FSFLA/ blogs/ lxo/ 2013-05-10-EME-DRM-W3C.en

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I've just posted this comment to the W3C blog post that tries to justify the EME proposal to introduce yet another mechanism for secret, proprietary DRM plugins to be (ab)used by the publishing industry.

Jeff,

Did you guys even ask whether the publishers pushing for this proposal are willing to make their movies, songs and whatnot available in the Open Web? I.e., in publicly documented and unencumbered formats that anyone can implement and release under any terms she likes, so that anyone who gets to any such implementation can use it to obtain the decoding keys (after paying for them, if the publisher puts a price tag on it) and then enjoy the movie, song and whatnot?

If you can't get commitment from the publishers pushing for this proposal to the effect that any movies, songs and whatnot they choose to publish on the web are published in the Open Web, then you're just wasting your time, ours and theirs: an intermediate layer such as EME just shifts the DRM plugins from one secret and encumbered format to another, without bringing them any closer to an Open Web.

If they then push back because people will be allowed to change the software so that it deviates from the spec in ways that bypass the restrictions they want to impose, you'll see they don't want anything to do with the Open Web, and that the notion of DRM in software that users can modify to disable the restrictions is of no interest to them (assuming you ddn't already know that).

However, if you can get such a commitment from them, you might as well skip EME or any such intermediate layer, and proceed to work on the specification that belongs in the Open Web and that they committed themselves to using, for this publicly documented and unencumbered format that anyone can implement and release under any terms she likes, to enable anyone who gets to such an implementation to use it to obtain the decoding keys and then enjoy the movie, song and whatnot.

Either way, EME is a waste of time. Don't do this to the W3. Don't do this to us.

So blong...