On 2014-05-21 05:35, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
On 5/20/14, 11:19 PM, Jim wrote:
We've tried to get that part standardized, and failed.
Prove this claim.
We explicitly requested the HTML working group to agree to take it on
as a deliverable. They, and more importantly the other browser
vendors involved, refused.
Where is this claimed specification?
There is no point writing a specification if you've already been told
by everyone involved that they have no plans to follow it.
The parts of an EME based media player not specified are implemented in
JS/HTML making it an obvious target for a polyfill. Mozilla could have
promoted a standard that has a polyfill that will work on EME enabled
web browsers and could have refused to implement the EME on Firefox, and
this would have made this alternative standard the best option for
developers. There was a clear winning strategy here, yet Mozilla chose
not to fight, and by supporting the EME have destroyed this strategic
option and aided the opponents by covering their weakness. Malice or
incompetence?
It keeps DRM out of the open web standards by definition.
This sounds to me like sweeping the problem under the rug more than
anything else, honestly.
There are good reasons to keep DRM out of web standards, but those
reasons are what's important, not the keeping out per se.
I disagree. There are legal precedents in which the contemporary
environment wins cases. This is a weakness for the DRM proponents and
why give it up?
It keeps DRM out of the open web standards, a very significant point,
and a matter to be defended.
We agree on that, but that battle is long since lost no matter what we
do.
Mozilla could still win this battle, but needs to be much more
strategic, and needs to refuse to implement the EME.
There are very real technical differences in the ability to sandbox a
separate DRM player versus an integrated web based media player.
I'm not sure there are.
It is trivially obvious. It is much easier for people to sandbox a
separate computing device, they can just disconnect it! Granted people
could use a separate computer to run a web based media player too, but
it needs to be more capable than a dedicated media decoder, and this
increases the barrier.
With a standard that supports a separate media player the user can
choose the tradeoffs between using an integrated player versus a
separate device. With the EME the user has less choice and thus less
control over their security and privacy.
Jim
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