read your original comment, I realized I was just restating a portion of your original comment but with far more words. So I think I'm being unnecessarily contentious. Standards serve the purpose of when user agents want to interoperate, so Mozilla was definitely ok with not implementing ActiveX, just as they would be ok with not implementing EME. But if Chrome and Safari and Edge all want to interoperate with EME, they're going to do that. Whether it's a W3C standard or a WHATWG standard, or an RFC, or a IHateFreeSoftworeSociety standard doesn't really matter. It's just whether W3C wants to be part of the conversation or not. I see little benefit and little downside to having it be a W3C standard vs. anything else. Or even for that matter, whether the term "standard" is used; even if it's somehow disallowed it's still the same situation.
- agildehaus 9y ago
  And yet, because it's not "integrated with the operating system", Netflix content providers do not trust Chrome's implementation and thus Chrome users are intentionally given lower-quality video.