[duncan_bayne]

Because those purists - and I'm one - care very deeply about the principles of the Open Web, the very principles that are touted on the W3C website itself.

The fundamental issue is this: up until now, anyone with the will to do so and a general purpose computer could build a browser that could display all the content on a W3C-standards-compliant website.

If EME + CDM are endorsed, then that will no longer be true. The Open Web will be a thing of the past.

That is why we're trying to prevent this from going forward in its current form.

[mcot2]

I don't even understand what the term "Open Web" even means. I don't see how driving video on the web away from flash and onto a standardized system is against the principals of openness, even if DRM is a requirement for content creators.

[duncan_bayne]

Because it's not standardised! Only the interop between the browser and CDM is standardised - the CDM itself is a closed-source, proprietary blob like Flash or Silverlight.

[makomk]

Actually, it's worse than that. The interop between the browser and CDM isn't standardised at all. The only thing this standardises is the browser API that websites should use to request that the browser communicate with the CDM on their behalf.

The interface between the browser and the CDM is proprietary and unspecified, so browser vendors and CDM providers have to negotiate that themselves. The format of the encrypted binary messages passed to the Javascript API is proprietary and unspecified. The API used to communicate with the license server is also proprietary and unspecified, so it doesn't even provide much interop from the media provider perspective - they still have to write a whole bunch of DRM-provider-specific code for every DRM scheme, and it looks like every browser vendor will have their own one.

Basically, it standardises just enough to give media providers the ability to claim they're using pure HTML5, without offering any more interoperability than if every browser vendor just had their own proprietary HTML5 extension for DRM. It's a PR stunt rather than a meaningful attempt at interoperability.

[watwut]

What is exact benefit of driving web away flash? It would make sense if the alternative would be open, but it is not.