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Submitted via IRC for boru
Dear Jeff, Tim, and colleagues, In 2013, EFF was disappointed to learn that the W3C had taken on the project of standardizing "Encrypted Media Extensions," an API whose sole function was to provide a first-class role for DRM within the Web browser ecosystem. By doing so, the organization offered the use of its patent pool, its staff support, and its moral authority to the idea that browsers can and should be designed to cede control over key aspects from users to remote parties.
[...] The W3C is a body that ostensibly operates on consensus. Nevertheless, as the coalition in support of a DRM compromise grew and grew — and the large corporate members continued to reject any meaningful compromise — the W3C leadership persisted in treating EME as topic that could be decided by one side of the debate. In essence, a core of EME proponents was able to impose its will on the Consortium, over the wishes of a sizeable group of objectors — and every person who uses the web. The Director decided to personally override every single objection raised by the members, articulating several benefits that EME offered over the DRM that HTML5 had made impossible.
[...] We believe they will regret that choice. Today, the W3C bequeaths an legally unauditable attack-surface to browsers used by billions of people. They give media companies the power to sue or intimidate away those who might re-purpose video for people with disabilities. They side against the archivists who are scrambling to preserve the public record of our era. The W3C process has been abused by companies that made their fortunes by upsetting the established order, and now, thanks to EME, they'll be able to ensure no one ever subjects them to the same innovative pressures.
[...] Effective today, EFF is resigning from the W3C.
Thank you,
Cory Doctorow
Advisory Committee Representative to the W3C for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:09AM (4 children)
I'm not so sure...
Definitely, most of the paid content will move to use EME... but I suspect some free content will move as well. The free content requires advertising in order to obtain revenue. Their problem is that they do not serve advertisements on content that is downloaded. EME will prevent easily downloading streamed content and will lock up the free content behind the advertising wall.
For this reason, I'm sure Google will incorporate EME into chrome. While Apple did piss off the advertising people with the recent release of Safari, they still have to play nice with the content industry due to all the content distributed through itunes... so, Safari will probably get it as well. I would suspect that Firefox may hold off initially, especially if there is any mass complaining about EME; after all, it costs more developer resources to implement EME, than it does to ignore it.
No real wallet when choosing browsers, but I agree if people avoid the browsers with EME, it will eventually be dropped. However, I don't believe the non-geeks are going to care or notice a difference. So unfortunately, it appears that EME is coming and its time for smart people to swap to non-mainstream browsers.
I also agree that your comparison to flash is accurate, and will eventually happen. Unfortunately, it will not happen until after EME takes over the masses.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 5, Informative) by urza9814 on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:44AM (3 children)
Well, they *did*...back around 2014. But by now Firefox *already* supports EME (on Windows...). You can disable it, but it's on by default. Chrome/Safari/IE/Edge also support it; not sure if it can be disabled on those.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encrypted_Media_Extensions#Support [wikipedia.org]
If you want to disable it on Firefox, head to about:preferences#content and look for the "Play DRM Content" checkbox. I don't think that option even exists on Linux installs (due to no EME support there yet), but can't verify at the moment as I'm currently on a Windows system at work.
The one way Firefox is better is they've apparently designed it specifically to resist attempts to track or identify specific users through the DRM tools. And, again, they do provide a switch to disable it. But if you want a browser that just doesn't and won't support it at all you probably want to be looking at something like Pale Moon...
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:04AM (1 child)
Not sure about Firefox, but I'm running PCLinuxOS and see this in Pale Moon's preferences window under Content:
|Video|
- Enable Media Source Extensions (MSE)
- Use MSE asynchronously
- Enable MSE for MP4 video
- Enable MSE for WebM video
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:47PM
MSE is a completely different part of the standard. That's just for regular video streams, not for DRM content.
MSE: https://www.w3.org/TR/media-source/ [w3.org]
EME: https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ [w3.org]
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:09AM
Ignore my earlier comment — I just realized that I wasn't paying close enough attention and mixed up EME with MSE.