[Discuss] DRM in HTML5

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

The FSF's anti-DRM group, Defective By Design, is encouraging people to
contact the W3C and let them know that the W3C shouldn't endorse the use
of DRM in the new HTML5 video standard:
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/no-drm-in-html5

(They have a petition you can sign.)

My initial reaction was that allowing DRM in HTML5 might be more
beneficial to consumers in the short term. The distributors, like
Netflix, that are actually implementing the video players will simply
build or buy (Silverlight) DRM tech, if it is not part of the standard,
because their content licensing agreements require them to have DRM. If
an HTML5 standard led to an open source implementation, and brought us
closer to a universal IP TV client, that will benefit consumers by
letting them play back content on the device of their choice, even if it
is an obscure platform.

This is similar to what Tim Berners-Lee reportedly said on the matter
last week: "...without it, more of the Web would be locked up in
un-searchable, unlinkable formats like Flash."

That's actually a paraphrased quote from an opinion piece from Cory
Doctorow:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2013/mar/12/tim-berners-lee-drm-cory-doctorow?CMP=twt_fd

where he makes the good point that any DRM tech we are likely to see
will be closed source. Consequently any advantage to it being part of
the HTML5 standard, from the consumer's perspective, goes away.

Essentially it takes us from having the large, proprietary binary blob
fraught with security holes known as Flash, to using a smaller
proprietary binary blob that serves as a DRM plugin.

Doctorow concludes with:

  As Berners-Lee himself will tell you, the presence of open platforms
  where innovation requires no permission is the best way to entice the
  world to your door. The open Web creates and supplies so much value
  that everyone has come to it - leaving behind the controlled,
  Flash-like environs of AOL and other failed systems.

  The big studios need the Web more than the Web needs big studios.

  The W3C has a duty to send the DRM-peddlers packing, just as the US
  courts did in the case of digital TV. There is no market for DRM, no
  public purpose served by granting a veto to unaccountable,
  shortsighted media giants who dream of a world where your mouse rings
  a cash-register with every click and disruption is something that
  happens to other people, not them.

If you consider the way broadcast and cable networks continue to lose
viewers to online sources, like YouTube, you can see how in the not too
distant future the traditional content distributors will have an
incentive not to put extra DRM hurdles in front of their viewers.

So yeah, Defective By Design is likely correct that DRM shouldn't be
formally endorsed by the W3C as part of the standard.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/