3 ms·

> Personally I am disgusted that this standard is being promoted by the W3C and Tim Berners-Fucking-Lee. The browser vendors are perfectly capable of building (

> Personally I am disgusted that this standard is being promoted by the W3C and Tim Berners-Fucking-Lee. The browser vendors are perfectly capable of building (and even standardizing) this tech by themselves. I don't understand these two sentences in conjunction, which is most of why I don't understand all the complaining about this issue. If, as almost everyone admits, the browser vendors are going to ship DRM-enabled playback one way or the other, what difference does it make whether it's in the official spec? The HTML5 spec is just a piece of paper that exists to make web developers' lives easier. I don't understand the need to assign attributes like "purity" to it, especially when (as you yourself said), whether or not the DRM is in the spec changes nothing on the ground.

evv 9y ago
As I understand, EME is the only w3c recommendation that forces web browsers to run proprietary black-box code. I am a proponent of the open web, so I view this standard as a big step in the wrong direction.
- metajack 9y ago
  Nothing forces web browsers to run any code except perhaps market pressures. Keeping EME out of the standard would have sent a political message, but since everyone is already shipping it, kind of a useless one. I am sad too. Perhaps there was a window of time when we could have gotten rid of NPAPI plugins and not added DRM to implementations and forced media companies to come along. That didn't happen though.
chii 9y ago
> whether or not the DRM is in the spec changes nothing on the ground. no, having a sanctioned DRM mechanism in an open standard means DRM is being normalized (and by extension, acceptable). The fact that DRM already exists as plugins isn't the point - but making DRM part of the web standard gives free reign for the pro-DRM camp that it's acceptable, or even desirable! The only acceptable standard is one where the user benefits. I don't see how a user can benefit from DRM, except that this standard makes DRM less difficult to swallow for an end user (who, let's face it, don't give a shit about DRM). The added convenience of standardization means we can never get to a place where DRM-free content is the majority/norm.

evv 9y ago

As I understand, EME is the only w3c recommendation that forces web browsers to run proprietary black-box code. I am a proponent of the open web, so I view this standard as a big step in the wrong direction.

metajack 9y ago
Nothing forces web browsers to run any code except perhaps market pressures. Keeping EME out of the standard would have sent a political message, but since everyone is already shipping it, kind of a useless one. I am sad too. Perhaps there was a window of time when we could have gotten rid of NPAPI plugins and not added DRM to implementations and forced media companies to come along. That didn't happen though.

chii 9y ago

> whether or not the DRM is in the spec changes nothing on the ground. no, having a sanctioned DRM mechanism in an open standard means DRM is being normalized (and by extension, acceptable). The fact that DRM already exists as plugins isn't the point - but making DRM part of the web standard gives free reign for the pro-DRM camp that it's acceptable, or even desirable! The only acceptable standard is one where the user benefits. I don't see how a user can benefit from DRM, except that this standard makes DRM less difficult to swallow for an end user (who, let's face it, don't give a shit about DRM). The added convenience of standardization means we can never get to a place where DRM-free content is the majority/norm.