W3C Declares DRM In-Scope For HTML

FredAndrews writes "The W3C has ruled DRM in-scope for their HTML standard. A lot of big businesses have supported advancing the Encrypted Media Extension, including Google, Microsoft, and Netfix. The BBC calls for a solution with legal sanctions. The EME could well be used to implement a DRM HTML engine. A DRM-enabled web would break a long tradition of the web browser being the User's Agent, and would restrict user choice and control over their security and privacy. There are other applications that can serve the purpose of viewing DRM video content, and I appeal to people to not taint the web standards with DRM but to please use other applications when necessary." Looks like the web is becoming more like Xanadu, but not in a good way.

Comments

Re:BBC not calling for legal sanctions

[OzPeter]

In other words there should be a "copyright" field in the metadata, so there is no doubt about it.

Ah .. so they finally want to implement the (almost) ten year old RFC 3514 IPv4 header!

HTMLMediaElement is ALREADY part of HTML

[AwaxSlashdot]

The proposal is to extend HTMLMediaElement (which is an ALREADY existing part of HTML) so it supports DRM in a standard way.
HTMLMediaElement is a specific DOM element that correspond to media elements (audio, video) and extends the standard element with media specific features: play, pause, length, volume, etc ...

The proposal is to recognize that DRMs are an widespread feature used in conjunction with media elements. As such, it is worth standardizing.

If the DOM accepts having play/pause features on a media element, it could also support DRM methods on a specialization of this element.

As you said, the implementation and enforcement of DRM is EXTERNAL to the DOM/HTML. Have you read the proposal ? I guess you didn't because the ONLY thing this proposal adds is a bunch of events and methods to allow javascript to provide the key to decrypt an encrypted flow.