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."

Comments

Say it ain't so!

[mark6509]

Please tell me that Tim Berners-Lee is only declaring it as in-scope so that it doesn't get worked on by some other group, so it can be killed as it should be.

Re:Open source browsers?

[ralphaostrander]

I want an internet for me not them, If they dont like it here dont come. live by the open rules or stay home. I am happy with that. The net was here and was better before it became a giant for sale god damn sign.

Re:Open source browsers?

[NickFortune]

If it's so laughable, then isn't it better to just have it?

Well, the security aspects are laughable. The potential legal follow ons are not. For instance, the next logical step is to insist on digitally signed browsers and declare non-complying browsers illegal as "circumvention tools" under the DMCA or somesuch. You might not be able to detect hack browsers, but you could sure as hell sue anyone distributing binaries or patches. You might have a hard time claiming non-infringing uses as well.

That would pretty much make any new browser impossible to distribute, and potentially puts enough regulatory red-tape on people like mozilla that they'd have difficulty continuing in their current open source form.

Then there's the possibility to pressure ISPs to only allow encrypted content (call it an anti-terrorism measure - that works for most things) and eventually to start chaging for access on a per web-page basis for all content.

From the point of view of some media and content cartels, that's a very desirable outcome. The genie would be back in the bottle.

On the other hand, if we don't have EME then the problems don't arise, so on balance I'd say better not to have it.

So instead of a world where content owners won't publish jack on HTML5

I don't see why that's a problem. There are DRM formats that work with PDFs so it's not as if your content dudes can't publish under DRM. They just can't try and make it apply to the whole web. Nothing of value is being lost here.

you get a world where content owners would and you can somehow mine the keys

Mine the keys illegally I think you mean. Possibly with disproportionate penalties as used by the recording industry in their anti p2p lawsuits.

Let's just not go there. Less effort + less risk == Win