Protect open internet: keep W3C standards without DRM

From a translator: this is a translation of an article from the EFF Foundation with an analysis of the situation surrounding the proposal to implement DRM in HTML 5 standards. I considered this material important, since the problems discussed in it will affect most Internet users in our country and in the world.

upd: If possible, then help change the type of topic to post-translation. I apologize to readers for the technical error in creating the post.


This is a new front in the war against digital rights management (DRM).technology. These technologies, which, according to many, exist to enhance copyright, did nothing to help pay creative people. Instead, either as intended or due to circumstances, they impede the implementation of modern developments, the fair use of technology and competition, the compatibility and realization of our rights to our own things.

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That's why we were shocked when we found out that the initiative under discussion was inviting the W3C HTML5 Development Team to incorporate DRM into the next generation of core web standards. This initiative is called Encrypted Media Extensions-EME . Accepting this proposal will be a very dangerous step and must be stopped.


The previous two decades have been marked by the struggle of two points of view on the work of the Network. One of them argues that the Network should be a universal ecosystem based on open standards that can be fully implemented by any member of the Network, wherever he is, under the same conditions without the need for permission or coordination with anyone, anywhere . This technological tradition gave us first HTML and HTTP, and then technologies that defined the era, such as wikis, search engines, blogs, email, JavaScript applications, online maps that can be used in other projects and hundreds of millions special web resources for which the paragraph is too short to list.

Another view was presented by corporations trying to take control of the Web with their proprietary extensions. These extensions are represented by technologies such as Adobe flash, Microsoft silverlight, and pushed by Apple and other phone companies with highly closed and limited platforms.. These technologies become available only from one source or require permission for an alternative implementation. When these technologies become popular, they poison the open ecosystem around them. As a rule, flash-dependent sites are hard to link to, impossible to index, they cannot be translated by machines, inaccessible to users with disabilities, such sites cannot work on many devices, jeopardizing the user's safety and privacy. Platforms and devices limiting their users are stifled by important new technologies and market competition.

EME suffers from many of these problems, as it clearly refuses to pay attention to compatibility issues and requires special third-party proprietary software or even special equipment from websites, as well as specific operating systems. All of this is referred to collectively as “data stream decoding modules” and none of them are defined in the EME proposal. The authors of the proposal argue that the essence of these modules, their functions, the sources of their distribution, are entirely outside the scope of this proposal and EME itself cannot be considered DRM technology, since not all such modules will be DRM modules. If the user cannot use the proprietary components that the site requires and, therefore, does not have the necessary decoding module, then the contents of the site will not be shown to him. It is terrible that this is the exact opposite of the main task of the W3C. W3C makes clear Standards available for implementation that guarantee portability not so that there are many incompatible proprietary software and services available from specific devices or applications. EME is just an initiative that is regressing the development of HTML5, threatening to bring us back to“Bad old days to the Web” with deliberately poorly developed portability and compatibility.

It is well known that the open standards community is very suspicious of DRM and the implications of using this technology for portability and software compatibility, so the proposal from Google, Microsoft and Netflix states: “DRM is not added to the HTML5 specification” using EME. It sounds something like this: "we are not vampires, but we invite them to your home."

DRM proponents further tell us that EME is not a DRM scheme. However, proposal author Mark Watson admitsthat “definitely, our interests are related to those use cases that most people designate as DRM” and that implementations require the use of classified information that is outside the specification. It is difficult to support the claim that EME is needed for anything other than DRM.

DRM offers in W3C exist for a simple reason: W3C agrees to indulge Hollywood, who is angry with the Internet for almost the entire time of its existence , and always demanded to give itself a developed infrastructure that allows controlling the functioning of users' computers. One gets the feeling that Hollywood will never allow the placement of films on the Web without DRM restrictions. The idea that Hollywood will pick up its toys and go home is illusory. Every movie that releases Hollywoodalready available to those who really want to get a pirated copy . iTunes, Amazon, Magnatune and many other sellers sell music without any DRM. Netflix and Spotify streaming services are successful because they offer a good, practical alternative distribution model, and not because DRM gives them any economic benefits. There is only one logical reason for Hollywood DRM requirements - the desire of film companies to have a veto on the development of new technologies. Film companies use DRM for various restrictions, including the prohibition on fast-forwarding and tight regional control of recording and playback of their products on different mediaand thereby create complex and expensive operating modes that must be “followed” by competing technologies. As a result, a small consortium of media corporations and corporations with a technical focus has the right to veto technology development .

Too often, technology companies erect technological walls against each other, satisfying the vagaries of Hollywood, selling their users along with it. However, open standards are a vaccine against this development. It would be a big mistake for the Web community to leave the door open for the Hollywood ganster and anti-technology culture, infecting W3C standards with it. This undermines the purpose of HTML5: creating open alternatives for all the functionality that was previously absent in the standards. Creating alternatives that are not tied to device restrictions, incompatibility, and opacity created by platforms such as flash. HTML5 expects to become better flash and excluding DRM from it will make it really better.

Support the fight against DRM on the Web .

Original article: Original article

authors: Peter Eckersley and Seth Schoen

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