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They're going to have to create ways to play their media on Linux, with the growing popularity of the OS for appliances such as living room video players and pr

They're going to have to create ways to play their media on Linux, with the growing popularity of the OS for appliances such as living room video players and products like the Steam Machine.

duncan_bayne 13y ago
Playing on Linux is not the issue. The issue is that EME + CDM introduces an 'Open Web' standard that cannot in fact be implemented by anyone who chooses. Say the W3C decided to add a new tag to HTML, called '<happy>', that displays a smiling face. Anyone who wishes (Firefox, Mozilla, you, me) could implement that feature and start properly displaying content that contains <happy> tags. This is not true of encrypted content that requires a proprietary, closed-source CDM and / or a secret key to operate. That is why EME should be rejected by the W3C. Lack of Linux support is a consequence of the problem, not the problem itself.
- gbhn 13y ago
  How about the embed tag? What big differences do you see between implementing EME vs the embed tag?
  - Rizz 13y ago
    One difference is that with embed you can still support most existing platforms by implementing NSAPI.
    - gbhn 13y ago
      My reading is that ESE is intended to work in much the same way -- the main work is done by the Content Decryption Module, which is more plugin-like. And indeed, the way existing DRM-using systems work in the browser is with the embed tag. The spec says "The Content Decryption Module (CDM) is a generic term for a part of or add-on to the user agent that provides functionality for one or more Key Systems."
wmf 13y ago
What they'll do is created CDMs that work on restricted subsets of Linux (Android and ChromeOS already support DRM and many media player devices have Linux buried inside) and tell you that if you want "Linux" you can use the supported subset (which is totally Tivoized so it's no more open than Windows).
betterunix 13y ago
Netflix already works on Linux: Android devices. What, you were talking about GNU/Linux? See, that is not going to happen. Instead, you'll see the Linux kernel, some GPLv2 userspace, and a hardware-enforced lockdown that renders the GPL useless. There will be jailbreaks but only a minority of people will even be aware of them, let alone care enough to actually make use of then.
- duncan_bayne 13y ago
  Which is why it's so important that the W3C doesn't endorse this technology. It's not, in itself, the fact that it's incompatible with GPL3 etc. It's that for the first time in the history of the Open Web, the Open Web will not be implementable by anyone with a general purpose computer. That is the problem here.
  - hsivonen 13y ago
    You seem to think that "the Open Web" doesn't mean the part of the Web that's freely implementable but the part of the Web that uses W3C-specified tech. What makes you think that? Wouldn't it be more logical to say something like, for the first time in the history of the W3C, the W3C publishes a non-Open Web spec? Or something like that.

They're going to have to create ways to play their media on Linux, with the growing popularity of the OS for appliances such as living room video players and products like the Steam Machine.

duncan_bayne 13y ago

Playing on Linux is not the issue. The issue is that EME + CDM introduces an 'Open Web' standard that cannot in fact be implemented by anyone who chooses. Say the W3C decided to add a new tag to HTML, called '<happy>', that displays a smiling face. Anyone who wishes (Firefox, Mozilla, you, me) could implement that feature and start properly displaying content that contains <happy> tags. This is not true of encrypted content that requires a proprietary, closed-source CDM and / or a secret key to operate. That is why EME should be rejected by the W3C. Lack of Linux support is a consequence of the problem, not the problem itself.

gbhn 13y ago
How about the embed tag? What big differences do you see between implementing EME vs the embed tag?
- Rizz 13y ago
  One difference is that with embed you can still support most existing platforms by implementing NSAPI.
  - gbhn 13y ago
    My reading is that ESE is intended to work in much the same way -- the main work is done by the Content Decryption Module, which is more plugin-like. And indeed, the way existing DRM-using systems work in the browser is with the embed tag. The spec says "The Content Decryption Module (CDM) is a generic term for a part of or add-on to the user agent that provides functionality for one or more Key Systems."

wmf 13y ago

What they'll do is created CDMs that work on restricted subsets of Linux (Android and ChromeOS already support DRM and many media player devices have Linux buried inside) and tell you that if you want "Linux" you can use the supported subset (which is totally Tivoized so it's no more open than Windows).

betterunix 13y ago

Netflix already works on Linux: Android devices. What, you were talking about GNU/Linux? See, that is not going to happen. Instead, you'll see the Linux kernel, some GPLv2 userspace, and a hardware-enforced lockdown that renders the GPL useless. There will be jailbreaks but only a minority of people will even be aware of them, let alone care enough to actually make use of then.

duncan_bayne 13y ago
Which is why it's so important that the W3C doesn't endorse this technology. It's not, in itself, the fact that it's incompatible with GPL3 etc. It's that for the first time in the history of the Open Web, the Open Web will not be implementable by anyone with a general purpose computer. That is the problem here.
- hsivonen 13y ago
  You seem to think that "the Open Web" doesn't mean the part of the Web that's freely implementable but the part of the Web that uses W3C-specified tech. What makes you think that? Wouldn't it be more logical to say something like, for the first time in the history of the W3C, the W3C publishes a non-Open Web spec? Or something like that.