On 1/17/2014 6:18 PM, Fred Andrews wrote:
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] <mailto:[email protected]>
> To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
> CC: [email protected]
<mailto:[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]>
<mailto:[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.
I'm not sure whether this is directed to me or not, but here are some
answers.
I'm not aware that Tim is considering dropping content protection from
the Charter. As you say, we spent months discussing this with EFF and
he decided to keep it in the charter.
DRM is not in the Charter.
Tim will consider EME as to whether it is a valid open solution to
content protection at a later stage.
> 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
