Encrypted Media Extensions, a proposal to build Digital Restrictions Management

[silicon_toad2000]

http://www.fsf.org/news/coalition-against-drm-in-html

In order for watching, sharing, recording, and transforming media to be restricted, computer users must be prevented from modifying the plug-in software used to view the media (otherwise people would modify the software to remove the restrictions). This makes DRM by nature incompatible with free "as in freedom" software. The letter argues that by enshrining nonfree software in HTML itself, EME would comparatively diminish the values of freedom, self-actualization and decentralization so critical to the Web as we know it.

FSF executive director, John Sullivan, said, "Building DRM hooks into HTML is another attempt by Hollywood and its friends to gain control over our home and mobile computers in order to restrict the way we use media on the Web. DRM turns these companies into gatekeepers capable of filtering and controlling not just movies and music but also educational materials -- anything digital. The FSF and its partners won't allow these companies to sneak this change into the Web's core language. We want the World Wide Web, not the Hollyweb."

Web expert and W3C HTML Working Group member Manu Sporny has also warned that EME would spur a new proliferation of incompatible proprietary browser plug-ins for playing DRM-encumbered media, harming interoperability on the Web. This would run counter to the W3C's stated principles, which include an explicit commitment to "global interoperability," as part of the Open Stand guidelines to which W3C is a signatory.

The coalition signing the letter is an international group of free software and Internet freedom organizations. Frédéric Couchet, executive director of the French free software organization April, wrote, "DRM is an outrageous threat made by the entertainment industry against its own customers. Accepting the EME proposal would make the W3C complicit in forcing DRM on every computer user."

The W3C hosts the full text of the EME proposal on its site at https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted-media/encrypted-media.html.