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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!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Sunday October 09 2016, @12:28PM
Would you prefer a bunch of individual proprietary DRM formats/standards that require their own programs and plugins?
I would actually prefer this, because at least it wouldn't appear to give DRM legitimacy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:50PM
More importantly, competing DRM implementations gives the lock-in power to the various distribution channels over the content creators. This is what killed DRM on music: Apple was able to manage a vertical monopoly (iPod, iTunes Music Store), which made it impossible for other music stores to compete and also implement DRM: if you didn't implement Apple's DRM, you couldn't put DRM'd music on the iPod, and Apple didn't license their DRM scheme. The only way for the music studios to regain control was to license music for DRM-free downloads.
In spite of the pronouncements from the music industry that DRM was essential in their fight against piracy, since allowing DRM-free downloads the industry has enjoyed record profits.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @05:18AM
record profits
I see what you did there.