5by5 | The Web Ahead #73: DRM with Jeremy Keith and Doug Schepers on Huffduffer
Here’s the chat I had with Jen and Doug about the prospect of DRM in browsers.
On EME in HTML5 | W3C Blog
Much as I respect Tim Berners-Lee, his logic here is completely flawed. First of all, treating DRM as though it’s an implacable force of nature is a category error. Secondly, EME doesn’t in any provide a standardised solution: it provides a sandbox for each DRM vendor to inject their own proprietary solution.
Related links
What is EME?
Henri gives an overview of the DRM-style encryption proposed for HTML. It’s a very balanced unbiased description, but if you have the slightest concern about security, sentences like this should give you the heebie-jeebies:
Neither the browser nor the JavaScript program understand the bytes.
W3C and EME: it isn’t about preventing DRM but saving the W3C – Baldur Bjarnason
A damning assessment of Tim Berners-Lee’s defeatist portrayal of the W3C:
No matter which side is right, the W3C faces an existential crisis.
Either:
- The W3C is a shepherd of the web for all, the web on everything, and a web of trust. But now it is fundamentally compromising its own principles in the name of maintaining industry relevance.
- Or, the W3C is merely an industry body for browser vendors to collaborate and its mission statement is nothing more than PR to increase buy-in from the smaller, largely powerless, members.
Both can’t be true. Neither is good news for the organisation.
Related posts
Playing TAG
A meet’n’greet with the W3C’s Technical Architecture Group.