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To be honest the W3C was between a rock and hard place here as all the other alternatives on the table were worse than this. If they had dug in we would have e

To be honest the W3C was between a rock and hard place here as all the other alternatives on the table were worse than this. If they had dug in we would have ended up with 2-3 proprietary DRM standards across the browsers or Flash would have lived on. Both are worse outcomes. As for "the open web", nothing changes. Content that was DRM free will continue to be DRM free, content that wasn't DRM free will still remain DRM. If anything we are slightly better off as one more proprietary has bitten the dust. As with a lot of things, the next steps aren't technical. Organizations like the EFF should be working with content providers to educate them on the benefits of being DRM free. A much harder task than firing off press releases.

GhotiFish 12y ago
> If they had dug in we would have ended up with 2-3 proprietary DRM standards across the browsers or Flash would have lived on. Both are worse outcomes. You're wrong about this. That is an excellent outcome. Large companies want the universal application that free software enjoys, but with none of the respect for the users it requires. I have absolutely no problem with companies having huge problems locking users in. If we had 2 or 3 proprietary standards to implement DRM that things worse for users, that's a good thing. "Why is this so hard to do?" The answer should be: "We refuse to make such abhorrent behavior easy", rather than: "It's not" Making it easy for vendors to dick users over is a bad thing. Making DRM easy to deploy damages the open web in a very bad way.