[pgeorgi]

We can only watch the streaming video if the DRM provider wants to provide a plugin (following the EME spec) for your platform.

That will make Firefox on Haiku less functional than Firefox on Windows. (and if the plugin were able to run everywhere, it would be trivial to work around: Just run on a system without a protected AV path)

[lucid00]

But if content providers refuse to not use DRM anyways, won't Haiku users still lose out regardless?

If you can't use HTML5 DRM with Netflix your other options are either Silver light or a native app and Haiku has neither.

I'd say HTML5 DRM is the far lesser evil in this case.

[pgeorgi]

They're all equally evil, since they're all equally useless on non-Win/OSX platforms (which are the only ones providing a reliable protected AV path), and since they're all very similar in that they need a plugin.

IMHO If anything EME is more evil than the other options in that it standardizes (and this way implicitely mandates) a special plugin interface for DRM purposes only.

Users still have to install plugins, and now browser vendors get the blame if things fail (since the user will be hard pressed to identify plugin issues in "that website doesn't work").

I fail to see where it's the W3C's, browser vendors' or web users' responsibility to make the DRM vendors' lifes easier. And that's all EME does.

[ProNoob13]

Good point. On the other hand, DRM will come to HTML5 anyway, whatever we try. So, I think it's better to give it a spec, and have one, unified and well-known way for the DRM to operate, instead of 20 different implementations.

[pgeorgi]

Specs are supposed to make things simple. I'd rather have DRM vendors struggle with the problem individually at every step (and that includes browser integration)

For one, because they'll fail in the most hilarious ways (and each one separately), so there will be backdoors, or at least a good laugh or two. But also because it drives up the cost of DRM, hopefully making it less attractive.

Should DRM manage to get hold even despite such problems and Amazon notices that they can reduce the price of their media package by 1$/month if they drop the DRM, the resulting massacre will be great to watch.

[josteink]

I'd say HTML5 DRM is the far lesser evil in this case.

Completely disagree. HTML5 DRM is non-interoptable but disguised as interoptable through its HTML form. That makes it much, much worse.

[acdha]

You have fundamentally misunderstood the proposal: it standardizes only the interface. It promises nothing about forcing interoperability — only a focused, more secure replacement for NPAPI.

[aaronem]

It's not entirely reasonable to expect everything to work identically well when you're comparing the most widely installed client OS on the planet with something even most developers on niche-of-a-niche toy OS projects probably haven't heard of.

[pgeorgi]

I was considering replacing Haiku with Linux, which will face the same issues.