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by jacobquick 4629 days ago
"Some arguments for inclusion take this form: if content protection of some kind has to be used for videos, it is better for it to be discussed in the open at W3C, better for everyone to use an interoperable open standard as much as possible, and better for it to be framed in a browser which can be open source, and available on a general purpose computer rather than a special purpose box. Those are key arguments for the decision that this topic is in scope."

This is ridiculous. The W3C should continue to refuse supporting DRM of any kind in order to keep the adoption of these technologies as difficult as possible. Yes a company like Netflix can just make a plugin for an existing browser to chat with an app they install on your desktop/tablet/whatever. Let them do that and convince their users that they should install their software and why - leave the rest of us out of it.

1 comments

Exactly. DRM should die out as a trend. It's never needed for any valid business reasons. W3C instead of refusing, helps prolonging this sickness.
I actually think that EME in HTML -- by narrowing the scope of the DRM part -- encourages what further use of DRM there is to be done in way which minimizes the cost of transitioning too a fully-open format (since it facilitates a model where the only non-standard piece is the DRM handling, as opposed to DRM being the lever to get high-value content into proprietary platforms.)
It really doesn't matter how standard DRM is. Who cares really if we want to get rid of it? The harder it is (making DRM for publishers and distributors), the better it is for users, since it will give more incentives to stop using it sooner. Making DRM harder to spread should be the goal, not making it easier in any way.