Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 19:58:46 -0500
From: [email protected]
On 1/16/2014 5:16 PM, Fred Andrews
wrote:
> Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 09:49:06 -0500
> From: [email protected]
> To: [email protected]
> CC: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: W3C HTML Fork without Digital Restriction
Management
>
>
> On 1/16/2014 3:31 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 5:58 PM, Jeff Jaffe
<[email protected]> wrote:
> >> I have not heard about any objections from the
Free Software Community about
> >> any of the Open Web Platform (OWP) specs other
than EME.
> >>
> >> Accordingly, a subset of the OWP which removes
EME would more accurately be
> >> characterized as a "profile" of the OWP, rather
than a fork of the OWP.
> > The above implies that you consider EME to to be
part of the Open Web
> > Platform. On what basis? On the basis that EME alone
(without a CDM)
> > is non-proprietary even though all its current and
expected
> > deployments involve a proprietary CDM and,
therefore, the actual uses
> > of EME fall outside the Open Web?
>
> To rephrase in a way that I hope you would agree:
>
> I have not heard about any objections from the Free
Software Community
> about any of the W3C specs other than EME.
I dispute Tim's interpretations of the principles of the web,
and dispute that DRM is compatible with the open web, and this
is a core issue.
> Yes, this is exactly why there are objections specifically to EME.
The objection is to the change in the charter not just the EME and Tim has
already made a decision on the charter, right? The EFF tried to offer Tim
assistance in this matter, and he had access to their objection well in advance
of making a decision on the charter. Are you suggesting that Tim might remove
DRM from the charter in future? That Tim might change his mind on the
compatibility of DRM with the open web? That Tim is not going to bother
reconsidering the matter until the EME is at an advance stage? Many of us
have better things to do than to defend this matter - make your decision and
stop wasting our time.
> Accordingly, a subset of W3C specs which removes EME
would more
> accurately be characterized as a "profile" of the W3C
specs, rather than
> a fork of the W3C specs.
DRM is a restriction, a mis-feature, a negative. If a
profile is the subtraction of features, then subtracting the
EME mis-features is an addition!
> A profile is a subtraction of a specification
The EME specification imposes the restrictions - it limits the set of solutions
that we are free to deploy in the web community. If a 'profile' just means
the removal of wording, and if that wording could add or remove from the
solution space, then 'profile' has no meaning for the set of solutions. It's
not going to help resolve the dispute. You also ignore the laws that enforce
the restrictions - they are not up for debate or to change in the resolution of
this dispute - we can not just agree to disagree and use separate branding and
then all get along, not to mention that the lack of consensus would damage the
web.
There is a better path. Just keep the DRM out of the web. The proponents of
the EME have still not produced the requirements that lead to the choice of the
EME and that requires adding DRM to the web. They have not explored a solution
that is compatible with the web without DRM, and without their requirements we
can do little more to assist. If you want a resolution then get on their case.
This would all be over if a specification were advanced that allowed the DRM
content to be deferred to external apps or devices - it would be the solution
that worked for the largest set of users and thus the solution that content
owners and web developers would want to use. The vendors of proprietary stacks
could bundle the required players just as easily as they could bundle CDMs, and
it could be trivial for open source web browsers to invoke the players on these
platforms. People would still not be happy with the promotion of DRM, and not
happy that it would exclude users of open source stacks. But users of open
source stacks might consider that the use of a separate device for viewing DRM
content is a good outcome as it clearly separates software that they can not
verify from their general purpose computer.
cheers
Fred
