Firstly, I think you make a very good point. I experience a similar feeling when I read things that appear one-sided, and I try in my writing to communicate the fact that both sides of the issue have been considered, even if I think one is completely absurd. I'll take your criticism into account with future writing about EME.

FWIW, here's the other side of the argument as I understand it:

"DRM is already happening on the Web, so we might as well do it at the W3C, with the vague hope that we will win some kind of concession from the DRM companies. Also, maybe if we don't, they will take their content off the Web and into some other system (subtext -- we care more about Netflix being on the Web as defined by W3C than we do about the Web as defined by W3C being free and open.

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Save Firefox 10 years ago

Question: He says EME will allow publishers to dictate which browsers can implement CDMs that can interoperate with their content, and therefore control the browser market, and that this will quell innovation. I have questions about this, however. In the old but waning status quo, Adobe and Microsoft got to decide which browsers would work with Silverlight and Flash (right?) so it still wasn't possible for a developer to make a new browser that could play DRMed video without getting their permission. What is the meaningful difference from the new status quo?

Is the difference that now, publishers control content and compatibility, whereas before publishers controlled content and DRM companies controlled compatibility? Is that actually a meaningful change for users or for browser developers? It doesn't seem like it is.

Am I missing something?

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