Slashdot Mirror
Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Approve Work On DRM For HTML 5.1
An anonymous reader writes "Danny O'Brien from the EFF has a weblog post about how the Encrypted Media Extension (EME) proposal will continue to be part of HTML Work Group's bailiwick and may make it into a future HTML revision." From O'Brien's post: "A Web where you cannot cut and paste text; where your browser can't 'Save As...' an image; where the 'allowed' uses of saved files are monitored beyond the browser; where JavaScript is sealed away in opaque tombs; and maybe even where we can no longer effectively 'View Source' on some sites, is a very different Web from the one we have today. It's a Web where user agents—browsers—must navigate a nest of enforced duties every time they visit a page. It's a place where the next Tim Berners-Lee or Mozilla, if they were building a new browser from scratch, couldn't just look up the details of all the 'Web' technologies. They'd have to negotiate and sign compliance agreements with a raft of DRM providers just to be fully standards-compliant and interoperable."
So fucking sad
The DRM implementation basically allows for binary opaque blobs to be part of the browser. These likely would be separate files bundled with installs, and not in the source. Those may be reverse engineered and replaced with FOSS variants, but that will take time and pain.
Huh? EME is already supported in the shipping versions of Chrome and IE, with Safari coming soon, and is already in use in the real world by Netflix to deliver video to users of IE and ChromeOS. Firefox is the only major browser to have not implemented or begun implementing support for it, and with every other major browser supporting it, all that will accomplish is to marginalize Firefox amongst the average user. To them, the problem will be manifested as "Netflix doesn't work in Firefox".
Breaking content in a standard way, which can then be unbroken in a standard way (likely to be cross platform and supported by your browser); as opposed to only being unbroken by a dodgy Windows-only rootkit supplied by the content distributor.
Please go back and look at the standard. The "standard way" you talk about is merely a standard API to a non standard blob of binary crap. It will still require the windows only rootkit to decode.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That sounds good to me.
That's because you misunderstand the proposed standard.
The standard is a standardised API to an external encryption plugin. All this means is that it is marginally easier to communicate with the plugin, though clearly it isn't much of a problem at the moment with flash anyhow.
It will still require a binary plugin to actually do the decryption, just like flash.
How many of your devices have flash?
Do you think $RANDOM_EME_PLUGIN will work on your Windows PC (of course!). Your Windows phone (uh...?) your Mac (perhaps...) your older Mac (probably not) your brand new Andriod phone (could do), your older Android phone (doubtful), your Atom android phone (really unlikely), your Blackberry (ha!), iOS devices (crapshoot), your TV with a built in web browser (not a damn chance).
If you think "just like the bad old days where you had to worry about who Adobe was supporting today with flash except now any monkey thinks they can make a binary DRM plugin because it's standard" sounds like a good thing, then you have a very different definition of "good thing" to me.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Except this change still doesn't describe what the big players are doing. All it does is standardize a call to DRM binaries without any standardization of what those binaries do. It in no way describes what the big players are doing in these binaries, meaning we are still going to be left downloading closed proprietary plugins that are only available for supported platforms. Since one of the main goals of HTML5 was to get rid of the plugin mess that was necessary to play media on the web, this is a backwards step that solves nothing.
Tell me something - is it better to download an app to do stuff, or to do it via the web browser? You know, like how on iOS and all that, you see sites saying "Use our mobile app!"?
Because really, that's what's happening. Now, it will be either Netflix able to deliver movies via a web browser with EME, or they'll just develop an app to do it (considering they have apps elsewhere, what's another one?).
Or the ultimate app that's on the web - iTunes, where clicking a link launches it. (I've always wondered how to use iTunes Preview - I mean the damned thing always launches iTunes instead - how does anyone actually index it?).
The web will merely end up being a collection of links that spawn various apps - your online banking will no longer be done on a website, but you click it and do it via the bank's app. YouTube may hang around but may launch a YouTube app, etc.
On mobile devices, installing new apps is relatively easy, and I expect similarly low integration hassles for Windows and OS X using their respective stores. Linux can use Steam (the ORIGINAL App Store).
About the only sites left would be shopping sites, only because they need a very low-effort mechanism to sell stuff. But once they sell you a video or movie, well, click to launch the Amazon app to watch and listen to your new content.