The reality is that content publishers that stream video over the internet
didn't like the existing HTML5 video spec that linked to a static MP4 or WebM
file and had no way of stopping you from directly downloading and giving to
your friend and sharing over BitTorrent. Then they would piss off the movie
studios as the studios wouldn't have a revenue stream to resell you the same
movie over again.
So what was the FSF trying to aim for here? All video be unencrypted or no
video at all? I have no technical backing for this, but what if video on the
server was encrypted with a public GnuPG key and when it was streamed to your
web browser, a private key (for which you bought) unlocked it? Of course if
we went down the private key route, it doesn't stop people from distributing
that private key with the video on BitTorrent.
Is there comprimise? What if this DRM'd video used a royalty free codec like
WebM instead of H264? Would that ease the pain or would you feel the format
itself was tainted?
