Am I missing something? Is this a case where an open standard is a bad thing?
Second, this is worse in the sense that Netflix, Google, and Microsoft - creators of EME - have gotten the W3C to support DRM. That's not just a symbolic blow.
Funny, I haven't heard many artists clamoring for DRM, and the ones who do tend to be well beyond the feeding-themselves step on Maslow's Hierarchy.
No, it is, as always, the distributors. That's because DRM hurts artists but entrenches distributors.
It is a shitty compromise because it is the start of a closed web. Enjoy your view-source while your corporate overlords deign to give you permission.
Is a programming language a good analogy? The C++ spec says what a switch-statement should do, but nothing about how it must be implemented, right?
> New browsers face a new barrier to entry
It's not really a new barrier to entry though, is it? If I wrote a browser last year, were my chances of getting Netflix to support it better then than they are now?
What about if I wrote a new DRM scheme? With a standard interface, are the barriers to entry for me now lower?
No it isn't. Example: Netflix will ask for Widevine DRM provider (and exactly that provider!). It's a proprietary closed licensed platform and your system needs to have their binary blob licensed and compiled for it. If you don't have it and didn't pay for it, you won't be able to decrypt the DRM. Of course to get your DRM blob to run, you'll also have to prove and promise to the DRM provider that you have locked out the user from their own device so they won't be able to accidentally record the video they watch.
It's impossible to make your own open implementation or compete with existing players because they built the fact that you need to negotiate with them for licensing into the standard.
I don't think that's true. It's still just a plugin so as long as implement something like the Gecko Media Plugin / CDM, you should be good, or at least no worse off than before where you had to support the Flash or Silverlight plugin.
Is there a better way to make strong DRM?
This DRM implementation would add this suffix: "and any number of third parties have chosen to allow my browser to use their proprietary decryption modules." This is the opposite of the Open Web and therefore a threat to user freedom and the integrity of the Web as a whole.
These steps are not technical but they are very significant.
Consider how you would provide this plugin to your users as the author of a new browser? You have to ask the plugin authors for permission to use it.
Then consider that you have to persuade Netflix to allow the users of your browser to use their site (without changing user agents).
Neither of these steps were required with NPAPI
There is no reason why Netflix would need to do user-agent sniffing - the EME API is built around request access to specific "Key Systems" (eg. Widevine) by well-known-name. If they do user-agent sniffing that's an entirely separate issue, and is just as much as problem in the Silverlight case.
I don't believe that's true. The plugin is freely available. You just have to write the host.
I don't think Netflix or the rights owners would care since the stream is protected equally in any browser.
That's not what's going on, though. It's an API that a DRM provider can implement. A website that gets a DRM provider it doesn't recognize will refuse to work with it.
Yes. The bit where this is an "open standard" to implement completely closed, non-standard plugins, which cannot be implemented by reading the spec.
With this "open standard" any browser or OS not blessed by Hollywood can't have a full web experience.
And I take great issues with that.
I couldn't care less about Netflix, I never intended to use their services and never will, but this really is bad news for the web.
Netflix on the web with a plugin was fine for me: people wanting to watch Netflix on their standards-compliant browser would need to install a proprietary plugin to do so, and would have done it (at least a great number would have, I guess). It was their choice to do so (the other one being not to watch Netflix in a browser, and yes it _is_ a choice).
The difference (and it's big to me) was that it had _no_ impact on people not wanting to watch Netflix in their browser. These people did not have this proprietary code running in their browser and all the potential security issues coming with it.
IMO the browsers should (and I don't actually know if they do or not atm, this is a thing I need to check soon) at the very least let people opt in or out of this. Of course if they opt out they wouldn't be able to use services like Netflix.
And here comes the browser plugins world again... So much for killing flash (which was and still is a _great_ platform for small to medium web games).
People are just tying themselves in knots to act like the status quo is a disaster.
I suppose that viewpoint admits that obstinance on the part of Firefox was not going to get Netflix to offer their service without DRM.
edit: not really sure how I messed up the original comment, which was an incoherent mess.
I understand the argument about this making it harder to develop new browsers and so on, but eschewing EME probably wasn't going to prevent that from happening, it would just happen in flash or other closed code.