W3C EME is not DRM (nor other fear-mongering TLAs) | Hacker News Reader

W3C EME is not DRM (nor other fear-mongering TLAs)

blog.adrianroselli.com

9 pointsbovermyer6 comments

Oh yeah that's smart, all the critics have no idea right?

Ok smartypants, open technology right? Doesn't mean anybody should be to do these two things:

1) Implement a browser, that implements the DRM (or at least talking to the DRM blackbox)

2) Get the software to encode his media on the variety of DRMs

Yeah, that's impossible. Why? Well, you can't d/l those blobs to run the DRM anywhere. You can't d/l the encoders anywhere. You can't get documentation the APIs of the blackboxes. Basically, zip, you can't do it.

If you're not in the MAFIAA/Netflix/Google pipeline, you're out.

Uh-hum, open technology, right?

EME/CDM DRM isn't about DRM, it's about putting up barriers to entry so that nobody but google and apple can give you a browser where it works. So that nobody but Netflix and BBC can provide content for that DRM so that none of Netflixes competitors could get a leg up and the MAFIAA has to go to Netflix if it wants its content distributed.

So if a browser like, say, Sleipnir implements the EME standard and is then able to act as a channel for streaming DRM-protected content... how does that imply that Evil Demons of Corporatocracy are taking over the entire system?

Link to the documentation and blob d/ls for encoding/playback. Is that so much to ask? It's an "open technology" isn't it? Anybody can implement a browser right? Link, link, link. It's not difficult, see, all I need is that magical link, and I'll shut up. Show me the link, shooooow meeeee the link baby.

Yeah, thought so.

Sleipnir claims to run on Windows and Mac. Platforms owned by Microsoft and Apple, who coincidentally also own two of the main three DRM implementations (PlayReady and FairPlay). Then Google will add their WideVine DRM scheme.

The difficulty isn't EME, but the proprietary blackbox it interfaces to. Without the blackbox, EME is worthless.

Let's look at TimBL's statememt:

[I]f content protection of some kind has to be used for videos, it is better for it to be discussed in the open at W3C, better for everyone to use an interoperable open standard as much as possible...

But EME is non-interoperable because different browsers use different DRM systems, and none of those DRM systems themselves are open standards. (Open standard DRM like OMA DRM does exist, but AFAIK browsers aren't interested in it.)

...and better for it to be framed in a browser which can be open source, and available on a general purpose computer rather than a special purpose box.

EME is kind of a shell game, moving the closed-source component outside the browser into the OS.

Tim Berners-Lee's statement:

* "[I]f content protection of some kind has to be used for videos, it is better for it to be discussed in the open at W3C, better for everyone to use an interoperable open standard as much as possible, and better for it to be framed in a browser which can be open source, and available on a general purpose computer rather than a special purpose box. Those are key arguments for the decision that this topic is in scope." *

* "Content protection", of which DRM is only one. So the other forms of content protection should still be in scope, and open to discussion

* "better for everyone to use an interoperable open standard as much as possible" -- I can't get my head around how EME is an open standard when the key component that gives it value is a proprietary / licensed / FOSS-incompatible black box.

* "better for it to be framed in a browser which can be open source" -- again, building around a proprietary blackbox can't be the open source solution in spirit. The proprietary blackbox taints the rest of the stack "like a cancer" [1]

* "available on a general purpose computer rather than a special purpose box" -- I wonder what the definition of a general purpose computer is. I worry it's limited to computing platforms owned by Microsoft, Apple, or Google.

* "Those are key arguments for the decision that this topic is in scope". Amen. The technology stack that EME is designing for assumes the answers to these four points, and so seems to reject solutions (e.g. watermarking) that question these assumptions, based in part by confidential agreements between Netflix and the movie industry.

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_c...

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