Edit: You guys are totally right, I missed it in the original article. Shame on me.
There was a sizeable component within the W3C (I am still unsure as to what degree I can reveal how much, given that the W3C holds members to a confidentiality agreement.) who felt this was an important step to take before making EME a standard. In the end, the W3C executive team overrode those objections, and decided to go ahead without any such covenant.
You can now for the first time be prosecuted for revealing a flaw in a W3C standard, overriding a browser "feature" on behalf of its user, or making a HTML video accessible without first asking permission of the DRM vendor who obfuscated it.
> You can now for the first time be prosecuted for revealing a flaw in a W3C standard, overriding a browser "feature" on behalf of its user, or making a HTML video accessible without first asking permission of the DRM vendor who obfuscated it.
Presumably you're referring to the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions? Your second two examples are just as illegal now as they were yesterday: EME was already a browser "feature," already being used for HTML video. The only thing that's changed is the "W3C standard" part.
The vendors presumably would have been fine to take EME, already a de facto standard and just leave it as-is, or "standardize" it in another body. Forcing that would have been nice for W3C's purity and image in some circles, and maybe even a good move, but it doesn't seem that it would have made any practical difference.