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posted by martyb on Sunday October 09 2016, @08:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the bring-out-your-dead dept.

This week, the chief arbiter of Web standards, Tim Berners-Lee, decided not to exercise his power to extend the development timeline for the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) Web technology standard. The EME standardization effort, sponsored by streaming giants like Google and Netflix, aims to make it cheaper and more efficient to impose Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) systems on Web users. The streaming companies' representatives within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) were unable to finish EME within the time allotted by the W3C, and had asked Berners-Lee for an extension through next year.

Berners-Lee made his surprising decision on Tuesday, as explained in an email announcement by W3C representative Philippe Le Hégaret. Instead of granting a time extension — as he has already done once — Berners-Lee delegated the decision to the W3C's general decision-making body, the Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee includes diverse entities from universities to companies to nonprofits, and it is divided as to whether EME should be part of Web standards. It is entirely possible that the Advisory Committee will reject the time extension and terminate EME development, marking an important victory for the free Web.

So it's not dead yet, despite Berners-Lee's decision. Let's not celebrate prematurely and keep up the fight to keep DRM out of the web!


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  • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday October 09 2016, @02:38PM

    by Pino P (4721) on Sunday October 09 2016, @02:38PM (#412072) Journal

    I don't use DRM media, ever.

    No DVDs? At all?

    Exactly. No DVDs at all. That is so XX century. And are not environment friendly.

    Takes more time and energy to rip a DVD and then convert it than to just download it.

    Lawfully made downloads of Hollywood feature films also come with digital restrictions management. (There are a handful of exceptions, mostly pre-1964 U.S. films whose copyright registration was not updated in the 28th year after publication.)

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:19PM (#412160)

    Exactly why I have never used the iTunes Store, and I never will.