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Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), a mechanism by which HTML5 video providers can discover and enable DRM providers offered by a browser, has taken the next step on its contentious road to standardization. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the standards body that oversees most Web-related specifications, has moved the EME specification to the Proposed Recommendation stage.
The next and final stage is for the W3C's Advisory Committee to review the proposal. If it passes review, the proposal will be blessed as a full W3C Recommendation.
Ever since W3C decided to start working on a DRM proposal, there have been complaints from those who oppose DRM on principle. The work has continued regardless, with W3C director and HTML inventor Tim Berners-Lee arguing that—given that DRM is already extant and, at least for video, unlikely to disappear any time soon—it's better for DRM-protected content to be a part of the Web ecosystem than to be separate from it.
Berners-Lee argued that, for almost all video providers, the alternative to DRM in the browser is DRM in a standalone application. He also argued that these standalone applications represent a greater risk to privacy and security than the constrained, sandboxed environment of the Web. He acknowledges that DRM has problems, chiefly the difficulties it imposes for fair use, derivative works, and backups. He notes, however, that a large body of consumers don't appear overly concerned with these issues, as they continue to buy or subscribe to DRM-protected content.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:53PM
Yes, this. DRM is like perpetual motion in that it is impossible. The only reason DRM works at all is that so many people blindly or even willingly wear DRM chains. Steam bribes people to accept DRM, and has had a fair amount of success. But they know they can't push people too hard.
Imagine trying to apply DRM to knives, because knives are dangerous tools that can hurt people. Have to have the blade retract into a case when not being held by the authorized user. So this case needs some serious sophistication, some means of detecting fingerprints perhaps, and the means to power it. Have to ban all existing bare blade styles of knives, including the humble table knife. Then there's the problem of home made tools. People have only been making knives since, oh, the Stone Age, how do you stop them from sharpening any handy hunk of metal, giving it a cutting edge? Brain damage everyone so no one is capable of do-it-yourself work? Of course not. You don't, you live with this reality.
It's the same with books. Even if copy/paste can be disabled on a locked down XBox kind of machine, what's to stop any reader from hand copying whatever they read on the screen into a text file on another computer? Only has to be done once to slip the DRM chains for everyone.
Maybe they think that since video is not so trivial to hand copy, it'll work for that format. Nope. But I find it exasperating that a supposed tech genius and visionary can miss the boat so badly on this. Hey, Berners-Lee, we don't have to use HTML to move information around on the web. HTML can be forked. You fork it up, and we'll fork you and the W3C out.