Defend the Open Web: Keep DRM Out of W3C Standards

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 20, 2013 @04:39PM from the power-to-the-people dept.

jrepin writes "There's a new front in the battle against digital restrictions management (DRM)technologies. These technologies, which supposedly exist to enforce copyright, have never done anything to get creative people paid. Instead, by design or by accident, their real effect is to interfere with innovation, fair use, competition, interoperability, and our right to own things. That's why we were appalled to learn that there is a proposal currently before the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML5 Working Group to build DRM into the next generation of core Web standards. The proposal is called Encrypted Media Extensions, or EME. Its adoption would be a calamitous development, and must be stopped."

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Oh, the horror! by node+3 · 2013-03-20 17:14 · Score: 0, Troll

Yeah, it would allow people to view sites like Netflix and Hulu without a plugin. Oh, the horror!
Here's the thing. DRM exists. It's not going to go away because a bunch of reactionaries leave it out of some web standard. That's because it already doesn't exist in that web standard! And DRM is doing quite fine without it.
What this will do, instead, is hasten the demise of Flash and Silverlight. Video that is currently DRM'd will now be available without a plugin, right from the browser. This gives the consumer more choice.
What it will not do is all of a sudden turn every web video into a DRM'd stream. It means more video, not less.