W3C Erects DRM As Web Standard (theregister.co.uk)

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has formally put forward highly controversial digital rights management as a new web standard. "Dubbed Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), this anti-piracy mechanism was crafted by engineers from Google, Microsoft, and Netflix, and has been in development for some time," reports The Register. "The DRM is supposed to thwart copyright infringement by stopping people from ripping video and other content from encrypted high-quality streams." From the report: The latest draft was published last week and formally put forward as a proposed standard soon after. Under W3C rules, a decision over whether to officially adopt EME will depend on a poll of its members. That survey was sent out yesterday and member organizations, who pay an annual fee that varies from $2,250 for the smallest non-profits to $77,000 for larger corporations, will have until April 19 to register their opinions. If EME gets the consortium's rubber stamp of approval, it will lock down the standard for web browsers and video streamers to implement and roll out. The proposed standard is expected to succeed, especially after web founder and W3C director Sir Tim Berners-Lee personally endorsed the measure, arguing that the standard simply reflects modern realities and would allow for greater interoperability and improve online privacy. But EME still faces considerable opposition. One of its most persistent vocal opponents, Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argues that EME "would give corporations the new right to sue people who engaged in legal activity." He is referring to the most recent controversy where the W3C has tried to strike a balance between legitimate security researchers investigating vulnerabilities in digital rights management software, and hackers trying to circumvent content protection. The W3C notes that the EME specification includes sections on security and privacy, but concedes "the lack of consensus to protect security researchers remains an issue." Its proposed solution remains "establishing best practices for responsible vulnerability disclosure." It also notes that issues of accessibility were ruled to be outside the scope of the EME, although there is an entire webpage dedicated to those issues and finding solutions to them.

Comments

Alternative Choices

[aprentic]

Are there vendors, browsers or developers who have committed to not adopt this standard?

Re:Digital Rights?

[hairyfeet]

And normal Joe's call it "bullshit that pisses ya off and sends you straight to TPB" ala the classic oatmeal strip.

AAMOF the ONLY DRM I've seen that doesn't piss people off and actually gets shit right? Steam. It has offline mode so you can still play your games if your connection goes tits up, and the platform actually does things FOR the consumer instead of simply being a tool for big corps to use against the user. It keeps all your games updated, gives creators of games an easy way to support modders and an easy way for players to use mods with Steam workshop, gives you chat,hassle free matchmaking, its convenient as hell which is what the media companies never seem to grasp, people want CONVENIENCE.

But instead the big corps will shit all over it in their endless greed and fuck it up, they always do. Hell we have a perfect example with MSFT and PlaysForSure. They had a great ecosystem with tons of shops you could buy and rent from, devices at every price point from sub $10 to over $400 that worked with it, both major and minor players supporting it....then MSFT got fucking greedy and killed it for their shitty iPod clone and in less than 2 years completely wiped out every inch they had gained in the market and had nothing to show for it besides a warehouse full of shit brown Zunes.

So don't worry fellow geeks, they will shit all over this thing as they always do. they will have the content split among a dozen different places, half of which won't play nice with the other half and ALL charging too much, it won't work worth a piss with any mobile that is older than 5 minutes ago, and it'll go the way of SecuROM and RMA files because if its one thing we've seen is true of big media? Its owned by a bunch of old farts that have ZERO clue what the consumers want.

Re:Not in this case

[Joce640k]

In this case, because of the method of application, this DRM is bad.

It hijacks YOUR computer because THEY want to control what you do with "their" data.

You're free to not transmit their data to your PC.

The only time DRM is bad is when it prevents you from doing things like listen to one of your CDs in your car, from making backup copies of delicate media for your kids to use, etc.

These days it's all electronic and modern cars have interfaces for mobile phones so these arguments are disappearing. If you choose to steal, that's your choice. Be a grown-up and admit that that's what you're doing though. Don't try to justify it because of the ev1L DRMs.